"Even as models project hospitalizations in excess of 300 by the end of September, state officials have no plans for reinstating statewide measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus."
Oregon-live news story today
The Delta variant changed the epidemic. But it is not changing the mood of the people. No more mandates.
Officials in Multnomah County (the county that contains Portland) promulgated a recommendation that people once again wear masks when indoors around other people, whether vaccinated or not. The announcement is in response to the more virulent Delta variant causing COVID cases to have climbed dramatically in Oregon. COVID is back.
The announcement contained the observation that mask-wearing is primarily needed in order to protect the un-vaccinated. That is a deal killer for a new round of masks and shutdowns.
Vaccinations changed everything. Now people who worry about COVID can protect themselves.
The largest group of Americans are the vaccinated. Vaccination was free; by late spring vaccinations were convenient and readily available; few people had side-effects beyond what would be resolved by taking two Tylenol tablets after the second dose. There was no big financial or convenience price to pay for vaccination. The benefit is that vaccinated people now appear to have little or no risk of a bad COVID experience. We were set free. Having tasted freedom, we don't want to go back.
A second group of people is large and easy to overlook. These are the un-engaged, the procrastinators, the people who don't want to think about COVID much and haven't gotten around to doing much, including get vaccinated. Maybe they have heard something about the vaccine that gives them pause; maybe they don't like needles; maybe they just consider this low priority. Humans are motivated by deadlines, which is why we have them. There is a tax filing deadline, an election day, and a date when a late fee is imposed on a bill, and a lot of people wait until then to take action. COVID vaccinations lack a firm deadline.
The third group of people are those this blog mentioned yesterday: Trump-influenced vaccine resisters. They think COVID is overblown as a risk, that masks and shutdowns are a cruel and unnecessary blow to the economy and personal freedom. They don't intend to get vaccinated. They don't like wearing masks, either.
There is no payoff for masking up and shutdown compliance. The people inclined to obey mandates and shutdowns, and to feel them legitimate and necessary, have been vaccinated. Yet the people they would most directly be protecting are people who don't care enough to protect themselves, or who do care but oppose it. The mismatch of interests creates a huge political problem for elected officials. There is no natural constituency for masking up by the people who would comply if it didn't seem like someone was taking advantage of them.
You mean we are protecting people who are too lazy or pig headed to protect themselves??? No thanks.
The result is bad public health but a predictable response of human nature. Humans are closely attuned to who is a "freeloader," a person who takes more of common resources than what he or she puts in. A governor or other leader would be asking the conscientious to sacrifice for the benefit of people who don't want the help, or don't care.
As long as the Delta variant primarily targets the un-vaccinated, the smart thing for officeholders to do is nothing. That appears to be what Oregon's governor plans to do. Nothing. Yes, extra people will die, but it is the consequence of freedom. People are making choices, primarily for themselves. Governors need to let them.
What they must not do is ask people to be saps. If they try to do so, there will be political hell to pay.
9 comments:
Easily the highest rate of vaccine hesitancy by demographic group is among Blacks. They are not "Trump-influenced".
Since per leftist dogma they cannot be "lazy or pig-headed", we can only infer that the virus IS racist after all.
'Low, Dudgeon,
I hope you’re not being pig-headed or racist, but it sorta looks that way.
There's many, many accounts that break open the canard about racial grouping that belie the notion of "hesitancy." Drilling down you will discover travel time, hours vaccine clinics are open, getting time off from service industry jobs, not listening to the news or not understanding what is expected of them to receive a vaccination. You will find some very similar reasons why these individuals did not fill out the 2020 US Census. But the biggest reason of all is targeted misinformation and out and out lies directed at individual groups by micro-targeting individuals through voter rolls and census data and other marketing information. Where is this misinformation coming from? As we see on Facebook the antivaxxer group of individuals that post most of the misinformation about Covid vaccines and vaccines in general are a small group of twelve individuals known to Facebook.
It has been a consensus since the beginning of the pandemic that 70% need to be vaccinated or naturally immune to stop it.
Other epidemics were eradicated by a unified national response. This is impossible with the Republican party. It's not just Trump. Republicans and white supremacist/libertarian media have politicized it since the beginning. They are responsible for a consistent anti science/anti-vax/anti government narrative that has hindered us getting to a level that will slow new infections. Their own states, so called "red states", are ok with this and it's those populations who are now spreading a mutated more lethal strain of COVID, giving new meaning to the phrase "live free or die".
It's against Progressive values to allow this to continue. Never mind empathy and compassion, there is a hard practical reality to taking steps to keep people away from each other and out of hospitals. "Doing nothing" will invite disaster.
At the moment Oregon is on the bubble, and I think our leaders are watching closely and if the uptick in cases continues they will have no choice but to impose closures again. It's probably coming.
I think we need to gradually increase the number of locations/situations where only immunized people are allowed. Maybe start with public transportation, followed by bars and restaurants. This will put serious pressure on the trumpidiots to get immunized.
Malcolm—
Prove it. Heck, remotely justify it, aside from “Not A Lockstep Leftist”.
Replying to Malcolm; Why do people whine about the possibility of the Government mandating Vaccination, after many decades of mandated vaccines for public schools. Military service in any number of foreign locations, ad infinitum. And all the time they're whining about Freedom on one hand, they are denying the right of business owners to require employees to be vaccinated, or submit to repetitive testing, at their own expense. I really struggle with the dissonance of these garbled messages. I increasingly lean towards a Darwinian solution; leave them alone, let Darwin sort it out.
“You mean we are protecting people who are too lazy or pig headed to protect themselves??? No thanks.” Good point. Other than kids, who have no say in heir vaccine status, I say, tough shit, trumpies. We here have a chance to increase the USA’s average IQ by around thirty points.
In reply to Malcolm "We here have a chance to increase the USA’s average IQ by around thirty points". Only if someone create a vaccine that destroys liberalism.
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