Let’s say that smoking is bad for you.
And let’s say that we really don’t want teenagers to smoke, so we spend $1.5b every year trying to convince them to not smoke.
The impact of this $1.5b is that we’ve helped to support the lifestyle of advertising executives, and kids start smoking at age 14, just as regularly - if not moreso - than if we’d never done a thing.
Likewise, we have spent all sorts of money on abstinence only education because, you know, if you don’t want to get pregnant nor contract an STD then that’s really the gold standard. So how many people here think that teens and young adults refrain from sex as much as they should, if they were being sane and responsible?
The “go and be free, my children!” approach to the pandemic is already the reality on the ground. Teenagers are going out, partying it up, and mixing all their juices at every chance that they can. Upper-middle aged people, who were mostly working desk jobs, are taking a more cautious approach to the matter, working from home, wearing masks, etc. And the elderly are on strict lockdown, living in somewhat nicer prisons than if they had been convicted of a crime.
The best policy is the best policy, but it’s not reality. You can dump a billion dollars into masks and tell all the teens that their risk of death from disease this year is 0.19% rather than 0.01%, because of Covid-19, and they will give zero fucks and go right out and do all the things that they’re going to do anyways.
There are only so many billions of dollars in the world, and only so many people available to do work. So you can spend your money hiring advertising executives to convince humans that they need to turn into rational, dependable robots for 12 months - because that will work - or you can spend the billion making sure that old folks are getting safe entertainment, lots of human communication, etc. so that they’re not dying of loneliness, a lack of sunlight, and depression. You can make sure that the people taking care of those places are regularly tested and have a supply chain for their life to make sure that the people they but groceries from are regularly tested and that they have someone safe to look later their kids. You can make sure that stores and buses and everything have scheduled times that separate people in different risk groups - no teens allowed on the bus, but twice a day - etc.
We can try to force a reality that won’t happen on everyone or accept that we’ve already proved, in history, that that doesn’t work, accept that humans are humans, and try to guide them on the path that they’re already going to take. We can make it better and more optimal or we can resist reality.
