Tribalism comes for pandemic science
This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are very low risk. Most risk is within shared living situations (migrant workers, retirement homes, prisons). We can respond to the _real_ risks and use a nuanced approach that actually saves lives. But instead, the left says &quot;lockdown lockdown lockdown&quot; and the right says &quot;open 100%&quot;... Both are full of shit to the point of it being disgusting.<p>This isn&#x27;t a game. This has life and death consequences so far beyond COVID-19, and the lack of foresight that the partisans are demonstrating will have reverberations for generations. We are playing the life of real people, we are risking the financial security of real people, who have families and debts and dreams.<p>Finally, the fact that the public health sector has devolved into partisanship really has me worried for when we _actually_ have a repeat of Spanish Flu, or a more virulent Ebola etc. Then we are screwed.<p>Edit: fixed a typo