Post-pandemic I wouldnt be averse to wearing a mask if it saved lives and made clinically vulnerable people feel slightly less vulnerable and less afraid to go to the shops or use public transport. Same goes for any period where large epidemic waves of covid occurred outside the traditional season.
I dont claim to be in a majority with that view, but I find notions of the 'overwhelming majority' quite underwhelming at moments like this.
I'm not expecting a huge amount of non-pharmaceutical measures to be deployed in a heavy way when covid isnt causing ig problems on the hospitalisation and death front. Pharmaceutical measures are being asked to take the strain instead, I get that. I'd still rather take a slower, precautionary approach that has more concern for the vulnerable in society, but I am aware that although this pandemic has raised awareness of deaths on that front, a sense of fatigue and wanting it to all be over and to forget all about such things may win out in many minds. Its a shame the media etc doesnt really bother with conversations about that though, their framing is usually a long way away from having a sensible conversation about being considerate to others. There are still occasional articles from certain publications that feature the thoughts of people who are still vulnerable, but such angles dont exactly rise to the top of the news agenda or form a large part of the mood music at times like these.
Perceptions of death and risk are complicated and often vague and quite strongly tied to overall mood music. Very seldom will anyone come out with an 'acceptable number', that sort of discussion goes nowhere or just to vague comparisons with flu death numbers. People certainly knew an unacceptably high and scary number of deaths per day when they saw them in the first few waves, especially when the number was increasing every day, before a peak was reached. The height those figures reached in this country in those first two waves has consequences for perceptions now, with figures that seem small compared to those ugly heights. And people like me who looked at overall deaths could comment in the first wave that at the peak twice as many people were dying as normal, and there are no such claims to be made in the recent waves.
But there are other ways that death risks thoughts form. Such as someone you know dying of covid. And the media putting names and faces to a small fraction of the deceased. There isnt much of that from the media this time, the deaths this winter have largely been faceless as far as I can tell.
I could take for example the following article. I have no objection at all to articles like this one pointing out the pharmaceutical tools that are now available to fight this virus. And unlike the sort of shit that Nick Triggle comes out with, the tone isnt terrible, certain things are acknowledged properly, eg:
There are still more than 12,000 Covid patients in hospitals across the UK. And there could still be new and concerning variants which cause further waves of infection. If this pandemic has taught us one thing it is to avoid making rash predictions. Coronavirus will flare up again and continue to pose a threat, especially to the unvaccinated and those who have serious underlying health conditions.
Even though the Covid hospital admissions have fallen sharply, there is the growing problem of long Covid. Last month a record 1 in 50 people in the UK said they were living with lingering symptoms of Covid.
As Covid treatments are changing, fewer patients are becoming seriously ill or dying.
www.bbc.co.uk
However even in an article like that one, those who have not and will not been saved by the available pharmaceuticals are not really brought into sharp focus. They are implied to exist, but the emphasis is on those who will be saved and on society not having to put much other effort in any more.
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ffs
