>another example of how we prioritize the elderly over children in the United States, arguably because children don't vote and the elderly do.
Or arguably because death is final, death came for the elderly more than the children with this disease, and we were trying to save lives.
We can debate the philosophy of saving people near end of life vs. allowing children to continue with close-contact education. But it's revolting that the first place your mind went was "save the vote".
Hell, old people who vote lean Republican, so if you're going to play a shrewd voting population game with a pandemic, wouldn't it have been in the interests of the "pro-isolation" coalition to let it run amok?
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One final note, moving away from your premise: The reason we needed to lock down besides saving lives from COVID directly was that our hospitals and funeral homes couldn't handle the burden. You can't treat people with heart attacks and broken bones if the ICU is filled with people dying of influenza-class viruses.
Maybe if our healthcare system can keep up with a disease's infection rate, we let society chug on - as we have each year when preventable, transmissible diseases kill tens of thousands of people per year.
> Or arguably because death is final, death came for the elderly more than the children with this disease
Death always comes for the elderly though. The metric of "years of high quality life saved" is important to apply here.
I was all for the shutdowns starting in March 2020, and was arguing in favor of it, but it then went on for way too long. NYC schools remained closed until fall 2021, and even then they kept shutting down individually for awhile afterwards as part of the COVID protocol. In hindsight it went on for way too long.
Or arguably because death is final, death came for the elderly more than the children with this disease, and we were trying to save lives.
We can debate the philosophy of saving people near end of life vs. allowing children to continue with close-contact education. But it's revolting that the first place your mind went was "save the vote".
Hell, old people who vote lean Republican, so if you're going to play a shrewd voting population game with a pandemic, wouldn't it have been in the interests of the "pro-isolation" coalition to let it run amok?
---
One final note, moving away from your premise: The reason we needed to lock down besides saving lives from COVID directly was that our hospitals and funeral homes couldn't handle the burden. You can't treat people with heart attacks and broken bones if the ICU is filled with people dying of influenza-class viruses.
Maybe if our healthcare system can keep up with a disease's infection rate, we let society chug on - as we have each year when preventable, transmissible diseases kill tens of thousands of people per year.