Sacrificing for Covid

 

Sacrificing for Covid

The bell-curve is showing a lot of support for government control in the Covid debate.

An Economist poll in Europe showed: 19 percent support for a permanent 10pm curfew. Significant minorities favor other permanent restrictions, including: keeping nightclubs and casinos closed forever (26 percent); enforced social distancing in theaters, pubs and sports grounds (34 percent); mandatory 10-day quarantines for people returning from foreign countries (35 percent); mandatory tracking-app check-ins when entering pubs and restaurants (36 percent); mandatory masks in shops and on public transportation (40 percent); foreign travel allowed only with proof of vaccination (46 percent).

Even the Americans defer to the State.

"A growing number of Americans want to get the coronavirus vaccine, and a majority also support workplace, lifestyle and travel restrictions for those not inoculated against COVID-19," a Reuters/Ipsos poll found the same month. The poll found majority support for barring the unvaccinated from airplanes (63 percent), public schools (59 percent), gyms (54 percent), theaters (56 percent), and offices where they're employed (56 percent). All of this even though the vaccines against COVID-19 are remarkably effective at shielding those who take them against illness, no matter the status of people around them.

These numbers are a few months old but the notion remains that these sorcerer's apprentices deserve our allegiance even in things where they have already demonstrated incompetence. And anxiety, even in lands where the political structure demands self-sufficiency, encourages us to look elsewhere for help.

Covid may be less threatening than revealing.