People forget about those days. We used to get daily news about % of ICU capacity left. Videos of people on respirators. We didn’t knew what this virus was. How

People forget about those days. We used to get daily news about % of ICU capacity left. Videos of people on respirators. We didn’t knew what this virus was. How bad things can go? Streets in China getting piled up with bodies in bags. People complaining that US govt is not as effective as Chinese. People worried about covid deniers, mask opposition. Entire Twitter population updating their profiles with masks. Fear of long covid. News of unknown impact on kids. No one knew how things would turn out. Most believed that that wasn’t time for debate because there was simply no data. People can argue either way and there will be always groups latching on other side. We needed unity and caution until we figured things out. That’s how efforts against covid misinformation started. In retrospect, it looks like suppression of freedom of speech. It wasn’t until vaccines came out and multiple dosages freed us. Now we look back and worry about that suppression of speech issue and packaging it up politically. I am not on either side but I think based on data we had, lack of vaccines and possibly safety issue for entire populations, people had to do what they had to. I don’t think their actions were politically motivated or ill-intended.