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The lockdowns were actually pretty great for me, personally - I could relocate to a much cheaper place while getting paid the same, without any pushback from the corporate overlords, because WFH became the norm. But I think the fact that this thing happened in America without any serious pushback is a horrible thing, and everybody complicit in it has my full personal disgust and hate.
Most of the hate for lockdowns just smacks of "I don't care if additional millions of old and vulnerable people had died, the virus wasn't dangerous to me personally and forcing me to conform and sacrifice is a great crime". There was reason for lockdowns and they saved lives, yet people on this site tend to deny that. Although, yes, the details of their implementations were often idiotic.
That's some vile bullshit. NY governor - and others - directly caused deaths of thousands by their policies of forced admittance of sick individuals in the nursing homes with healthy ones. But if I want to go to a beach - alone - and swim in the sea, I am killing the elderly. Elites dined in large luxurious companies, maskless - but if I go to a store, I can not buy anything beyond pre-approved list, because I am killing the elderly. Politicians called to go to the Chinatown and hug random people there because this would show I'm not racist, politicians condone mass riots smack in the middle of pandemic because "fighting racism is more important for public health" - but if I meet two friends for a glass of beer, I am killing the elderly. Screw that. I would consider accepting the baloney about "sacrifice" if the people who demand sacrifices from me behaved like they think it is serious. When they proudly stood maskless in front on masked servants, this is not "sacrifice" - this is showing that they are the patricians and we are the plebeians. When they closed down businesses, but had them private open for them on the down low - this is not "sacrifice", this is oppression. When they destroyed thousands of small businesses while "disappearing" tens of billions of dollars of "covid fund" - this is not "sacrifice", this is fraud.
No they did not. You can worship this idol however you want, you can believe that dances with tambоurinеs, sacrifice of chickens and wearing special religious garments and performing elaborate rituals is the only thing that keeps the world from collapse. That's you religion, and I won't say anything about it, it's between you and whatever gods or other entities you worship. But when you try to force me into your religion, when you deny all empiric evidence and logic in service of your religious dogma, and when you lay all the atrocities that fellows of your religion committed - at my feet, I have nothing to say but "screw that". Your attempt at emotional blackmail failed.
People on this site deny that too: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00461-0/fulltext
In other words, mandates help lowering infection rate among low-risk populations, but did nothing for high risk populations. In more mundane words, all this destruction and fascism was so we could have the cough a couple of months later than otherwise, with no change in outcome.
Oh, sorry, I forgot - true socialism has been never tried. Maybe next time.
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millions of old and vulnerable people did die and comparisons between places with lockdowns and not lockdowns (and varying levels of lockdowns) do not buttress the claim they reduced mortality even in that target group
someone sure is in denial of something, and it's the person who has to rely on an unsupported counterfactual of "sure millions of old and vulnerable people did die anyway, alone, cloistered off from their family, and not being taken care of by terrified medical staff as they drowned in their own fluid, and at an absurd cost in wealth and human rights violations, but more totally would have died without it"
once you account for those who died anyway and the enormous cost in wealth, lives, and rights violations, the lockdowns comes into focus as the stupidest public policy decision of the last 100 years and I hope each of you who supported such lunacy is constantly reminded of it like an albatross around their neck
and it wasn't only stupid in hindsight (it's preposterously stupid in hindsight), it was stupid at the time with relevant data and evidence at the time which was entirely ignored for reasons we're all left to speculate; Should we 1) use flu pandemic guidelines carefully crafted over 100 years in response to real world diseases or 2) throw those away and launch into a vastly costly global experiment with next to zero scientific support while refusing to engage in any sort of cost-benefit analysis whatsoever?
characterizing lockdowns as mere "conforming" and "forced to stay at home more than usual" is asininely dishonest
and stinks of someone whose cost for lockdowns was either near zero or positive
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That's the one great legacy of covid. It took that big exogenous shock to move the needle toward remote work. The viability of such work was mostly speculative before then.
A giant blow against an Office Space-style quality of life pain point.
Yes. I am seeing companies who didn't touch WFH with a ten-foot pole now opening remote positions. Once this happens, there's no stopping it - even if you ban WFH, people would just leave for a company that doesn't. Unless you pay fabulously well - which only a small percentage of companies does, and even for them it may be not fabulous enough to justify living in a place like San Francisco - you'd just get your market reduced, that's all. Only a total memetic blockade of WFH on the management level has been sustaining the "local only" model, but this has been broken and I don't think it's coming back. It can come back in certain companies, but not industry-wide.
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