Well I’m not arguing with the rules of which stores were open. But the logic of the news reporting to stay home, only send one person to the grocery store once a week and all the rest and then seeing folks lined up to paint their bathrooms didn’t make sense to me. It’s one thing if someone needed something to fix a problem, but they were shopping. Many posted home redos on their FB pages. 
You can think it’s fine. I think that flattening the curve was a great idea. It didn’t work. Guess what, the Home Depot happened to be one of the spreader places that had to close. Big surprise. And the supermarkets were doing an outstanding job by having curbside pickup. Delivery was up. Very few cases. Why? Better awareness.
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Its one thing to say that you don’t agree with people’s behavior and think they should be more cautious. Its another thing to say people are breaking rules and think rules don’t apply to them.
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Going to agree to disagree with you on this one. Flattening the curve didn’t work.
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Sounds good. Let’s move back to the topic
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A former coworker (and still friend) of H’s is not getting the vaccine. He was eligible here in California when they opened up to 16-64 with underlying medical conditions (he has diabetes). He says there are treatments for Covid if he gets it and will just rely on those versus a vaccine. His logic makes me shake my head!
His friend needs to research the variants before turning down the vaccine. They can be a game changer. And the treatments are pretty iffy. That old saying “an ounce of prevention…” really applies here.
Perhaps my “if” (or both ifs) should have been capitalized and in large font. I agree that it is highly unlikely that people will be careful enough and also highly unlikely that enough people will get vaccinated. Rats.
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And the current treatments are limited to certain people, notably those in the hospital and with certain characteristics.
We need the optimists. They help us imagine what’s possible. 
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In high-vaccine-enthusiasm areas, it will probably be at least two months before everyone who wants a vaccine can get an appointment, so probably at least three and a half months before everyone who wants a vaccine is fully vaccinated (and there is potential for herd immunity) and able to go back to normal.
In high-vaccine-refusal areas, it is probably already easy to get a vaccine appointment, but there is no chance of herd immunity. People are probably going back to normal anyway, keeping COVID-19 circulating in the community and sending people to the hospital.
If enough folks don’t get vaccinated, then herd immunity is not reached, and this hellish thing goes on for many more months (hoping not more years!!!)
I don’t want to listen to those complain about how this pandemic is dragging on and on and on if they won’t get vaccinated. Yes you have your rights, but the good of the masses sometimes outweigh the rights of the individual. Try sending your kid to school without any vaccinations.
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Although once everyone who wants vaccine gets it, then most of the people who later get severe COVID-19 will be those who voluntarily chose not to get vaccine (yes, there will be a few very unlucky people who will get breakthrough severe cases, and a few who are medically unable to get any of the vaccines). I.e. instead of a risk heavily imposed on others like it is now, COVID-19 becomes mostly a risk one chooses to take oneself.
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https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736(20)31558-0 compares views on vaccines (general, not COVID-19-specific) across countries.
But consider the theory that asymptomatic covid (or it staying in your body for a long time) spawns variants. In that case it is not a risk chosen for oneself. The unvaccinated puts everyone at further risk because of an increased risk of new variants.
All of this is a big IF of course.
But I certainly encourage everyone I know to get it as soon as possible. At least you can protect yourself and build a living bubble by getting those close to you and interact with daily to get the vaccination.
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Our public schools require all kinds of up to date vaccinations, or not attending.
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I’m listening to a podcast called Doubt from Bloomberg. It’s a series but I’m 3 episodes into the current season. It’s about the anti vax movement. Very interesting imo
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They probably already are. They also probably look for pediatricians who share their views and are willing to write letters of medical exemption in places where that is the only allowed exemption.
Those areas will also reach herd immunity just not as fast. Pandemics eventually end. The vaccines are just helping end this one faster.
I also wonder if vaccine refusal will wane because of external pressures like job and school requirements. It sounds like Pfizer is very close to filing for full approval from the FDA. Or just from seeing that people aren’t getting sick or dying from the vaccine itself.