I notice you objected to schools closing in pandemics and other steps that would protect older people. But you weren't ready to quit enforcing traffic laws that also protect people in your age group.
The school closures thing has nothing to do with money... as far as I know, teachers were still getting paid during that time window and education spending didn't shift a whole lot. My objection to the school closures (not even the initial ones...before we knew what we were up against, I supported the remote learning approach) was merely due to how long they kept them going for. Long after it became evident that children were not a huge risk (and neither were the 83% of teachers that are under 55, most of whom had prioritized access to the vaccines), there were districts that were still pushing to do remote learning due to "covid concerns". Sorry if it comes across as cynical...but if a 36 year old vaccinated teacher is claiming they wanted to extend the remote learning out of
covid concerns, I question how much of it is sincere vs. how much of it is merely "I like working from home, and I don't want to go back to having to get dressed up and fight the traffic driving to work every morning"
But to the other part:
How much does it cost to enforce traffic laws? How big is the benefit of traffic law enforcement relative to the imposition it creates?
As it currently stands, the total sum of policing in the US costs $100 Billion per year, obviously not all of that is traffic enforcement.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it was.
$100 Billion (in comparison to the potential amount of life lost due to people ignoring stop signs, red lights, and driving 100mph), and traffic laws themselves don't completely prohibit you from engaging in automotive travel in any significant way.
Now, if you said that traffic law enforcement was costing $6 Trillion per year, and the "rules of the road" were such that every speed limit was set 20mph, and there would be rolling "stay off the road orders" every time the weather conditions got a little slippery, making everyone wear double seatbelts and a helmet every time they drove, and setting up DUI checkpoints 24/7 every 2 miles, on every major highway.... then no, I would say despite those measures saving lives, the amount of disruption they cause in other areas of life/society/economy would be a situation where the juice isn't worth the squeeze, I'll take my chances.
There were other options that I would've been very supportive of with regards to Covid mitigation measures that would've been a lot cheaper, a lot less disruptive, and wouldn't have resulted in same level of disruption...and probably wouldn't have changed the overall death rate by any significant degree.
For instance, after we'd gotten to day 60 of the 15 days to flatten the curve, and saw that the main groups at serious risk were 65+ (and 55+ with specific comorbidities), we could've made arrangements to allow people in those categories to be eligible for benefits while everyone else went back to something more resembling normalcy. And I was fine with the money spent on the vaccines and testing kits...that made perfect sense. What didn't make sense were rules like (but not limited to)
- You can go to a Wal-Mart, but "Joe's hardware" has to stay closed, we'll just back PPP loans for Joe
- You can go to a restaurant, but it has to be < 15% capacity, tables have to be 6 feet apart and you have to wear your mask when you walk to the bathroom, but it's fine to take it off when you're at the table.
- We're going to pay 27 years olds to stay home
- Eviction moratoriums lasting well into late 2022 (when the proper response to anyone who's healthy and under 50 should've been "yeah, the
I'm afraid of covid thing isn't going to fly anymore, get your jab and go back to work, rent's due")