Thread by @phl43

This is basically the conclusion I have reached after the second wave and why I have been endlessly frustrated by otherwise smart people coming up with technocratic solutions that will never happen because they fail to take into account the political reality.

https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1471851816165928961

In theory, I may even agree that some of those plans are good (although I think more often than not they're just magical thinking), but in practice their chances of being implemented are essentially zero and the main effect of those proposals is to keep the hysteria alive.

I oppose even plans that can be implemented, such as vaccine passports, because I think that at this point the main effect of any restriction will be to prolong the pandemic by delaying the moment people accept that we have to move on.

In an ideal world, things would be different and we'd be able to find sensible compromises, but we don't live in an ideal world. We live in this world and, in this world, the pandemic will only end when enough people decide to move on.

Of course, people will still get infected and they are still going to die, that's not the point. The point is that, unless people decide to move on, it will never end because we can always move the goalposts, which indeed is what we've been doing continuously since the beginning.

To be clear, I understand there won't be a point at which the pandemic ends all of a sudden and my view is not predicated on this unrealistic assumption, here is a more precise statement of my view.

https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1471861123133714437