4 ms·

I, personally, find it amazing that so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life to fight a virus that wouldn't hurt most

by seneca 5y ago

I, personally, find it amazing that so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life to fight a virus that wouldn't hurt most of them. I know everyone is doom and gloom about covid, but I'm actually pretty impressed with how much the typical person (outside of political manipulation and coercion) was willing to sacrifice for others. If you had asked me in early 2020 how long it was possible to keep this up, I'd have guessed 6 months or so. Lament all you want that people are dropping their vigilance, or about how effective any of it actually was, but I'm generally pretty impressed with how far the "common man" was willing to go.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
> so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life This always smacks of hyperbole. How much quality of life was sacrificed, really? It's not like we had to all go dig trenches or something. We just had to stop going to brunch.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Man the privilege required to say what you just wrote is amazing. Not everybody works some cushy work from home tech job. Many people had their life’s work destroyed, their career ripped from them, they got to watch the education system fuck over their kids. Maybe all you lost was brunch, but these last years cost many people a lot. It’s almost insulting to just brush off what we did the last two year as something minor.
  - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    The parent commenter that I was replying to was talking about: "people [who] were willing to sacrifice [..] their quality-of-life" Not people who got fucked over as collateral damage by the pandemic. But people who sacrificed. A sacrifice is "giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else", and it's something you "give", not something someone takes against your will. The essential workers who sacrificed were and are heroes. First responders, nurses, doctors, teachers, grocery store clerks, vaccine scientists. The people keeping us alive. They deserve our respect and admiration for their sacrifice. But the parent commenter says they sacrificed their "quality of life". That's something very vague. It's not necessarily their livelihood, or apartment, or life. "Quality of life" could mean nearly anything that makes you happy. There's a whole bunch of people who are not essential workers who think that what they sacrificed is just as important, and those people's "quality of life sacrifice" were leisure activities like brunch. Or, like the parents who just don't want to deal with their kids, "sacrificed their kid's education" (even though no kid's education is destroyed by a year or two of sitting inside). Probably a majority of the population complaining about their quality of life are these people, and that's who I'm referring to.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

by seneca 5y ago

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

> so many people were willing to sacrifice nearly two years of their quality-of-life This always smacks of hyperbole. How much quality of life was sacrificed, really? It's not like we had to all go dig trenches or something. We just had to stop going to brunch.

spookthesunset 5y ago
Man the privilege required to say what you just wrote is amazing. Not everybody works some cushy work from home tech job. Many people had their life’s work destroyed, their career ripped from them, they got to watch the education system fuck over their kids. Maybe all you lost was brunch, but these last years cost many people a lot. It’s almost insulting to just brush off what we did the last two year as something minor.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  The parent commenter that I was replying to was talking about: "people [who] were willing to sacrifice [..] their quality-of-life" Not people who got fucked over as collateral damage by the pandemic. But people who sacrificed. A sacrifice is "giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else", and it's something you "give", not something someone takes against your will. The essential workers who sacrificed were and are heroes. First responders, nurses, doctors, teachers, grocery store clerks, vaccine scientists. The people keeping us alive. They deserve our respect and admiration for their sacrifice. But the parent commenter says they sacrificed their "quality of life". That's something very vague. It's not necessarily their livelihood, or apartment, or life. "Quality of life" could mean nearly anything that makes you happy. There's a whole bunch of people who are not essential workers who think that what they sacrificed is just as important, and those people's "quality of life sacrifice" were leisure activities like brunch. Or, like the parents who just don't want to deal with their kids, "sacrificed their kid's education" (even though no kid's education is destroyed by a year or two of sitting inside). Probably a majority of the population complaining about their quality of life are these people, and that's who I'm referring to.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]