• Soggy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    For real. When there’s a new illness spreading across the globe and the medical community says, “we have this new vaccine, everyone should take it but we only have enough for high-risk groups right now. Everyone else continue to quarantine” my reaction was not “well now I’m not doing any of that” it was “sweet, we’re almost through this.”

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      Hindsight is great when you can distill it down so simply as a clear, coherent message coming from a reliable single point of trust! Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy back then.

      I didn’t mind the staying home (although I was privileged enough to be paid to do so for at least the beginning, as everyone should have been.)

      I concluded that the logic behind some secret plot was hilariously full of holes…

      …BUT, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not consider the possibility that maybe a rushed corporate product was contracted and pushed through normal channels way faster than usual. Why? Because Capital was losing money, and the ownership class wanted to hurry and shove everyone back into offices as quickly as possible. (The same ownership class that paid us ‘essential workers’ in pithy piano-tracked commercials instead of money)

      We’re immensely fortunate the vaccines worked like they always have, but at the time it was a series of mixed messages and uncertainty and noise, and that was just from trustworthy sources! Not even counting all the ones masquerading as such and people with cabin-fever wanting to pick fights over the Internet and crazy family members.

      We agree the vaccine made sense and it was a useful tool that saved countless lives, and if we had a consistent trustworthy source of information much sooner like other countries had, instead of the crackpot reality show that is American news, many more could have been saved. So I don’t get all the down votes for simply saying “It was a scary time and there was lots to be concerned about.”

      Maybe realizing it’s impossible to be 100% right about everything scares people, idk.