Quote:
Originally Posted by mopek1
Why do you think you'll get that freedom back? Unless you have imposed restrictions on yourself you'll have to wait for the government to decide when you can get your life back. And that's the crux of the issue in our society.
If your restrictions are self imposed then that's one thing. If bars are open and your friends want to meet you can do that whenever you like.
Many others though have a different point of view and feel we can go out to restaurants and meet friends now, without a vaccine. For us, we are waiting for the government to open up those types of places and are not convinced that even a vaccine will be enough for them. They keep moving the goal posts and use vague language as to what is necessary to get back to normal.
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I came out in the middle of the AIDS crisis and had a lover die of AIDS when I was still in my 20s. I cared for him to the end. So I take pandemics seriously. I was also told I had a brain tumor at the age of 18. 22 years later they said it was just a scar, but I've thought a fair amount about my own mortality.
What I learned from the AIDS epidemic is that you listen to science and do risk reduction. So I simply stopped indoor activities with people other than my husband. I still did stuff with my cycling club. And took commuter rail trains and the subway to go on bike rides since neither had been identified as particularly risky. The big "splurge" was going to spend the weekend with a friend and her daughter. But we knew they were low risk as were were and we got tested a couple days before. And of course I put on a mask when outside my home (though not for exercise).
And having had my lover die a year before ARVs came out, when the vaccines came out for COVID and they were 95% effective I got even stricter about risk. My motto was "you don't want to be the person who dies a week before he could have gotten a vaccine". Been there, done that with my lover. Lesson learned. (Though the AIDS crisis was completely different - it's not like he took risk at a time when there was any real hope.)
So it's not like my life stopped. But certain things stopped. I was fine with that but I look forward to having a full life again.
As far as people who didn't stop their lives… I wasn't going to be one of those people for three reasons - 1) my life is worth more than that, 2) I have a problem with killing other people, which is exactly what can happen if you pass it onto someone else, and 3) the pandemic ends more quickly and it's less severe if everyone just sucks it up and does what's best for the community (e.g. like they've done in Taiwan and New Zealand).