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Comment by avgcorrection | Hacker News Reader

> not be subjugated to whatever happens to feed the anxieties and neuroses of society.

That’s awfully vague. Are specters doing this to you?

Seems that some power analysis is in order.

Even before covid, when it turned out that society wants to track my movements or to reward and punish me based on my medical history, it could easily be swayed with such words as "pedophile ", "terrorists", or "drugs". So much so that it might want to be able to monitor my private messaging (and prevent its encryption) to make sure that I am neither a pedophile, nor a terrorist; or might want to check my social media profiles at the border to make sure I haven't expressed any sympathies to a terrorist organisation. Today, it also seems to be eager to do things to fight "misinformation". I am sure more examples can be provided.

Have fun with those ghosts of yours.

The power elite sets policy. Not vague sentiments.

> Have fun with those ghosts of yours.

Thanks. Will do.

> The power elite sets policy. Not vague sentiments.

What do you mean by this? What's a power elite; doesn't it, in a democracy, rule with the approval of the society, and why would one be happy with a power elite's policy that lets it intrude into your private life anyway?

Can anyone say the past 2 years of covid-19?

Please don't feign naivety. It is a distraction to critical thought.

I know that it wasn’t the “anxieties and neuroses of society” that controlled the COVID-related policy decisions. Only a fool would think that.

Well, the “anxieties and neuroses of society” are the only reason we're still forced to wear cloth masks in certain places, so...

No one is forced to wear a cloth mask anywhere -- a superior mask is always accepted. The inferior cloth mask is merely accepted, not required.

Here you distort a laxness in COVID mitigation to describe it as the very opposite.

God, all these ellipsis and references to vague fears is tiring.

The pandemic didn’t turn out to be a bogeyman that had no impact. Oh shucks—just a common cold after. But I guess that’s too “blue pill” of me to say.

However much of a bogeyman the pandemic turned out to be, the concern is that the state, proverbially, doesn't let a good crisis go to waste. Such was the case after 9/11; and there are signs that such is also the case now.

I agree that the aftermath of 9/11 wasn’t handled properly. You can’t react to a terror attack by becoming more afraid of terrorism—that just means that the terror attack was a success.

the past 2 years of covid-19

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