Y'all should think about how your thinking is ass backwards. You're assuming the momentary feelings ("I want to go in a restaurant." "I hate masks.") will be lasting, and the most profound shyt ("Mom is dead.") will be fleeting.
People's strongest negative feelings about the lockdown are gonna be
right now. When the lockdowns are over those feelings will be less intense. But the dead people will still be dead - in fact, MORE of them will be dead because we are still far from the end.
When in US history have negative feelings about deaths ever faded in a single election cycle?
Despite all of that, Trump still barely lost in the midst of the pandemic.
No one will care in 2024
Bush won in the middle of our soldiers dying in the Iraq War. Nixon won in the middle of losing Vietnam.
Trump lost, he lost in large part due to this, and he lost when we were only halfway through.
Horrific boondoggles always look worse in retrospect, not better. More people are going to keep dying, and more people are going to face long-term health consequences, and when it's over more people are going to get to spend time with family and hear awful stories.
Three years from now, bytching about wearing a mask or missing a motorcycle rally is going to seem trite. But all the dead people are going to still be just as dead and that's real.
About 70%. In other words, 150,000 deaths under 70. That's an insane number.