Every time I hear someone talk about life when a modicum of COVID concern existed in western countries it's basically them saying they're scared of coughing in public, not because they're scared of spreading COVID but because they don't want people to think they have COVID. It seems like the idea they might have COVID doesn't even enter the picture, at least initially. As well as other similar examples of their self-orientated lives.
Obviously most people dropping the masks as soon as possible as well as refusing to learn how to use them (or even what kind of masks in the first place) reveal this a bit as well. It seems, to me in my small social world at least, that the people around me literally only cared about themselves during the pandemic and how awkward it was for them. My existence isn't inside a particularly great slice of humanity though.
Even in left-ish spaces you see maybe a vocal minority of people who care, like some people on here, doing anti-COVID acts as part of a larger understanding of the world: either out of empathy or at least a greater self-interest in seeing society not crumble. But everyone else is basically only doing "good" so far as everyone else forces or allows them to.
Again, my world is pretty small but getting really tired of hearing saying "during COVID" in pass-tense around/to me as I wear a fucking mask in front of them. Haven't heard of any great empathy from people broadly. And the shallow bloomer excuses don't really convince me otherwise.
For most people in my circles it’s a bit of both I think. Most people obviously care about not infecting other people if they have covid, but at the time it seemed like perfection was expected (a small mistake can cost lives). I think it makes people uncomfortable to admit that they made misjudgments, so they act like their actions weren’t to stop spread the virus, but to conform to social experiences. As in the latter case it doesn’t sound as bad to make a mistake.
I say this because most people around me did really care about not spreading the virus (many people around me worked with elderly people and they were genuinely afraid they’d infect them if they weren’t careful), but at the same time they sometimes now talk about handling with covid as if the social expectations were the reason they wore masks and didn’t gather with too many people.
Interesting response. I could see this for some people, yeah. Especially kinda' high-empathy low-info types who got burnt out by the governmental/media misinfo barrage we got.