What if there's a middle ground, noodle? What if the vast majority of people agree that the situation is very hard, and people disagree on whether people should be expected to make the hard choices that are in the best interests of society over themselves, essentially every time? Not in normal life, but just right now. The whole wartime spirit thing. There was incompetent government then too. There were selfish desires then too. But in the end people made sacrifices for the greater good, even if it had the most devastating consequences for themselves and those in their close circle. Why is it so unreasonable to expect individuals in a society to make those almighty sacrifices, for a limited period of time, if we really believe in the idea of the society? A functioning government makes it easier to believe in that, and it makes it easier to take those choices with the appropriate support system in place, but why should it be required?
It's not about a "middle ground". It's about people making idiotic assumptions from a position of complete ignorance, and then using them to cast judgement on other people, which there has been too much of going unchallenged in this thread at certain times. Don't get me wrong there's been a lot of good and informative discussion as well, particularly from people who know a lot more about the science than I do, but the ignorance when it crops up is particularly grating.
I'm not really sure what you mean by the rest of your post because, as I explained in the post you quoted, I have not broken any of the rules or guidelines and have stuck to them despite it being a huge and lonely personal struggle. I clearly wouldn't be doing that if I didn't think that was what I and people should be doing. Basically my whole life since March has been about managing a way through this and helping others to do the same. So I consider I have a right to challenge someone who makes stupid accusations against me just because they haven't even bothered to educate themselves before pointing their finger around.
The common problem I have found in this thread isn't what people think we should or shouldn't be doing, or people's different interpretations on the science or government. It's the people who just blatantly have no appreciation of what is actually going on, because presumably it hasn't really affected them and they aren't willing to stick their head above the trench and look.
When the schools were closed for months on end, it meant millions of people couldn't feed, support or educate their children. A situation that was not sustainable for more than a short period. It wasn't as simple as "it's wrong to open them again because covid". This thread was particularly annoying around that time. If you wanted schools to open you were some kind of right wing demon, or something.
Whenever the government change restrictions or move the goalposts without prior warning, it throws a lot of people into a black hole. People then react out of desperation. They don't for the most part react because they are just brazenly doing whatever the feck they like. No one wants to be fighting with all their belongings to try and catch the last train out of town. No one does that unless they are desperate and in a panic. It doesn't make them Hitler. If you announce at 4.30pm that you are quaranteening one of the largest cities in the world later that same day, then there is a 0% chance that some people wont panic and try to leave. Acting like that is unacceptable makes you the irresponsible one, not them.
The problem with the "wartime spirit" analogy is it doesn't really work. During the war things were shit for basically everyone. On Friday some people will be happily spending Christmas with their family as normal having been mildly inconvenienced by this year, while others will have an empty chair where their dad should be, and others will be so lonely and isolated due to the situation that they will take their own life. Showing empathy is not about finding a middle ground or even about what you think people should or shouldn't be doing, it's about understanding a situation and the human aspect of it, instead of acting like it's a maths puzzle and some of the numbers aren't behaving themselves.
