Guardian article supposedly about optimism actually full of doom

[BlueBlancmange]

This article in the Guardian has really riled me. While the story of her mother's death is very sad, why is she using it as a comparison to suggest that the whole world's prognosis in terms of the pandemic is equally as dire? And the way the title suggests an optimistic slant, only for the message to be totally pessimistic. She doesn't even clarify why she thinks the outlook is so terribly bleak, apart from scientifically minded people pointing out, quite rightly, that vaccines aren't going to totally magic the problem away. Most people know that, but she has presented the whole thing as though it's only obvious that despite the great vaccine news, we are still basically all fucked.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/30/optimism-pandemic-covid

I think most people realise that clinging to optimism in the face of all the facts is a not-totally-rational coping mechanism. But clinging to pessimism in the face of all the facts is just the same, really. It’s not inherently more truthful just because it’s bleak.

I was fairly optimistic about vaccines but even I wasn’t optimistic enough to think we’d get vaccines over 80% and 90% effective before the end of the year, or that the government would make some good decisions about which ones to buy. And yet, here we are...

@GoldenOmber

I think most people realise that clinging to optimism in the face of all the facts is a not-totally-rational coping mechanism. But clinging to pessimism in the face of all the facts is just the same, really. It’s not inherently more truthful just because it’s bleak.

I was fairly optimistic about vaccines but even I wasn’t optimistic enough to think we’d get vaccines over 80% and 90% effective before the end of the year, or that the government would make some good decisions about which ones to buy. And yet, here we are...

It just smacks of the Guardian deliberately commissioning an article to cling on to total pessimism, to be published on the day the Oxford Vaccine is approved.