Is the rabid zeal for other people to get vaccinated like anything so much as Old World missionaries dragging frightened natives into the sunlight and forcing them to kiss a holy book?
Andy Slavitt is the conquistador in shiny greaves spraying holy water on a virgin landscape and idly wondering where to put the silver mine
Gates is the earnest believer who erects a church on his encomienda and scrupulously counts out the royal fifth to be sent to Spain
State Governors are the caciques who grin from ear to ear when they realize they can erect a few crosses and get axes and horses in return
And of course the pliant masses are the pliant masses, merely relieved to be told what to do
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1\ I just experienced a government clusterfuck so stupefying that, if I hadn't already watched the world shut down despite hospitals being empty, I wouldn't believe it was possible...
So, I need a PCR test for an upcoming int'l flight...
2\ Test can't be more than 72hrs old, but because our city is testing all school children multiple times a week, commercial labs can no longer do 72hr turnarounds
The lab tech helpfully suggested I check the airport
Turns out, the airport offers 48hr turnarounds on tests!
3\ Great! I even checked the airport website. It specifically advertises that tests are available for people who need them before they can depart
@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 1\ Even if you deny the existence of objective morality or a creator, pragmatism still demands a delineation of rights that leads to the best outcomes in the world we inhabit
A libertarian, "negative rights" approach argues that sovereignty of one's body and property is best...
@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 2\ Locke got there a bit mystically, Rothbard a bit speciously, Hayek and Friedman (Jr.) with arguments about how benefits and costs must be vested in the individual to allow economically efficient outcomes
@rocket_jenross@Benshooter@wolfejosh 3\ For me it comes down to the practical consideration that positive rights are incompatible with negative rights, so if you want to avoid the coercion that so often leads to tyranny, you have to pare rights down to a minimal set
1\ Ok, I have to do a thread on vaccine distribution, because it is just so insane
As everyone knows by now, governments around the world are paralyzed by vaccine logistics
Who should get it? In what order?
Does age trump race? Does profession trump health?
2\ What is enabling this political paralysis is the illusion, universally held by Very Decent People, that if we don't distribute in accordance with Equity (undefined bullshit word), then various needy people will be Priced Out, and Inequality Will Increase!
3\ Now, let's take a giant step back
This vaccine costs somewhere between $3 & $40 per dose
NOBODY in the US for whom COVID is an existential thread cannot afford this
The average welfare recipient's cable bill is 2x the cost of this vaccine
1\ Rumors of overwhelmed hospitals have become so lurid in South Africa that a chain of urgent care centers had to put out a press release denying the rumors