[Nouser76]

What's humorous to me about this is that both ideologies can probably make this claim. I know a lot of people who are pro-vaccine and mask mandates that are mad that this pandemic is still going on because of people believing misinformation and refusing to do their part. I know people who are anti-vaccine and anti-mask mandate who are mad that they are being "forced" to vaccinate (in effect, because of businesses adding requirements - the government itself is not forcing vaccination for the general public). Both would say the other side is causing their strife. Both are right, if you accept their axioms/premises (which I don't think is reasonable for both sides).

[bequanna]

One side is doing whatever they can to force everyone to not only accept but live their views, impose their restrictions, and snatch up as much "emergency" power as legally possible. All because they see themselves as morally superior and more intelligent than the other side. They're the smarties "following the science".

And so now we find ourselves at the unceremonious end of this pandemic. One day we woke up and restrictions are gone. Fear mongering by the media and our government is gone. COVID is old news. Kinda strange, huh?

Regardless of which group an individual falls into, I believe all people intuitively know that this crisis was at best exaggerated and at worst manufactured, but absolutely exploited to the max. Now that the fear binge is over, we can see that arbitrary and ultimately unnecessary restrictions were imposed on us, how purchasing power has been eroded, countless choices and freedoms taken from them without any recourse.

We should all be mad and unruly. Something is deeply broken and wrong which allowed power hungry individuals to POINTLESSLY disrupt so many lives for so long.

[mywittyname]

> One day we woke up and restrictions are gone. Fear mongering by the media and our government is gone. COVID is old news. Kinda strange, huh?

Maybe in your bubble.

CDC guidance on masks and other preventative measures are data-driven, based on number of cases in the area, ICU utilization, and other metrics. You can see the guidance for your are here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/covid-... Most places are low risk, meaning the guidance is to, "Wear a mask based on your personal preference, informed by your personal level of risk"

> Fear mongering by the media and our government is gone.

COVID-19 is still in the news. YouTube still has a section dedicated to it, it's still a "special coverage" section in Apple News and it's "front page" news on the New York Times. The President is still actively talking about COVID every day, and is pushing people to get their second boosters (that's fear mongering, right?).

Granted, Fox News hasn't published a covid article in a while.

[spookthesunset]

Data driven, maybe. Myopic in focus? Absolutely. And it is that myopic obsession over Covid that took something bad and made it orders of magnitude worse.

[mywittyname]

> And it is that myopic obsession over Covid that took something bad and made it orders of magnitude worse.

A good number of my family and friends are healthcare workers. You get any set of them into a room and all they do is talk about how many people are dead/dying because they didn't get a vaccine.

So if by "myopic obsession" you mean, the myopic obsession with people not getting vaccinated because of some shortsighted views on relative risks you'd be right. ICUs were full of unvaccinated people who got covid, not vaccinated people who didn't.

[mtVessel]

What do you imagine all that "exploitation" was about? Which "power-hungry individuals" benefited, and how? Everyone ended up with loved ones sick and dead. The governors and mayors who implemented mandates did so knowing it would wreck their economies. Who would have benefited from exaggerating (or manufacturing) this crisis?

[spookthesunset]

Nobody benefited from this crisis. Everybody was doing what they were incentivized to do. The problem is those incentives caused a massive overreaction with far reaching societal consequences.

[peakaboo]

I bet there is a new covid mutation before summer. Gotta keep everyone afraid so they comply.