Thread by @davidfrum

The great British PM, the Marquess of Salisbury, warned: "If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe." At some point, it's the job of politicians to decide: we're safe enough

To follow @HotlineJosh point:

Unless the US moves to vastly stricter vaccine mandates - which I would favor, but which is plainly not going to happen - the US will stall at present vaccination levels. 1/x

@HotlineJosh So the practical political choice is: keep schools and businesses on the present hobbled footing indefinitely - or return fully to normally as boosters become available to all, accepting the inherent risks of "normal" in a 30% unvaxxed society? 2/x

@HotlineJosh You want to fulminate against the dumb-ass malignity of the anti-vaxxers and their (quietly personally vaxxed) media and political enablers? Go ahead, I do it myself almost every day right here in this space. 3/x

@HotlineJosh But the malignant minority is not yielding to reason any time soon. And even such seemingly basic mandates as "no jab, no fly" seem beyond the enforcement capability of the US federal government. So what now? 4/x

@HotlineJosh Seems the best option is

1) Keep encouraging vaccines and boosters;

2) Impose vaccine mandates where it can be done;

3) Otherwise return to normal as fully as we can, especially the schools; and

4) Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last

Reading the reactions to this tweet, I am impressed by the immense self-pity of the anti-vaxxers - who see themselves as bottomless victims, even as their own bad choices deny hospital care to so many others in desperate need.

If, at this point, you are still unvaccinated, you are not a victim. You are a cause of the victimization of vulnerable others

"Knowledge in the abstract ... is not enough. ... [I]nstitutions and culture shape the application of scientific knowledge. Improvements in life expectancy are generated not by ideas alone but by ideas that are put into action ...

... especially by capable governments that care about the health of their citizens, and by cultures that translate scientific advances into behavioral adaptations." - Plagues Upon the Earth, p. 384

"The control of infectious disease, by its very nature, requires collective and coordinated action. ... Societies that were good at solving collective action problems were thus most effective in controlling infectious disease." - Plagues Upon the Earth, p. 385