If you’re on this site, you probably work in an industry where it feels like very large things can get done in 18 months. I remember in February 2020, before anything reached the US, watching China build a new hospital in all of 10 days. I have some vague understandings of “all-hands-on-deck” govt projects of the past. FDR’s WPA jobs program, etc.
So it’s dishearteningly easy to look at this situation from that point of view: “my government, and everyone currently exercising power, has had 18 months to do the dirty work of expanding health capacity, retrofitting buildings to make them safer in the presence of a virus (e.g. open-air supermarkets), and whatever else is necessary to help us all live how we’d like to during this time,” and instead they’ve not really tackled any of those things. We got the vaccine, which is a huge triumph, but beyond that it’s just “hey we need you as an individual to stay at home another couple years while we slack off and keep ignoring any opportunity for letting you live the life you did before.”
I know not all real world systems are as flexible as software systems, especially true of the Frankenstein healthcare system we have here. But it really is not hard for me to say “if this were my problem, I would solve it like an engineer, by building (more capacity, tools to make it easier to grow manpower in the areas they’re needed).” And then be upset at the people who are asking me to make my own life shit for another couple years so that they can avoid making life-long improvements to the systems that need it. Because if our roles were reversed here — if I were the one at risk of this disease — I would never ask of them what they’re asking of me. It’s just not how I think about the world or how I think about solving problems.
I think some people voicing GP’s comment really are doing it in good faith. People have different lived experiences that lead to radically different ways of thinking about the world and how to act within it. These disagreements will always exist. The pragmatist accepts that and says that of the range of possible solutions to your problem, the most successful is the one that can be grounded in this world where people disagree with each other and pursue their own interests.