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Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above? Why would a few months of

Genuine question: do you think that the lockdowns had such long-lasting effect on people as to explain the problems described above? Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes?

lotsofpulp 11mo ago
It wouldn’t. The response to COVID merely accelerated the changes that were happening due to changes in the population age histogram.
aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
> Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes? I don't know about how COVID-19 was handled in the USA, but in Germany it rather was "many years of bad idea".
bragh 11mo ago
It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd happily ran along with. January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests. February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask. Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further. The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- rootusrootus 11mo ago
  I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
  - bragh 11mo ago
    And all those years could have been avoided by treating a new unknown disease as it should have been treated instead of trusting China's word on it. Go figure.
    - diogenescynic 11mo ago
      [flagged]
  - diogenescynic 11mo ago
    >I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think. The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
    - rootusrootus 11mo ago
      > Is it willful ignorance? I think it might be. In my experience, the ignorance goes together very closely with political ideology. That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people. Anyway ... West Bank and Gaza: 941.84 deaths per million people, 29% vaccination rate by end of 2021. Israel: 887.20 deaths per million people, 64% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
maxerickson 11mo ago
It can be that social order is partly maintained by conformance and a bunch of people found out that there aren't consequences for choosing not to conform. In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always several comments saying "So what, who cares". Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of other minor little things you might encounter in a given week.
Tanoc 11mo ago
Normal people were shown that they had no real bearing on the world, and were forced to live without being rushed for a year or in some places two. Without the need to constantly look over their shoulders for encroaching crises people started to examine the world around them. They had time to enjoy things without constantly battling with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that lead to procrastination just to recover a little bit. So many realized they were being deprived of not only recreation, but fulfilling their basic needs outside of food and sleep. So they shifted from fearing the systems that deprived them to loathing them and the people who administrated them, and resolved to deny contributing to those systems as much as possible. That's why there were so many sweeping changes starting in May of 2020, not in the way the systems of the world were run, but in the way the public at large engaged with them. Much of what's been happening over the last five years can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth. Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and thought they would benefit from being new instigators for it.
wkat4242 11mo ago
For me yes. I'm not the same, much more depressed. I was already prone to it but two years of home imprisonment while living alone really damaged me. I also have a really bad reaction to the masks due to a youth trauma where I nearly choked. Being forced to trigger that memory daily was terrible. I did wear them of course (I'm in Europe so we had quite heavy restrictions). Maybe it was necessary for society but for me personally the damage was much higher than the benefit. On the bright side when it was over in 2022 it did make me go out again and I go out partying every weekend until 6am still. That probably wouldn't have happened because I'm in my 50s. I think the measures were a bit overblown though some were necessary. But shit like curfews was ridiculous. It made contagion worse because the shops were only open during the day so everyone had to go there during a much shorter time. So they were always chock full of customers, exactly the thing you don't want during a pandemic.
listenallyall 11mo ago
That's like asking "why would one car crash that lasted a few seconds change your driving habits for years?" - or perhaps your entire outlook on life, the consequences of not appreciating the things around you in the moment, the realization that life is fleeting, that maybe "getting to work on time" shouldn't be as high a priority as it once was, etc, etc. All it takes is one major shake-up for people to be changed, often for life.

lotsofpulp 11mo ago

It wouldn’t. The response to COVID merely accelerated the changes that were happening due to changes in the population age histogram.

aleph_minus_one 11mo ago

> Why would a few months of a “bad idea” induce decade-long changes? I don't know about how COVID-19 was handled in the USA, but in Germany it rather was "many years of bad idea".

bragh 11mo ago

It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd happily ran along with. January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests. February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask. Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further. The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 11mo ago
I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
- bragh 11mo ago
  And all those years could have been avoided by treating a new unknown disease as it should have been treated instead of trusting China's word on it. Go figure.
  - diogenescynic 11mo ago
    [flagged]
- diogenescynic 11mo ago
  >I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think. The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
  - rootusrootus 11mo ago
    > Is it willful ignorance? I think it might be. In my experience, the ignorance goes together very closely with political ideology. That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people. Anyway ... West Bank and Gaza: 941.84 deaths per million people, 29% vaccination rate by end of 2021. Israel: 887.20 deaths per million people, 64% vaccination rate by end of 2021.

maxerickson 11mo ago

It can be that social order is partly maintained by conformance and a bunch of people found out that there aren't consequences for choosing not to conform. In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always several comments saying "So what, who cares". Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of other minor little things you might encounter in a given week.

Tanoc 11mo ago

Normal people were shown that they had no real bearing on the world, and were forced to live without being rushed for a year or in some places two. Without the need to constantly look over their shoulders for encroaching crises people started to examine the world around them. They had time to enjoy things without constantly battling with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that lead to procrastination just to recover a little bit. So many realized they were being deprived of not only recreation, but fulfilling their basic needs outside of food and sleep. So they shifted from fearing the systems that deprived them to loathing them and the people who administrated them, and resolved to deny contributing to those systems as much as possible. That's why there were so many sweeping changes starting in May of 2020, not in the way the systems of the world were run, but in the way the public at large engaged with them. Much of what's been happening over the last five years can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth. Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and thought they would benefit from being new instigators for it.

wkat4242 11mo ago

For me yes. I'm not the same, much more depressed. I was already prone to it but two years of home imprisonment while living alone really damaged me. I also have a really bad reaction to the masks due to a youth trauma where I nearly choked. Being forced to trigger that memory daily was terrible. I did wear them of course (I'm in Europe so we had quite heavy restrictions). Maybe it was necessary for society but for me personally the damage was much higher than the benefit. On the bright side when it was over in 2022 it did make me go out again and I go out partying every weekend until 6am still. That probably wouldn't have happened because I'm in my 50s. I think the measures were a bit overblown though some were necessary. But shit like curfews was ridiculous. It made contagion worse because the shops were only open during the day so everyone had to go there during a much shorter time. So they were always chock full of customers, exactly the thing you don't want during a pandemic.

listenallyall 11mo ago

That's like asking "why would one car crash that lasted a few seconds change your driving habits for years?" - or perhaps your entire outlook on life, the consequences of not appreciating the things around you in the moment, the realization that life is fleeting, that maybe "getting to work on time" shouldn't be as high a priority as it once was, etc, etc. All it takes is one major shake-up for people to be changed, often for life.