| >Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. New Zealand is a counterexample. They locked down tighter than a radioactive waste storage drum, stopped new cases which led to practically no strain on their health system, people actually (SHOCK! SUPRISE!) listened and wore masks to reduce local transmission, and now movie and television studios are flying personnel there en-masse and putting them through the mandatory quarantine in order to restart production. Geographic or demographic size differences are irrelevant-- the actions can be scaled to a quadrillion people if needed. In the US at least, closures were necessary because a great proportion of Americans are so self-centered, selfish, and stupid that they think that wearing a mask is a conspiracy to steal their rights. They would lick each other's tonsils just to "stick it to the gubmint". They would squeeze together into a single pair of sweatpants and rub their bodies up and down on each other saying "how's this for social distancing, STALIN!" That is literally, in the literal traditional dictionary definition of the word literally, happening before our very eyes-- the statement is immediately self-evident based on any rational person's visual first-person observation of his or her community. Edit: like this https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/i67279/w... |