Oh, come on, you've never heard of optimism bias? As fate would have it, this article from November came across my timeline tonight.
Experts who study the way we think and make decisions say that it can be more than politics driving our decision-making this year. The unprecedented nature of the pandemic undermines how we process information and assess risk. Need proof? Look around.
www.propublica.org
This is 3 times you've referenced the CDC person and the 60%. How about Dr. Walensky's statement while answering questions, that because of the increased transmissible variants, they have had to revise their assumptions upwards from the 60%-70% of this summer to 70-85%? Does that hold any weight, or is it like all the other people who previously have latched onto best case scenarios, "Since we don't know what will be true, I'm going to choose to hitch my wagon to someone other than the CDC director?"
Of course, that's not being plastered everywhere, because as you say the messaging has gone out to sell vaccines through positivity. Despite the "tell us the truth," crowd, what actually works on people is to tell them what they expect to hear, otherwise they think manipulation and lies, and you're facing an uphill battle. So the truth about needing to get to 2022, is being back-burnered, and we're back to giving people milestones instead of the finish line. First, we'll get people to May 1 and then July 4th. Then I expect it will be: get people to Labor Day with the carrot of all schools reopening as normal, then Thanksgiving, and then 2022. "Talk about degrees of normalcy," which people happily extrapolate as normalcy. You heard "small gatherings with a lot of caveats," others obviously think the limitation of small gatherings is just as ridiculous as your thoughts about what Christmas will look like and they expect fireworks and family reunions. I personally, expect that the earlier messaging that got the, "Don't say that or people won't behave the way we need!" freak out, will bear itself out. They are sitting on the troublesome parts because we have proven we aren't capable of dealing with it. And now that we have the vaccines to focus on, it's not as imperative we understand it today. Right now, it's phase one: May 1, phase 2: July 4, let people focus on a summer which should be manageable, and we'll worry about the rest when it's more obvious there is more work to be done. I don't think they sped up the timeline at all, but are choosing to focus on the expectation of oscillating seasonality. Summer isn't an actual return to normal, but a false normal that will placate the masses, while experts continue to model and plan for fall/winter because they know we aren't there yet.
