If you think the last few years were bad for individualism, see the Salem witch trials or McCarthyism. We used to punish people with unpopular opinions by literally burning them at the stake at worst and ruining their livelihoods at best. Before that we had excommunication from the Church which was cancel culture on hypersteroids.
Nonconformity to the cultural zeitgeist is more acceptable now than it has ever been.
You'll see very quickly how the desire of the community to not think icky thoughts will happily run roughshod over the individual. Hell, SCOTUS recently signaled that it's looking to do just that.
Until covid it looked to be true yet they reached to the same tools without a second thought
But it is true in that it turns around more quickly - it only took two years to understand the absurdity of COVID measures from mandatory masking to indoor lockdowns and vaccine passports - in the past that would have taken 50 years
so yes we are in a much better place
The last 2 or 3 years were not a great time for the individual. The 'community' was stampeding, morality and freedom of choice went out of the window, and it didn't matter who got hurt. Everyone needed to do what they were told.
So, what I'm hearing is 'fine words' but these seem to go out of the window, when the s** appears to hit the fan.
Ultimately - this is a question of authority. Are you your own authority, or do experts (political, judicial, scientific, etc) tell you what to do?