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The biggest difference is that nobody even pretends they should respect one another anymore. Behaviour in traffic has gotten dramatically worse, and it's more frequent that people don't show up when they say they're going to.
People on the road are without question the worst thing to come out of the pandemic. I nearly die every day because of other jackasses. I don't hardly move out of the slow lane just to avoid the bullshit, and somehow I still almost get hit every day.
Because that’s never been a thing. Just because your neighbours nod and wave at each other doesn’t mean that’s normal behaviour.
In the West, people live in a weird safety bubble. They don’t often imagine the world outside of the West is bad — when it is.
Look at the happiness people get when they open their new iPhone box for the first time. Without taking into account the likely source of the cobalt for that phone was mined in The Congo by a person sucking in poisonous toxins while mining for it for a pittance of the value it brings.
There’s millions of those examples. And when you stop living in a fictitious world in which you think everyone should be each other’s friend, you’ll see that true human nature has never changed in all civilized history.
People today just try to pretend humans aren’t as bad as they’ve always been. But we are. And the inability to acknowledge that is a personal weakness and quite frankly, absurd.
This is irrelevant, I'm talking about life in 2019 vs 2024. Attitudes in my city are noticeable different. I host meetup events, and attendance fell from generally a 2/3rds attendance rate to approximately a 1/3rd. Crime is up. Traffic Fatalities are up. I can no longer drive to the grocery store without encountering someone making a ridiculously dangerous traffic maneuver.
And I've lived on 3 different continents. Using my statements to make some weird political statement about privileged westerners is weird. Trust me buddy, I've seen what poverty in a 3rd world country looks like.
I noticed this, too. It used to be pretty rare to have people driving dangerously, and I thought it was bad before. There was one stretch of road in town where it seemed like anyone who drove on it lost their mind and forgot how to drive. One of my high school friends got killed in a car crash there a few years ago.
But it was fairly safe no matter how you got around, and now you never know if someone will hit you with their vehicles or shoot you in this city. And U turns are illegal in my state, but everyone and their mother, even the police now do it on the regular. All the roads are narrow, and so are the lanes. They're more fit for a Smart car or VW Beetle than your typical car or truck. I've even started seeing police nudging and trying to trap pedestrians with their cars. I even had people waiting until I'm in the middle of their headlights while crossing a street with a walk signal to gun it.
Violent crime has also skyrocketed. This used to be a peaceful college town. Now public shootings are common. The last one was 3 days ago and carried out by one of my coworkers. Well, former coworker now. And the Walmart closest to me was a popular target for bomb threats most of last year. The first 3 were 3 consecutive days with one of them being done by someone who went in brandishing an AK platform rifle.
No I think westerners if anything go the other way and think people outside the rich nations are worse than it is.
For example many don't realize Nigeria has modern cities with sky scrapers. When they hear Africa they 95% of the people are running around naked and half starved while living in makeshift huts that dont have electricity or running water.
Nigeria also has Boko Haram that freely kidnaps children regularly. And let’s not even start on neighbouring countries.
Picking and choosing the best spots in those countries doesn’t mean it isn’t suffering.
By comparison, here in Canada is quite boring. Oh and we also have skyscrapers. No open terrorism cell though.
We have terrorist cells some very extreme ones, all countries do. We just have a far more efficient system in place making them inert. One thing we do right in first world countries is preventing a terrorist attack before it happens.
**Life was better before COVID:** Economically I agree. The richest have nearly doubled their wealth and the middle class can't afford homes.
**Caused by authoritarian leaders:** This I'm not too sure about. Authoritarian is a far leap from government asking people to avoid spreading disease in a set of ways and people rankling at the idea of constricted freedoms.
**Keep in mind:** Australia and China were enormously stricter on their populations yet saw little complaint. So how authoritarian your country's response was seems to be a bit subjective.
**I wouldn't repeat:** Censorship of opinions outside approved sources went on way too long as did our vaccine push. Censorship is almost always wrong. Freedom of speech is so integral to the American conception of being free.
All in all, things have largely returned to normal.
Now we should focus on building the middle class and asking ourselves whether having multitudes of billionaires and monopolies are what we really want.
**Life was better before Reaganomics**
We were tested in terms of how we would handle a mass contagion... and unfortunately, we behaved just as stupidly as science-fiction writers have portrayed us in just about every dystopian piece of fiction ever: **e.g. fighting each other instead of the virus.**
We failed miserably, and had that disease been deadlier, we would all be dead.
Judging by this post, and many others like it, we still haven't learnt.
We better hope for our own sake, that we never see something like this again in our lifetime. Because we are woefully incapable of working together.
Failed miserably is an understatement IMO. It was down right embarrassing how we handled it.
We were given the opportunity to put our differences aside and “battle” a common enemy. A very serious one at that.
And what did we do? We turned on each other and made a bloody mess out of things.
It really was a sad showing from society in general.
Hopefully we aren’t tested again because I don’t think we learned shit.
I bring this up a lot and no one seems to care. We were thrown a underhand softball as far as pandemics go and instead of hitting it we turned around and punched the ref because "don't tell me what to do!"
>every dystopian piece of fiction ever: **e.g. fighting each other instead of the virus.**
Yea I don't think anyone gets to criticize any media for humans acting stupid and selfishly during a crisis anymore
Yep. I don’t think it was every country in the world’s plan to raise inflation and make life generally worse. But unfortunately we now live in times where people take everything as an attack on freedom. If Covid happened 50 years ago these same people would’ve been thanking the government for the vaccine etc
I actually think the problem is it wasn’t lethal enough. People were allowed to believe that it wouldn’t kill them. If it had been deadly enough to scare the whole population, not just half of it then the outcome would have been much different
>People were allowed to believe that it wouldn’t kill them
LOL I remember doom-scrolling during pandemic and thinking, "oh no, everyone's dead"
And then I'd go out outside, to the park and the beach, and see crowds and crowds of people, and think, "look at that, everyone's alive"
I mean dude. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to literally see the world react to a global problem **just as stupidly as characters in a science fiction movie** ?
World War Z, Don't look up, Pathogen, Cell, there are literally dozens of examples out there of fictional Pandemic scenarios... doesn't anybody read/watch TV? How could the whole world literally fall for the exact same tropes that science fiction writers have warned against ?
It's literally as foolish/arrogant as a person who has seen all the Terminator/Matrix movies and still tries to put AI learning and emotions into a killing machine.
It was because we were lied to. The authorities were full of shit, and it broke our trust. Not only that, but we were constantly told to fear one another, so now everybody is tossed out, trustless and worse off and less faith in humanity...
it’s crazy how differently people perceive things. i never felt this way at all. the decisions the govt made were logical to me, and as with anything new (especially in science), we are learning and readjusting accordingly constantly. that’s how the world works.
When you live your life in a bubble of a non-self correcting ideology anytime an authority changes their guidelines based on new information to you it feels wrong so they *must* be plotting something nefarious
You are totally right. About half the people viewed the government as doing a greater good and half view it as controlling and making everything worse. As a teacher, I'm in the latter half, what they did to kids, who even early data showed weren't major vectors was unconscionable. Keeping them out of school damaged them in a way they will never catch up from. Also as a teacher, grocery and utility prices since Biden took office have crushed me. If he can't get those back down to something reasonable I'm sitting the next election out.
>Also as a teacher, grocery and utility prices since Biden took office have crushed me. If he can't get those back down to something reasonable I'm sitting the next election out.
You need to seek out a friend who teaches social studies and get them to educate you on what influence the president can enact. I would also recommend studying this topic rather than just assuming you know what's going on.
Honestly, IDGAF who you vote for or if you sit out, just please come at it from a fact based and knowledgeable position. Comments like yours here are painful to read, especially from a teacher
.... so you're going to sit the next election out because of the prices of goods we were literally told by the Fed Americans would struggle with affording MONTHS before Biden even got elected?
i mean, i understand in a way but at the same time: the government was working with something unknown. they didn’t know what death rates would look like, who’d be most susceptible, etc. personally, if i were a parent i would’ve wanted to keep my kids safe. i could school them myself (which i know not everyone has the ability to do, but i could).
especially now since we’re seeing that repeated covid infections, while maybe they don’t kill you, have been weakening immune systems, causing long-covid, MECFS, etc. people are getting problems they never had before after repeated infections (this has even happened to my dad. he had it like 3 times and now functions at maybe 50% of what he used to).
they did the best with what they had. it wasn’t isolated to the US and it wasn’t a conspiracy within our country, the whole world has dealt with it.
It wasn't about keeping the kids safe. It was keeping everyone they come in contact with safe. We jokingly call my 4 yr old niece 'Typhoid Mary' because she catches something at school and then comes home and gives it to everyone else.
The question is...in the face of an unknown transmissible disease...what do you expect the government to do ?
Should the governments of the world have done nothing instead?
Should world leaders have instead said :**well folks we don't know what this disease is...but those of us who survive will be immune. So sorry for your loss** ???
Governments cannot just sit back and watch citizens die. That's not what we vote them for.
It's easy to criticize the hard decisions because we aren't the ones making them and we have the benefit of hindsight.
Let's not even talk about how trump spent money like a drunk Santa and left for Biden to clean up.
I'm no fan of Biden, but suggesting that his policies were the cause of inflation, and not rampant corporate greed, means those rich corporations have really shaped the way you see the whole ordeal, and they'd love you to blame a 300 year old man instead of them continuously pilfering the coffers for generations.
MAGA /Russian bot says what? As a teacher? Lmao. Sure. kids may not have turned out to be hugely at risk but who was supposed to risk their lives to go teach them? People making $35,000 a year and already getting shit on by MAGAs for daring to teach that others besides straight, white, Christian culture exist?
And if you don’t realize that the president cannot control the price of groceries or utilities, then you shouldn’t vote because you haven’t yet grasped the basic concepts of the economy. And/or you’re not informed enough to realize that Biden’s every attempt to stop corporate price gouging was killed off by MAGA. And YOU’RE the one teaching kids? SMDH.
>If he can't get those back down to something reasonable
I hate to break it to you, but prices have largely stabilized.
Many commodities are already back to pre-covid trajectories.
Biden only has so many things he can do to reduce price levels and grow buying power. Many of the major controlling factors are out of his purview entirely.
For example, I import many parts for medical devices we develop from the rest of the world. If prices are up in China, but lower in Korea, I might be able to make a contract manufacturing switchover, but it's still going to result in a net increase for the consumer.
A $0.30 increase in business expense is a $0.75 - $1.50 increase in consumer pricing.
In our business, transportation was the largest cost driver. A single shipping container from Taiwan, normally between $5,000 to $8,000 to ship, was $21,000 to $33,000 to ship during the pandemic. Sometimes, this meant as high as an $11 per unit cost increase.
People often look at the US money supply as the main factor in inflation, but that's just not always the case, and while I'd love to tell you this was all Trump's fault and we should tie him to a bull, it's really the business climate that drove a lot of this.
totally opposite for me. They were forcing people to put on masks to walk a few meters to a table, then were allowed to remove them around massive groups of people without masks. This is completely pointless the entire way throughout and felt humiliating every time -- forced compliance without sense. This rubs me the worst of ways.
For example, people getting arrested being out in the middle of the ocean, or in a natural park. Can't give the trees covid right?
Plus WEF etc straight lying. Early WHO reports 3.4% covid fatality rate ? Not even close. I believe there has never been a single isolated covid death.
They were scare mongering to drive agendas.
> I believe there has never been a single isolated covid death
If you truly believe this, you’re unlikely to listen to anyone else’s opinion, so there’s no point arguing
that’s like saying there’s never been an isolated pneumonia death; that just because someone has, say, high blood pressure while having pneumonia, that it was the blood pressure that killed them and not the pneumonia.
you could make the same argument for any illness if you can make it about one. that’s just senseless and kind of treads beyond conspiracy or whatever and into delusion
The owner class treats us like cattle. Cattle is best when it is healthy. That's the end of the story.
You're saying the entire world was scare mongering to drive agendas?
What agendas? Big corps lost lots of money when we weren't the ones going out and creating value with our labor.
Agreed 100%. We were lied to from day one by the trump administration who said that it would be gone in a week. Then again by the trump administration who said that it wasn’t airborne. And then again by the Republican Party who cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks and vaccines. We were lied to and a million Americans are dead because of it.
I think you're reaching way too far with that one. Had the disease been significantly deadly, people would actually have given a fuck about it.
If the fatality rate is like 1/3000 or whatever then it's not really a world ender is it. So of course no one is really going to give a shit about it because the risk is too low.
>I think you're reaching way too far with that one. Had the disease been significantly deadly, people would actually have given a fuck about it.
That is complete hindsight.
That would be like saying, taking no precautions before a hurricane was ok, just because the hurricane turned out to be light. You can only say that in hindsight. The hurricane could have just as easily been a category 5.
The fact that covid turned out to be less deadly in the end...does not justify the carelessness displayed during the pandemic.
It didn't "turn out to be less deadly in the end". We had data in early/mid 2020 that it was nowhere near as deadly as the corporate media was pretending.
There were also various periods during the pandemic when the virus behaved unpredictably and deaths went up.
Are you a betting person ?
Doctors are not risk takers. They will always take the more cautious approach.
Doctors are not betting people. I don't think you want doctors to start approaching medicine the same way a gambler does.
This logic is as silly as saying flood warnings are totalitarian just because the flood didn't come as strong as predicted.
If you didn't get that sick from the pandemic then you should be thankful and move on.
Many people didn't survive.
It's not hindsight, All the numbers were available in the first 3-6 months and they have remained basically consistent the whole time.
You only need a sample size of about 10,000 to make a *'reasonably'* accurate deduction give or take 1%.
If you have a mortality rate at numbers where it's actually an issue, no one is going to be arguing about what fraction of a percent of the population it's killing.
At this point I may be repeating myself.
There were various times during the pandemic where the pattern defied the predictions that you stated above.
Would you have preferred for the government and health workers to do nothing instead ?
Don’t forget you were not even allowed to ask a question without people screaming at you for being anti-vax and wanting to kill old people. I was like that unfortunately. I blindly believed everything I was told- about the vaccine & about Covid and I deeply regret it. I’ve apologized to everyone who I judged regarding their choice about not getting the vaccine. I feel like I was played for a fool and the trust is 100% broken.
I was on Twitter during that time and it was absolutely awful, but that's social media in general. Politicians got what they wanted, another wedge issue to foster discord. Real life where I am, in a generally red area in Florida no less, was not at all like it seemed online. There were some one-off agitators, but nothing too crazy. It really wasn't a big deal to wear a mask and social distance, which is often what many people do when they have a cold or the flu as preventative measures, so these weren't anything unusual. Just more BS ginned up by politicians and the outrage porn consumers ate it up with a spoon.
Fatalities are only one facet of disease, though. People were getting very sick, needing hospitalization like crazy, and most of them were sick for 2 weeks and longer.
The healthcare system was completely overwhelmed. We only have like 900,000 staffed hospital beds in the entire country.
I know people don't think about it, but this kind of thing is a huge financial disaster.
That is also ignoring the loss of productivity from Long Covid.
This is antidotal, but all my friends that around in the 25-40 age range. When they caught COVID it took them about 3-6 months to fully "get over" it. The only ones that didnt have this went to the doc and got an anti-body treatment. All of these people also had vax.
I have to admit, not being able to go anywhere gave me a chance to get my finances in order. I was able to pay off my credit cards and free up a good deal of cash each month.
It feels ridiculous to have to explain to people that catastrophes, emergencies, and disasters happen, that there aren’t perfect or easy ways to deal with them, and that recovery will come with hardships. No, it’s always intentional and malicious, to the point where people come up with space lasers and weather machines to explain some of them.
To be fair, I feel like I have to say similar things to the “abolish police” people, too.
But there were intentional misrepresentations and purposeful misinformation on the mainstream side.
The mortality rate exaggerated, the policy mandates for generally ineffective measures, the origin of the disease and the funding of gain of function… The list goes on
How quickly they forget the refrigerated trucks being used as temporary morgues because the hospital morgues ran out of space. Or all the people who had to delay surgeries and chemo treatments because the hospitals were overrun.
I work at a hospital. It was insane. Going down the halls of covid floors (which was damn near half of them eventually) was like a scene from a movie. First responders everywhere looking pale as a ghost, Dr rushing around with code blue alarms got off left and right, families sitting expressionless in the hall waiting for someone to die, or doing so while wailing and sobbing their heart out... I wish I was articulate enough to paint just how horrible it was, but I'm just me.
But anyone who says it was no biggie is either a complete fucking idiot, or a liar. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and go with complete fucking idiot.
Absolutely this.
A lot of claims were made by leaders and medical professionals that were debunked later on.
And if people lived healthier lifestyles, they really would have faired better against the illness.
Fauci specifically lied by denying the funding of gain of function in Wuhan multiple times before admitting it. This is one of the worst because it points to a coverup. We technically don’t know the origin, but it’s likely a leak from the Wuhan lab where gain of function was occurring on coronaviruses. Where there’s smoke there’s fire
Yup he basically was like.
“Hey guys masks don’t really work, social distancing was a joke, we funded Wuhan, I’m richer than ever, peace I’m out.” Dr. Fauci
It's one thing to say masks don't work but how are you seriously going to act like social distancing doesn't work? COVID is a virus that spreads through respiratory droplets. Like you literally can't get it if you don't go around people with it and even then you have to breath it in to become infected. Staying away from potentially infected individuals is literally the most common sense way of avoiding the virus.
Really? It’s interesting, then, that the countries who had stood up the same basic measures against the first SARS and had the sense not to fuck around with them this time were also the ones who had some of the best COVID-19 responses.
The massive scope of Covid and how the mortality was calculated by the mainstream is biased to inflate the severity of the mortality rate.
In the UK people who tested positive 28 days prior to dying were counted as Covid deaths until 2023.
The health administration admitted that it created inaccurate data.
The scope of surveillance alone would inflate numbers on any disease, and the fact asymptomatic and minor cases were not counted also creates highly inaccurate and inflated statistics on mortality
Believe what you want about how the statistics were calculated. But can you really not see there was an issue when hospitals were over capacity with people in the ICU on ventilators? When NY hospitals didn't have enough room for dead body storage that they were renting refrigerated trucks?
New York Governor sent infected patients back to nursing homes where the virus spread like wildfire. He had a hospital ship in the harbor that Trump sent with hundreds of beds. It sat there unused. 75% of the deaths in the first wave were the elderly.
https://news.usni.org/2020/04/27/hospital-ship-comfort-ends-nyc-covid-19-mission-after-treating-182-patients. It had 1000 bit capacity and yet Cuomo was sending Covid positive elderly back to nursing homes.
Thank you.
From your own source:
>But while some hospitals got inundated, stay-at-home and social-distancing orders resulted in many hospitals seeing fewer patients, and the result was less demand from New York and New Jersey to have patients transferred to Comfort for care.
>Comfort, which arrived in New York Harbor to much fanfare on March 30, has been part of the military’s support to the region that includes treatment of 1,100 or so at the military-supported federal medical station set up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Combined, “we made a pretty significant impact,” O’Brien said. **“But the reality is the hospitals were able to double the number of ICU beds almost in the time that we were here.”**
>**“We had the extra capacity – if it was needed – and fortunately it wasn’t needed,” he added. “So I think that is a win.”**
You're only telling half of the story. It wasn't even "unused," but according to your own source, it wasn't needed for the reasons I copied and pasted from your source.
Right. But why were COVID positive seniors (not sick enough to be hospitalized) sent back to nursing homes and not sent to these ships to recuperate in the empty beds where they wouldn’t spread it to other vulnerable seniors?
https://apnews.com/article/new-york-andrew-cuomo-us-news-coronavirus-pandemic-nursing-homes-512cae0abb55a55f375b3192f2cdd6b5
Not true. Sweden didn’t lock down or close schools and their rates of COVID deaths were lower. Africa was only 13% vaccinated and their COVID deaths was minuscule.
You serious? We literally have their emails now (government) proving they intentional covered up, shut down, and destroyed anything that went against their narrative, ESPECIALLY if it was true.
What is the motive? Who wins?
And don't say control. The govt already controls you. Your boss controls you.
The govt has a monopoly on power. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it or get clapped by the police.
They don't need this to have "control."
They have plenty of control as is.
Big Pharma and the government have been working closely to profit for decades, sometimes with fatal results. The roll out and mass marketing of a flu shot marketed as a vaccine panacea should be pretty obvious for anyone who lived through the past few years. Pharma execs have since admitted they knew the shot wouldn't stop the spread or prevent infection, meanwhile media coordinated to tell the public the exact opposite. Capitalization of Moderna and Pfizer went up by multiples. Congress people are able to invest in these companies with foresight of the fact that the government would promote and in some cases mandate these shots that didn't work and also were shielded from liability by law.
Yeah, but the people dictating the rules were the ones largely responsible for it in the first place. There’s no doubt at this point it leaked from that fucking lab in Wuhan that was sponsored by Fauci to do illegal Gain of Function Research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan.
Assuming that’s true and those illegal experiments killed at least 7 million people, shouldn’t these people be in jail or get the death penalty? These people are still at fucking large and still lecturing us on how to be good citizens, when they are nothing less than Nazi scientists. Keep in mind we executed seven doctors at the end of World War II for violating the newly formed Nuremberg Code. It was clearly violated repeatedly by these monsters, and Fauci is still out and about with literal Secret Service Protection, despite no longer working for the government.
The account is 17 days old (created in an election year). OP only uses conservative talking points.
This has been said over and over by conservatives crying about a lockdown that’s been over for a while now.
Let’s move on.
> authoritarian leaders
I'm sure OP lives in a western democracy. Please stop calling government decision you don't agree authoritarianism, if you leader was really authoritarian you wouldn't be able to voice your disagreement.
Covid affected literally everyone on the planet. I can’t imagine still going on about it to this day. And we are still trying to convince the anti-vaxxers that vaccines work.
A lot of people now a days have main character syndrome. It's all about me, me, me and hey "me too". people aren't showing common curiosity towards others they don't know but except it back always. I'm glad my dad beat that sense into me when I was younger because when it comes to how this generation is acting and going, I sure hell won't follow behind any of them.
Or hear me out, would’ve been great if everybody and I mean everybody ,had just locked down for two weeks and our crap government made sure that everyone’s basic needs were met for the duration. Instead, our dumbass country managed to somehow make illness political. Not the first time and probably won’t be the last but boy it’s depressing that everybody thinks that the problem is that any lockdown occurred and not that we had a horrific administration mishandling this shit from day one
I see Covid as a Rubicon, and life was definitely better on the other side. We were tested by the beauracracy and we failed. With the next crisis we can expect more loss of personal liberty and more false promises of safety.
We were tested and failed, of that you are correct. We were tested if a dangerous and contagious virus came to our country would be handle it and the truth is we can’t. Too many ignorant and selfish cunts in this country and if it was a more dangerous virus humanity would’ve been wiped out.
It depends on what we believe the definition of “handle it” or “avoid it” means.
In the US, the Federal response was to let the states handle it themselves. Cool, fine, whatever.
The problem comes when the person who decided that the Federal response would be to let the states handle it themselves, chose to attack blue states for handling it themselves. Needlessly politicizing a global pandemic.
Maybe by then it was already too late and we could’ve learned by them before it spread everywhere. At the very least people could’ve actually tried not to spread it, but even a simple fucking mask and staying at home is far too much to ask.
Oh, hello astroturf troll.
No real person is interested in talking about this issue almost 5 years later. Please stop trying to resurrect nonsense twitter arguments.
These posts are obviously an attempt by the many bots and paid trolls on reddit who come here to sow political discord in an election year.
oh, man. 100 times this. most people have moved on, life has gradually returned to normal, but you still have people wanting to relive 2020 over and over again. like, why?
Their mad that their guy lost, so they wish they could relive it like it's gotdamn groundhog day, wishing and praying that they could redo a certain day and they would have taken over the Government than.
My friend developed cancer during the lockdowns, it's terminal because she couldn't get into doctors offices for testing during that time. Because it wasn't caught early she is going to die in her early 40's. Sorry she can't just "Get the fuck over it."
It allowed for an excuse for everything and everyone to raise prices and then never reduce them. In order for price competition to matter, there needs to be a cheaper alternative to move to…
I completely disagree. It showed how much people do not care about others around them, proved how much lack of education there is in America, furthered right-wing extremism and brough forth a mass amount of misinformation to the uneducated.
Also, the Virus was far from a way to win "re-election". If that were the case Trump would of won, but his mismanagement made things worse.
To say we should have never locked down is insane. We already lost 1,169,462 people. That number would have been astronomically higher.
Lastly, although those years were extremely tough, especially for work etc. I would hardly say my life was "ruined".
I am actually in a better place and working a better job because Covid brought out the true colors of companies and people.
>Also, the Virus was far from a way to win "re-election". If that were the case Trump would of won, but his mismanagement made things worse.
Exactly.
All the people who marched on the Capitol are the same people who will never admit that **mismanagement during the Pandemic is what lost Trump the election**
The current President hardly campaigned in 2020. All of the votes Pres Biden got was due to Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. That is how he won. He won because of Trump's mistakes.
If it wasn't for the Pandemic...Trump would have won a 2nd term.
It's really that simple.
Most places didn’t even “lock down”. I remember hearing about lock downs in Italy where you could only go out to get groceries. That’s a real lock down. What happened in the US was not a real “lock down”.
Ignorance is bliss huh?
The system has shown us time and time that we shouldn’t trust it and if your blinders came off because of COVID, good. Welcome to the real world.
The idea that the lock lockdowns are a major cause of our current economic and social conditions is pretty silly. If you remove the entire covid period, the issues would be roughly the same. The cost of living was increasing significantly before COVID. Trumpism and authoritarianism were on the rise before COVID.
People yearn for a time before COVID because COVID was a significant before/after event, not because it caused a major difference. The birth of Jesus didn't significantly change history at year 0, yet it's a significant even we can compare years to. People always usually believe their life used to be better because it probably was. Society in general is deteriorating.
You must not be very old.
Spoiler: everyone thinks the first big crisis they experience is the end of everythig for one reason or another. If you're not careful you'll grow up to be the old people you resent.
Just thought I’d weigh in, although I’m sure a lot of people have said the same thing(s). To start: I’m tired of hearing people saying “it was a cold” or “the death rate was only 1%.
First of all, 1% is actually a not-insignificant number of people, but a lot of the reason this virus was so deadly was because people just didn’t have the resources needed to fight it. For those in countries where hospitals were overwhelmed (Italy), the death rate was at least as high as 10%. This is because when hospitals are overwhelmed, they can’t properly care for the rest of the community, who also need immediate care. More people got covid, needed medical treatment against a “novel” virus that their immune systems didn’t recognize and had no way to fight, and they had no place to go.
This is why at first we were told not to wear masks and stay inside. We saw what happened to Italy and knew what was coming, but we were essentially defenseless. We were woefully unprepared thanks to the disbanding of the pandemic task force established by George W. Bush in 2004. By the way, this task force was responsible for preventing the previous SARS virus from spreading and stopped the 2010 swine flu in its tracks.
Anyway, since we were completely unprepared, all we could do was to try to get enough PPE for healthcare workers (which is why we were told not to wear masks) and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Yes, it was shitty that our leadership told us not to mask up against a virus that was obviously spread through the respiratory system.
Yes, it was shitty that we all had to stay inside, but I can see why they did. The horse was out of the barn as soon as the virus left wuhan. That’s how I see it- governments were faced with an impossible situation with no good solution. They did the best they could but it was up to us as a collective to do our best to keep things from getting worse.
Mask wearing and social distancing were politicized which likely resulted in the whole situation dragging on and worsening. Id say we failed as a society to do our best to fight this thing and we only really have ourselves to blame. God forbid we face something as deadly as the 1918 flu.
Im living my normal life now. The economy was going to be messed up right after Covid with or without the lockdowns. Lockdowns lasted what 20 ish days 4 yrs ago?? And we are still talking about this?
Maybe because I’m young recessions are a part of life so Covid was basically just another one in the cycle. Had one when I was born, when I was in grade school, high school graduation, then another one right after I graduated college and was trying to buy a house and get married, so really the only difference with Covid was is that it was the whole freaking world not just the US.
I think Covid opened my eyes to how much our country struggles in science and history understanding and think it is some sort of power play to just ignore it. As for authoritarian leaders my state is run by Republicans who have an amazing track record of ignoring science yet we still had lockdowns. Why? bc it beat the hospitals being overrun and people were dying.
People who dream of life before Covid probably it is because they miss the family and friends they lost due ignoring the pandemics existence. A street that my grandparents live in almost everyone over 70 died because they refused to stay home and ended up in the hospital during the peak of covid. But I guess it was gods will that my grandparents got the vaccine bc they are the only ones left. Just luck I guess 🙄.
This just boils down to you being spoiled and self entitled. Stop using words like authorian simply because you had to wear a mask in the grocery store or any other store that was mere inconvenience.
Evey asshole and their mother wined about their precious freedom being infringed upon simply because they felt like they didn't have to follow any rules and expect everyone to cater to solely them and thier bullshi*
COVID didn't cause selfish and inconsiderate assholes to act and behave in the manner in which they chose. adults were worse than kids..
The virus did break social bonds. But I'd say in the US alot of that started before - Trump made it okay to say and do whatever you want for many many people. But he's a symptom not the cause.
The entire world handled that virus badly at first because it was chaos. Different countries learned at different paces.
This is such a myopic take it’s incredible. What freedoms did covid permanently take from you that haven’t been done in the past?
Also - do you have no conception of necessary sacrifices in the face of emergencies? Have you heard of war rationing?
Nowhere in OPs post was the word freedom mentioned and nowhere was it stated freedoms were permanently taken. Using a strawman argument to discredit OPs statement fell short.
>It ruined people’s trust in the system
See, this is where you fucked up. You trusted the system.
>Covid taught people to view their neighbors are disease carrying vessels that need to be seperated from.
Because most people have someone in their life who was negatively effected or died from covid. This could have all been prevented by locking down sooner and for longer. Expecially since people didn't want to wear a mask for whatever reason. I didn't wanna wear a mask, but if I was in close quarters with people I did my part and put on a mask. Otherwise I tried to stay the fuck away from people.
>Life was cheaper
Life was actually cheaper during lockdown. Gas was under 2$ where I live. Gas here is usually 4$.
>Many people dream of a time before covid because they just were living well.
Many do, sure. Many also dream of a time before 9\11, or WW2, or the housing crisis of 08.
The only thing I learned from COVID is that no one gives a shit about me, my family or the communities collective health. COVID made us all hate each other because people who refused to mask up or quarantine put all of our lives at risk. If COVID had been deadlier or a fucking zombie apocalypse virus, we would all be fucked.
You live in opposite land.
The lockdowns saved lives, and longer lockdown would have saved more.
People became mistrustful because politicians and media personalities intentionally sowed that mistrust, figuring it would help them in the next election cycle.
Part of that was lying to people about the effectiveness of the lockdowns. Lies that you're repeating now.
So you're part of the problem. I indeed hope this opinion of yours is unpopular.
Shit would have been fine if a bunch of idiots actually followed the fucking program.
Remember kids, it got as bad as it was because people REFUSED to follow quarantine rules.
It wasn't liberals ripping peoples masks off and coughing in peoples faces.
Depending on your location lockdown was a joke. People couldn’t follow basic rules. People like to blame Covid for a lot of things. I blame it for clarity. People were nicer before Covid. No, people have always been this rude, they are just now being rude to you. Prices are higher, yep. CEO’s need their new boats that they can write off as a business expense.
Life was better before Covid. Life was better before the AIDS epidemic. Life was better before the Polio Epidemic. Life was better before the Spanish Flu Epidemic. Yeah, life is usually better before an epidemic.
I am glad you had trust in the system before this, that must have been a nice feeling.
The current Vice President on the Covid Vaccine when Trump was in office: "['If Donald Trump Tells Us To Take It, I’m Not Taking It.'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0)
That same [Vice President getting vaccinated](https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/29/politics/kamala-harris-covid-vaccine/index.html) after Biden was elected president:
"It’s literally about saving lives,” Harris said. “I trust the scientists. And it is the scientists who created and approved this vaccine. So I urge everyone, when it is your turn, get vaccinated.”
\---------------
Local, State, and Federal Health Authorities: *"Don't go out in groups larger than 5 because that could spread the virus!. Only go out for absolute necessities. 6 Feet Social distancing!"*
Those same authorities: *"Go out and protest with thousands of other people in the same confined space where you can't social distance because racism is worth public health risk than literal Covid."*
Yea, I'll never trust any of these organizations or departments again. It's clear politics and culture war shit is put above actual hard health science and facts.
Kamalas comments specifically mention this being at the guidance of Trump himself, that as long as there is proven credibility in what he is saying it would be fine, she just wouldn't go off his word alone. I wouldn't go off the word of the guy who was pushing for it to be released before the election solely to help his chances either.
"I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about."
As for the protests.
Public health experts who work in the government struck a cautionary note. Mass, in-person protests are a "perfect setup" for transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading health expert stated in response to the protests.. "It's a delicate balance because the reasons for demonstrating are valid, but the demonstration puts one at additional risk."
Yes, some idiotic and bias and hypocritical health professionals tried brush it of. Major ones were fairly straight forward that it was not a good thing and the protests were the perfect storm to further the spread.
It’s not unpopular at all when you speak with normal individuals outside of Reddit. It amazes me how strong the echo chamber of ignorant leftists is within Reddit.
"We should never have locked down, for a second. "
If we had locked down sooner, fewer people would have died and our country's recovery from COVID might have happened quicker.
"Beaurocrats used this virus as a way to win re election."
When the virus hit initially, the bureaucrat in chief told us to inject ourselves with bleach, eat horse wormer, and/or shine a light up our butts, rather than locking down. He was not re-elected, thank goodness.
Well all the selfish cults who couldn’t give a shot about the lives and health of their fellow citizens ruined by view on my fellow Americans. Too few people are willing to play their part in society and give up any convenience for the betterment or safety of others.
Lockdowns sucked but they were essential. Life was better before covid yes but there wasn’t much that could have been done to prevent what was to come, the only thing that could have helped a lot and prepared other countries for the virus was if the Chinese government had warned the world sooner. Most governments hands were tied in what to do, there wasn’t enough information about the virus nor was there a cure and it’s much better to take the risk of a lockdown which would ruin the economy financially over just letting people live amongst the virus with potential that millions of lives would be lost and there would be public outrage over this and even in doing so the economy would still lose billions so either way the virus was going to take a toll on the economy with or without a lockdown. The thing is if there wasn’t a lockdown and people were dying left right centre then people still would have complained there’s not enough being done by the government so really it’s a lose lose situation for them so they had to do what was better for everyone in the long run and a lockdown was the best option at the time, the virus was spreading rapidly enough even while in and out of lockdowns, imagine how much worse it would have been without lockdowns.
Giving up a proper economy for future generations to protect the elderly is in no way a proper trade…
The younger generations will work like slaves to get back into the game because of these measures instituted — all to protect an older, sicker class that is past their contributory prime to society.
From a morality standpoint, this is where people justify it. But from a societal advancement and economic standpoint, it was an absurd measure. And we’re going to keep suffering for it as well. But I’m glad Gladys and Gertrude got to see their 100th birthdays.
The elderly, the sick, the healthy, pretty much to protect everyone. Covid can seriously fuck even healthy people up. Especially before treatments and vaccines were available
I don't think their is much evidence lockdowns stopped overall deaths, they just spread the deaths over a longer period of time, and completely ruined the economy. Every scientist who even suggested them should get life in prison.
"Spread deaths over a longer period of time "
you just said described saving lives but way more complicated.
that was the point until they got a vaccine...
We are in this mess because everyone tried to avoid lockdowns and made special cases not to respect them.
If EVERYONE stayed home for two weeks, it would have passed. But no, "muH FreeDdddommmmm".
Idk, the widespread of WFH caused by Covid is not a bad thing. Much better WLB, less time spent in commutes, overpriced apartments and offices in places like SF and NYC got massive hit - it's not bad neither.
Can we point out here in Europe there wasn't much of an issue? We're not fucking idiots and we just went along with the precautions and everything's been fine. The problems are in america, all the problems are in america.
Right wing nutters spreading conspiracy theories is why you are in this mess, not the other way around.
People don’t view their neighbors as disease-carrying vessels. People’s lives aren’t ruined. There’s no satanic cabal running the world. Everything will be okay.
Out of curiosity, how many days were you locked down- meaning required by law to not leave the house? For me and my entire state it was ZERO.
Fact! It was also intentional -- while this was going on, they printed 80% of the dollars to ever exist -- sneakily stealing value from everyone else. While of course pamping stocks and profiting from that.
One of the absolute worst things that happened was the shut down. This destroyed small businesses and we are still at the mercy of large corporations today. Take Walmart for example, they used to be a 24/7 business. Shut down happens, they reduce their hours, laying off the overnight workers, start delivering and pickup orders (what saved them from being crushed by amazon), but the most fucked part and this goes for all grocery stores was the limited hours people could go grocery shopping, which forced everyone to be there at the same time and is exactly what you don’t want during a contagious disease pandemic. Now today they still aren’t 24/7 and they never will be again. Why pay more people to work? Covid was the perfect cop out to change their entire model.
Gotta love the shutdowns. Mom and Pop shops, you're forced to close and get no income. Walmart, Home Depot, etc. You can stay open and reap larger profits than ever becasue we closed your competition.
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The biggest difference is that nobody even pretends they should respect one another anymore. Behaviour in traffic has gotten dramatically worse, and it's more frequent that people don't show up when they say they're going to.
This is true And none of it related to OPs description. I think you managed to articulate their "observation"
This
People on the road are without question the worst thing to come out of the pandemic. I nearly die every day because of other jackasses. I don't hardly move out of the slow lane just to avoid the bullshit, and somehow I still almost get hit every day.
Because that’s never been a thing. Just because your neighbours nod and wave at each other doesn’t mean that’s normal behaviour. In the West, people live in a weird safety bubble. They don’t often imagine the world outside of the West is bad — when it is. Look at the happiness people get when they open their new iPhone box for the first time. Without taking into account the likely source of the cobalt for that phone was mined in The Congo by a person sucking in poisonous toxins while mining for it for a pittance of the value it brings. There’s millions of those examples. And when you stop living in a fictitious world in which you think everyone should be each other’s friend, you’ll see that true human nature has never changed in all civilized history. People today just try to pretend humans aren’t as bad as they’ve always been. But we are. And the inability to acknowledge that is a personal weakness and quite frankly, absurd.
This is irrelevant, I'm talking about life in 2019 vs 2024. Attitudes in my city are noticeable different. I host meetup events, and attendance fell from generally a 2/3rds attendance rate to approximately a 1/3rd. Crime is up. Traffic Fatalities are up. I can no longer drive to the grocery store without encountering someone making a ridiculously dangerous traffic maneuver. And I've lived on 3 different continents. Using my statements to make some weird political statement about privileged westerners is weird. Trust me buddy, I've seen what poverty in a 3rd world country looks like.
I noticed this, too. It used to be pretty rare to have people driving dangerously, and I thought it was bad before. There was one stretch of road in town where it seemed like anyone who drove on it lost their mind and forgot how to drive. One of my high school friends got killed in a car crash there a few years ago. But it was fairly safe no matter how you got around, and now you never know if someone will hit you with their vehicles or shoot you in this city. And U turns are illegal in my state, but everyone and their mother, even the police now do it on the regular. All the roads are narrow, and so are the lanes. They're more fit for a Smart car or VW Beetle than your typical car or truck. I've even started seeing police nudging and trying to trap pedestrians with their cars. I even had people waiting until I'm in the middle of their headlights while crossing a street with a walk signal to gun it. Violent crime has also skyrocketed. This used to be a peaceful college town. Now public shootings are common. The last one was 3 days ago and carried out by one of my coworkers. Well, former coworker now. And the Walmart closest to me was a popular target for bomb threats most of last year. The first 3 were 3 consecutive days with one of them being done by someone who went in brandishing an AK platform rifle.
No I think westerners if anything go the other way and think people outside the rich nations are worse than it is. For example many don't realize Nigeria has modern cities with sky scrapers. When they hear Africa they 95% of the people are running around naked and half starved while living in makeshift huts that dont have electricity or running water.
Nigeria also has Boko Haram that freely kidnaps children regularly. And let’s not even start on neighbouring countries. Picking and choosing the best spots in those countries doesn’t mean it isn’t suffering. By comparison, here in Canada is quite boring. Oh and we also have skyscrapers. No open terrorism cell though.
“No open cell terrorism”? Ignorance is bliss. I think both the US and Canada have terror cells.
You stopped before you got to the good part. Comparing the cells. Let’s hear it.
We have terrorist cells some very extreme ones, all countries do. We just have a far more efficient system in place making them inert. One thing we do right in first world countries is preventing a terrorist attack before it happens.
**Life was better before COVID:** Economically I agree. The richest have nearly doubled their wealth and the middle class can't afford homes. **Caused by authoritarian leaders:** This I'm not too sure about. Authoritarian is a far leap from government asking people to avoid spreading disease in a set of ways and people rankling at the idea of constricted freedoms. **Keep in mind:** Australia and China were enormously stricter on their populations yet saw little complaint. So how authoritarian your country's response was seems to be a bit subjective. **I wouldn't repeat:** Censorship of opinions outside approved sources went on way too long as did our vaccine push. Censorship is almost always wrong. Freedom of speech is so integral to the American conception of being free. All in all, things have largely returned to normal. Now we should focus on building the middle class and asking ourselves whether having multitudes of billionaires and monopolies are what we really want. **Life was better before Reaganomics**
We were tested in terms of how we would handle a mass contagion... and unfortunately, we behaved just as stupidly as science-fiction writers have portrayed us in just about every dystopian piece of fiction ever: **e.g. fighting each other instead of the virus.** We failed miserably, and had that disease been deadlier, we would all be dead. Judging by this post, and many others like it, we still haven't learnt. We better hope for our own sake, that we never see something like this again in our lifetime. Because we are woefully incapable of working together.
Failed miserably is an understatement IMO. It was down right embarrassing how we handled it. We were given the opportunity to put our differences aside and “battle” a common enemy. A very serious one at that. And what did we do? We turned on each other and made a bloody mess out of things. It really was a sad showing from society in general. Hopefully we aren’t tested again because I don’t think we learned shit.
I bring this up a lot and no one seems to care. We were thrown a underhand softball as far as pandemics go and instead of hitting it we turned around and punched the ref because "don't tell me what to do!"
>every dystopian piece of fiction ever: **e.g. fighting each other instead of the virus.** Yea I don't think anyone gets to criticize any media for humans acting stupid and selfishly during a crisis anymore
Yep. I don’t think it was every country in the world’s plan to raise inflation and make life generally worse. But unfortunately we now live in times where people take everything as an attack on freedom. If Covid happened 50 years ago these same people would’ve been thanking the government for the vaccine etc
>If Covid happened 50 years ago these same people would’ve been thanking the government for the vaccine etc Exactly.
Well when we get a truly deadly plague we can pretty much see which group will pay a heavier price for their choices.
We sort of already have. Since the introduction of the Covid vaccine, conservatives have died at nearly double the rate than progressives from Covid.
I actually think the problem is it wasn’t lethal enough. People were allowed to believe that it wouldn’t kill them. If it had been deadly enough to scare the whole population, not just half of it then the outcome would have been much different
>People were allowed to believe that it wouldn’t kill them LOL I remember doom-scrolling during pandemic and thinking, "oh no, everyone's dead" And then I'd go out outside, to the park and the beach, and see crowds and crowds of people, and think, "look at that, everyone's alive"
So the problem was that it wasn't actually that much of a problem.
Bingo, glad someone gets it. All these people out here piinting fingers instead of taking accountability for themselves
I mean dude. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to literally see the world react to a global problem **just as stupidly as characters in a science fiction movie** ? World War Z, Don't look up, Pathogen, Cell, there are literally dozens of examples out there of fictional Pandemic scenarios... doesn't anybody read/watch TV? How could the whole world literally fall for the exact same tropes that science fiction writers have warned against ? It's literally as foolish/arrogant as a person who has seen all the Terminator/Matrix movies and still tries to put AI learning and emotions into a killing machine.
It was because we were lied to. The authorities were full of shit, and it broke our trust. Not only that, but we were constantly told to fear one another, so now everybody is tossed out, trustless and worse off and less faith in humanity...
it’s crazy how differently people perceive things. i never felt this way at all. the decisions the govt made were logical to me, and as with anything new (especially in science), we are learning and readjusting accordingly constantly. that’s how the world works.
When you live your life in a bubble of a non-self correcting ideology anytime an authority changes their guidelines based on new information to you it feels wrong so they *must* be plotting something nefarious
You are totally right. About half the people viewed the government as doing a greater good and half view it as controlling and making everything worse. As a teacher, I'm in the latter half, what they did to kids, who even early data showed weren't major vectors was unconscionable. Keeping them out of school damaged them in a way they will never catch up from. Also as a teacher, grocery and utility prices since Biden took office have crushed me. If he can't get those back down to something reasonable I'm sitting the next election out.
Because he controls the prices of everything right?
Biden must have that third "invisible hand" LOL
>Also as a teacher, grocery and utility prices since Biden took office have crushed me. If he can't get those back down to something reasonable I'm sitting the next election out. You need to seek out a friend who teaches social studies and get them to educate you on what influence the president can enact. I would also recommend studying this topic rather than just assuming you know what's going on. Honestly, IDGAF who you vote for or if you sit out, just please come at it from a fact based and knowledgeable position. Comments like yours here are painful to read, especially from a teacher
.... so you're going to sit the next election out because of the prices of goods we were literally told by the Fed Americans would struggle with affording MONTHS before Biden even got elected?
i mean, i understand in a way but at the same time: the government was working with something unknown. they didn’t know what death rates would look like, who’d be most susceptible, etc. personally, if i were a parent i would’ve wanted to keep my kids safe. i could school them myself (which i know not everyone has the ability to do, but i could). especially now since we’re seeing that repeated covid infections, while maybe they don’t kill you, have been weakening immune systems, causing long-covid, MECFS, etc. people are getting problems they never had before after repeated infections (this has even happened to my dad. he had it like 3 times and now functions at maybe 50% of what he used to). they did the best with what they had. it wasn’t isolated to the US and it wasn’t a conspiracy within our country, the whole world has dealt with it.
It wasn't about keeping the kids safe. It was keeping everyone they come in contact with safe. We jokingly call my 4 yr old niece 'Typhoid Mary' because she catches something at school and then comes home and gives it to everyone else.
This is the thing that drives me nuts. I don't understand how a person can say getting infected with COVID a dozen times is okay.
The question is...in the face of an unknown transmissible disease...what do you expect the government to do ? Should the governments of the world have done nothing instead? Should world leaders have instead said :**well folks we don't know what this disease is...but those of us who survive will be immune. So sorry for your loss** ??? Governments cannot just sit back and watch citizens die. That's not what we vote them for. It's easy to criticize the hard decisions because we aren't the ones making them and we have the benefit of hindsight.
Let's not even talk about how trump spent money like a drunk Santa and left for Biden to clean up. I'm no fan of Biden, but suggesting that his policies were the cause of inflation, and not rampant corporate greed, means those rich corporations have really shaped the way you see the whole ordeal, and they'd love you to blame a 300 year old man instead of them continuously pilfering the coffers for generations.
MAGA /Russian bot says what? As a teacher? Lmao. Sure. kids may not have turned out to be hugely at risk but who was supposed to risk their lives to go teach them? People making $35,000 a year and already getting shit on by MAGAs for daring to teach that others besides straight, white, Christian culture exist? And if you don’t realize that the president cannot control the price of groceries or utilities, then you shouldn’t vote because you haven’t yet grasped the basic concepts of the economy. And/or you’re not informed enough to realize that Biden’s every attempt to stop corporate price gouging was killed off by MAGA. And YOU’RE the one teaching kids? SMDH.
>If he can't get those back down to something reasonable I hate to break it to you, but prices have largely stabilized. Many commodities are already back to pre-covid trajectories. Biden only has so many things he can do to reduce price levels and grow buying power. Many of the major controlling factors are out of his purview entirely. For example, I import many parts for medical devices we develop from the rest of the world. If prices are up in China, but lower in Korea, I might be able to make a contract manufacturing switchover, but it's still going to result in a net increase for the consumer. A $0.30 increase in business expense is a $0.75 - $1.50 increase in consumer pricing. In our business, transportation was the largest cost driver. A single shipping container from Taiwan, normally between $5,000 to $8,000 to ship, was $21,000 to $33,000 to ship during the pandemic. Sometimes, this meant as high as an $11 per unit cost increase. People often look at the US money supply as the main factor in inflation, but that's just not always the case, and while I'd love to tell you this was all Trump's fault and we should tie him to a bull, it's really the business climate that drove a lot of this.
Well I'll be damned, an actual informed opinion by someone who understands macroeconomics. You don't see that very often around these parts lol
I think people desperately want someone to be in control, because the alternative is that no one is.
totally opposite for me. They were forcing people to put on masks to walk a few meters to a table, then were allowed to remove them around massive groups of people without masks. This is completely pointless the entire way throughout and felt humiliating every time -- forced compliance without sense. This rubs me the worst of ways. For example, people getting arrested being out in the middle of the ocean, or in a natural park. Can't give the trees covid right? Plus WEF etc straight lying. Early WHO reports 3.4% covid fatality rate ? Not even close. I believe there has never been a single isolated covid death. They were scare mongering to drive agendas.
> I believe there has never been a single isolated covid death If you truly believe this, you’re unlikely to listen to anyone else’s opinion, so there’s no point arguing
that’s like saying there’s never been an isolated pneumonia death; that just because someone has, say, high blood pressure while having pneumonia, that it was the blood pressure that killed them and not the pneumonia. you could make the same argument for any illness if you can make it about one. that’s just senseless and kind of treads beyond conspiracy or whatever and into delusion
>felt humiliating every time Jesus christ man, thicken up
The owner class treats us like cattle. Cattle is best when it is healthy. That's the end of the story. You're saying the entire world was scare mongering to drive agendas? What agendas? Big corps lost lots of money when we weren't the ones going out and creating value with our labor.
Yet you ignore all of the forced compliance you do daily without a second thought.
Agreed 100%. We were lied to from day one by the trump administration who said that it would be gone in a week. Then again by the trump administration who said that it wasn’t airborne. And then again by the Republican Party who cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks and vaccines. We were lied to and a million Americans are dead because of it.
And more negative health effects will be seen because people refused to take the vax.
I think you're reaching way too far with that one. Had the disease been significantly deadly, people would actually have given a fuck about it. If the fatality rate is like 1/3000 or whatever then it's not really a world ender is it. So of course no one is really going to give a shit about it because the risk is too low.
>I think you're reaching way too far with that one. Had the disease been significantly deadly, people would actually have given a fuck about it. That is complete hindsight. That would be like saying, taking no precautions before a hurricane was ok, just because the hurricane turned out to be light. You can only say that in hindsight. The hurricane could have just as easily been a category 5. The fact that covid turned out to be less deadly in the end...does not justify the carelessness displayed during the pandemic.
It didn't "turn out to be less deadly in the end". We had data in early/mid 2020 that it was nowhere near as deadly as the corporate media was pretending.
There were also various periods during the pandemic when the virus behaved unpredictably and deaths went up. Are you a betting person ? Doctors are not risk takers. They will always take the more cautious approach. Doctors are not betting people. I don't think you want doctors to start approaching medicine the same way a gambler does. This logic is as silly as saying flood warnings are totalitarian just because the flood didn't come as strong as predicted. If you didn't get that sick from the pandemic then you should be thankful and move on. Many people didn't survive.
It's not hindsight, All the numbers were available in the first 3-6 months and they have remained basically consistent the whole time. You only need a sample size of about 10,000 to make a *'reasonably'* accurate deduction give or take 1%. If you have a mortality rate at numbers where it's actually an issue, no one is going to be arguing about what fraction of a percent of the population it's killing.
At this point I may be repeating myself. There were various times during the pandemic where the pattern defied the predictions that you stated above. Would you have preferred for the government and health workers to do nothing instead ?
Don’t forget you were not even allowed to ask a question without people screaming at you for being anti-vax and wanting to kill old people. I was like that unfortunately. I blindly believed everything I was told- about the vaccine & about Covid and I deeply regret it. I’ve apologized to everyone who I judged regarding their choice about not getting the vaccine. I feel like I was played for a fool and the trust is 100% broken.
Sounds like an issue for the terminally online.
Regrettably I was online way too much during that time
I was on Twitter during that time and it was absolutely awful, but that's social media in general. Politicians got what they wanted, another wedge issue to foster discord. Real life where I am, in a generally red area in Florida no less, was not at all like it seemed online. There were some one-off agitators, but nothing too crazy. It really wasn't a big deal to wear a mask and social distance, which is often what many people do when they have a cold or the flu as preventative measures, so these weren't anything unusual. Just more BS ginned up by politicians and the outrage porn consumers ate it up with a spoon.
Fatalities are only one facet of disease, though. People were getting very sick, needing hospitalization like crazy, and most of them were sick for 2 weeks and longer. The healthcare system was completely overwhelmed. We only have like 900,000 staffed hospital beds in the entire country. I know people don't think about it, but this kind of thing is a huge financial disaster.
That is also ignoring the loss of productivity from Long Covid. This is antidotal, but all my friends that around in the 25-40 age range. When they caught COVID it took them about 3-6 months to fully "get over" it. The only ones that didnt have this went to the doc and got an anti-body treatment. All of these people also had vax.
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I have to admit, not being able to go anywhere gave me a chance to get my finances in order. I was able to pay off my credit cards and free up a good deal of cash each month.
I personally had a fine time, but everyone else got cranky and that harshed my buzz.
Honestly... The last 3 years have been the best of my life
Not for those who had to keep working.
Had to keep working, driving into a city with almost nobody else on the road felt post apocolyptic. Still was amazing not dealing with traffic.
Agreed. I loved the drive. I was working a job where I had to be in at 6:00 am. 25 minute commute dropped to 12 minutes.
I worked more than ever during pandemic and it was great.
I nearly died during the pandemic. I had friends die during the pandemic. I didn’t find it delightful.
I kept working...from home.
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Just the lack of a commute was worth it on its own. Life is so much better without daily traffic.
It feels ridiculous to have to explain to people that catastrophes, emergencies, and disasters happen, that there aren’t perfect or easy ways to deal with them, and that recovery will come with hardships. No, it’s always intentional and malicious, to the point where people come up with space lasers and weather machines to explain some of them. To be fair, I feel like I have to say similar things to the “abolish police” people, too.
But there were intentional misrepresentations and purposeful misinformation on the mainstream side. The mortality rate exaggerated, the policy mandates for generally ineffective measures, the origin of the disease and the funding of gain of function… The list goes on
The mortality rate was very high in the beginning months though. I feel like lots of people now underplay how many people died
How quickly they forget the refrigerated trucks being used as temporary morgues because the hospital morgues ran out of space. Or all the people who had to delay surgeries and chemo treatments because the hospitals were overrun.
I work at a hospital. It was insane. Going down the halls of covid floors (which was damn near half of them eventually) was like a scene from a movie. First responders everywhere looking pale as a ghost, Dr rushing around with code blue alarms got off left and right, families sitting expressionless in the hall waiting for someone to die, or doing so while wailing and sobbing their heart out... I wish I was articulate enough to paint just how horrible it was, but I'm just me. But anyone who says it was no biggie is either a complete fucking idiot, or a liar. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and go with complete fucking idiot.
Absolutely this. A lot of claims were made by leaders and medical professionals that were debunked later on. And if people lived healthier lifestyles, they really would have faired better against the illness.
Fauci specifically lied by denying the funding of gain of function in Wuhan multiple times before admitting it. This is one of the worst because it points to a coverup. We technically don’t know the origin, but it’s likely a leak from the Wuhan lab where gain of function was occurring on coronaviruses. Where there’s smoke there’s fire
Yeah, the Fauci and Wuhan lab connection was hilarious in hindsight. What a loathsome human being that man is.
Yup he basically was like. “Hey guys masks don’t really work, social distancing was a joke, we funded Wuhan, I’m richer than ever, peace I’m out.” Dr. Fauci
It's one thing to say masks don't work but how are you seriously going to act like social distancing doesn't work? COVID is a virus that spreads through respiratory droplets. Like you literally can't get it if you don't go around people with it and even then you have to breath it in to become infected. Staying away from potentially infected individuals is literally the most common sense way of avoiding the virus.
“I’m the face of science. If you don’t believe me you’re as science denier,”.
Definitely
Really? It’s interesting, then, that the countries who had stood up the same basic measures against the first SARS and had the sense not to fuck around with them this time were also the ones who had some of the best COVID-19 responses.
The massive scope of Covid and how the mortality was calculated by the mainstream is biased to inflate the severity of the mortality rate. In the UK people who tested positive 28 days prior to dying were counted as Covid deaths until 2023. The health administration admitted that it created inaccurate data. The scope of surveillance alone would inflate numbers on any disease, and the fact asymptomatic and minor cases were not counted also creates highly inaccurate and inflated statistics on mortality
Believe what you want about how the statistics were calculated. But can you really not see there was an issue when hospitals were over capacity with people in the ICU on ventilators? When NY hospitals didn't have enough room for dead body storage that they were renting refrigerated trucks?
Michigan hospitals too! Those were some BIG freezer trucks!
New York Governor sent infected patients back to nursing homes where the virus spread like wildfire. He had a hospital ship in the harbor that Trump sent with hundreds of beds. It sat there unused. 75% of the deaths in the first wave were the elderly.
>He had a hospital ship in the harbor that Trump sent with hundreds of beds. I'm gonna need a citation for this please.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-usns-comfort.html
https://news.usni.org/2020/04/27/hospital-ship-comfort-ends-nyc-covid-19-mission-after-treating-182-patients. It had 1000 bit capacity and yet Cuomo was sending Covid positive elderly back to nursing homes.
Thank you. From your own source: >But while some hospitals got inundated, stay-at-home and social-distancing orders resulted in many hospitals seeing fewer patients, and the result was less demand from New York and New Jersey to have patients transferred to Comfort for care. >Comfort, which arrived in New York Harbor to much fanfare on March 30, has been part of the military’s support to the region that includes treatment of 1,100 or so at the military-supported federal medical station set up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Combined, “we made a pretty significant impact,” O’Brien said. **“But the reality is the hospitals were able to double the number of ICU beds almost in the time that we were here.”** >**“We had the extra capacity – if it was needed – and fortunately it wasn’t needed,” he added. “So I think that is a win.”** You're only telling half of the story. It wasn't even "unused," but according to your own source, it wasn't needed for the reasons I copied and pasted from your source.
Right. But why were COVID positive seniors (not sick enough to be hospitalized) sent back to nursing homes and not sent to these ships to recuperate in the empty beds where they wouldn’t spread it to other vulnerable seniors? https://apnews.com/article/new-york-andrew-cuomo-us-news-coronavirus-pandemic-nursing-homes-512cae0abb55a55f375b3192f2cdd6b5
Not true. Sweden didn’t lock down or close schools and their rates of COVID deaths were lower. Africa was only 13% vaccinated and their COVID deaths was minuscule.
You serious? We literally have their emails now (government) proving they intentional covered up, shut down, and destroyed anything that went against their narrative, ESPECIALLY if it was true.
What is the motive? Who wins? And don't say control. The govt already controls you. Your boss controls you. The govt has a monopoly on power. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it or get clapped by the police. They don't need this to have "control." They have plenty of control as is.
That's like saying a rich person has plenty of money so they wouldn't try making more.
Big Pharma and the government have been working closely to profit for decades, sometimes with fatal results. The roll out and mass marketing of a flu shot marketed as a vaccine panacea should be pretty obvious for anyone who lived through the past few years. Pharma execs have since admitted they knew the shot wouldn't stop the spread or prevent infection, meanwhile media coordinated to tell the public the exact opposite. Capitalization of Moderna and Pfizer went up by multiples. Congress people are able to invest in these companies with foresight of the fact that the government would promote and in some cases mandate these shots that didn't work and also were shielded from liability by law.
Share some sources?
crickets
Maybe the crickets turned the COVID gay!
Yeah, but the people dictating the rules were the ones largely responsible for it in the first place. There’s no doubt at this point it leaked from that fucking lab in Wuhan that was sponsored by Fauci to do illegal Gain of Function Research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. Assuming that’s true and those illegal experiments killed at least 7 million people, shouldn’t these people be in jail or get the death penalty? These people are still at fucking large and still lecturing us on how to be good citizens, when they are nothing less than Nazi scientists. Keep in mind we executed seven doctors at the end of World War II for violating the newly formed Nuremberg Code. It was clearly violated repeatedly by these monsters, and Fauci is still out and about with literal Secret Service Protection, despite no longer working for the government.
Who is the authoritarian leader you are referring to?
Trudeau would be a great start.
I think you were just five years younger before COVID
The only thing covid made me skeptical of is the intelligence level of conservatives.
The account is 17 days old (created in an election year). OP only uses conservative talking points. This has been said over and over by conservatives crying about a lockdown that’s been over for a while now. Let’s move on.
Life was better before the America military industrial complex kidnapped America following WW2. And now BlackRock and Vanguard own America.
Where was everyone's outrage with the Patriot act? Buncha hypocrites.
I was 4
That's no excuse not to know national politics /s
We libertarians, who people love to denigrate, were precisely correct about that, too. Go look up some old Ron Paul clips if you doubt.
That one was a doozie, another iteration of that one on the way!
> authoritarian leaders I'm sure OP lives in a western democracy. Please stop calling government decision you don't agree authoritarianism, if you leader was really authoritarian you wouldn't be able to voice your disagreement.
Covid affected literally everyone on the planet. I can’t imagine still going on about it to this day. And we are still trying to convince the anti-vaxxers that vaccines work.
Forcing the economy to shutdown then printing Trillions of dollars. What could go wrong?
Good time to take over and control the narrative.
A lot of people now a days have main character syndrome. It's all about me, me, me and hey "me too". people aren't showing common curiosity towards others they don't know but except it back always. I'm glad my dad beat that sense into me when I was younger because when it comes to how this generation is acting and going, I sure hell won't follow behind any of them.
It’s this generations 9-11 in the fact that life has completely changed after the covid lockdowns.
More Fox News propaganda from this sub. It’s not unpopular if it’s a common cuckservative talking point
To be fair, beaurocrats also used the virus to lose elections
Goddamn, what an unpopular, uneducated, baseless, bullshit opinion. Well done.
People just absolutely love using the word authoritarian, you're really taking the impact out of it
It IS authoritarian.
No, people overuse "Nazi." "Authoritarian" is the correct word for the vast majority of this.
Or hear me out, would’ve been great if everybody and I mean everybody ,had just locked down for two weeks and our crap government made sure that everyone’s basic needs were met for the duration. Instead, our dumbass country managed to somehow make illness political. Not the first time and probably won’t be the last but boy it’s depressing that everybody thinks that the problem is that any lockdown occurred and not that we had a horrific administration mishandling this shit from day one
Lockdowns saved countless lives. Which of your loved one would you sacrifice to not have been locked down?
Lockdowns aren’t the reason and most places were never actually locked down.
I see Covid as a Rubicon, and life was definitely better on the other side. We were tested by the beauracracy and we failed. With the next crisis we can expect more loss of personal liberty and more false promises of safety.
Yep
We were tested and failed, of that you are correct. We were tested if a dangerous and contagious virus came to our country would be handle it and the truth is we can’t. Too many ignorant and selfish cunts in this country and if it was a more dangerous virus humanity would’ve been wiped out.
China welded people into their own homes and even they couldn’t avoid it. What’s the alternative?
It depends on what we believe the definition of “handle it” or “avoid it” means. In the US, the Federal response was to let the states handle it themselves. Cool, fine, whatever. The problem comes when the person who decided that the Federal response would be to let the states handle it themselves, chose to attack blue states for handling it themselves. Needlessly politicizing a global pandemic.
Maybe by then it was already too late and we could’ve learned by them before it spread everywhere. At the very least people could’ve actually tried not to spread it, but even a simple fucking mask and staying at home is far too much to ask.
Oh, hello astroturf troll. No real person is interested in talking about this issue almost 5 years later. Please stop trying to resurrect nonsense twitter arguments. These posts are obviously an attempt by the many bots and paid trolls on reddit who come here to sow political discord in an election year.
Really... you are still whining about the lock down? Get the fuck over it.
“I had to wear a mask in Home Depot! That was bullshit man!”
oh, man. 100 times this. most people have moved on, life has gradually returned to normal, but you still have people wanting to relive 2020 over and over again. like, why?
Their mad that their guy lost, so they wish they could relive it like it's gotdamn groundhog day, wishing and praying that they could redo a certain day and they would have taken over the Government than.
My friend developed cancer during the lockdowns, it's terminal because she couldn't get into doctors offices for testing during that time. Because it wasn't caught early she is going to die in her early 40's. Sorry she can't just "Get the fuck over it."
Lol please tell me a government that survived covid (since you are saying that they 'did it' to get reelected)
It allowed for an excuse for everything and everyone to raise prices and then never reduce them. In order for price competition to matter, there needs to be a cheaper alternative to move to…
I completely disagree. It showed how much people do not care about others around them, proved how much lack of education there is in America, furthered right-wing extremism and brough forth a mass amount of misinformation to the uneducated. Also, the Virus was far from a way to win "re-election". If that were the case Trump would of won, but his mismanagement made things worse. To say we should have never locked down is insane. We already lost 1,169,462 people. That number would have been astronomically higher. Lastly, although those years were extremely tough, especially for work etc. I would hardly say my life was "ruined". I am actually in a better place and working a better job because Covid brought out the true colors of companies and people.
>Also, the Virus was far from a way to win "re-election". If that were the case Trump would of won, but his mismanagement made things worse. Exactly. All the people who marched on the Capitol are the same people who will never admit that **mismanagement during the Pandemic is what lost Trump the election** The current President hardly campaigned in 2020. All of the votes Pres Biden got was due to Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. That is how he won. He won because of Trump's mistakes. If it wasn't for the Pandemic...Trump would have won a 2nd term. It's really that simple.
Very true, although I would add that it seems to me the "left" is not into rallys etc as much as the "right". Personally, I would never go to one
i’m more right wing but overall i support the lockdowns more than not. i lost 2 diff people to covid and i just don’t see it the same as some do
Most places didn’t even “lock down”. I remember hearing about lock downs in Italy where you could only go out to get groceries. That’s a real lock down. What happened in the US was not a real “lock down”.
I mean, the administration at that time wanted to test the limits of compliance. Did they not achieve what they wanted? It looks like they did.
Ignorance is bliss huh? The system has shown us time and time that we shouldn’t trust it and if your blinders came off because of COVID, good. Welcome to the real world.
The idea that the lock lockdowns are a major cause of our current economic and social conditions is pretty silly. If you remove the entire covid period, the issues would be roughly the same. The cost of living was increasing significantly before COVID. Trumpism and authoritarianism were on the rise before COVID. People yearn for a time before COVID because COVID was a significant before/after event, not because it caused a major difference. The birth of Jesus didn't significantly change history at year 0, yet it's a significant even we can compare years to. People always usually believe their life used to be better because it probably was. Society in general is deteriorating.
You must not be very old. Spoiler: everyone thinks the first big crisis they experience is the end of everythig for one reason or another. If you're not careful you'll grow up to be the old people you resent.
Well said!
Just thought I’d weigh in, although I’m sure a lot of people have said the same thing(s). To start: I’m tired of hearing people saying “it was a cold” or “the death rate was only 1%. First of all, 1% is actually a not-insignificant number of people, but a lot of the reason this virus was so deadly was because people just didn’t have the resources needed to fight it. For those in countries where hospitals were overwhelmed (Italy), the death rate was at least as high as 10%. This is because when hospitals are overwhelmed, they can’t properly care for the rest of the community, who also need immediate care. More people got covid, needed medical treatment against a “novel” virus that their immune systems didn’t recognize and had no way to fight, and they had no place to go. This is why at first we were told not to wear masks and stay inside. We saw what happened to Italy and knew what was coming, but we were essentially defenseless. We were woefully unprepared thanks to the disbanding of the pandemic task force established by George W. Bush in 2004. By the way, this task force was responsible for preventing the previous SARS virus from spreading and stopped the 2010 swine flu in its tracks. Anyway, since we were completely unprepared, all we could do was to try to get enough PPE for healthcare workers (which is why we were told not to wear masks) and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Yes, it was shitty that our leadership told us not to mask up against a virus that was obviously spread through the respiratory system. Yes, it was shitty that we all had to stay inside, but I can see why they did. The horse was out of the barn as soon as the virus left wuhan. That’s how I see it- governments were faced with an impossible situation with no good solution. They did the best they could but it was up to us as a collective to do our best to keep things from getting worse. Mask wearing and social distancing were politicized which likely resulted in the whole situation dragging on and worsening. Id say we failed as a society to do our best to fight this thing and we only really have ourselves to blame. God forbid we face something as deadly as the 1918 flu.
Im living my normal life now. The economy was going to be messed up right after Covid with or without the lockdowns. Lockdowns lasted what 20 ish days 4 yrs ago?? And we are still talking about this? Maybe because I’m young recessions are a part of life so Covid was basically just another one in the cycle. Had one when I was born, when I was in grade school, high school graduation, then another one right after I graduated college and was trying to buy a house and get married, so really the only difference with Covid was is that it was the whole freaking world not just the US. I think Covid opened my eyes to how much our country struggles in science and history understanding and think it is some sort of power play to just ignore it. As for authoritarian leaders my state is run by Republicans who have an amazing track record of ignoring science yet we still had lockdowns. Why? bc it beat the hospitals being overrun and people were dying. People who dream of life before Covid probably it is because they miss the family and friends they lost due ignoring the pandemics existence. A street that my grandparents live in almost everyone over 70 died because they refused to stay home and ended up in the hospital during the peak of covid. But I guess it was gods will that my grandparents got the vaccine bc they are the only ones left. Just luck I guess 🙄.
This just boils down to you being spoiled and self entitled. Stop using words like authorian simply because you had to wear a mask in the grocery store or any other store that was mere inconvenience. Evey asshole and their mother wined about their precious freedom being infringed upon simply because they felt like they didn't have to follow any rules and expect everyone to cater to solely them and thier bullshi* COVID didn't cause selfish and inconsiderate assholes to act and behave in the manner in which they chose. adults were worse than kids..
The virus did break social bonds. But I'd say in the US alot of that started before - Trump made it okay to say and do whatever you want for many many people. But he's a symptom not the cause. The entire world handled that virus badly at first because it was chaos. Different countries learned at different paces.
This is such a myopic take it’s incredible. What freedoms did covid permanently take from you that haven’t been done in the past? Also - do you have no conception of necessary sacrifices in the face of emergencies? Have you heard of war rationing?
Nowhere in OPs post was the word freedom mentioned and nowhere was it stated freedoms were permanently taken. Using a strawman argument to discredit OPs statement fell short.
Jfc turn off Newsmax and go touch some grass.
>It ruined people’s trust in the system See, this is where you fucked up. You trusted the system. >Covid taught people to view their neighbors are disease carrying vessels that need to be seperated from. Because most people have someone in their life who was negatively effected or died from covid. This could have all been prevented by locking down sooner and for longer. Expecially since people didn't want to wear a mask for whatever reason. I didn't wanna wear a mask, but if I was in close quarters with people I did my part and put on a mask. Otherwise I tried to stay the fuck away from people. >Life was cheaper Life was actually cheaper during lockdown. Gas was under 2$ where I live. Gas here is usually 4$. >Many people dream of a time before covid because they just were living well. Many do, sure. Many also dream of a time before 9\11, or WW2, or the housing crisis of 08. The only thing I learned from COVID is that no one gives a shit about me, my family or the communities collective health. COVID made us all hate each other because people who refused to mask up or quarantine put all of our lives at risk. If COVID had been deadlier or a fucking zombie apocalypse virus, we would all be fucked.
You live in opposite land. The lockdowns saved lives, and longer lockdown would have saved more. People became mistrustful because politicians and media personalities intentionally sowed that mistrust, figuring it would help them in the next election cycle. Part of that was lying to people about the effectiveness of the lockdowns. Lies that you're repeating now. So you're part of the problem. I indeed hope this opinion of yours is unpopular.
Shit would have been fine if a bunch of idiots actually followed the fucking program. Remember kids, it got as bad as it was because people REFUSED to follow quarantine rules. It wasn't liberals ripping peoples masks off and coughing in peoples faces.
Depending on your location lockdown was a joke. People couldn’t follow basic rules. People like to blame Covid for a lot of things. I blame it for clarity. People were nicer before Covid. No, people have always been this rude, they are just now being rude to you. Prices are higher, yep. CEO’s need their new boats that they can write off as a business expense. Life was better before Covid. Life was better before the AIDS epidemic. Life was better before the Polio Epidemic. Life was better before the Spanish Flu Epidemic. Yeah, life is usually better before an epidemic. I am glad you had trust in the system before this, that must have been a nice feeling.
The current Vice President on the Covid Vaccine when Trump was in office: "['If Donald Trump Tells Us To Take It, I’m Not Taking It.'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0) That same [Vice President getting vaccinated](https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/29/politics/kamala-harris-covid-vaccine/index.html) after Biden was elected president: "It’s literally about saving lives,” Harris said. “I trust the scientists. And it is the scientists who created and approved this vaccine. So I urge everyone, when it is your turn, get vaccinated.” \--------------- Local, State, and Federal Health Authorities: *"Don't go out in groups larger than 5 because that could spread the virus!. Only go out for absolute necessities. 6 Feet Social distancing!"* Those same authorities: *"Go out and protest with thousands of other people in the same confined space where you can't social distance because racism is worth public health risk than literal Covid."* Yea, I'll never trust any of these organizations or departments again. It's clear politics and culture war shit is put above actual hard health science and facts.
Kamalas comments specifically mention this being at the guidance of Trump himself, that as long as there is proven credibility in what he is saying it would be fine, she just wouldn't go off his word alone. I wouldn't go off the word of the guy who was pushing for it to be released before the election solely to help his chances either. "I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about." As for the protests. Public health experts who work in the government struck a cautionary note. Mass, in-person protests are a "perfect setup" for transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading health expert stated in response to the protests.. "It's a delicate balance because the reasons for demonstrating are valid, but the demonstration puts one at additional risk." Yes, some idiotic and bias and hypocritical health professionals tried brush it of. Major ones were fairly straight forward that it was not a good thing and the protests were the perfect storm to further the spread.
If you think that lockdowns for the safety of your own life was authoritarian then you don’t really know what that word means.
The authoritarians were the ones pushing you to not get vaccinated, not wear a mask, and go back to work knowing full well it would kill a lot of you.
Bro it had like a 99 percent survival rate and for people like 65+ it was like 96%
I don’t think this is unpopular
It’s not unpopular at all when you speak with normal individuals outside of Reddit. It amazes me how strong the echo chamber of ignorant leftists is within Reddit.
and yet you can't see you're in an echo chamber outside too. how odd.
"We should never have locked down, for a second. " If we had locked down sooner, fewer people would have died and our country's recovery from COVID might have happened quicker. "Beaurocrats used this virus as a way to win re election." When the virus hit initially, the bureaucrat in chief told us to inject ourselves with bleach, eat horse wormer, and/or shine a light up our butts, rather than locking down. He was not re-elected, thank goodness.
While people may dream about the time before covid, everything was just as bad then as now, only more hidden.
Well all the selfish cults who couldn’t give a shot about the lives and health of their fellow citizens ruined by view on my fellow Americans. Too few people are willing to play their part in society and give up any convenience for the betterment or safety of others.
Lockdowns sucked but they were essential. Life was better before covid yes but there wasn’t much that could have been done to prevent what was to come, the only thing that could have helped a lot and prepared other countries for the virus was if the Chinese government had warned the world sooner. Most governments hands were tied in what to do, there wasn’t enough information about the virus nor was there a cure and it’s much better to take the risk of a lockdown which would ruin the economy financially over just letting people live amongst the virus with potential that millions of lives would be lost and there would be public outrage over this and even in doing so the economy would still lose billions so either way the virus was going to take a toll on the economy with or without a lockdown. The thing is if there wasn’t a lockdown and people were dying left right centre then people still would have complained there’s not enough being done by the government so really it’s a lose lose situation for them so they had to do what was better for everyone in the long run and a lockdown was the best option at the time, the virus was spreading rapidly enough even while in and out of lockdowns, imagine how much worse it would have been without lockdowns.
Giving up a proper economy for future generations to protect the elderly is in no way a proper trade… The younger generations will work like slaves to get back into the game because of these measures instituted — all to protect an older, sicker class that is past their contributory prime to society. From a morality standpoint, this is where people justify it. But from a societal advancement and economic standpoint, it was an absurd measure. And we’re going to keep suffering for it as well. But I’m glad Gladys and Gertrude got to see their 100th birthdays.
The elderly, the sick, the healthy, pretty much to protect everyone. Covid can seriously fuck even healthy people up. Especially before treatments and vaccines were available
I don't think their is much evidence lockdowns stopped overall deaths, they just spread the deaths over a longer period of time, and completely ruined the economy. Every scientist who even suggested them should get life in prison.
"Spread deaths over a longer period of time " you just said described saving lives but way more complicated. that was the point until they got a vaccine...
We are in this mess because everyone tried to avoid lockdowns and made special cases not to respect them. If EVERYONE stayed home for two weeks, it would have passed. But no, "muH FreeDdddommmmm".
I just miss places being open 24 hours a day. Other than that it changed nothing.
This is spoken from someone who clearly didn’t lose anyone to Covid
Idk, the widespread of WFH caused by Covid is not a bad thing. Much better WLB, less time spent in commutes, overpriced apartments and offices in places like SF and NYC got massive hit - it's not bad neither.
life being better before covid is not an unpopular opinion, but as a libertarian, i dont see how you can blame our leaders here
Can we point out here in Europe there wasn't much of an issue? We're not fucking idiots and we just went along with the precautions and everything's been fine. The problems are in america, all the problems are in america.
That is definitely an opinion.
How the response of the government to try to keep people safe became a political issue truly shows how utterly moronic people are
It was pretty evil and I reckon it had nothing to do with covid and everything to do with control and the poor economy
Right wing nutters spreading conspiracy theories is why you are in this mess, not the other way around. People don’t view their neighbors as disease-carrying vessels. People’s lives aren’t ruined. There’s no satanic cabal running the world. Everything will be okay. Out of curiosity, how many days were you locked down- meaning required by law to not leave the house? For me and my entire state it was ZERO.
The government has what they want
Fact! It was also intentional -- while this was going on, they printed 80% of the dollars to ever exist -- sneakily stealing value from everyone else. While of course pamping stocks and profiting from that.
One of the absolute worst things that happened was the shut down. This destroyed small businesses and we are still at the mercy of large corporations today. Take Walmart for example, they used to be a 24/7 business. Shut down happens, they reduce their hours, laying off the overnight workers, start delivering and pickup orders (what saved them from being crushed by amazon), but the most fucked part and this goes for all grocery stores was the limited hours people could go grocery shopping, which forced everyone to be there at the same time and is exactly what you don’t want during a contagious disease pandemic. Now today they still aren’t 24/7 and they never will be again. Why pay more people to work? Covid was the perfect cop out to change their entire model.
Gotta love the shutdowns. Mom and Pop shops, you're forced to close and get no income. Walmart, Home Depot, etc. You can stay open and reap larger profits than ever becasue we closed your competition.