Being anti-lockdown does not mean being pro-death. Now we know more about the virus the lockdown measures must be re-evaluated.
What I do know is my American friends are suffering for the same reasons my local community are, and it's abhorrent to continue supporting these policies when it's destroying so many lives.
I'm sick of hearing stories about children trying to commit suicide, people getting fat and lazy, domestic abuse reports skyrocketing, small businesses going under and taking generational wealth out of the working class.
This isn't worth it, and we need a better solution.
Everyone is free to travel anywhere in the country and even outside to places welcoming people. Schools are opening back up pretty quickly. Restaurants are doing in person again despite all common sense. Amusement centers are either already open or on the path to open, most are not even hurting that bad and some are flourishing (look at Disney’s stock price, what pandemic?). The only people really hurting the most are bars.
And I really hate to say it but if someone is going to kill themselves over these “lockdowns” they’re already mentally ill and still would be without the pandemic. That’s another discussion around the poor state of mental health globally.
The only thing destroying so many lives are families deciding to host massive parties and watching all of their relatives die from covid over a month.
I guarantee unless your friends own a bar, they’re not hurting as much as they might lead on to believe.
Do you have a source for that claim? Household savings were up across all American income categories in 2020.
The $600 / week federal unemployment benefit that ended in July 2020 was the most significant (accidental) antipoverty program in decades. It lasted long enough that it’s effects will probably be felt for a year or more.
How does the fact that 2019 had a much much less deadly flu season fit into your narrative? And 2020 magically did away with the flu, eradicating this awful virus, plus reduced heart attacks massively.
But they have actually acted in such a way as to completely obliterate any credibility they had. From lying about masks being useful (Fauci), to the WHO carrying water for China, to the "it's 100% proven zoonosis, couldn't possibly be a lab creation), to the rapid shift away from any commentary about IFR/CFR once it became clear that it was an order of magnitude off.
What's strange is I'm not arguing against crazy strict measures during a deadly pandemic. What I'm arguing is that we have learned a lot about this coronavirus, which is just one of thousands/millions of coronaviruses, and even though we learned it was nothing like what we feared, the policy response never changed.
It's been repeated over and over that initial recommendations against mask usage was in the hope that people didn't hoard them and prevent healthcare workers from getting them. Predicting the irrational behavior of large populations is a key skill of leadership. Judging by way people hoard toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and other goods, that prediction seems pretty spot on.
The disease being less deadly than we feared, and our response to it remaining the same are not contradictory. Even 10x less deaths than originally predicted is still a major crisis. It is still worthy of attempts to mitigate the problem, and the mitigation strategies are still the same.
Yet here we are, many folks scared so much they're praising their jailers and starting to love their cages.