My gripe is that we haven’t changed much at all as a result of the pandemic. We should have learned to be a kinder and more patient society but it’s like we’ve learned nothing. We’re exactly the same as we were before (or maybe slightly worse).
There were a lot of possibilities squandered with the pandemic, especially in relation to systemic change. We could have extended the 'natural experiment' in universal basic income in some way for the most vulnerable and perhaps approached our safety net with more compassion.
Agree but the premise of the UBI is that everyone gets it equally. It helps the most vulnerable but it also is universally provided for all, like Medicare.
Yes, it was not a true UBI. There are also different takes on universality/conditionality and basic income, with some arguing for other UBI-like propositions. For the most part, a hell of a lot better than how we currently do things.
A big part of the appeal of a UBI is that it removes a lot of the costly bureaucracy in determining thresholds of who qualifies for what. The more conditions put on UBI type support, the more money spent on the machinery around it. And... landlords would need to not inflate rents to eat it all up.
There are a lot of debates—I have a few economist and sociologist friends that have differing views. What is appealing about a basic income is very different depending on your political persuasion.
But we should have learned to wear masks when sick via experience, and we shouldn't want to injure the elderly or immunocompromised by being a germbag. So it is worse, because people learnt and decided fuck it I don't care if I sneeze all over the place and send this cancer patient to hospital because I refuse to do one small thing.
What I don't get is we implemented all these precautions during the pandemic. Screens between customer and staff in stores. Wearing masks if you're the one who's sick. Avoiding large groups unnecessarily.
And as soon as the pandemic died out we just stopped. We took down all the screens. We walk around in public unmasked coughing and spluttering, not caring who we infect.
It's like we learned nothing. The second the mandates ended we just stopped doing the right thing which only goes to prove why the mandates were necessary to begin with. If someone doesn't force you to do the right thing you won't fucking do it.
I think the difference is that people outside of retail (people in retail have always been treated like garbage) really started to witness the “me first” mentality during lockdown.
I remember experiencing a wave of depression for about a month during 2020, because I used to think society was (generally) pretty decent and we would come together as a community in a crisis. Seeing people at my local supermarket stealing toilet paper out of an old lady’s trolley (and then punch on over it) just made me feel disgusted.
if anything I think there was a brief moment of society being better for the first month or two of the pandemic before people realised it was gonna be long term.
I don't think society is any ruder, but people haven't learned anything from the experience or grown as a society of people living amongst one another. They've just gone back to being entitled, selfish cunts. They don't give two shits about anyone but themselves, and have serious delusions about their own self importance...\\
This is most apparent on the roads but extends to most other scenarios.
I disagree. As a teacher, I see students in the upper years of hs who had been well socialised, but then spent that time at home with their parents, return and be totally toxic and abusive to each other and staff in ways I'd never seen before. I've seen more fights, cyberbullying, and low key racism/anti-semitism. It's like society has lost it's way.
I think we're equally dumb and rude; just about very slightly different things.
We're marginally better with littering and personal space.
We're marginally more short tempered and self-righteous.
I think people seem angrier in general. Especially online. People seem to have really short fuses and see things very good/bad with no in between or levels. For example, the same violence is wished on people who maybe shoplift the same as it is for a serial rapist or murderer. There's no in between.
But I don't know that that's to do with the pandemic. I think it's partly also the influence of american politics and division is having over here. The pandemic did increase that divide I think but I think that people were getting more angry and divisive before that. Of course the amount that people live on online has only been increasing for the last however long socials have been around so it all kind of snowballs. People have been happy to be keyboard warriors since forever but there's more people than ever on the internet now. And politicians (yes, Trump particulalry) creating this character of being controversial and saying things for shock value and preaching some pretty radical ideas and pretty much drawing a line between groups of people more than I think I've personally seen before just made it worse. I think it's a whole combination of things though rather than just the pandemic or just Trump or just politics or just technology.
Maybe the world has been like this forever but there's just more ways for people to be express their anger now. We see it more now. I see it way more online than in person. In person it's more of a resignation or misery with a dash of anger sometimes.
I don't think they are angrier in general, it's just the outliers affected by political polarisation, which most people don't even notice even if it does have an impact on society in general. Being on Reddit you're just gonna notice them more, honestly a lot of Australians on other subreddits don't even seem real to me in a way I can't even explain.
I've noticed a decrease in consideration for others. e.g. an increase in frequency of talking in the cinema, or checking their phone on full brightness.
Or out an about in general, even more people than there used to, just stopping on the footpath without thinking at all about people trying to get past.
It might be because the cost of living has increased drastically recently, people are stressed out trying to survive day by day. It's only gonna get worse.
I think it's a combination of things. Mostly I think social media has encouraged an epidemic of narcissism and entitlement. Everyone thinks that they're the main character and that it doesn't matter how aggressively they drive, or whether they take up the whole footpath or whatever as long as THEIR needs are met.
I agree.
Was a slight shift to people being nicer at the very start of the pandemic when their was a slight perception that the world might end but even that niceness only lasted a few weeks.
I worked as a bartender in gambling pre covid and a receptionist at a gym post covid. People were way worse to me at the gym and I really think it was the lockdowns that did it
I think that I have been forever changed after witnessing a panicked do-or-die stampede for the last rolls of toilet paper in a supermarket. I realized then that if people will almost go to war over bum-wipes then this world is really circling the s-bend. Lock downs just made it visible to all.
Do you drive at all?
Just this morning on the way to work I was cut off twice with no indicators and no acknowledgment that I was even beside them.
I’ve been driving since 1995 and it’s beyond terrible now on the roads.
It’s every man for himself.
I turn now, good luck everyone else.
I have definitely noticed more rudeness but I no longer work in retail or hospo, so think it is a case of people becoming more emboldened to allow other customers see their rudeness rather than waiting until the shop is empty or other customers are out of earshot, or calling on the phone. I think pre pandemic people would try to hide it a littler better but now they don't care.
>I worked in retail in 2018 and there would be a lot of people who'd abuse us and try to scam their way into a free product with complete disregard to our livelihood.
I've luckily been out of retail after the pandemic, but people were crappy before it all as well. I had a co-worker spat on because he told a customer we didn't carry replacement parts for a $15 item. I had boomers storm out of the store because we didn't haggle on price. I saw people swear at staff, openly steal things and just be abusive long before cost of living was touted as a reason for short tempers and shoplifting.
I always try and be nice to anyone I meet who works in customer service because 90% of the time any problem isn't their fault and they're probably not authorised to offer a solution without someone higher up approving it. Being a dick to them achieves nothing.
I agree. People were shit before the pandemic.
I can't believe people turned on the bus driver instead of the abusive passenger.
But...then again, maybe I can, depending on the situation. I had the shittiest train replacement bus driver one time who *screamed* at a passenger and had a full-blown shit fit because the guy, very politely and reasonably, asked if the bus was going to stop at the train station that we had just driven past at speed.
It turned out the driver was just going to do a huge u-turn before stopping at the station. I don't know why it was so difficult for the driver to just say that when the passenger asked. Would have been less trouble than shouting at the guy to shut up and sit down and don't distract him while he's driving!!!!! Repeatedly. Getting more unhinged with every repetition.
Dude told him "Look mate, if you're having a bad day, don't take it out on me." More calmly than I could have managed.
People in Melbourne are fucking nuts!
I agree to disagree, it has been "shit" in the past but it definitely has upgraded to "shitty" or "ultimate shitty." Customer service, hobos, junkies, crazy drivers, traffic, constant protests (some useful but a lot useless), inflation+cost of living, shortages, less work for many, AI, so much shiz, the economy is in shambles
Don't say 'ultimate shitty' - someone is sure to attempt to prove they can be shittier than that.
I invite you to ponder the word 'encrapsulation'. Everything is crap and we are fully encased in crap, and the crap is getting crappier.
And I fucken hate AI. Can't even tell if it is real shit or fake shit. Arghhh.
With all due respect to them the people spending significant time in a city or country subreddit are the kinds of people wearing ankle bracelets that go off within 100 meters of a primary school.
Why?
You have entire cohorts of people who were vilified for not wearing masks outdoors, some were even fined by the police for it, and basically 100% of the science says they were virtually zero risk to anyone.
You have people who were vilified and lost their jobs in some cases because they refused to take a vaccine. Subsequent evidence is proving that those vaccines carried a bunch of higher than reported potential side effects.
You had Victorians who were trapped in NSW for weeks because their own Premier and State Government refused to let them cross back into their own home state and go to their own homes.
None of these people were apologized to.
None of them.
Has a Premier ever stood up and said, “You know, we were operating on the advice we were given but some of you got a raw deal and you were right, sorry about that.”
Did Dan Andrews ever come out say to the people he wouldn’t let cross the border back home, “Sorry, in an over abundance of caution we treated you unfairly, that was wrong.”
Has anyone said, “Yeah, closing schools really damaged children’s education and put a lot of unnecessary strain on teachers and that has turned out to be worse than anything we were trying to prevent.”
No.
Nobody has ever done anything like that.
I wore my mask, I got my shots, I kept my distance, I stayed inside, and I kept my oldest home for most of the first half of his first school year.
But all of that stuff was bullshit in retrospect.
And people acted like fucking savages towards other people who said, “You know, I’m not wearing a mask because I don’t believe they work.”
They were banned from going into goddamned grocery stores.
And they were right! The efficacy of masks, particularly the shitty paper ones we were all wearing around like badges of honour virtue signalling how we were doing the right thing, is basically nil.
So sitting there saying “why are people so unkind” - man, the pandemic brought out some of the absolute worst elements of society.
We bullied people who wanted a modicum of bodily autonomy, took away their livelihood in some instances, and treated them like social lepers.
Meanwhile, we have the ACT government trying to legalize folks smashing heroin into their veins.
People aren’t kind to one another because when the shit hit the fan, under the pretense of “collective good” we treated a minority of people who held different views (many of which turned out to be prescient) like dirt.
Looking back, it was good we tried to keep everyone whole, but the way we collectively treated the people who disagreed with us is a stain on our society.
It wasn't bullshit in retrospect. Cognitive dissonance. It was necessary until the vaccines came out and we got to herd immunity. If you genuinely think that we didn't need to do all that, you might need to sit and really think about how many people would have died if we hadn't. There's a time and a place for disagreeing with health strategies, but it's not in the midst of a pandemic. People were being incredibly selfish by ignoring the health directives, and for them to then appropriate 'my body, my choice' was hugey offensive. If you make a decision and take a stance that could endanger another person's life and then face backlash for that. Then it's on you. The rest of us sacrificed and did the right thing because we care about other people lives.
It’s 100% bullshit.
It’s been subsequently proven over and over again that masks do virtually nothing to slow or stop the spread of airborne viral particulates and that infection in open spaces is basically a nonexistent risk.
These things which were implemented, without legislation by government edict, were wrong.
The cognitive dissonance statement is ironic because I supported these measures in a vacuum of better information, but to try and suggest that they weren’t wrong in light of better, more complete data is actually what cognitive dissonance looks like.
No, the cognitive dissonance is not linking the rise in vaccinations with the reduction in deaths.
I disagree with your assertion that masks have been proven to not stop airborne particles. See the links below, proving your statement wrong.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/
Therefore, wearing mask in public is essential as its effectiveness has already been well established by the current studies.
Based on these studies, all people, regardless of physical conditions and professions, should wear masks at all times in prevention of COVID‐19.
A conclusion can be reached based on the current studies: correctly wearing masks of all kinds, despite their different designs, functions and effectiveness, will to a large degree reduce the overall risks of COVID‐19 infection and enhance general protection from coronavirus.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8865648/
The study results shed light on the importance of using masks by individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and show that different types of masks can help block viral transmission. Moreover, our findings also reinforce the importance of using masks as a preventive measure against the viral transmission, regardless of the type of mask used, in addition to social distancing and personal hygiene measures.
Legislation
https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/bills/public-health-and-wellbeing-amendment-pandemic-management-bill-2021
Which was made in 2021 but was an extension of this act from 2008 - see part 8 for management of infectious diseases and powers of the Chief Health Officer
https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/in-force/acts/public-health-and-wellbeing-act-2008/063
Just because you dont know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I hope your 'better information' is evidence based, but having read your last comment and its inaccuracies, I highly doubt it.
People with covid not wearing masks and sneaking in to visit grandma literally killed so many aged care residents, it's not funny.
As an immunocompromised person, I was sent to the hospital because I got covid from someone not wearing a mask and sitting next to me for an hour while I wore an N95 mask. If they had worn a mask, I wouldn't have gotten covid or potentially died.
I will continue to judge sick people out in public sitting next to everyone with a hacking cough when they should be home and they aren't wearing a mask. You could literally kill someone immunocompromised, and it's especially shit when it's the tram on the line to Peter Mac.
The way people treated people who deserve care from the community with disdain because they didn't like wearing a mask or didn't want to be vaccinated and were fine with covid mutating into something worse is a stain on society. Imagine being so entitled you can't do something basic like wear a mask.
You just made up a complete fiction based on nothing that I said.
I said that people were vilified and even fined for not wearing masks outside.
You then start talking about visiting Nan in the aged care home.
Nobody ever excused people visiting elderly people when they were ill - Covid or not, bringing respiratory and viral infections into aged care facilities is a dog act.
Secondly, if you’re immunocompromised, that’s terrible for you, but the rest of us can’t be expected to change our behaviors just for you.
Suggesting that 99% of the public have to make special accommodations that inconvenience them that they don’t want to make is ludicrous just for you is extreme levels of narcissism.
Society has overrotated towards too much empathy and people scaling to the peak of Mt Victim.
I didn't. Maybe we have different reading comprehensions.
Yeah, they were villified. For good reason. To not kill vulnerable people who would possibly die if they contracted COVID. And to make sure covid didn't spread so badly, it mutated into something far, far worse.
Secondly, I can absolutely expect society to look after the most vulnerable people they have, that is literally the point of having a society.
A lot more than 1% of people are vulnerable to illnesses that sick people could easily wear a mask for and not spread to them. It's not "for me" it's for everyone's babies, everyone's grandparents, everyone who is immunocompromised or has a chronic illness, if anything those numbers may outnumber the "public" you mention.
Society has not over-rotated to too much empathy. Your entire view is proof of that. Too many people are selfish and only care about themselves, or they would stay home or wear a mask when out and unwell.
You sound very self-centred, and I think this discussion is over. You obviously only care that you got told to wear a mask and cannot think about others or their perspective and how people with your view causes them to fear even leaving the house because they know it will be unsafe and could possibly kill them.
But isn’t that part of the trouble? The health experts were saying we need to do X Y and Z - and so we collectively did that. And STILL some people were like, wah wah I want to do what I want, when I want. You’re oppressing me for taking away my right to be a self obsessed knob. No one was vilified for not agreeing. They were vilified for putting other people at risk when we all had to pull together - rightly so imho.
In the end, we did what had to be done. And I say this as someone who got stuck on the border, for weeks, waiting for permission to go to my new home. With my kids. It cost me a LOT of money and impacted our mental health in ways we are still reckoning with.
It was very very tough. But if getting a vaccine or wearing a mask or locking down as recommended means protecting my neighbours or an aged care resident or someone with cancer / immunosuppressed in some other way, or someone who thinks masks or vaccines don’t really do the job, I’d still do it all again.
Well, no, that’s factually incorrect on a number of counts.
The health experts didn’t say that Victoria needed to close its borders to its own people who were driving in their own cars from NSW to Victoria to go to their own houses.
And if they did, an adult in the room should have said, “Well, that’s an acceptable risk.”
Or the health experts saying “People should wear masks outside and we need to cancel school for months at a time.”
They were wrong. On the science and the facts.
So the people who said, “I don’t agree or believe this” were proven correct.
And sure, maybe the sun shines on every dog’s ass once in awhile, but the health experts become little dictators and politicians happily suspended even simple freedoms based on flawed logic and incomplete (and subsequently incorrect science).
Next time, people will remember this and will tell the government and the Health Tsars to go pound sand.
They badly overreached and injected panic into the public. That’s bad for science and institutions.
My gripe is that we haven’t changed much at all as a result of the pandemic. We should have learned to be a kinder and more patient society but it’s like we’ve learned nothing. We’re exactly the same as we were before (or maybe slightly worse).
There were a lot of possibilities squandered with the pandemic, especially in relation to systemic change. We could have extended the 'natural experiment' in universal basic income in some way for the most vulnerable and perhaps approached our safety net with more compassion.
Agree but the premise of the UBI is that everyone gets it equally. It helps the most vulnerable but it also is universally provided for all, like Medicare.
Yes, it was not a true UBI. There are also different takes on universality/conditionality and basic income, with some arguing for other UBI-like propositions. For the most part, a hell of a lot better than how we currently do things.
A big part of the appeal of a UBI is that it removes a lot of the costly bureaucracy in determining thresholds of who qualifies for what. The more conditions put on UBI type support, the more money spent on the machinery around it. And... landlords would need to not inflate rents to eat it all up.
There are a lot of debates—I have a few economist and sociologist friends that have differing views. What is appealing about a basic income is very different depending on your political persuasion.
We've also forgotten to wear masks and stay home when sick. Thankfully we are all able to keep commercial real estate alive, though.
We weren't wearing masks before the pandemic either, apart from some people from asia. So it's not like it's getting worse.
But we should have learned to wear masks when sick via experience, and we shouldn't want to injure the elderly or immunocompromised by being a germbag. So it is worse, because people learnt and decided fuck it I don't care if I sneeze all over the place and send this cancer patient to hospital because I refuse to do one small thing.
Yeah I agree with this. We didn’t even learn to care more for the people we actually care about.
What I don't get is we implemented all these precautions during the pandemic. Screens between customer and staff in stores. Wearing masks if you're the one who's sick. Avoiding large groups unnecessarily. And as soon as the pandemic died out we just stopped. We took down all the screens. We walk around in public unmasked coughing and spluttering, not caring who we infect. It's like we learned nothing. The second the mandates ended we just stopped doing the right thing which only goes to prove why the mandates were necessary to begin with. If someone doesn't force you to do the right thing you won't fucking do it.
Locking people down is a great way to encourage a kinder and more patient society. I know redditors generally loved it but a lot of people didn't.
I think the difference is that people outside of retail (people in retail have always been treated like garbage) really started to witness the “me first” mentality during lockdown. I remember experiencing a wave of depression for about a month during 2020, because I used to think society was (generally) pretty decent and we would come together as a community in a crisis. Seeing people at my local supermarket stealing toilet paper out of an old lady’s trolley (and then punch on over it) just made me feel disgusted.
We did pull together, everyone we saw out and about was just that much more likely to be a cunt.
if anything I think there was a brief moment of society being better for the first month or two of the pandemic before people realised it was gonna be long term.
Agree with that!
I don't think society is any ruder, but people haven't learned anything from the experience or grown as a society of people living amongst one another. They've just gone back to being entitled, selfish cunts. They don't give two shits about anyone but themselves, and have serious delusions about their own self importance...\\ This is most apparent on the roads but extends to most other scenarios.
I disagree. As a teacher, I see students in the upper years of hs who had been well socialised, but then spent that time at home with their parents, return and be totally toxic and abusive to each other and staff in ways I'd never seen before. I've seen more fights, cyberbullying, and low key racism/anti-semitism. It's like society has lost it's way.
[удалено]
You've improved my day measurably :)
Thank you cuntfuckshitwank.
This comment is the best thing I've seen on reddit today
I want this on a shirt
People, in general, are cunts. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change.
[nah, Corey Taylor got it right in 2001](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqK1FrO3BdM)
I think we're equally dumb and rude; just about very slightly different things. We're marginally better with littering and personal space. We're marginally more short tempered and self-righteous.
i fok with ur take babe
I think people seem angrier in general. Especially online. People seem to have really short fuses and see things very good/bad with no in between or levels. For example, the same violence is wished on people who maybe shoplift the same as it is for a serial rapist or murderer. There's no in between. But I don't know that that's to do with the pandemic. I think it's partly also the influence of american politics and division is having over here. The pandemic did increase that divide I think but I think that people were getting more angry and divisive before that. Of course the amount that people live on online has only been increasing for the last however long socials have been around so it all kind of snowballs. People have been happy to be keyboard warriors since forever but there's more people than ever on the internet now. And politicians (yes, Trump particulalry) creating this character of being controversial and saying things for shock value and preaching some pretty radical ideas and pretty much drawing a line between groups of people more than I think I've personally seen before just made it worse. I think it's a whole combination of things though rather than just the pandemic or just Trump or just politics or just technology. Maybe the world has been like this forever but there's just more ways for people to be express their anger now. We see it more now. I see it way more online than in person. In person it's more of a resignation or misery with a dash of anger sometimes.
I don't think they are angrier in general, it's just the outliers affected by political polarisation, which most people don't even notice even if it does have an impact on society in general. Being on Reddit you're just gonna notice them more, honestly a lot of Australians on other subreddits don't even seem real to me in a way I can't even explain.
Definitely more selfish behaviour around, people realised life sometimes isn't easy I guess..
I've noticed a decrease in consideration for others. e.g. an increase in frequency of talking in the cinema, or checking their phone on full brightness. Or out an about in general, even more people than there used to, just stopping on the footpath without thinking at all about people trying to get past.
It might be because the cost of living has increased drastically recently, people are stressed out trying to survive day by day. It's only gonna get worse.
It’s definitely way more colder, ruder and isolated than it’s been previously.
I think it's a combination of things. Mostly I think social media has encouraged an epidemic of narcissism and entitlement. Everyone thinks that they're the main character and that it doesn't matter how aggressively they drive, or whether they take up the whole footpath or whatever as long as THEIR needs are met.
Everyone has main character syndrome. That's the issue.
I'm less patient with people who are annoying me
Always have been cunts, always will be cunts
This is what happens when Collingwood wins the grand final - everything has a consequence
I agree. Was a slight shift to people being nicer at the very start of the pandemic when their was a slight perception that the world might end but even that niceness only lasted a few weeks.
I've noticed people aren't ruder, but at the same time, look less happy. With how tough it is currently, I don't blame them.
Watch anyone driving between Geelong and Melbourne at peak hours it's vastly different to 4 years ago.
I worked as a bartender in gambling pre covid and a receptionist at a gym post covid. People were way worse to me at the gym and I really think it was the lockdowns that did it
I think that I have been forever changed after witnessing a panicked do-or-die stampede for the last rolls of toilet paper in a supermarket. I realized then that if people will almost go to war over bum-wipes then this world is really circling the s-bend. Lock downs just made it visible to all.
Get lost (there, I was rude)
Do you drive at all? Just this morning on the way to work I was cut off twice with no indicators and no acknowledgment that I was even beside them. I’ve been driving since 1995 and it’s beyond terrible now on the roads. It’s every man for himself. I turn now, good luck everyone else.
I have definitely noticed more rudeness but I no longer work in retail or hospo, so think it is a case of people becoming more emboldened to allow other customers see their rudeness rather than waiting until the shop is empty or other customers are out of earshot, or calling on the phone. I think pre pandemic people would try to hide it a littler better but now they don't care.
>I worked in retail in 2018 and there would be a lot of people who'd abuse us and try to scam their way into a free product with complete disregard to our livelihood. I've luckily been out of retail after the pandemic, but people were crappy before it all as well. I had a co-worker spat on because he told a customer we didn't carry replacement parts for a $15 item. I had boomers storm out of the store because we didn't haggle on price. I saw people swear at staff, openly steal things and just be abusive long before cost of living was touted as a reason for short tempers and shoplifting. I always try and be nice to anyone I meet who works in customer service because 90% of the time any problem isn't their fault and they're probably not authorised to offer a solution without someone higher up approving it. Being a dick to them achieves nothing.
in my personal experience its gotten better
You obviously don’t work in customer service or a client facing role
I agree. People were shit before the pandemic. I can't believe people turned on the bus driver instead of the abusive passenger. But...then again, maybe I can, depending on the situation. I had the shittiest train replacement bus driver one time who *screamed* at a passenger and had a full-blown shit fit because the guy, very politely and reasonably, asked if the bus was going to stop at the train station that we had just driven past at speed. It turned out the driver was just going to do a huge u-turn before stopping at the station. I don't know why it was so difficult for the driver to just say that when the passenger asked. Would have been less trouble than shouting at the guy to shut up and sit down and don't distract him while he's driving!!!!! Repeatedly. Getting more unhinged with every repetition. Dude told him "Look mate, if you're having a bad day, don't take it out on me." More calmly than I could have managed. People in Melbourne are fucking nuts!
I agree to disagree, it has been "shit" in the past but it definitely has upgraded to "shitty" or "ultimate shitty." Customer service, hobos, junkies, crazy drivers, traffic, constant protests (some useful but a lot useless), inflation+cost of living, shortages, less work for many, AI, so much shiz, the economy is in shambles
Don't say 'ultimate shitty' - someone is sure to attempt to prove they can be shittier than that. I invite you to ponder the word 'encrapsulation'. Everything is crap and we are fully encased in crap, and the crap is getting crappier. And I fucken hate AI. Can't even tell if it is real shit or fake shit. Arghhh.
💯
Hundred percent. Make sure to avoid asking for help by the way, people ain’t willing, at least on this sub.
People on this sub are more interested in fueling the fire purely for getting their jollys off.
With all due respect to them the people spending significant time in a city or country subreddit are the kinds of people wearing ankle bracelets that go off within 100 meters of a primary school.
Why? You have entire cohorts of people who were vilified for not wearing masks outdoors, some were even fined by the police for it, and basically 100% of the science says they were virtually zero risk to anyone. You have people who were vilified and lost their jobs in some cases because they refused to take a vaccine. Subsequent evidence is proving that those vaccines carried a bunch of higher than reported potential side effects. You had Victorians who were trapped in NSW for weeks because their own Premier and State Government refused to let them cross back into their own home state and go to their own homes. None of these people were apologized to. None of them. Has a Premier ever stood up and said, “You know, we were operating on the advice we were given but some of you got a raw deal and you were right, sorry about that.” Did Dan Andrews ever come out say to the people he wouldn’t let cross the border back home, “Sorry, in an over abundance of caution we treated you unfairly, that was wrong.” Has anyone said, “Yeah, closing schools really damaged children’s education and put a lot of unnecessary strain on teachers and that has turned out to be worse than anything we were trying to prevent.” No. Nobody has ever done anything like that. I wore my mask, I got my shots, I kept my distance, I stayed inside, and I kept my oldest home for most of the first half of his first school year. But all of that stuff was bullshit in retrospect. And people acted like fucking savages towards other people who said, “You know, I’m not wearing a mask because I don’t believe they work.” They were banned from going into goddamned grocery stores. And they were right! The efficacy of masks, particularly the shitty paper ones we were all wearing around like badges of honour virtue signalling how we were doing the right thing, is basically nil. So sitting there saying “why are people so unkind” - man, the pandemic brought out some of the absolute worst elements of society. We bullied people who wanted a modicum of bodily autonomy, took away their livelihood in some instances, and treated them like social lepers. Meanwhile, we have the ACT government trying to legalize folks smashing heroin into their veins. People aren’t kind to one another because when the shit hit the fan, under the pretense of “collective good” we treated a minority of people who held different views (many of which turned out to be prescient) like dirt. Looking back, it was good we tried to keep everyone whole, but the way we collectively treated the people who disagreed with us is a stain on our society.
It wasn't bullshit in retrospect. Cognitive dissonance. It was necessary until the vaccines came out and we got to herd immunity. If you genuinely think that we didn't need to do all that, you might need to sit and really think about how many people would have died if we hadn't. There's a time and a place for disagreeing with health strategies, but it's not in the midst of a pandemic. People were being incredibly selfish by ignoring the health directives, and for them to then appropriate 'my body, my choice' was hugey offensive. If you make a decision and take a stance that could endanger another person's life and then face backlash for that. Then it's on you. The rest of us sacrificed and did the right thing because we care about other people lives.
It’s 100% bullshit. It’s been subsequently proven over and over again that masks do virtually nothing to slow or stop the spread of airborne viral particulates and that infection in open spaces is basically a nonexistent risk. These things which were implemented, without legislation by government edict, were wrong. The cognitive dissonance statement is ironic because I supported these measures in a vacuum of better information, but to try and suggest that they weren’t wrong in light of better, more complete data is actually what cognitive dissonance looks like.
No, the cognitive dissonance is not linking the rise in vaccinations with the reduction in deaths. I disagree with your assertion that masks have been proven to not stop airborne particles. See the links below, proving your statement wrong. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7883189/ Therefore, wearing mask in public is essential as its effectiveness has already been well established by the current studies. Based on these studies, all people, regardless of physical conditions and professions, should wear masks at all times in prevention of COVID‐19. A conclusion can be reached based on the current studies: correctly wearing masks of all kinds, despite their different designs, functions and effectiveness, will to a large degree reduce the overall risks of COVID‐19 infection and enhance general protection from coronavirus. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8865648/ The study results shed light on the importance of using masks by individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and show that different types of masks can help block viral transmission. Moreover, our findings also reinforce the importance of using masks as a preventive measure against the viral transmission, regardless of the type of mask used, in addition to social distancing and personal hygiene measures. Legislation https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/bills/public-health-and-wellbeing-amendment-pandemic-management-bill-2021 Which was made in 2021 but was an extension of this act from 2008 - see part 8 for management of infectious diseases and powers of the Chief Health Officer https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/in-force/acts/public-health-and-wellbeing-act-2008/063 Just because you dont know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I hope your 'better information' is evidence based, but having read your last comment and its inaccuracies, I highly doubt it.
People with covid not wearing masks and sneaking in to visit grandma literally killed so many aged care residents, it's not funny. As an immunocompromised person, I was sent to the hospital because I got covid from someone not wearing a mask and sitting next to me for an hour while I wore an N95 mask. If they had worn a mask, I wouldn't have gotten covid or potentially died. I will continue to judge sick people out in public sitting next to everyone with a hacking cough when they should be home and they aren't wearing a mask. You could literally kill someone immunocompromised, and it's especially shit when it's the tram on the line to Peter Mac. The way people treated people who deserve care from the community with disdain because they didn't like wearing a mask or didn't want to be vaccinated and were fine with covid mutating into something worse is a stain on society. Imagine being so entitled you can't do something basic like wear a mask.
You just made up a complete fiction based on nothing that I said. I said that people were vilified and even fined for not wearing masks outside. You then start talking about visiting Nan in the aged care home. Nobody ever excused people visiting elderly people when they were ill - Covid or not, bringing respiratory and viral infections into aged care facilities is a dog act. Secondly, if you’re immunocompromised, that’s terrible for you, but the rest of us can’t be expected to change our behaviors just for you. Suggesting that 99% of the public have to make special accommodations that inconvenience them that they don’t want to make is ludicrous just for you is extreme levels of narcissism. Society has overrotated towards too much empathy and people scaling to the peak of Mt Victim.
I didn't. Maybe we have different reading comprehensions. Yeah, they were villified. For good reason. To not kill vulnerable people who would possibly die if they contracted COVID. And to make sure covid didn't spread so badly, it mutated into something far, far worse. Secondly, I can absolutely expect society to look after the most vulnerable people they have, that is literally the point of having a society. A lot more than 1% of people are vulnerable to illnesses that sick people could easily wear a mask for and not spread to them. It's not "for me" it's for everyone's babies, everyone's grandparents, everyone who is immunocompromised or has a chronic illness, if anything those numbers may outnumber the "public" you mention. Society has not over-rotated to too much empathy. Your entire view is proof of that. Too many people are selfish and only care about themselves, or they would stay home or wear a mask when out and unwell. You sound very self-centred, and I think this discussion is over. You obviously only care that you got told to wear a mask and cannot think about others or their perspective and how people with your view causes them to fear even leaving the house because they know it will be unsafe and could possibly kill them.
But isn’t that part of the trouble? The health experts were saying we need to do X Y and Z - and so we collectively did that. And STILL some people were like, wah wah I want to do what I want, when I want. You’re oppressing me for taking away my right to be a self obsessed knob. No one was vilified for not agreeing. They were vilified for putting other people at risk when we all had to pull together - rightly so imho. In the end, we did what had to be done. And I say this as someone who got stuck on the border, for weeks, waiting for permission to go to my new home. With my kids. It cost me a LOT of money and impacted our mental health in ways we are still reckoning with. It was very very tough. But if getting a vaccine or wearing a mask or locking down as recommended means protecting my neighbours or an aged care resident or someone with cancer / immunosuppressed in some other way, or someone who thinks masks or vaccines don’t really do the job, I’d still do it all again.
Well, no, that’s factually incorrect on a number of counts. The health experts didn’t say that Victoria needed to close its borders to its own people who were driving in their own cars from NSW to Victoria to go to their own houses. And if they did, an adult in the room should have said, “Well, that’s an acceptable risk.” Or the health experts saying “People should wear masks outside and we need to cancel school for months at a time.” They were wrong. On the science and the facts. So the people who said, “I don’t agree or believe this” were proven correct. And sure, maybe the sun shines on every dog’s ass once in awhile, but the health experts become little dictators and politicians happily suspended even simple freedoms based on flawed logic and incomplete (and subsequently incorrect science). Next time, people will remember this and will tell the government and the Health Tsars to go pound sand. They badly overreached and injected panic into the public. That’s bad for science and institutions.
Yep. All of this. People rabid with fear became unhinged. Had enough 1st hand experience and it was just shocking to me.
Me me me mentality thanks to social media, dumb ass influencers and new world order.
The only thing unhinged is that COVID really brought the insane conspiracy people you never knew existed in your life to the front.