Pretty much of perfect summary of how I feel now, too.
Governments insisted on trying to make themselves relevant here. It is important to keep in mind who has the most knowledge about the virus and who invented the vaccines. It wasn’t the fucking government, and the people at the companies who did invent the vaccines are not evil, like they are always depicted in stupid left-wing Hollywood movies.
Peter Bergen interviewed infectious disease expert and professor at the University of Minnesota, Michael Osterholm, who predicted in April 2020 that 800,000 Americans would die of Covid-19 within 18 months. Now, with over 790,000 Americans dead, Osterholm talks to Bergen about what lies ahead...
www.cnn.com
I do agree with Cloud500 that in its supposedly magnanimous gesture to save all of us poor folks by printing money, it created significant inflation. And of course plenty of elected politicians, who are amazingly exempt from insider trading rules that apply to everyone else, profited from what they created.
How is this for a system?
Companies develop a product and sell it to consumers who wish not to die. Investors and lenders who realize that people will pay for such products fund the development of those products.
The government for the most part fucks off. It recognizes that when the company developing the product has scientists smarter than those working for the government, it rubber stamps the new product through its regulatory process about an hour after the company’s internal process green lights the product.
If the product costs $1,000, and I place a value on my life exceeding $1,000, I buy the product (the vaccine). I get to buy it once it is available. The government does not buy it for me and choose my life‘s level of relative importance compared to other life’s and choose the order in which I get my vaccine. Same is true if the product costs $10,000. If I am early in the process, I recognize that the price will be higher at first, and will eventually drop. I decide when I get my shot. If they have a charity system set up when I get my shot, I will donate to reduce the cost for the less privileged.
At every step of the way, what the government has done has pissed me off. The vaccine wasn’t free. Nothing is free. Why is the government even still they relevant here? If Pfizer and Moderna recommend that I go get a booster every six months, I will do so. If other people don’t do so, I don’t give a fuck. But I also don’t give a fuck what the government recommends. They know less than Pfizer or Moderna. And I do wish the government would quit printing money, so I will have enough left after buying food to pay for my semiannual vaccine booster.