The India strain scared them because a vaccine resistant strain could honestly spell the end of the US as it is. Another necessary shutdown would be resisted by the business class even harder. Then just leaving things open would wipe out a bunch of the population.
Then you have Russia & China giving out their vaccines to countries and actually helping them instead of extorting them like the global north is looking to.
Then just leaving things open would wipe out a bunch of the population.
That's not their main concern, since covid is not deadly enough to wipe out a significant percentage of the working population or anything like that, however the fear that comes with a surge makes many sectors of the economy seriously underperform. And of course you'd have to deal with the growing dissatisfaction. Many governments are eager to get to that point where people realize they don't have to worry at all any more, since they hope there will be some sort of spending frenzy.
I mostly agree with what you say. It's not their top priority, but I do disagree that the ruling class wouldn't worry about it. We saw 700k+ excess deaths from March till now according to the CDC. That's with only a few places being overwhelmed at certian times.
They'd have a decision to make to kneecap their already weak service economy to keep people alive or keep the economy chugging but have the fragile medical system get overwhelmed and see the death rate skyrocket to what it was earlier in the pandemic due to rationed care.
I think you nailed it.
The India strain scared them because a vaccine resistant strain could honestly spell the end of the US as it is. Another necessary shutdown would be resisted by the business class even harder. Then just leaving things open would wipe out a bunch of the population.
Then you have Russia & China giving out their vaccines to countries and actually helping them instead of extorting them like the global north is looking to.
That's not their main concern, since covid is not deadly enough to wipe out a significant percentage of the working population or anything like that, however the fear that comes with a surge makes many sectors of the economy seriously underperform. And of course you'd have to deal with the growing dissatisfaction. Many governments are eager to get to that point where people realize they don't have to worry at all any more, since they hope there will be some sort of spending frenzy.
I mostly agree with what you say. It's not their top priority, but I do disagree that the ruling class wouldn't worry about it. We saw 700k+ excess deaths from March till now according to the CDC. That's with only a few places being overwhelmed at certian times.
They'd have a decision to make to kneecap their already weak service economy to keep people alive or keep the economy chugging but have the fragile medical system get overwhelmed and see the death rate skyrocket to what it was earlier in the pandemic due to rationed care.
Either choice would lead to major unrest, imo.
Well it's not exactly that they don't worry about it at all but it can be spun various ways.