Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
If we had collectively done more of the right things we would be far closer to the end of this.
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See, there's part of your problem.
There is no end. COVID is here to stay. It is already mutating out of control and will continue to do so. At some point it will be reclassified from a pandemic to an endemic disease (if sanity prevails), but the disease itself will not go away. That means that whatever ‘emergency’ measures you take now will become permanent unless the political will exists to revoke them.
(Income tax in Canada was a temporary emergency measure in 1917, to deal with the cost of World War I. Apparently
that emergency isn't over yet.)
In all of human history, only two viral diseases have been eradicated: smallpox and rinderpest. Both of them were slow-mutating pathogens for which a single vaccination could confer lifelong immunity. COVID, in terms of epidemiology, is much more like the flu.
I'm all in favour of vaccination for those who can get it. I am not in favour of setting up an omnipotent bureaucracy that can exclude people from society simply by refusing to issue them a document. History shows again and again that nobody can be trusted with that kind of power.