Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[vivster]

haxxiy said:

vivster said:

Doesn't really matter. A virus is way easier to combat than established bad habits. You could say the same about smoking and drinking, but it's moot to talk about it. It's only logical to tackle the easier to solve problem first or maybe do both at the same time? It's not like people have stopped caring about other issues during the pandemic.

I mean, most never cared about other issues, to begin with. 9 million people died of hunger last year. 3 million were children under 5. I strongly suspect that would take less financial resources and logistic planning to solve than vaccinating everyone for Covid and instead, here we are, shocked that retired boomers in developed countries are dying above usual rates.

Whataboutism? I'd rather consider it relevant context to determine whether certain attitudes or concerns are actually fair and not merely deflections...

I mean, so many people are like oooh 2020 is the worst year ever. Pal, you don't need to go more than ten or fifteen years to the past to find out, for the average human being, in terms of life expectancy, income, etc., that life was worse than this, all the time.

Fairness isn't how humanity works. Everything is just shitty compromises and decisions based on the least shitty outcome. It's also never an "either or" decision.

The global fight against a pandemic does not mean wasted resources. To think that those resources would be used to solve other crises instead is foolish. Poor people aren't dying of hunger because rich white people are getting treated for COVID. They will die either way because in the grand scheme nobody cares enough. If they did they would be fighting the pandemic and hunger at the same time. Well, actually if anyone cared about hunger it would've been solved long before the pandemic even started. Comparing the two is neither fair nor productive. Other issues are separate fights that need to be fought. There are enough resources to fight everything without trying to question the resources put into one.

The question isn't if there are too many resources pumped into one crisis, the question should be why aren't more resources made available for other things. If you want more resources try the world's war industry and not desperate doctors trying to solve a pandemic.