LT42
There’s really no good way to compartmentalise sections of society effectively.
Exactly. The central issue is that when asked to act responsibly, too many people are still pre-disposed to take: the “Yeah but I want to do [insert x activity]” approach and think it doesn’t matter as long as they get to do what they want – because the problem rests with everyone else and not them.
These actions might range from a very minor/negligible impact through to the type of super spreader actions or events but they all ultimately contribute to the same problem. We might convince ourselves it doesn’t “because obviously x thing I do doesn’t matter”. The overall problem is that as long as we persist in taking a half-way house approach to keep everyone happy, the longer the situation will continue.
In the case of the UK, we also have a dangerously incompetent government that has managed to persuade large swathes of the electorate that 1000+ deaths a week since “Freedom Day” is completely normal and not worth worrying about as long as we can all do [insert activity] which does nothing to encourage personal responsibility. All too often you hear people say, “We’ve just got to learn to live with it and get on with our lives.” which ignores what we know about the virus and its potential to produce variant mutations that could potentially render our vaccines useless and overwhelm the NHS. What we have seen in respect of death tolls could look very mild in comparison to what could happen if we “just get on with it” as some people would have us do.
When individuals cannot be relied upon to act responsibly, a piecemeal approach is no longer going to work. We know this much from the tier restrictions that were used as an alternative to a lockdown. On the issue of nightclubs, it is largely (but not exclusively) younger people who go to clubs. Unfortunately, young people are also the demographic that are least likely to get vaccinated because “why should I have it, I’m fit and heathy thanks” but are seemingly surprised when restrictions are imposed on nightclubs.
