[dent9876543]

That’s what we were told, but don’t you think it was a bit daft?

If it was a really severe disease, then fair play. (But then, what on earth are you doing chatting in a restaurant.)

If it isn’t severe, then why bother protecting yourself at all? (Leave it to those that want to, or need to, to protect themselves.)

The “wear masks!” demand simply puts responsibility in the wrong place.

[edanm]

> If it isn’t severe, then why bother protecting yourself at all? (Leave it to those that want to, or need to, to protect themselves.)

It was a severe disease for a certain portion of the population, especially before the vaccine.

If you're willing to write off anyone with any preexisting condition and with older than a certain age, or just have them not participating in society for a few years, that's one kind of tradeoff. Everyone taking extra precautions like wearing masks and trying to socially distance is a different tradeoff.

There's no getting around the fact that given a novel risk, we as a society had to make tough choices and tradeoffs over how to deal with it. There was no way to get out of this with zero negative impact - because the world gave us a bad situation.

[dent9876543]

True — we had to deal with it.

Revisionism these days seems to accept that we didn't get it right, but rhetorically asks "could you have done better?", and gives only a shrug.

We should have done better, and we could have.

We put those with preexisting conditions and those over a certain age at greater risk by pretending our protection measures were good enough when they really weren't.