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I appreciate your perspective, but I'd like to provide an alternative viewpoint. I think only a minority of Americans were really effected by the pandemic in th

I appreciate your perspective, but I'd like to provide an alternative viewpoint. I think only a minority of Americans were really effected by the pandemic in the way you're describing. Many Americans did not believe a pandemic was happening, or had ever happened. Many believed the pandemic was real, but worked through it anyway because they had no choice. Only a minority of Americans believed the pandemic was real, and could afford to rearrange their whole life accordingly. I think there's a lot of reasons for runaway spending, from feeling overly optimistic about the economy, to feeling overly pessimistic about the economy, like the extravagant spending of Russian nobility on the eve of the February Revolution of 1917. It can even be the case that multiple groups are spending a ton for different reasons.

demosthanos 3y ago
Everyone was affected by the pandemic. Red state, blue state, service worker or constant zoom meetings, everyone was impacted. Local government, personal political views, socioeconomic status and everything else had an impact on how people experienced the pandemic and for how long (in some places things went back to more-or-less normal sooner), but there's no question that the entire world felt the impact intensely.
- cjohnson318 3y ago
  I think the thing that matters is how people perceive it now. If the US went through another epidemic with a similar mortality rate, I think that there would be greater resistance to masking. I think that people would compare it to Covid-19, say "we already did this once," and just skip it.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    How they perceive of it now, and how it effected them psychologically are not the same.
Aloha 3y ago
I'm sorry, you're wrong - and I dont say that lightly. My roommate worked a service job during the pandemic, went to work every day. He couldn't go shopping at a store for 6 months, he couldn't go out to eat for a similar length of time - there was social pressure on him to not do these things even once they reopened for fear of harming others. Social Media was acidic, and the mainstream media was.. upsetting, to put it politely. I'd also note that we are in Texas, which didn't keep its restrictions as long as NY or CA, and it was still traumatic. All but the most crazy anti-vax nut jobs believe the pandemic happened, I know folks who would otherwise lean very conservative take it quite seriously - do you know why? they saw the morgue trailers. I know others folks who didn't who behaved the same way after watching a loved one die. The folks who didn't believe are not a small number, I'll admit - around 15% of the country - but polling backs up people believing the illness was real, and that it was dangerous - the level of danger however did vary in intensity by partisan paring.
- cjohnson318 3y ago
  For the record, I took everything very seriously; I wore masks everywhere and I was fortunate enough to work at home, have groceries/alcohol delivered, etc. We have different sources of anecdotal evidence, sure, but from my anecdotal evidence, I think everyone was very spooked for 1-3 months, and then by the end of 2020 most people were back to "YOLO, whatever". Especially in Texas, I worked a lot there during that time. > The folks who didn't believe are not a small number, I'll admit - around 15% of the country I think this is a lot closer to 25%, or higher. I don't know how to explain it, but a stupid number of people just did not give a shit. I guess because at it's peak Covid-19 was 10x more fatal than flu, but still not fatal enough for everyone to care about? I took it seriously, but I learned that a lot of people would literally rather take a chance dying, than wear a mask for an extended period of time.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    > I think this is a lot closer to 25% This is a completely idiotic number, I'm sorry. That's over half of people who claim to be conservative. Half. I live in Wisconsin and know of exactly zero people who deny the pandemic. I know one that still shoots up horse dewormer when he gets the sniffles, but that's one person out of many, and that's blatantly not denial.
Balgair 3y ago
In the US, roughly a million people died of covid during the pandemic. That's ~1 in 340 people, or roughly two Dunbar's numbers (150). Meaning that every 1 in 2 people was 'close' to someone that died of covid. That plus the restrictions and all the other jazz. It was a lot. Personally, my family lost 5 due to covid. And we lost another 3 during the pandemic that we had to digitally mourn too[0]. The family is still not processing all of it very well, as a fair few members are still at very high risk and travel is still restricted for us. It's as if those years didn't really happen. Personally, I have a hard time remembering 2020-22. There are just gaps in my mind. I'm not the same person I was after it. My spending is a, to be honest, a bit more free now. There really is a sense of YOLO in my life. Not a very large sense, but a sense all the same. Seeing so many close family members die, sometimes at their bedside, it affected me. I know now, in some very small way, how short my life is. How precious it is, how frivolous it is. I'm personally still dealing with a lot of that memento mori. [0] I will forever hate zoom because of those horribly dumb, mismanaged, separated funerals. Fuck's sake, digital cruelty.
- fifilura 3y ago
  > That's ~1 in 340 To put that number in perspective, on a regular year around 1 in 150 die. 1 in 340 over 2-3 years is shocking for the individual of course, like every death, but not a huge offset from that number.
  - Kranar 3y ago
    It's very hard to properly contextualize the number, however. For example it's true that the total number of deaths only increased by about 10-15% during COVID which is not trivial but also not a catastrophe either... however, you also can't really compare how people lived during COVID where everyone was isolated, to a typical year where people would be exposed to far more risks just naturally. You could imagine that if hypothetically everyone lived the way they lived in 2020-2022 with little travel, little outdoor exposure, deaths would likely plummet, and yet even with all those restrictions deaths increased by about 15%. It's very hard to get a sense of how much of a threat COVID posed since there's not much that it can be compared to.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mikewarot 3y ago
At one point, there were so many people dying some areas, that the dead had to be kept on ice until someone could come pick them up from their families homes. Obviously this happened in low income areas more than elsewhere. Many people died, and were buried without a funeral or wake. Many people couldn't even visit their dying family members, and had to make do with video calls to their loved ones, all alone and hooked up to machinery as they passed on. This was definitely a traumatic event. Looking at annual numbers glosses over most of the horror and shock of it. No wonder the Economists don't get it.

demosthanos 3y ago

Everyone was affected by the pandemic. Red state, blue state, service worker or constant zoom meetings, everyone was impacted. Local government, personal political views, socioeconomic status and everything else had an impact on how people experienced the pandemic and for how long (in some places things went back to more-or-less normal sooner), but there's no question that the entire world felt the impact intensely.

cjohnson318 3y ago
I think the thing that matters is how people perceive it now. If the US went through another epidemic with a similar mortality rate, I think that there would be greater resistance to masking. I think that people would compare it to Covid-19, say "we already did this once," and just skip it.
- Aloha 3y ago
  How they perceive of it now, and how it effected them psychologically are not the same.

Aloha 3y ago

I'm sorry, you're wrong - and I dont say that lightly. My roommate worked a service job during the pandemic, went to work every day. He couldn't go shopping at a store for 6 months, he couldn't go out to eat for a similar length of time - there was social pressure on him to not do these things even once they reopened for fear of harming others. Social Media was acidic, and the mainstream media was.. upsetting, to put it politely. I'd also note that we are in Texas, which didn't keep its restrictions as long as NY or CA, and it was still traumatic. All but the most crazy anti-vax nut jobs believe the pandemic happened, I know folks who would otherwise lean very conservative take it quite seriously - do you know why? they saw the morgue trailers. I know others folks who didn't who behaved the same way after watching a loved one die. The folks who didn't believe are not a small number, I'll admit - around 15% of the country - but polling backs up people believing the illness was real, and that it was dangerous - the level of danger however did vary in intensity by partisan paring.

cjohnson318 3y ago
For the record, I took everything very seriously; I wore masks everywhere and I was fortunate enough to work at home, have groceries/alcohol delivered, etc. We have different sources of anecdotal evidence, sure, but from my anecdotal evidence, I think everyone was very spooked for 1-3 months, and then by the end of 2020 most people were back to "YOLO, whatever". Especially in Texas, I worked a lot there during that time. > The folks who didn't believe are not a small number, I'll admit - around 15% of the country I think this is a lot closer to 25%, or higher. I don't know how to explain it, but a stupid number of people just did not give a shit. I guess because at it's peak Covid-19 was 10x more fatal than flu, but still not fatal enough for everyone to care about? I took it seriously, but I learned that a lot of people would literally rather take a chance dying, than wear a mask for an extended period of time.
- packetlost 3y ago
  > I think this is a lot closer to 25% This is a completely idiotic number, I'm sorry. That's over half of people who claim to be conservative. Half. I live in Wisconsin and know of exactly zero people who deny the pandemic. I know one that still shoots up horse dewormer when he gets the sniffles, but that's one person out of many, and that's blatantly not denial.

Balgair 3y ago

In the US, roughly a million people died of covid during the pandemic. That's ~1 in 340 people, or roughly two Dunbar's numbers (150). Meaning that every 1 in 2 people was 'close' to someone that died of covid. That plus the restrictions and all the other jazz. It was a lot. Personally, my family lost 5 due to covid. And we lost another 3 during the pandemic that we had to digitally mourn too[0]. The family is still not processing all of it very well, as a fair few members are still at very high risk and travel is still restricted for us. It's as if those years didn't really happen. Personally, I have a hard time remembering 2020-22. There are just gaps in my mind. I'm not the same person I was after it. My spending is a, to be honest, a bit more free now. There really is a sense of YOLO in my life. Not a very large sense, but a sense all the same. Seeing so many close family members die, sometimes at their bedside, it affected me. I know now, in some very small way, how short my life is. How precious it is, how frivolous it is. I'm personally still dealing with a lot of that memento mori. [0] I will forever hate zoom because of those horribly dumb, mismanaged, separated funerals. Fuck's sake, digital cruelty.

fifilura 3y ago
> That's ~1 in 340 To put that number in perspective, on a regular year around 1 in 150 die. 1 in 340 over 2-3 years is shocking for the individual of course, like every death, but not a huge offset from that number.
- Kranar 3y ago
  It's very hard to properly contextualize the number, however. For example it's true that the total number of deaths only increased by about 10-15% during COVID which is not trivial but also not a catastrophe either... however, you also can't really compare how people lived during COVID where everyone was isolated, to a typical year where people would be exposed to far more risks just naturally. You could imagine that if hypothetically everyone lived the way they lived in 2020-2022 with little travel, little outdoor exposure, deaths would likely plummet, and yet even with all those restrictions deaths increased by about 15%. It's very hard to get a sense of how much of a threat COVID posed since there's not much that it can be compared to.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mikewarot 3y ago

At one point, there were so many people dying some areas, that the dead had to be kept on ice until someone could come pick them up from their families homes. Obviously this happened in low income areas more than elsewhere. Many people died, and were buried without a funeral or wake. Many people couldn't even visit their dying family members, and had to make do with video calls to their loved ones, all alone and hooked up to machinery as they passed on. This was definitely a traumatic event. Looking at annual numbers glosses over most of the horror and shock of it. No wonder the Economists don't get it.