Having squeezed out the no-vax scapegoat, the government will have to tell us how it intends to get us out of the emergency
The number of cases continues to rise strongly in Italy, as in the rest of Europe, due to the high contagiousness of the new Omicron variant. Despite the wide vaccination coverage, we are witnessing a much higher number of infections than any previous wave, also because, compared to the past, this time no generalized lockdowns have been implemented. Fortunately, the number of hospitalizations, intensive care and deaths is still under control, although, of course, it is not possible to predict what the situation could be in a few weeks.
Faced with a rapidly evolving scenario again, the government's strategy at this stage is to try to squeeze further the "no-vax" argument, which has so far been successfully used to explain any "lower than expected" results in contrasting the pandemic.
Although it becomes increasingly questionable, in the face of the new variant, that the vaccine represents a substantial watershed for the transmission of the virus, and although no-vaxes , for some weeks now, have been excluded from most activities related to sociability, the government will bring into force on January 10 measures that represent the "final sting" against vaccination dodgers.
However, it is likely that with the imposition of the lockdown of the unvaccinated and with their probable expulsion even from the world of work, the possibility for the government to further exploit this scapegoat to keep the popular consensus on the management of the pandemic will definitely be exhausted. Quite unlikely, it must be said, that the latest measures against the no-vaxes will significantly change the dynamics of contagion we are witnessing in these days.
If the infections, as foreseeable, remain high and if the employment levels of intensive care units were to rise, the government would find itself having to make decisions that no longer concern small "unpopular" minorities and therefore "sacrfiable" successfully, but the complex of the population. The possible ways would be only two. The first would be to return to the introduction of generalized forms of lockdown .
The second would be, however, the acknowledgment that it is necessary to get out of the emergency logic and settle on a definitive coexistence with the virus, certainly with some common sense precautions, but without more "state rules", restrictions, quarantines, isolations , distance learning, tampons and certificates – accepting any increase in mortality with the same rational attitude with which many other risks inherent in human life are faced.
Both of these paths would represent a defeat for the ideological way in which, for some time, the government has set up the vaccination campaign.
A new lockdown for all would represent the disavowal of the vaccination campaign in the terms in which it has been presented and communicated for months, that is, as a substantial panacea for this pandemic. Conversely, the "free-all" would be the disavowal of "sanitary absolutism" and the idea of the fight against Covid erected as a single ordering criterion of public policies – and would bring back in the public debate the reasons for the economy and individual freedom so far liquidated by the government and mainstream journalism as cynical "indifference".
In short, if so far the "no-vax" argument has allowed Draghi to evade a whole series of other issues, once that argument is exhausted, someone in the government will have to provide the country with a vision of how exactly it is planned to end the emergency.
The post After squeezing the no-vax scapegoat, the government will have to tell us how it intends to get us out of the emergency appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/spremuto-il-capro-espiatorio-no-vax-il-governo-dovra-dirci-come-intende-farci-uscire-dallemergenza/ on Mon, 03 Jan 2022 03:51:00 +0000.