AFAIK the correct solution to the pandemic hasn't changed since 2019: test and trace, pay and support people who need to isolate. That's the only way you prevent spread and the rise of new variants. China did this, now they can roll out the vaccines on a voluntary basis and while they're not completely relaxing other policies, they're not experiencing giant outbreaks.
"Well China doesn't have to deal with a population of hogs and they did it right from the start, we're so overwhelmed with covid we can't take such a lenient approach with vaccination now" Isn't it still true that most unvaxxed are also uninsured, and have good reason to be skeptical of the government and pharmaceutical complex? Pushing the technocratic fix on people is engendering resistance, and it can't /just/ be from the hogs, can it?
I'm not sure if a real solution can be implemented in the US, but I don't understand why so many people on here are embracing the solution pushed by both liberal parties. Like, trying to get everyone to drive an electric car is not solving climate change.
Should we just get used to the masks? Am I wrong and it /is/ just the hogs throwing a tantrum?
Edit: I'm vaccinated for covid, I guess I've caught a little brainworms comrades. Thanks
The vaccines are free. Distrust in big pharma does not invalidate other cures, such as insulin, which despite being produced for profit by the same corpos, people still take, and it works. Big pharma is interested in every worker drone getting back to making them billions of dollars as soon as possible, so they have no inherent reason to provide an ineffective cure. We have had mandatory immunizations for everything from the military, to certain jobs, to immigration, to everyday annual flu vaccines (most of which aren't 100% effective against the strain they're supposed to defend against either). What's suddenly changed?
It really is just dumb hogs throwing a tantrum, placing people with actual compromized immune systems, not to mention vast swathes of an otherwise healthy population at risk, creating the chance for more dangerous mutations in the meantime.
Yes, mass quarantining would've been better. The material reality is that we live in a neoliberal hellscape where individual "freedoms" outweigh the risks as a whole, which is why the US has nearly a million dead and other countries do not. Quarantining was not, and is not politically feasible. There are no government mechanics to set it in place, and even if there were, I wouldn't trust a neoliberal state to carry them out in a safe and beneficial manner. The next best thing available is vaccines. Get your shots or this thing will never end, and we'll be handwringing about cost-benefit of doing or not doing this or that thing. We don't live in a socialist state that can wield political power effectively. There is no use in wanting to do what China or this or that other state did.
If the shitheads in the government just gave everyone n95 masks and mandated their use, we’d be in a lot better shape with regard to the vaccines effectiveness. Social isolation ala China was never an option because of our suburban and semi-rural areas. Rural China didn’t do lockdowns in the same way as the cities did
That still leaves too much (in)action up to the individual, imo. There's just no political capital to carry a mask mandate out, and the enforcement of such a rule would be left up to everyone's favorite sole conceivable mechanism of enforcement under neoliberalism: the cops, who would surely never abuse their position to make life hell for poor people on the basis of something as silly as a mask, right?
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