Certainly not looking to get in an argument here....
The speed of the vaccine development and distribution has been amazing. No question there. In my very humble opinion the problem was how it was handled from the beginning. Specifically being wraponized by politicians on both sides for political gain. (I would say one side more than the other but that's my bias showing and if we had a different party in power it probably would have gone the other way) I still think we would be in a much better place if the restrictions put in place were more targeted. For example I have little to no risk of any issues from the virus. That being the case I still could certainly be a carrier and get someone more vulnerable sick so taking precautions to prevent that was clearly the right thing to do.
I'm speaking more in terms of the long term economic ramifications of the last 12 months. The young healthy people with no complicating health factors should have been masked up and working while we protected those who were vulnerable. If you take a look at what has happened to the money supply over the last year we have set ourselves up for some serious trouble down the line.
A few more examples of what I'm talking about....
My brother and a good number of his friends are in their early 20s and have been unemployed since March. Mostly by choice. Many of them are now raging about the importance of UBI and legitimately do not think they should be required to work ever again. It drives me crazy when I hear this.
I, on the other hand, have been very lucky and never had a lapse in employment or pay over the last year. Do I really need to be receiving stimulus checks? Probably not, but someone with complicating health factors who is at serious risk if they contracted covid should.
Maybe "focused on a solution" was not the best choice of words? Just another reminder that short bits of text on the internet is one of the worst ways to properly express an opinion.
No worries, and I apologize if that came off harsh.
There is a lot to this conversation, and to be honest, I'm not sure how we have it anymore because I find some people to be insincere when they have these conversations.
I tend to believe this, and I don't think this is a controversial statement. We live in the greatest time ever, this is probably the best time you could ever be alive if you measure it on what life looked like 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 years ago, life isn't that bad. I'm not sure there is a period of time I would rather be alive. We still have progress to make as a nation, and humanity is still very frail, but I still believe this is the best time to be alive in human history.