while vaccination has clearly helped get the issue under control amongst the elderly population, it is more important than ever that they continue to be isolated from contact with the general population, because the variants that can evade the vaccine are going to be especially deadly on the people that get it. and, it only takes a minor tweak to get us back where we were when we started this.
life will never be normal for these people ever again.
but, that doesn't mean everybody else has to suffer with them - and that's what's pissing me off about this, this centrally enforced penance, this idea that we have to all suffer together. like i have an obligation to give a fuck....
it's an idea that is foreign to any sort of secular-derived contemporary western culture, and any kind of celtic or germanic or even greek culture, as well. you have to look towards mid-eastern cultures like judaism and it's offshoots to make sense of that, and that's not my culture and those aren't my values.
so, i mean, how did we get stuck with this idea of enforced collective penance in a secular society in the 21st century? that's the idea we need to figure out as we normalize the virus as a fact of life, and get back to normal along with it.