From The Atlantic:
Lurking among the jubilant Americans
venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a
different group: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic
restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an
expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the
disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what
public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more
worry about the pandemic than Republicans do. People who describe
themselves as “very liberal” are distinctly anxious. This spring, after
the vaccine rollout had started, a third of very liberal people were
“very concerned” about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, compared
with a quarter of both liberals and moderates, according to a study
conducted by the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc
Hetherington. And 43 percent of very liberal respondents believed that
getting the coronavirus would have a “very bad” effect on their life,
compared with a third of liberals and moderates. ...
For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of deeply felt frustration
with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. “If he
said, ‘Keep schools open,’ then, well, we’re going to do everything in
our power to keep schools closed,” Monica Gandhi, a professor of
medicine at UC San Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as “left
of left,” but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she
has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a
clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. “We went the other way, in
an extreme way, against Trump’s politicization,” Gandhi said. ...
“Those who are vaccinated on the left seem to think overcaution now is
the way to go, which is making people on the right question the
effectiveness of the vaccines,” Gandhi told me. Public figures and
policy makers who try to dictate others’ behavior without any scientific
justification for doing so erode trust in public health and make people
less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of staying
shut down might not justify the potential backlash. ...
It's obvious that CDC guidelines will change rapidly over the next
three months. Let's not fight the science because we're still mad with
Donald Trump. We can't keep cowering in fear forever.
If you're one who believes that we need to remain cloistered even after we're fully vaccinated and the CDC says we can start to resume normal life, what's your endgame? What will be enough to persuade you that it's safe to eat in restaurants, travel, visit in person with family and friends, return to normal workplaces, etc?
Covid-19 will never completely go away. The vaccines who have are extremely effective. Like influenza, meningitis, salmonella and other infectious diseases Covid-19 will always be some threat but the world is full of potential threats.
