I don't know about society, but this was the straw the broke the camels back for me. I have not been the same since, I don't think I ever will be. The first lockdown in my province was when things really started to go wrong for me mental health wise in a major way and it only got worse as they continued.
What's really been maddening is that people get angry when I mention the affects it all had on me, they assume I'm taking a political stance first and foremost, they tell me it wasn't that bad, and they try to tell me I didn't experience what I experienced or do what I did.
I used to think things could get better, but I really don't see a happy ending for myself anymore.
I know many similar people, formerly of all different political, philosophical and religious persuasions. My rough estimation is that this voting bloc is between 20 and 35% of western society.
To those who disagree: although we are products of the same society, we have simply a fundamentally different view of liberty, happiness and risk tolerance.
I hope for your sake you aren't. If you are though you have all of my sympathy, someone like me looking back is not a good thing.
Ideologues are always saying that anybody who doesn't agree with them must be brainwashed. They can't imagine that could actually choose to hold a different point of view from their own. Well let me tell you it ain't necessarily the case.
Were there even places that gave you a citation for being out "uneccessarily"? Every single "lockdown" I'm familiar with in the US was voluntary. There was a period where "non-essential" businesses were forced or encouraged to not operate, but even that still isn't a lockdown, and nobody was forced to stay in their home.
US government overthrew Iran democratic government -> "I know the US is so evil!"
US government secretly injecting US citizens with radioactive material -> "My gosh, what's wrong with these people?"
US government lies about reasons for Iraq War -> "One of the great crimes of the century"
Then someone suggests, that just maybe, the lockdowns weren't based on science and that we should be concerned about the government overstepping and the comments are suddenly -> "Wow, did you forget your tinfoil hat?" or "Why don't you believe in science?" or "Think of the children"
It's really weird. The US gets rightfully condemned for wrongdoings, but then suddenly any suggestion that they did it again is met with violent opposition.
Not really. The HN user base has been taken over by big-corporation/big-government shills for years now.
Many around my parts were being outright belligerent asshats when all we had was asking nicely that people distance and wear masks. A substantial subset of the population did the exact opposite, and caused all sorts of trouble being antagonistic even to people just trying to buy groceries.
Then the lockdowns happened and it was like a light switch. I rarely saw the same kind of troublemakers acting out that way in public. Apparently once the US starts gutting its own economy to deal with an invisible threat, people start taking it more seriously. Until then it was like they thought it was all fake news, running around mocking the gullible masked suckers.
But why they didn't end far sooner, like maybe once food supply chains were recovering and our shelves weren't empty anymore, is totally beyond my comprehension. It evolved from "flattening the curve" to "prevent as many deaths as possible at all costs", which IMNSHO is where it went all wrong.
Do what you want, everything has tradeoff and risks. But don’t pretend science is normative until it becomes inconvenient.
And it's not like nothing good came out of lockdowns either, particularly the much greater willingness of employers to embrace remote work.
There was like the initial 6 weeks to stop the spread.
I still went to the grocery store, not locked down, i still went to the park, not locked down.
What lockdowns? please be specific.
When people say lockdown, they mean:
"I was forced to wear a mask when i went to the grocery store and i felt like a loser"
Thats the whole issue.
Call it what you like. You're arguing semantics when you say it wasn't a lock-down, but whatever you call it, it harmed people socially and psychologically. Humans aren't meant to be socially isolated.
The differences were highly variable. I have family in rural areas whose lives changed not one iota unless they had to travel for business to more urban areas. I have more urban people in my circle who were locked into their residence almost all the time, working and school from home. And then, there are the grocery store, food delivery, and health workers, who were working until they dropped, short staffed, in a sea of anxiety, many getting Covid multiple times.
There was no single experience of lockdown status even within just the USA, let alone across countries.
Plenty of it I'm sure, but why does that matter? Local policies effected my life even if they weren't federal policies.
Well guys, we weren't physically barred in our homes and starved so we weren't locked down. Brilliant.
Looking back at this thread it seems every post disagreeing with the ridiculous statement that there were no lockdowns has been downvoted. Amazing.
Don't confuse correlation with causality.
You had politicians abusing the covid pandemic with accusations of being a made-up conspiracy and in the process enticing hatred towards health officials who enacted standard public health policies, to the point that hardline militants even attacked them for suggesting that people should wash their hands.
After over a year of this blend of propaganda permeating society, of course you'll have the most vulnerable segment of society, overly represented by the undereducated, building up an uneducated grudge against society in general and in particular against "the system", whatever they were told to believe that might be.
It gave belligerent jackasses as stage upon which to perform. I suspect the grudge was long there, and the chip sat so long on their shoulder prior to the pandemic that it left a stain on many of their shirts. We should not cater to them.
It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.)
Again, just an excuse. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater because people that know far more about the subject than you do got a few things wrong, well, that's just being immature and/or supporting a narrative. We should not cater to them, either.
But at least we can agree that closing the schools was a bad idea.