Marshmallows

Ron reminds me of the following:

A classic experiment showed that kids who can resist immediately eating one marshmallow in order to later get two of them have better life outcomes.  Our fight against Covid-19 is being derailed by a surfeit of one-marshmallow adults.

That is certainly the case in the US White House. What? Stop holiday parties and keep people safe? Oh, wait, we should be fine since we have already risked all the employees here (hundreds of whom have contracted COVID-19). Guests? Being invited gives you immunity….

Or on the arrogant island collective where marshmallow-headed politicians, assuming that all who live in the 4-country semi-cooperative called the UK, have decided to give everyone a 5 day pardon from serious social distancing. Pods of up to three families with traveling allowed to join yours.

Then there is the German State with a current covid-19 infection rate of over 400 new cases per week per 100K, is allowing hotels to open from Christmas to New Years day to facilitate family get togethers with up to 10 adults and an unlimited number of children.

It all leads to a certain amount of fatalism, doesn’t it? Like – “here I have been obeying all the rules since March and now …..”

There have been plenty of wiser heads out there stating clearly that this lifting in restrictions is going to set us all back months. There will be millions more cases and thousands of unnecessary deaths. I will leave out, for the moment my rant about irresponsible religious leaders and faith groups (yes, Catholic Church, Hassidic Jews, Evangelicals – I am talking about you).

But seriously, I will review the bidding on Immunization priorities and realities tomorrow and why, just because there are vaccines on the horizon, it is not safe to drop sensible precautions now.

Of course, ignoring all safety means that there will be a lot fewer individuals to immunize come next year….