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Old 11-15-2021, 10:10 AM   #23
SailinAway
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Mercier View Post
It isn't fear. It is money. At a certain point, it is going to have a pretty strong effect on everyone in the areas' livelihood. When you mess with people's livelihood, bad things tend to happen.
It already has messed with the livelihood of millions of people. The only question is, at what point will people be losing so much money that they're willing to get vaccinated? I think that point will come. Many people value money---aka food, clothing, and shelter---more than anything else.

But cases show that people also value certain personal freedoms more than they value their freedom to not get vaccinated. Austria just instituted a lockdown on unvaccinated people for all but essential work and errands. (Why? Because Europe accounts for half of the infections and deaths of the whole world.) The day after the lockdown began 32,000 people got vaccinated.

I agree that money is at the heart of the pandemic. If the situation continues for more years, at some point the people and organizations that are shouldering the economic burden will collapse: hospitals; companies that can't obtain the products they sell, the raw materials to make those products, or employees; federal and state bailout budgets; landlords who can't collect rent; colleges and universities that have lost students and tuition; the food production and distribution system; retirees who lose their pension. The list of economic impacts goes on and on.

Having discovered vaccines that work, we're now faced with the ultimate enemy: human behavior that cannot be controlled on a large enough scale to stop the virus and keep its economic impacts in check. Education, friendly persuasion, and forced measures have worked to a certain extent but have not been sufficient to stop the virus and the growing economic losses. What else is there after asking and telling people to get vaccinated? Behavior only changes when people have a very compelling reason to change. More massive deaths? More massive economic collapse? Empty shelves in grocery stores?

I think that at some point people's survival instinct (built into the human brain) will outweigh the culturally learned values of personal freedom. In fact the herd instinct (needed for survival) will prevail over the desire for individual freedom when personal survival is at stake.
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