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I’m not pretending or saying that if everyone was vaccinated or wore masks when they should, it would all be over. That said, a lot less people would be dead and we can clearly see in the data as it exists now that areas with lower vaccination rates are doing worse. And of course, the overwhelming majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated. It isn’t rocket science. And we still have a non-trivial segment of the population who can’t get vaccinated (under 12) who are quite literally the victims of people who are largely unvaccinated and making the conscious and what they believe to be moral choice to not wear a mask or be vaccinated.

As far as people not living in reality, this isn’t even primarily about COVID. It also isn’t a refusal to try and have a discussion on my part. It is what happens when people reject information that doesn’t reflect what they believe. They have written themselves off. You’re right. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks there is a satanic cabal of liberals who prey on children. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks 5G is going to read their minds. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks the vaccine is the mark of the beast. I don’t understand the point of view of, based on various polling, 70-80% of republicans who don’t believe Biden won the election legitimately.

Or rather, I do. Or at least I can see how they got there. But what I can’t do is convince them that these things aren’t true. I can’t convince them that someone on the internet who claimed to be an insider and now hasn’t posted anything in like over a year wasn’t actually able to predict all the future events leading up to Donald Trump being reinstated as president and rounding up all the Democrats and liberals and child abusers. These people have already bought into something that is so far out that there is no reaching them. It isn’t for lack of trying. They aren’t willing or ready to accept anything else.

Eventually some of them will find their way out of it, but that is a place they have to get to on their own before anyone can help them out of it.

To answer your final question, it leaves us in a terrible place and exactly where we are. I don’t enjoy this. I’m not reveling in it. It’s fucking depressing. It’s sad. It’s an actual tragedy. We’re in a bad place and I don’t see that changing or getting better any time soon.

I’ll happily discuss things of this nature with people who don’t agree with my general beliefs but I don’t have a lot of patience for someone, and I’ve interacted with more than a few, who flat out deny things that are objectively recordable, let alone anything subject to interpretation. They closed the door, they shut down the conversation.

>>hellot+(OP)
You brought up a log of topics, some more fringe than others. I think there's been a lot of changes in the world the past few decades that have left a lot of people feeling culturally adrift. Lack of trust in various institutions. Perhaps it is a loss of personal identity, replaced by mass media tribalism? Perhaps the internet is a big part of that - a printing press in everyone's pocket? Finance and globilzation doesn't help. Politicians are not helping.

On the topic of covid specifically, I think that people have vastly different outlooks on the personal and/or societal risks of dying versus the impact of extended lockdowns. I don't think it is an unreasonable position. It's hard to point at definitive data proving that anything works for certain, there's a lot of confounding factors and surprises in the numbers. Some people can't get past the individual tragedies. Some people only look at the population scale numbers. Some people are more educated than other. Lots of people make up their minds on a hunch, as you said, and look for sources that confirm their biases.

A fascinating book I read called "The Republican Brain" talked about this stuff, theorizing that some of the partisan divide is due to personality differences, that people are born with different feelings about authority, hierarchies, individualism, communitarianism, etc. I was left with the impression that this was an evolutionary advantage as a species, that the variety of ways of thinking makes us better as a group.

I don't think that it's the end of the world that we as a group don't agree on everything. We could celebrate that and support each other in our differences, or at least respect each other. But so many do not, both on the left and on the right. They'd rather win 51% of the vote, and impose their point of view on the losers, winner take all. Mass media and further removing isolating people make the problems worse.

> And we still have a non-trivial segment of the population who can’t get vaccinated (under 12) who are quite literally the victims of people who are largely unvaccinated

You called out some things the other side say that are unreasonable. I think the language you used above is a bit strong, and I'm not sure how much fact vs feeling it is. Not a lot of kids die of covid. It's similar for them to the risk from the flu in other years. And RSV. And the vaccine is not 100% effective, lots of people will still die, just like people die of the common cold every year. It seems unreasonable to draw a "quite literally" connection between the vaccinated and the small amount of kids who die, some every year, from respiratory ailments.

Also there is no country in the world who has a 100% vaccination rate, so maybe it is outside the bounds of human nature to expect that amount of compliance on such a short notice controversial issue? Perhaps it would be better for politics to account for the strong beliefs that large segments of their populations hold? For instance, why haven't we build more hospitals in the last 18 months? Are there better ways to support the vulnerable? What are the numbers used to justify various decisions? Can we admit what we don't know? etc