I'm looking at posts on a hobby forum I also post on and there's some serious furor being caused by the news of the vaccine mandate. Someone referred to Biden as a "Feckless Fuck of a leader" and another person advocated for balkanization for the 20% of the country that doesn't approve of vaccine mandates.
I get that some people have concerns about authoritarianism and expansion of state powers (I mean they kinda don't because if they really did we'd have been done with this government a long time ago) but I'm really, genuinely struggling to understand why this is making so many people irrationally mad. These aren't even open fascists either, it's like liberals and Hank Hill type conservatives. What is it about this sort of governance that so frustrates them? They won't be materially affected in any way, and a lot of them have expressed the desire to be "left alone".
I have to wonder if there is some sort of deeper meaning to "left alone", because throughout a lot of the pandemic it seems that most people have been trying to pretend it's not happening. Is it the fact that the USA is facing a humiliation on it's own soil that it can't shoot at or nuke? I'm really confused by thought process behind this sort of rage.
No workers want to go back into the office. I guess that's anecdotal, but I know many people who have quit when their workplaces called them back in. And how does everyone "know" a lockdown is coming? We had no lockdowns last winter, why would we have them this winter when we actually have a good portion vaccinated?
But also, if they want lockdowns and mask mandates so bad, why lift them in the first place? Why not just have a lockdown? What are they waiting for? It's not public opinion, that's already out the door and has been since at least summer 2020. The CDC walked back their "masks are unnecessary" advice when it became clear the situation was getting worse. The places mask mandates have come back are in places where they lifted them and the virus just came sweeping through again. They do want to deal with the virus, but are trying really hard to do it without going to spring 2020-style lockdowns or even stricter. They view the vaccine as the virus' silver bullet, which isn't true and will not work out, as you say second shots will wear off, but that's why they're now forcing vaccinations, they don't want to go back to lockdowns