I think it's a myth to only tally the cost of the pandemic in deaths and skew it to old people. The stats show you're more likely to be a 30 year old flattened on his ass with a nasty illness for more than 3 months than you are to be a dead retiree with the virus. But because death is our only cost measure, we presume there's no impact on younger people other than open businesses.
Closing pubs is kind of a no brainer. Ain't nobody drinking pints has a clue about social distancing with loud music blaring. This is why bars became superspreader events in places like South Korea that otherwise did a killer job of control. Meanwhile, medical research studies clearly showed how the virus transmitted between neighboring dining tables in Chinese restaurants, so that's a known vector too.
And all this peacock posturing about saving jobs is kind of a false bargain. What good is a job if its business just gets more people sick and out of the workforce (if not dead)?
Whack. Thanks for the share.
Being here I am learning more about how America is morphing from the locus of global liberal democracy to more parochial cultural weirdness... the way Westerners might look at an Indian subculture that tortures itself by embedding hooks in their skin as part of a spiritual practice of enlightenment. Things like American wokeness, racism obsessions, and Trump reality distortion fields are becoming anthropological to the rest of the world.
Good interview on this with a former Tuga in the US:
https://pullrequest.substack.com/p/american-magical-realism
If they ain't getting the test, why would they even get the vaccine?
Some of our relatives, however, are still stuck there.