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I encountered so many goodthinking midwits during Covid who really had never encountered the idea that nothing is a costless action. I had a hundred variations on this exchange between 2020-21.
"Is it worth opening the pubs/opening the schools/going into the office if it means people die?"
People died because of all of these things before Covid. If "someone dies as a result" is a reason not to allow something, we should immediately ban all motor vehicles.
"Well no, because even though a small number of people die in motor accidents every year, we still need motor vehicles for a functioning economy."
Congratulations, you now understand the concept of a "cost-benefit analysis". Please apply this concept to lockdowns, social distancing and so on.
And they did, and they reached the conclusion that pubs, schools and offices don't need to be open because you can do all that via Zoom.
You can call that wrong, or motivated reasoning to justify their compliance, but in my recollection it wasn't as simple as pointing out that costs exist either way.
I completely reject the claim that remote schooling for young children is anything resembling an effective substitute for in-person schooling, so "you can do all that via Zoom" falls at the first hurdle. Likewise "you can do all that via Zoom" is cold comfort to the thousands of Irish people who lost their jobs because their job couldn't be done via Zoom, but wasn't considered an essential service.
We must have been moving in radically different social circles. The scale of the midwittery on /r/ireland was something to behold. I lost count of how many times I had to patiently explain to people the concept of "excess death toll": a lot of people seemed genuinely surprised (even incredulous) when I told them that 85 people died in Ireland every single day in 2019. The median poster there was out of college (so unaffected by schooling being done remotely), capable of working remotely (so unaffected by economic shutdowns), introverted (so didn't really mind not being unable to go out to pubs or nightclubs, and was perfectly content sitting at home watching Netflix) and young (so unaffected by disruptions to the health service wrought by Covid). To the extent that these people were aware of the costs associated with lockdowns, it was limited to a vague recognition that spending time by yourself for months at a time can be rather trying (for which state of affairs, being socially awkward introverts, they had little sympathy). Most people there genuinely did not seem to appreciate the scale of the costs associated with lockdowns, and routinely glossed the anti-lockdown position as "imagine caring so much about drinking pints with your friends that you're willing to step over a hundred dead bodies to get there".
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