[spookthesunset]

> IMO this was likely a misguided effort directed towards reducing spread, because it was determined that quarantining to save other people wasn't a strong enough incentive to curb risky behavior (which is depressing), but backfired heavily and likely caused more harm than good.

Perhaps a large set of people have a different set of values and consider the tradeoff between endless (and mostly useless) lockdowns and restrictions not worth it compared to taking their risks of getting covid.

Perhaps they have decided that the costs to society far outweigh any benefits from these mitigations. These are a perfectly valid set of values, just different than your own--it requires absolutely no "conspiracy theories" to think this.

> conspiracy theorists

There is not many conspiracy theories about covid and a very small set of people peddle them. Most of the "conspiracy theories" turned out to be perfectly true. For example requiring proof of vaccination to sit down at a starbucks turned out to be true. Vaccines turned out to do very little to stop infection or transmission. Masks not working as well as some people would like to believe. Lockdowns and school closures hurt children--especially those who are low-income.

Writing off everything you disagree with as "conspiracy theory" is poor intellectual thinking. Maybe if you put aside your preconceived notions and dug harder into the arguments people have against everything society has done for covid, you'd discover that they have very valid points.

[ikrenji]

it was calculated how many lives were saved thanks to vaccines, wearing masks, social distancing, lockdowns etc. just because some people with different sets of values don't believe those numbers doesn't mean they aren't true...

"We estimate that across these 6 countries, interventions prevented or delayed on the order of 61 million confirmed cases, corresponding to averting approximately 495 million total infections."

"COVID-19 vaccination has substantially altered the course of the pandemic, saving tens of millions of lives globally. However, inadequate access to vaccines in low-income countries has limited the impact in these settings, reinforcing the need for global vaccine equity and coverage."