Meantime hospitalisation and deaths continue to drop in all those above countries as Omicron has run its course. Here it’s not going to be allowed, so we’ll be in lockdown purgatory. For the foreseeable future.
While elsewhere, even the left-wing Atlantic is calling for the US to “Open Everything”. The “logic" of keeping restrictions is the same there as it is here: to protect the unvaccinated. Yasha Mounk makes the same point many of us have been making for months now:
It’s time to stop the restrictions on vaccinated to protect those who have willingly chosen not to protect themselves:
The strongest reason to keep up pandemic restrictions is that some people remain vulnerable. Those who are unvaccinated, for example, remain at significant risk. What do we owe to them?
Our current attitude toward the unvaccinated makes little sense. Even as we heap scorn on the unvaccinated, we make sacrifices on their behalf. The unvaccinated are subject to immense pressure and moral indignation. Governments and private institutions are doing what they can to make their everyday lives difficult. A number of people, including anonymous commentators on Reddit and columnists at the Los Angeles Times, even engage in open schadenfreude when anti-vaxxers die from COVID. This is wrong. We owe every victim of this pandemic compassion, whatever risk they may have chosen to incur.
At the same time, the unvaccinated are, implicitly, the main justification for ongoing restrictions—in that the pro-restriction camp points to the persistently high death toll from COVID-19 and these deaths are heavily concentrated among the unvaccinated. That attitude is also wrong. We need not put our lives on hold for the indefinite future because others have decided to risk theirs. …
Just as we are willing to take on calculated risks in other areas of life, so we should be willing to tolerate some risk of infectious disease. When you set out to drive across the country, you know that you could get into an accident. You might get hurt, and so might another driver, or even a child crossing the road. But that does not create a moral obligation to stay put for the rest of your life.
Because COVID will likely remain endemic for the foreseeable future, delaying a return to normal life until the risk it poses has been completely eliminated simply is not a realistic plan.
