The pandemic has exacerbated existing political discontent
economist.com
economist.com
Consider NYC, which had mask mandates through till about mid June. Talking with people back in April, I remarked how almost everywhere had dropped their mask mandates to people. All -- and I mean _all_ -- were shocked: here in the city, you still had to wear them in the office, in businesses, bars & restaurants, all complete with occupancy requirements. The occupancy requirement of 50% were not dropped until the mask mandate was dropped. Hell, even across the Hudson River in New Jersey they didn't have those occupancy requirements for as long as we did.
And that's just local to the United States.
Consider how Colombians rioted in Medellin when the government attempted to impose another lockdown. The government gave up. Was this ever reported on?
Or consider how the Philipinnes are pushing for another lockdown atm. Is this common knowledge?
Or consider how Canada still has major restrictions. Cities like Toronto had police knocking on the doors of businesses as late as June (may be still on?) ensuring that people weren't gathering "illegally." Is this common knowledge?
Or consider how Australia is on a fifth lockdown where their prime minister said "vaccines alone will not end Australia's lockdown." [1]
Or consider how India's delta variant case explosion came down approximately two weeks after it peaked. Sharply and with very low vaccination rates. Is this common knowledge?
In somewhat lighter news, consider how other countries tackled issues relating to masks. Lithuania never required them for school children as one example.
The world is incredibly polarized but also increasingly parochial, at least anecdotally. People are extrapolating their local circumstances and assuming elsewhere must be similar or in worse shape, that these restrictions must be meaningful.
[1] Source: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/australia-pm-says-vaccinatio...
For example, I had several heated discussions about some COVID mandates with a friend from Indiana. Specifically, I worried about the denial of health procedures deemed non-essential, and the lack of ability to buy things like garden seeds in Michigan for a time.
He insisted I was blowing things out of proportion, that this was all for the greater good, and that I was selfishly harming others for my own gain (despite me personally not caring to buy garden seeds or needing any kind of medical procedure).
Months go by, my friend visits Michigan this summer (which is fairly well back to normal as of today) and he complains to me for 20 minutes that one McDonald’s location still has its lobby closed due to safety concerns, and was still on reduced hours.
Turns out, neither of these conditions lasted long in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
It occurred to me that, no matter what I said to him about the specific conditions in Michigan that bothered me, he wasn’t viewing them through my lens. He wasn’t even hearing most of the specific things I was arguing about.
He only viewed it through the lens of his own experience. Had he been unable to use the lobby of McDonalds in Indiana for more than a month or so in 2020, apparently, he would have been livid. But he didn’t, therefore anyone else with any kind of a different experience was wrong.
On the opposite spectrum, I know people who haven’t been affected at all by the virus who argue it may not exist, those who had a rough battle with it and therefore think it’s 100% fatal to everyone, and everything in between.
And it’s not just COVID, it extends to all things politics, economy, just about everything.
I wonder if the real problem is a sheer lack of ability to empathize, or relate to things outside of one’s own experiences.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s a defense mechanism. Real empathy, I argue, is painful, because it usually means relating to multiple, sometimes mutually exclusive, wants or needs, and realizing there is no one universal solution.
People seem to look for comic book heroes and villains in everything, and are uncomfortable anytime they find human beings with nuances and differing experiences in their place.