Not sure if this is allowed here and I mean no disrespect to anyone’s views. However, I am curious how this transition was experienced by folks here.
In March 2020, it was quite taboo to ignore the guidelines in many places, and laws were strictly enforced. Now, the vast majority have essentially returned to “normal life”. Basically a complete 180 in right around 4 years.
Did you see this outcome coming?
Was there a tipping point?
Did your views evolve over time? Or diverge in specific ways?
As someone in the middle of the spectrum, the trajectory the pandemic took (in terms of how serious people took guidelines) seemed somewhat unsurprising and inevitable. Personally, I picked up a couple of good habits like being stringent with hand washing and never going into the office sick (regardless of illness).
Just interested in other peoples perspective on this if you care to share :)
Yes, everyone here predicted this would happen because the narrative from the start from those in power (businesses and politicians who work for capitalism, not the people) has been "Don't let the cure be worse than the disease." They did the bare minimum locking down and abandoned it as soon as they could get away with it.
They planned to sacrifice millions to keep the money flowing to the top. The rest of us died, had our lungs crippled and so on, while the rich made record profits off of death and neglect. This was a genocide of the working class through willful neglect.
I remain a zero-covider. Everyone I know behaves as if aerosol physics will make special exceptions for them, and my words about endothilial damage, long covid odds, continued excess mortality, and numerous naked conflicts of interest in the world of bourgeois health systems affecting the available info and measures, just rolls out of people's ears like water off a duck's back.
I lost my two principle social circles to the knowledge of their carelessness, and they had seemed exceptionally not-ableist, safe company for neurodiverse people like me. They fought for their right to party and they won. I'm sad about them, but their decisions are downstream of the decisions of the propertied classes, for whom I reserve my rage.
But I also no longer bother to mind neurotypical manners anymore. Assimilation into the killzone has lost it's appeal.
Before January 20, 2021: Doing less testing so we have less cases is a terrible idea and anyone suggesting that should be condemned
After January 20, 2021: If we do less testing, we'll have less cases. Covid is over, Jack
We have unironically gone full nurgle cult, and everyone I talk to sees nothing strange about suddenly knowing many people who have died young, or had strokes. I bring up covid, they say it's just being blown out of proportion. Like motherfucker, a million people died in the US, BEFORE they stopped counting like a year ago. It feels like I'm going insane, but I know I haven't. I'm watching millions of others go insane. I think for many of them, internalizing that we have been left to die so that line could go up would break them.
Who are you going to believe, the hegemonic narrative that aligns what you wish were true, or your lying eyes?
I don’t blame the vast majority of people for returning to “normal life,” whatever the hell that means.
What fills me with unquantifiable rage is the business owners and all other profiteers of our capitalistic system who would rather people return to work during the worst public health crisis in several generations and the elected and health officials around our world who gave up on the people they ought to serve.
Edit: This post feels a little bit like you wanna know why we’re all “not over it yet.” And it’s like…where do I even fucking start?
Remember when the CDC cut the recommended-self quarantine time for infected workers from 10 days to 5, because Delta Fucking Airlines asked them to?
In March 2020, it was quite taboo to ignore the guidelines in many places, and laws were strictly enforced.
I don’t know what country you live in, but that definitely wasn’t the case in America.
It was in my neck of the woods (lib central) which just made the inevitable betrayal sting even more. Like, I remember late in 2021 feeling like shit when I popped into a liquor store and realized halfway through that in a rare lapse in concentration I'd forgotten my mask and was the only person not masked up in the store. And that was because I (and the people around me) had correctly internalized that universal masking was about protecting the community, not just ourselves. Amazing how quickly everyone was to change their tune once Diamond Joe said the coast was clear, evidence be damned.
As someone in the middle of the spectrum
Covid doesn’t care dude. You have a ten to twenty percent chance of getting long covid every time you’re infected. No n95 = 💀
The truth is always somewhere in the middle
-Guy who's 50% wrong about everything
Everyone saw this coming since at least new years eve dec. 2020 when everyone on Chapo expected normo-Os to think COVID would disappear when the new year started and the vaccines would come out and everything would turn to normal.
Which actually didn't happen in 2021 but it did in 2022. And everyone gave up.
Didn't it kinda go in a sinusoidal pattern where people ignored it in Summer 2020 because there was a dip, then hospitals started filling up so they took it seriously until Biden said COVID was officially over?
In rural Midwest America it followed more of a y=cot(x/2) sorta thing.
Did you see this outcome coming?
Yes. Since the beginning the push was to not close down because "the economy." A better historian of the pandemic might've saved the numerous videos in early 2020 of various think tank ghouls going on live TV to suggest (paraphrased) "the amount of people we'll save is not worth it to shut down the economy." Spring 2020 I expressed to my sister the fear that Trump was going to stop testing because less tests=less covid. It was later that year he actually suggested it, and then of course this is what has actually happened throughout the Biden years.
Was there a tipping point?
I saw the current "just ignore covid and act like everything's normal" state of affairs coming from the start, but I think the biggest moment this became clear was when vaccines were announced. Like Spring or Summer 2020 my mom says "did you hear, they're aiming to have vaccines by the end of the year" and my heart just dropped. It was clear at that moment that how we were going to "get out" of the pandemic was a vaccine-only response. We'd hold together some semblance of covid restrictions until the vaccines were available, then we'd gradually remove any and all protections. And that's exactly what happened.
Did your views evolve over time? Or diverge in specific ways?
Yeah late 2019/early 2020 I really didn't care about covid. I thought the fears about covid were just anti-China propaganda (and in my defense a lot of the early reporting on Covid did amount to anti-China propaganda). My dad, and to a lesser extent my mom, was actually the ones who cared about covid first. That first week in March when we shut down I actually went to hang out maskless at my friend's place (of course we were still being told not to wear masks so of course I was maskless). I think later that week is when I had the sudden realization that oh shit this is a pandemic that's overloading our health care system, and that Covid was a big deal.
2020 was actually probably the time I felt best because most people around me also cared to some extent. Some people cared more than others, but it all sort of evened out to an okay equilibrium of my community as a whole caring about covid. However as everyone has decided Covid no longer matters, I've had to correct in the opposite direction, becoming more cautious and more restrictive wrt what I do. If other people aren't going to take care of the community, then I need to pick up the slack to take care of myself.
I try not to stress too much about it bc my kid is gonna bring it home anyway. I get the newest gen boosters the week they become available, mask up in crowded places or places with a lot of turnover like airports etc. and I try to keep an eye on wastewater taking more precautions when cases spike, like staying home etc. obv if I get it I stay the fuck home until I test negative, but I have that luxury. I’ve “only” had it twice.
Living sort of in the middle of nowhere we had about a year of.. oh.. maybe 70% compliance, and the other 30% being generally hostile to the rest of us. I got harassed 4 times myself. And of course, as predicted we now have to hear "oh well I still got covid once the restrictions lifted so it was a waste of time" incredible.
I have a younger sibling who lives with me and goes to school, and the system they had in place there worked pretty well actually. They did half in person/half remote w/ masking and hand washing the last couple years and the household didn't get sick once during that time. This year it's like every other week something is brought home.
I was really counting on masking being a cultural thing that would stick. Shoulda known
