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Notes -
Biden: Pandemic is over
Of course, for all important purposes, pandemic has been over in most of the Western world for most of this year - ie. sure, there's a disease going around, but the "pandemic mentality" is gone, and so have at least the most visible and onerous restrictions - but this sort of a declaration, offhand and qualified as it is, seems like a point in the general development.
It's already evident in social media that COVID doomers - the ones who would still want to mask up, keep up restrictions etc. - are angry and frustrated, as they've been for months, but I also wonder how the sort of "reverse doomers" who declared a year ago that Western world is never going to declare the pandemic over and give up restrictions, either out of stupidity or out of a malignant conspiracy, are interpreting it.
Honestly it's shocking how sticky some of this stuff is, even if the vast majority of people have just moved on with their lives.
Got asked to take a RAT test to attend a 29th birthday celebration in which nobody is immunocompromised or over 30. Some people just seem to want to live in COVID zero mode forever.
High status respected people have to lead and these people will follow. Once the avocado toast people can be sure that being unworried about covid doesn't mean you're a Nazi or Qanon or anti-science guy, they will go along. At this point some are still very afraid of being seen as part of that "misinfo" cluster if they aren't worried about covid enough, the cluster that includes things like climate change denial, Russia stuff, etc. But once it's announced that The Science now actually says XYZ, they will accept it too. They are just taking a bit longer, like that Japanese soldier on that island who "fought" WWII even decades after it ended.
But let's not be magnanimous when it's not warranted.
The sheer extent of social and economic destruction all around the Western world caused by long-term lockdowns will probably remain incalculable for years to come, provided that anyone even dares to calculate it. Will anyone have the courage to hold the feet of avocado toast people to the fire for what they have supported?
The whole point of being high status is power without responsibility; nobody gets to hold their feet to the fire, they get to define where the fire is and whose feet are to be held to it.
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I listen to the BBC's daily news podcast -- which could be the mouthpiece of the World Avocado Toast Forum -- and at some point in the last week or so there was a report about how some third-world region's economy had been devastated "by COVID." It's not the first time I've heard it put like this, and it always makes me vomit in my mouth a little: attributing the mal effects of oppressive lockdown regimes to the disease rather than the politicians/bureaucracies who chose against other options. This is going to be the narrative going forward.
From the old place:
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Personally, I'd consider "being sure the right lessons are learned" to be more important than "making sure the right people are punished," if I had to choose between them. If we settle into a narrative of "the Bad Thing happened because of the Bad People," and not because of Bad Decisions or Bad Behaviors that really made the difference, we can fall into the trap of believing that, so long as none of the people around bear the marks-of-shame tribal-signifiers of the Bad People, we are incapable of repeating their mistakes. And if any such mistakes are made, why then, it must be because of Secret Bad People who were lurking among us! They must be found and killed!
I do not want to lose sight of the fact that I could be an avocado toast person the next go-round. Hopefully avoiding complacency will help me stay on the right path.
But learning the right lessons implies learning from mistakes and admitting them.
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