I advocated lockdowns combined with strong social safety net protections and a thorough testing regime and the person still said "yeah but the other effects." When I pressed as to what effects, they said "well children won't be able to socialize." Like yeah.... that's bad, but you know what else can effect a child's mental health: mommy/daddy/granpa/grandma/etc dying from a totally preventable pathogen.... Jesus and this person is in "academia" doing anthro and shit....
I would say don't bring anthro into this, but yeah, anthropologists who aren't explicitly Marxist in their frameworks tend to be incredibly lib and naive. That being said, I think the more 'correct' version of that argument is that lockdowns, when executed efficiently with deadlines are incredibly effective at containing viruses (i.e. China and Vietnam) when combined with followup support and tracing.
However, extended longterm inconsistently enforced half lockdowns are detrimental to people's mental health and social well being. It only kinda solves the problem of hospital overflow, while stressing out your population and creating protocol fatigue from those that are following your protocols. This is even more so with the western conception of society, as individuals will not do things without explicit incentives or punishments. You cannot appeal to society because there is barely a concept of community and those who do have a conceot of community tend to be conservative and primed against these kind of actions.
The west is incredibly fucked here and survives only upon it's accumulated wealth.
It's a matter of incentives and messaging. People were lied to about how long the measures would have to last - top public health officials said the pandemic would last 18+ months, never the "2 weeks" BS that was sold to the public.
People also didn't get anything in return for the inconveniences and chaos. Not everyone has the same risk profile or tolerance, and those being asked to sacrifice their treats who don't feel a risk aren't being given anything in return except "You won't die". Of course they're gonna get mad!
as an anthro phd ... you're right. most anthros are...yeesh.
I'm curious, what's your experience in academia? Like what do most people believe? MSNBC shit? "Evo Morales bAd" kinda stuff?
it varies by uni and individual.
lots of critiques of "power" but doing a full on marxist analysis is often frowned on, or seen as reductive.
honestly, the anthros are usually better than the polisci or middle eastern studies. I once had a masters student tell me that democracy was wrong, that not everyone should be able to vote (this was around first trump election).
in my cohort specifically (5 of us), it's me a hardcore marxist, a racist lib, a well-meaning lib (bio), a kinda braindead lib (bernie supporter), and a woman who is pretty lib, but did her research in India/Bangladesh and came back a communist.
others in my program run the gamut, but it's very lib heavy, but like progresive lib, so huge bernie types, some liz/hillary types. a tiny minority of chuds.
academia as a whole in USA is a scam. social sciences/liberal arts specifically.
Aw man, I know that's true (being an anthro undergrad) but I really want to go back into acedemia to rub some 'lived experience' of years of actual factory work in their faces. A boring fantasy to be sure.
yeah, I also worked in a factory (meat packing) for a bit too, which people find "interesting".
I am from a solid poor background. Grew up in the poorest county in my state, and while obviously had privileges, money from my family wasn't really one of them. All but one of my grad school friends come from rich families (parents have PhDs, doctors, etc).
like thankfully most of the leftist ones are doing what they can to try to counteract that. but it's still so frustrating sometimes...
:maduro-katana-2: