What really bothers me about these half-assed lock downs.

 At the very start of this pandemic, one of the first things I said to my wife was "we really need to hope that the government quickly enacts sustainable measures". They didn't. I'm not blaming any particular level of government either. They ALL failed us. And while that certainly would have helped, this isn't really what irritates me the most.

What irritates me the most is that the initial predictions were that a vaccine shouldn't be expected for 2 or more years. And NONE of the reactions to any of the "waves" of this pandemic have EVER taken that notion seriously. Except in rare occasions like the first wave in South Korea or in New Zealand and Australia.

To be clear, the fact that vaccines were produced on the time frame they were was nothing short of incredible coincidence. mRNA vaccines beat all others by a few months. And they only did this because we had just recently reached certain milestones in that science which actually allowed us to produce such a vaccine. And then, we combined that with unprecedented procedures being allowed to hasten the approval process.

All of the more traditional vaccines lagged quite far behind in development and testing and have been riddled with more potential health problems. And without the mRNA vaccines we'd be millions, if not billions of doses behind the current pace globally.

I also think we can't just blame governments. The people themselves were instrumental in being dip-shits en masse. Anti-Mask and Anti-Vaccine rallies. Protesting closures. Ignoring stay at home orders. Lobbying politicians to relax when they should have been more strict.

We are all to blame. If we had all actually followed the recommendation that the actual professionals were making. Or even just paying attention to what was happening in regions where successes being had, things might be in much better shape. Actually, we WOULD be in much better shape.

And, like Australia and NZ we would be able to enjoy longer periods or relatively unfettered access to the things which make life worthwhile to many. The deeper the virus gets into a country though, the more extreme the measures would need to be to contain it.

I think the measures required to reverse the course here would now be so extreme that no one would accept them after everything else. We have become a country of passive murderers. We are killing our friends and family because of our inaction or poor decisions.

It will be weeks or even months before most of us are able to get our first dose. It will be up to 2 weeks after that before the vaccine is fully effective. And then weeks to months after that we will still need a 2nd shot or a booster which will once again need additional time to be fully effective. We are still a year or more away from the vaccines we have being able to fully take their toll on this pandemic.

Don't bitch about how bad the lock downs for the 3rd wave are. We're all to blame. And with people talking a lot more openly about defying the lock downs this time around it may not be the last wave.