This article misses the point. The point is that at a time where teenagers' finances (= their parents') are not at their best (COVID), where theaters and libraries are closed-ish (COVID), where you can't just hang out freely at a coffee shop that offers free comics to read (COVID), where you can't side down in the aisles of the comic book store (COVID), they decided to give them $350. Nobody believed they'd use it to go see some Shakespeare, and nobody should. It's just dumb classicism.
Good on them to use it for something they LIKE instead of something someome else deems better for them.
"If you pursue this career, you'll live under a bridge in 5 years, so I'm kicking you out and giving you no money, so you'll live under a bridge right now."
edit: kudos to you for sticking to it really! You should be proud of yourself!
I don't know where you're from that you heard that. But from where I'm from, we were told that:
- it was just only the beginning of a massive sh*tstorm, not just "2 weeks of lockdown and we'll be ok"
- the lockdown in April was to mitigate as much as possible the first wave
- a second wave would almost definitely arrive in the winter (hello! it's here! we're in lockdown again, pretty much as planned)
- nothing will be back to normal before we get the vaccine, and even then, it would take months if not years for it to be a thing of the past, and that until then we'd have to do our best to follow the guidelines.
You can't compare scientific proof that something works vs. a government decision taken to "mitigate things".
The spring lockdown helped free beds in hospital and ultimately it saved thousands if not millions of lives worldwide. Period. This is UNDENIABLE.
Also, maybe if some people weren't so doubtful that these decisions were for their own good and stopped throwing tantrums about their "fundamental right to breathe air", we wouldn't have had a second wave at all. Maybe.
Of course, you're right, it doesn't make sense and that's not how it should work. Unfortunately, science and medicine are fields that are largely driven by money. Laboratories don't really care about a vaccine for a disease in Africa that nobody will be able to afford or invest in. They will turn to better markets. There are multiple reasons, the most obvious one is that they're private companies, their goal is to make profit. The second one is that it's a field that requires a lot of resources. So you need a big ROI.
One of the reasons the vaccine for COVID-19 was produced so quickly is not because of some sort of conspiracy, like they had the antidote all along or something. It's just that when there's a real buck to make, it becomes a race between these big pockets companies.
That's one side of it and I don't know enough to cover every aspect of it. Also, it's just my opinion of course and how I see this.
Edit: I'm doubtful about a zombie vaccine being given for free. Most likely in a Walking Dead type scenario, where the economy would completely go down, there wouldn't be any financial incentive to keep the searches going, and no money to back up the researches either. So we'd be scr*wed I think. :o)
Well, there IS a pandemic. So there IS a good reason for "selling it" "a bit hard". It will literally save lives and end a world-wide economy-crippling disease.
Now I agree the process was quicker than usual, that it brings up a lot of questions. But it's the studies we should question, the efficiency, the long term effects. The way it's sold and "advertised" is just equally as dramatic as the disease it's trying to stop, in my opinion.