This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Also to, beat a dead horse, closing schools is not confining kids to their rooms. At least in the US. It's not enough that people in Australia were under house arrest, we must pretend that was the case everywhere.
That's... not what happened in Australia.
During those lockdowns I remained able to go for walks, buy groceries, and so on. I think our covid response was over-enthusiastic and proved to be stronger than was necessary, but foreigners have a completely distorted picture of what happened here.
Okay. I exaggerated. In reality, NSW and Victoria residents (over half the country) were only permitted to be within 5km of home (unless the Melbourne night curfews were in effect).
More options
Context Copy link
Jesus Christ, this is the bar? You know there are people serving actual prison sentences that have that same amount of freedoms, i.e. brief leaves on weekends and access to commissary?
I think Olive meant being able to go for walks at any time.
Late answer but in Paris, where I lived during most of the pandemic, there was a curfew at 6 pm, after which you were not allowed to leave your house without a valid reason (medical emergency, work, etc.) Your daytime movement was also heavily restricted to 1 hour at a time, and within 1km radius of your apartment. You had to fill out and sign a specific form clarifying your reason for being outdoors every single time you left your home.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-france-requires-form-leave-house-walk-shopping-2020-3
I assume it maybe wasn't quite as extreme in Australia, but in Paris we most certainly could not leave home to go for walks at any time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Australia is federal and used targetted lockdowns and external and internal border controls to (broadly successfully) maintain zero COVID in unaffected areas - my understanding is that @sarker's comments would be permissible exaggeration in the case of Melbourne but false as applied to almost anywhere else in Australia.
@OliveTapenade - where in Australia were you?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed. What most frustrates me about Covid talk on The Motte is the insistence that there were only ever two situations in the western countries: a full lockdown or the Swedish "let's do nothing"-approach. As if my country (you know, right next door to Sweden) with zero legally mandated "lockdowns" but a bunch of voluntary recommendations and public health response changes didn't exist.
I kept track of restrictions during the Covid era and the only government mandated ones were restrictions to large events, bars, restaurants and gyms. Everything else was voluntary (including bar / restaurant closures when the pandemic started) or just recommendations with no penalties. The officials outright recommended that "going out in the nature is a very good idea now".
I've looked into the swedish response back during Covid and as far as I can see, they did mostly the same: They made a lot of recommendations to minimize social contact, they just didn't force you. And this worked: If you look, for example, into mobility data such as usage of trains and subways, it went down just the same as other large cities across the west.
The big problem with mandated legal lockdowns such as the UK and germany, both of which I'm more directly familiar with due to having lived in both and having family & friends in both, was their pointless tyranny and nonsense rules. I have a friend who got a massive fine in the UK. His crime? He took a walk with his flatmates through a forest - which was further than his allowed distance. He lived in central London of course, so he was allowed to take walks there. I, too, got told to move along and go home again in the UK. I was sitting on a park bench in a mostly-empty park reading a book.
Germany I at least didn't experience any problems going outside - but I was deliberately living in the countryside with my parents & girlfriend. My mom constantly reminded us, every time we technically were breaking the law, such as driving too far from home or staying outside too long or whatever. The situation in the cities was, of course, very different. Plenty of friends barely left their rooms and actually got stopped and controlled by police when they did, getting questioned to make sure they had legitimate reason to be outside.
Not to mention the insanities on the day care and school system and their still-lingering effects. Frequent & long closures threw back parents and children months to years in their career and education, respectively. Worse, the new culture of 1) always taking sick leave no matter how weak a cold is and b) always having to stay home two extra days after the cold passed "to be safe" is still on the books in many places and makes everything unworkable insofar as people actually follow the rules.
Again, my mom is a day care worker herself and she is extremely pissed about her younger coworkers constantly taking sick leave, always for a full week. She is staying even when seriously sick, because otherwise it would mean all the parents who depend on them couldn't work. This is still going on. Our own daycare also still has these rules on the book, and a few of the workers do seem to take advantage, but at least not as many. Several of our friends with older kids tell similar stories of schools with constant "teacher shortfalls" which are entirely due to teachers constantly taking sick leave by sticking to the letter of the current rules.
More options
Context Copy link
Good for y'all. The US version was that public parks that had gates were chained shut, people were fined for going to the beach, etc. In the UK your neighbors would snitch on you for being outside.
In my state of Washington they banned fishing. Not congregating with others to go fishing, fishing in general. Casting a line off of your own dock was illegal for awhile.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, US and UK were retarded about it. That does not mean that the only options were "do nothing" or "be completely retarded" and we have examples of western nations that had generally sane responses that didn't involve locking everyone indoors or forcibly shutting down workplaces but also didn't literally tell people to go out to bars and restaurants (which Sweden did in 2020 spring) or keep elderly and other high risk groups during the highest case peaks without masks or any visiting restrictions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sweden did great if you look at excess deaths over a two year period. And no, it wasn’t because everyone stayed home.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link