I'm going to be kind and not respond directly to that aside from asking if you really believe this to be the end?
Haha you don't have to be kind on my account! I've been brutal lately.
Yes, I haven't heard a single convincing argument for why politicians should willingly crash their economies and make people hate them. It is all the usual right-wing paranoid fearmongering garbage -- from the masks are so we can't talk about trump! to mark-of-the-beast apocalyptic scenarios I have heard since I was a kid. Utter nonsense. Follow the linkies and it always turns out to be some chucklehead looking for clicks.
On the contrary, you see blue-state governors like mine (and CA and NYC) aggressively and unequivocally reopening things, upsetting all the metrics they set in place, making health directors squawk that they are moving too fast.
Here is what I think is driving it that no one will say: nobody is seeing the anticipated plague striking red-state areas, you guys are probably mostly immune already and the vulnerable have already been carried off. The disappointment is palpable. Ultimately, whether you think the lockdowns and masking etc. were necessary comes down to whether an extra death or three per thousand is worth it, and the grim calculus of business says it's not.
The biggest barrier right now is fear. That is the only thing sustaining the lockdowns, etc. That will not go away until you see your vaccination rate start to drop off. We are a few months ahead of you with cases and vaccinations and ER capacity so it is not as apparent to you up there, but once you give the nanny-staters the security blanket of a vaccine there is no reason for them to insist on protecting you for your own good. No one has demonstrated what harm the lousy coofers pose to the virtuous vaxxed yet; all we have left are the kind of insults I gleefully hurl your way. Rather than resenting it, I think the political antipathy works in your favor and you should encourage it at every opportunity; god forbid they should actually want you to live!
