Quote (fender @ 11 Aug 2021 23:29)
ah i see, schrödinger's restrictions: both completely unnecessary to avoid the collapse of our healthcare system, and also the reason our systems do better than many republican US states...
read again, I explicitly pushed back on ampoo's claim that all restrictions whatsoever could be gone. I said that it would be sufficient to put them on a voluntary basis, which in practice would mean that a lot of people would continue wearing masks out of their own volition or avoid places like clubs or crowded stadiums. this is particularly true if cases should go up substantially in the winter. so government-mandated rules could and should go, but this does not mean that every single person can or should throw caution completely out of the window.
furthermore, I do of course assume that our vaccination rate will continue to go up from here on out, particularly if cases and hospitalizations should go up. yes, with our current vaccination rates, we would not get through the winter without any restrictions without overwhelming the hospitals - but for now, during the summer, we could open up, and there is not a lot of further vaccination progress missing to get us through winter as well. progress which can be assumed to come between now and, say, october. hence, opening up now, similar to how the UK did it, is feasible.
these points aside, I already mentioned it: many red states in the US are doing much better than other similarly open, similarly vaccine-sceptic red states, so even this example is a mixed bag when it comes to your argument that "red states are already at capacity which proves that restrictions are still necessary".
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i know you love to ignore this whenever you bring up the UK, but their daily death average is about 6 times higher than ours - despite their smaller population, despite their natural advantage as an island nation, and despite their superior vaccination campaign.
the big paradigm shift I want to see is that we no longer worry about preventing every last infection and death and focus on protecting the healthcare system. in this regard, the UK's reopening is very successful.
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speaking of which, ALL of the other countries you mentioned still have covid restrictions (masks, tests, documentation...) in place (although denmark indeed plans to lift them in october), and if your "point" was merely about easing restrictions (just to inb4 that pivot), you could have included germany as well.
switzerland is also making plans to gradually phase out all restrictions over the coming months, even stuff like masks.
and what are you talking about when it comes to Germany? there are virtually no plans of relaxing rules any further in Germany, by the contrary, our politicians have constantly been discussing new restrictions in recent weeks.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 11 2021 04:49pm