I didnt claim it was straightforward.
My mental health has suffered from seeing how many people decided to be post-Covid-y a little too soon. I am partially shielded against that because my expectations were low pre-pandemic and only improved once the magnitude of the pandemic and the fact millions of people would take it seriously was properly demonstrated, along with the huge government u-turn. I suppose I've always known since then that people were likely to slide back towards the old normal at a pace that wouldnt line up fully with my way of thinking. And because I have had the relatively luxury of isolating, during most later phases of the pandemic I've tried very hard not to judge other people doing what they needed to do to cope. But this particular phase of the pandemic is dragging on and its starting to get to me now, especially given which season we are heading towards. I better hope that the virus doesnt have too many huge pockets of potential left to result in any more explosive growth and fresh peaks, and that I too can move on before far too many more months have to pass.
All the same make no mistake, part of the reason I get depressed is because the government have relied on various sentiments in order to make their 2021 reopening agenda work. And there are a whole bunch of parallels between how many people have ended up thinking about things in that way these days, and how the government would have needed people to 'keep calm and carry on' in order to make their original 'herd immunity' plan A work at the start of the pandemic. Hospitalisation levels stopped that original plan near the start and necessitated a rethink, but if those levels had been within a range the government thought the system could cope with, we'd have been treated to all this carry on shit all throughout the pandemic, with similar excuses and attitudes of the multitude as to what we see now. Vaccines broadly reenabled their original calculations and plan, and now I have to try to cope with seeing all the dodgy shit play out across the multitude. All the hideous unsustainable failures at the start and people openly pointing and the ridiculousness of it all would have been replaced with endless justifications and people convincing themselves that carrying on as before was the only thing to do.
In other words if people have a hard time imagining how the government thought they could possibly get away with their original plan, just look at attitudes in more recent phases, along with press focus and framing. Why wouldnt the establishment have believed they stood some chance of pulling off the same thing with the same rhetoric and features from the start if the hospitalisation estimates were within a range deemed tolerable? I expect their default stance would be that they could pretty much take such things for granted, and it was a surprise to all concerned that the magnitude of the pandemic thwarted business and usual, herd management as usual, all the usual priorities from them and indeed everyone else.
