Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From "Why many of the 'open everything' COVID-19 arguments are so dishonest" by Parker Molloy (ParkerMolloy), 2022-02-14:

He just wants to have his dinner parties without feeling sad about it. It's really that simple. He wants the government to tell people to go out and have dinner parties and for others not to judge them for it. The truth is that quite literally nobody is stopping him from having dinner parties. He wants the government to intervene specifically to tell people how to feel. How sad and, dare I say, snowflakey is that?

My biggest question is why someone would frame an article around "opening everything" then you admit that things are, in fact, open? Is it because the actual argument being made -- that people need to pretend that COVID-19 doesn't exist, that they need to pretend like long COVID isn't something to be concerned about -- isn't actually one the author can support?

[...]

Of course, people "prefer the old normal." Nobody is sitting around chuckling to themselves that a couple of thousand people a day are dying from a virus that didn't exist 2.5 years ago. But "old normal" vs. "new normal" is a false choice. It cannot be 2019 because it is, in fact, 2022. I can't be 20 years old because I am, in fact, 35. Time moves onward. If I could make COVID-19 disappear, I'd do it. But I can't. It's here. Hopefully, its future mutations make it weaker, but nothing I say or do will affect it. "Normal" is, and will always be, a state beyond our personal control.

When I graduated college in 2009, thrust into an economy in free fall, I didn't get to go, "Ummm... I actually preferred the 'old normal' where 'entry-level' jobs didn't say, 'Needs seven-years experience,' on them!" (I mean, I certainly could have said that, but I don't think The Atlantic would be running out to commission a piece on it from me.) Sometimes the world deals us a bad hand.