Can you ever be TOO careful?
Yes. Yes you can.
Gallup cheerfully notes the good news:
"This is down from 85% in April."
Why that's fully fourteen percentage points less hopelessness and despair!
In contrast to Democrats, only 13% of Republicans are as terrified of living.
That's not a gap. that's a chasm.
Put another way, fully 87% of Republicans believe people should "live their normal lives as much as possible," in contrast to only 29% of Democrats who believe the same (Independents come in at 64%).
What makes this even more odd is that Democrats are far more likely to be vaccinated. The 20 states with the highest vaccination rates all went to Joe Biden in 2020, while 19 of the 21 states with the lowest vaccination rates all went to Trump.
Further, as Polumbo writes in the above Newsweek article:
Basically, the vaccinated have nothing to fear from COVID-19. According to LA County public health officials, "only 0.00036% of fully vaccinated people went on to die from the virus." So there's absolutely no fact-based reason why fully vaccinated adults should continue living in fear and hiding in their homes.
The group with the highest vaccination rate, with a vaccine that is highly effective, remains by far the most fearful of Covid.
Remember this?
Good, because he doesn't.
This pandemic of fear is not a benign problem either, it's a real one.
In real life, there's no escaping trade-offs, and good decision making requires a rational weighing of costs and benefits. Irrational fear makes this impossible. In his hit work Dune, acclaimed sci-fi author Frank Herbert wrote that "fear is the mind killer." He dubbed fear "the little death that brings total obliteration." What he meant was that fear clouds our ability to make rational decisions, which, if unchecked, ultimately leads to our downfall.
Those of us paying attention understand the downsides all too well. School closures, suicides, drug abuse, etc.
Interestingly, the "mainstream" media, along with Gallup, is burying the lede as always. For a peek into the liberal hive mind, check out this Twitter thread.
It starts with someone deciding simply to not believe the 71% figure as reported by the New York Post. He doesn't check it, doesn't look into the source, it does not appear he read past the headline. He just chooses to not believe.
Amusingly, this is the tweet he currently has pinned at the top of his feed.
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence."
That was followed by more people who refuse to believe an article they didn't read.
The NY Post is not a stellar source for news. Their bias makes their information suspect. I would need to see data like this from a more reliable source.
She literally just has to click a link and she'd know the source (same source as everyone, Gallup).
She doesn't. Instead, she reads another headline more to her liking.
And then, the headline Gallup manufactured from the data.
It is not my intention to pick on these random people, but this serves as a perfect example of the kind of confirmation bias going on right now.
All of these reports are accurate and are all using the same data. The New York Post decided to highlight the breakout by party, others, including Gallup itself, chose to highlight the combined number.
The people who don't want to believe the 71% number comfort themselves with the fact that there are other numbers they like more, so they just ignore the former and make believe it doesn't exist.
The fact remains that while a majority of the country is finally ready to move on, it is in spite of Democrats – the party of science, the ones with the "Science is Real" yard signs – not because of them.
