Thread by @DrZoeHyde

You know what worries me a lot more than COVID-19? People. Particularly angry, fearful people.

Make no mistake; they are afraid. Denial of reality is a coping mechanism for many. But you can’t avoid reality forever, and eventually they’ll turn on the enablers of that delusion.

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1419034849881456641

The current crop of politicians who’ve promised freedom won’t be able to deliver it.

We’ll inevitably have to live with some level of restrictions until we have more of the world vaccinated with better vaccines. Will these people accept that?

But there’s a bigger problem. Many countries could have eliminated COVID-19 in early 2020 had they chosen to. It would not be a stretch to say that it was to an ideological choice to have a pandemic, to some degree.

I don’t hold any side of politics particularly responsible for this, because the failure to act comes from a deeper, selfish impulse common to all of us.

We weren’t prepared to accept some personal inconvenience for the benefit of all.

But we need to get our house in order, and quickly. The pandemic has exposed shocking failures of our economic and social institutions. e.g., essential workers who can’t afford to isolate if they test positive, elderly people abandoned in nursing homes.

How long can this go on?

We also never recovered from the global financial crisis of 2008. We simply papered over the cracks. But the economic carnage from the pandemic we chose to have may make the wheels finally fall off.

This, I think, is the real danger posed by the pandemic.
mg.co.za/opinion/2021-0…

I don’t think the situation is hopeless. We do, however, stand at a crossroads. What kind of society do we want to be? What kind of future will our children inherit? We face enormous challenges, but we’ve already proved how resourceful we can be if we try.