I’ll repost your simplistic characterization for reference.
There is a cost / benefit that every person should consider on their own, but it’s not the binary options you present.
It’s a risk that one must accept and / or mitigate with their own personal choices.
What is deserving of ridicule in that?
You know, I had actually typed a whole paragraph explaining how I had initially thought reopening the economy was the wrong decision but had come around to being wrong on that. Essentially, my revised thought is that the most effective way forward was to have social distancing at levels that keep hospitals near capacity. We generally weren’t close to capacity, meaning we overcorrected. There is a lot of nuance to unpack on that but the bottom line is that I fall into the group whose cost/benefit analysis was that some people will die, but by keeping hospitals at capacity it would prevent avoidable deaths from hospital overload. Not an especially easy to implement plan, but the bottom line was increased human contact.
I typed out a shorter version of this that was intended to avoid another tangential argument and I thought “this isn’t necessary, he’s reasonable and it’s not reasonable to think that you’re criticizing people solely for thinking the economy should reopen.”
... and here we are.
So I will back to what I said a few days ago:
Envision a Vinn Diagram.
Circle A: People who want the economy to bounce back at the expense of safety measures (human life).
Circle B: People who don’t want to wear masks.
Independently, each circle is just composed of people who made a prudential judgment. I don’t have a problem with either of them.
The issue I have is with the shared space.
Is that helpful?