I don't think attitudes have changed that much. The stats show tens of thousands of people are coming forward every day to get their vaccines. Over a million people every day are getting tested for Covid. Wherever I go, I see the vast majority of people adhering to hands/face/space guidelines. We also don't know what people are doing when we don't see them - Who's to say that group enjoying a night out aren't having their only get-together in a month, haven't all tested and minimised their other social contacts to make the evening as safe as possible? We just don't know.
Sure, there are exceptions where not everyone is following the guidelines or doing all they reasonably can, and sure, those exceptions have been growing, but a certain amount of fatigue over restrictions is inevitable at this point. Two years is a long time to have your life disrupted and your plans put on hold.
I also think it's important to distinguish between "inconveniences" and "having a terrible time", and that those can be different for different people - Restrictions on meeting other households might have been a minor annoyance for those with happy home lives with their partners and/or families, but were a source of terrible loneliness and depression for me and many others. On the other hand, school closures didn't affect me, but have been a huge disruption to lots of children's education and a major headache for their parents. I didn't care when crowds weren't allowed at football matches (Actually it was quite nice!), but there are plenty for whom that shared experience is the main thing they live for. It is a Very Good Thing to be able to have none of these restrictions in place.
Covid is going to be with us for years to come. A combination of vaccines, improved treatments and less deadly virus mutations have all changed the risk calculations, compared to where we were just a few months ago. While it's not yet completely shifted from pandemic to endemic, I can't condemn people too much for jumping the gun a little. Deaths and excess deaths are very different now to the early waves. Obviously, every preventable death is a tragedy but, though it's a horrible thing to admit, society functions according to a degree of "acceptable losses". Anybody who says differently is only fooling themselves.
It's not uncommon for flu to kill 20,000 people in a bad winter, but we don't lock down every year because of that. Nor do we all give up ever getting into a car because of the small-but-non-zero risk of a fatal accident. We consider those things too much to ask. But we do ask everyone not to visit medically vulnerable people if they are unwell, to wear seatbelts in cars, and so on. The trick is getting everyone to see the connections between their behaviours and saving lives, and finding a balance between safeguards and inconveniences, that we can all live with in the long term as Covid becomes endemic. Where we are right now is still the early stage of figuring all that out.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2022-01-02 04:01 pm (UTC)Sure, there are exceptions where not everyone is following the guidelines or doing all they reasonably can, and sure, those exceptions have been growing, but a certain amount of fatigue over restrictions is inevitable at this point. Two years is a long time to have your life disrupted and your plans put on hold.
I also think it's important to distinguish between "inconveniences" and "having a terrible time", and that those can be different for different people - Restrictions on meeting other households might have been a minor annoyance for those with happy home lives with their partners and/or families, but were a source of terrible loneliness and depression for me and many others. On the other hand, school closures didn't affect me, but have been a huge disruption to lots of children's education and a major headache for their parents. I didn't care when crowds weren't allowed at football matches (Actually it was quite nice!), but there are plenty for whom that shared experience is the main thing they live for. It is a Very Good Thing to be able to have none of these restrictions in place.
Covid is going to be with us for years to come. A combination of vaccines, improved treatments and less deadly virus mutations have all changed the risk calculations, compared to where we were just a few months ago. While it's not yet completely shifted from pandemic to endemic, I can't condemn people too much for jumping the gun a little. Deaths and excess deaths are very different now to the early waves. Obviously, every preventable death is a tragedy but, though it's a horrible thing to admit, society functions according to a degree of "acceptable losses". Anybody who says differently is only fooling themselves.
It's not uncommon for flu to kill 20,000 people in a bad winter, but we don't lock down every year because of that. Nor do we all give up ever getting into a car because of the small-but-non-zero risk of a fatal accident. We consider those things too much to ask. But we do ask everyone not to visit medically vulnerable people if they are unwell, to wear seatbelts in cars, and so on. The trick is getting everyone to see the connections between their behaviours and saving lives, and finding a balance between safeguards and inconveniences, that we can all live with in the long term as Covid becomes endemic. Where we are right now is still the early stage of figuring all that out.