Quote (Skinned @ 20 Jan 2022 14:16)
Yes, this is because of Capitalism falling apart, not because they were wrong about the disease. If you want to visit a loved one in the hospital you have to wait 20 days from when they were diagnosed, because they are contagious with a deadly disease, and we get sued if a patient or visitor dies. If you have Covid-19 and you work somewhere you have to now come back whenever you feel like you can regardless of symptoms. This isn't because they are wrong about the 20 days, it is because we are actually disposable as workers under the capitalist paradigm. We as humans are just another factor of production to be considered such as rent, interest, entrepreneurship, investment, etc. If I die they will get another one.
It isn't backpedaling, it is capitalism reasserting itself as the prime ethic and the acknowledgement that individual lives are meaningless in the face of the economic engine of America.
You can have the clueless self-confirming take though, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
All the backing off of the covid mandates only says that a 9 day general strike in America would be able to get labor whatever they want.
This take is completely detached from reality.
First, the endgame of covid was always that it would become endemic and just like another flu. This is essentially what happened with the Omicron variant. Those who said "it's just a flu" in the beginning were wrong, but now the situation has fundamentally changed and it's indeed on the level of the flu. The virus has become magnitudes less deadly and this fact must of course be reflected in the way society deals with it. We must, at some point, begin treating covid like we treat the flu. People working in critical infrastructure aren't quarantining for a week or 10-20 days when they have the flu, they're coming back as soon as the acute symptoms have ended and they can go again. We aren't constantly running around with masks (outside of high-risk settings like hospitals), not even during flu season. We aren't testing for the flu and trying to keep track of every flu infection either. Completely giving up any control measures for covid just yet might be a bit too early, but in the medium-term future, this is the way we have to deal with it.
Second, taking a laxer approach with covid is a necessity out of social reasons just as much as it is out of capitalist or logistical reasons. The loss of education, livelihoods, social interaction, culture and general quality of life from the covid measures was never sustainable indefinitely - and now, with a much less virulent and much harder-to-contain variant, the cost-benefit ratio of the covid measures has flipped into deeply negative territory once and for all. Acknowledging this fact and changing our handling of the virus accordingly isn't "capitalism reasserting itself and using the plebs as cannon fodder for the virus to keep profits up", it's the sensible thing to do.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 20 2022 01:38pm