It concerns me that the take away from all this is so often “My fellow community/country members are selfish”. People are selfish because this was treated like there was in exhaustible supply of personal patience and financial/social ability to stay home.

We underestimate the extent to which government can foster a different set of conditions. We never had a true shutdown because a segment of people always had to go out and risk their lives at work because their livelihoods were at stake.

When you gotta choose between definitely not feeding your family and maybe contracting a deadly disease, you always choose maybe. And if this goes on for 9 months without support, lots of folks will start to “just move on with life” and these dangers become secondary.

This is a systemic failure, not just a personal moral failure. There is a whole other world w/ broad public health campaigns where folks understand all the peculiarities of the disease, are paid to stay home, and such a robust testing strategy that lockdowns then become targeted.

We don’t have that life because our leaders were not enough, not just because our people were hard headed.

Had friends go to another country recently - negative test required within 72 hours of flight, rapid tests administered at check-in, quarantine tracking watch handed out at customs, stuck in a hotel for two weeks and fed. That immediately incentivizes other behavior.

I lost my Abuela and have spent 9 months recovering from this thing. It’s easy to be pissed at “selfish people” but I have to constantly remember how many resources we have as a country and how few of them are being used to prevent mass death.