Sunday reflection on #COVID19AB . What we are witnessing is the failure of individualism, the idea that we are only individuals and as Margaret Thatcher famously said, society does not exist. (1/n)
Throughout the pandemic, conservatives (not just Kenney) have argued that we can only respond to COVID as individuals protecting our own interests, i.e. our personal surivival. (2/n)
If you don't think COVID is a serious threat to your survival, you can just ignore it. In fact, you have the right to ignore it. (3/n)
If you do think COVID is a threat to your survival, you are free to take whatever precautions you want, as long as they don't interfere with another person's right to ignore it (see #3 above). (4/n)
The problem is that the virus does not recognize individuals. It travels *between* individuals, so my survival is not independent from your survival. We are inextricably connected. (5/n)
In the world of the virus, only statistics matter. How many people are wearing masks, how many people have been vaccinated. Not whether this or that person is wearing a mask or has got two shots. (6/n)
Conservatives need individualists to obtain and retain power. So they refuse to acknowledge how COVID actually propagates, even if it causes disability and death in many of the people they are supposed to be serving. (7/n)
This goes beyond Jason Kenney or Tyler Shandro or Deena Hinshaw. They are replaceable. It is the ideology of pure individualism itself that is the fundamental problem. (8/n=8).
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