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Notes -
How time flies, a few general thoughts:
I lean to the left of most of the users here posting on this issue, but I was and am willing to be persuaded. The first round of lockdown measures I was more forgiving, since the scientific and political information that leaders were dealing with was more or less novel. As things moved towards the next year I was less forgiving since we had a good model of what worked and what didn't. I don't know if anyone would find this relevant or care as I'm unlikely to post non-redacted proof but in the first few weeks of the pandemic period in the west:
Most of the leaders in charge during this time promptly lost their next election. I don't understand the grumpiness of comments here talking about a lack of public accountability. If the next solution up is jailing BoJo or Justin Trudeau or whomever then I would point to the actual notion of qualified immunity - passing bad policy isn't a jailable offense. Even Mr Trudeau's attacks against the trucker convoy in Ottawa were found to be wildly unconstitutional, his just desserts for that are resigning and having many of his policy choices reversed by the following administration.
People underrate by a lot how much of the decline of society in the first months was caused by a genuine fear of people who don't want to get sick. The biggest economic and social downtown first predated any government mandate - I feel this has largely been memoryholed. I've had discussions with users on this forum who think that the vast majority of travel reduction in the USA was due to law and not fear.
Even as such, I'm surprised how vitriolic and grumpy users here sound. I suspect this has more to do with the vibes you felt during the pandemic and not the specific levels of of government policy failure or misalignment. Admittedly I had tonsillitis for most of that february and march so the differences were not immediately noticeable to me, being bedridden. Afterwards I continued to do the same activities I did before, except now there were sometimes more people to do them with since their things had been cancelled. A few restaurant closures annoyed me greatly. Forced masking annoyed me the most if I force myself to remember the era, but I don't think about it at all normally, as if it had never happened.
There are a number of upsides that people are ignoring. Kick starting the WFH era has undoubtedly led to large quality of life increases for the people who use it, and cost savings for firms. Being able to get out of any obligation short to medium term, cancel any flight, and refund any ticket just by saying "I tested positive" was immensely useful.
I am surprised more people here don't complain about outcomes vis-a-vis the massive stimmy that permanently affected the shape of the economy. It makes it much harder to get a grasp (especially for laypeople) of inflation over the last few years. That is what is purely caused by extra money and what is caused by disrupted infrastructure and supply lines.
Kids were trending down before and after the lockdown at similar rates. Blame social media or their parents or iPads. I'm willing to be convinced that lockdowns had a (even larger than I am giving credit for - which is still large) negative effect on them, but if in 15 years we're blaming every bad thing about people born 1998 to 2016 on the 2020-2021 time period I'm going to be skeptical.
Consider how much of the bad stuff in your personal life you blame on the pandemic and how much of that is actually rational. I have all of the friends I had before it, had to go to a few delayed weddings a year late, did not have any major work or life changes, I flew on airplanes the same amount I have before an after (Although I had to cancel some). Negativity I perceive during this period is the same way I watch the news, it is very annoying and interesting conceptually but it's not like its my house getting bombed.
Fear doesn't come out of nowhere; social restrictions can increase or decrease it. I would expect that if there weren't any restrictions and it didn't cause people to die in the streets, the fear level would go down pretty fast.
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I’m not against people making their own choices. To be clear, I think the best model in the entire affair was Sweden who didn’t enforce laws forcing people indoors and forcing businesses to close. Such things are possible— give people proper information and the tools they need and they will find their own balance. If you live with someone at risk, the strongest measures make sense. If you’re a 21 year old co-Ed living in a college dorm, you can do anything you want without too much worry. And you can easily set yourself up to prioritize one thing (like your business) or another (your personal safety). We do this all the time, in pretty much every other context.
But the idea of the state enforcing the choice, the state deciding what I can do with my time, where I may shop, work and play is not freedom and in fact pretty tyrannical. Free people do not need permission from the state to move about, to work, play, socialize, or shop. The state, in a free society must get permission from the people to place restrictions on the people. The state doesn’t get to just decide by fiat that something is so dangerous that they get to decide what the people get to do until the state decides the danger is past.
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A lot of my grumpiness comes from my experiences with the people around me, less so public figures. People who didn't know the difference between a bacteria and a virus or how the immune system works tried Educating me on The Science. They flipped from shaming anyone who tried socializing outdoors with precautions to shaming anyone who didn't go outside to protest against cops existing. Lockdown policies stuck around way past the "official" end of the pandemic, and I still see maskies out in public to this day. People would weaponize making a stink about masks and social distancing mid-conversation, like when the topic of how much money they owed me came up. They'd use selective anxiety to torture their partners or to get their way. It broke my faith in people as people.
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