After a question yesterday, I spent a fair amount of time looking over the Covid ban rules, their path, and how leaders (not just Germany) react (or sometimes refuse to act).
So, eight observations:
1. About every month or two, there is a Covid 'evolution' and because things seem out of control....the natural tendency of people in positions of authority....is to react.
So a set of ban rules gets thrown together. Another month or so passes, and the ban rule situation becomes complicated because the effect you expected....never did truly arrive. Then you go to the next list of ban rules....repeating the issue as each evolution occurs.
2. Herd immunity. Back in summer/fall of 2020, we heard the term often. Some folks avoided identifying it to a number. When you did hear a number.....it was typically two-thirds or three-quarters.
Generally, we all believed in this term of herd immunity. If you asked people (Germans or Americans), they believed that it truly exists. If you went to the science geeks....they'd mostly grin and suggest that it's a goal but it's not something that you'd go to Vegas and put $10,000 down on some bet.
3. The vaccination business. The sales pitch was that if you got x-vaccine, you were x-effective against Covid-19. No one ever uttered 100-percent effective, if you stand back a bit and gaze at the chatter. They simply said you had better statistics with x-vaccine, and this was all a good thing.
No one is ever claiming pure immunity with the vaccination. The talk is that you improve your odds. It's like putting seat belts onto your car, but admitting over a 40-year period of driving....you've never encountered a wreck where the belts were really 'tested' (I can vouch on that condition myself in life).
If the pro-vaccination folks really wanted to make a blunt advertisement, then arrange for three vaccinated folks to walk into a room of ten Covid-coughing folks for ten minutes, and see the results three days later. It'd be a great salesmanship situation and quiet down the non-vax crowd....but I seriously doubt anyone wants to test the vaccination business to that level.
4. How to force non-vax people into doing something. Well....you basically need to make their lives as miserable as possible....so they just accept the situation. Oh, in some cases, if you just offered $100 in cash.....some folks would fold quickly and take the vaccination.
Companies have the carrot/stick approach where they can just dismiss non-vax people....but the HR people have the task of finding new replacements who are accepting of the deal. If you can manage two months of manpower problems, this carrot/stick approach might work.
You could probably limit entry into theaters for the non-vax folks, but that would just mean mostly fewer consumers, less profit, and angry theater owners. Same story for soccer, NFL football, MLB baseball or tennis competitions.
You can't stop folks from pharmacies or grocery operations....but you could tell the vax-people that they could enter without masks. Whether they'd trust the situation without a mask? That's just a guess. Fear does strange things to people, and I think a quarter of the people out there are now consumed with pro-mask feelings (even in a church, or walking around a outdoor flea-market).
5. Covid is really about statistics? Yeah, it is.
You could board a plane with ninety folks and all having masks on....then safely fly for 75 minutes into Vegas and not have anyone infected. You could also board a plane with 20 Texas Democrats, all unmasked, and three hours later arrive in DC....to find that 48 hours later, at least half are infected.
6. Statistics of dying from Covid? If you asked most hospital doctors, they will all admit that your odds of dying have improved from July of 2020 to July of 2021....mostly because new ideas were shared and various drugs were put into play.
The same doctors, if asked, will admit that if you lived a pretty lousy lifestyle (smoked a lot, drank a lot, ate a lot)....your statistical odds probably haven't improved that much.
7. Covid 'porn' addition. It's a joke but there are people who wake up at 6 AM....flip the local news on, and kinda expect Claude and Miss Perky from the local Channel-Nine news to spend at least six minutes talking hyped-up Covid talk. By 7 AM, the Today Show folks come on, and they talk for at least fifteen minutes of the sixty minute show....on Covid.
Sports folks come on and talk Covid. Business journalists come on and talk Covid. Your Senator will be interviewed and talk Covid. Your school PTA meeting has at least a quarter of the chatter on Covid. If you stood at a school bus stop out in Iowa....there's probably four 10-year old kids standing there....chatting on Covid, Ms Jenkin's bra size, and some freaky movie they saw on Netflix last night.
You walk into a Sunday school church group, and it's a 25-percent chance that they will be spending more time on Covid-chatter, than on Moses walking around in circles for 40 years.
8. Finally, you come to the effects of lock-down. No matter how you slice up the situation....a fair number of people have had a dismal lock-down experience and mentally need a dog, a week in Fort Lauderdale on a drinking spree, or mental rehab in some wellness center.
The anti-Covid people? They are focused on a opposition agenda and it's driving them safely through the Covid era.
Kids in Covid shut-down/lock-down? Well...you have a digital class where it's hit and miss on some learning experience. Even the experts in Germany admit that there is some element of missing education, and there's some consequence coming (sooner or later).
So onto my point of the consequence path....the ban-rules evolve and there's no way you can predict the eventual outcome. We won't be out of the Covid-era in 2021, or 2022, or 2023. Things will just evolve onto the next level.
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