[cruffle_duffle]

I mean he was 100% right about all of that; history will not look fondly upon societys hysterical reaction to Covid, so… I think he took a lot of shit for “coming out of the closet” in that regard and he’s never been the same. There was (and apparently still are) a lot of incredibly sanctimonious busy body’s out there who absolutely loved the power trip Covid gave them and they were more than happy to harass, threaten, and be incredibly disrespectful to people who disagreed with the mainstream narrative.

As somebody in the same boat as AvE, watching people who you knew and respected turn against you the way so many people did is pretty brutal and fucks you up pretty good. Honestly it was scary as fuck how so people completely lost their minds after being fed non-stop fear porn and propaganda. Lots of parallels to some pretty fucked up atrocities—I can now see how “normal people” can turn so evil and corrupt they’d kill their neighbors and families. Multiple people I knew and respected wished me a horrific death for expressing my opinions… I’m sure if we continued this conversation and it was allowed on this forum you too would verbally wish at my death. Scary fucking shit.

I mean god forbid anybody express any disagreement with perhaps the most authoritarian, unscientific power grab in human history. The shit that went down was pure evil. Thank god some people had the courage to speak out against it even if it cost them so dearly.

[steve_adams_86]

Disagreement is healthy. What was unhealthy is that it was dangerous to disagree.

People who thought we should just ride covid out were, more often than not, simply unaware of the nuances of covid vs a cold or something similar. People who thought we should hide in our homes until it was eradicated were similarly unaware of the implicit harms of that choice.

A healthy discourse with people willing to concede and compromise would have landed us somewhere sane. Disagreement would have been part of finding a sensible conclusion.

What failed was our ability to do just that. Somehow we totally blew it.

[cruffle_duffle]

We were all told to shut the fuck up and listen to a handful of cherry picked “doomsday experts” who refused to follow their own data, didn’t follow their own science and refused to acknowledge that society has millions of problems beyond one very single, very specific thing.

And if we didn’t follow their edict’s or if we were to express any doubt of any kind, we were evil alt-right grandma killers who deserved horrible Covid deaths.

Heathy discourse was absolutely not allowed. You were either 100% on board with whatever crazy shit your local politicians threw against the wall or you were a pile of shit sub human scumball. Didn’t matter they had no definition of success, no long term gameplan, no acknowledgment of the harms they were causing… in fact it didn’t even matter that these experts and politicians didn’t follow their own policies, you were told to suck it up buttercup this is the “new normal” and it’s forever.

I don’t think this is a “both sides have a good argument” kind of deal. What the Covid “side” did was abhorrent and history will not look fondly on them at all.

[Zenzero]

> We were all told to shut the fuck up and listen to a handful of cherry picked “doomsday experts”

No, you were told to out aside your opinions and allow people educated in epidemiology to guide a rapidly changing situation. It turns out the there were too many people with a chip on their shoulder to make the policy recommendations effective.

> if we were to express any doubt of any kind, we were evil alt-right grandma killers who deserved horrible Covid deaths.

Pointless hyperbole.

> no acknowledgment of the harms they were causing

Such as?

> What the Covid “side” did was abhorrent and history will not look fondly on them at all.

Reading between the lines it seems like you have many baked in assumptions that distort your perception of the event.

[electrondood]

Thank you. The revisionism in this thread is ridiculous.

There was no oppressive regime forcing you to do anything. There were common sense, effective public health recommendations for mitigating a novel virus that spread faster than anything we'd seen, whose death rate was not known, and for which we had no vaccine or mitigation except for masking/distancing.

No one was forcing you to stay indoors. You were asked to wear a mask around other people, and most private businesses chose to require customers and employees to wear one, as is their right.

[Zenzero]

Exactly. It's maddening seeing all of these uneducated people spouting full throated delusions as fact and everyone else allows these people to have room to spread their nonsense.

Im frankly pretty shocked that HN, which usually has a relatively educated user base compared to most other sites, is allowing this kind of drivel from people who have no idea what they are talking about.

[aakresearch]

Eloquent primer on "cogent argument" which is totally not "rambling stream of anger and emotion". Perfect basis for a healthy, respectful debate.

I'm really sorry I did bite on this provocation, but hope your post stays up for everyone to see and make their own judgement.

[aakresearch]

What revisionism? There was nothing sensible, measured, effective, justified, "common sense" or genuine in the "response" to that "pandemic". I came to believe that it was not even well-intended beyond the first couple of months. No, in my book, authorities lying and manipulating to save their own arse and cover incompetence cannot be absolved or rationalized as well intended.

What you describe is the idealistic picture of how it, perhaps, should have unfolded. You may even genuinely believe it is what actually transpired, and sure as hell you want us to believe the same, but reality disagrees. We remember how it was and we "have receipts".

In Victoria (AU) people were definitely not "asked" but very much demanded to perform all these theatrics. I remember watching some news with police wallowing in pride of scolding and ultimately fining a man who they "caught" sitting in his own car "outside of property boundary" after curfew, apparently needed to escape a heated family situation. By sitting alone and unmasked in the car he would surely cause a mass-spreading of your beloved "virus". We were, in fact, forced to stay indoors. What is the other meaning of "curfew"?

In other multiple examples people were jumped from behind by police, tasered, hand-chocked and even rammed by police cars - again, for being found in "non-compliance" with this nonsense. There was no lack of footage showing people forcibly masked by police. Other measures included arresting people in their homes for "inciting" on social media, large scale deployment of armored vehicles, helicopters and drones to spy on those having BBQ "over allowed number of visitors". Tear gas and rubber bullets for transgressors. Mounted police "kettling" of protesters of such "measures". Care to quantify anti-viral properties of curfews?

We knew all there was to know very early in the show. Diamond Princess was perfect in-vivo experiment. A sardine can full of old farts had 700 out 3700 "infected". Pardon, "tested positive" - I imagine with a PCR test. I wonder was the PCR test at the time used at 40 cycles, which is enough to find traces of this "deadly virus" in orange juice and machine oil? Apparently 14 people later died "from" the "virus". Interestingly, both "tested positive" and "died" were reported after half- to one-and-half-months since vessel was fully abandoned. I can only conclude that those poor 14 were ventilated to death, as it was a preferred method of disposal at the time. Is it even so much over the "baseline" for 3000 septagenarians regardless of covid or any other malaise?

Epidemiology has proven itself to be full of it and unable to take on any new learnings. I suspect it was always like that. "People educated in epidemiology to guide a rapidly changing situation" were even unable to follow their own "guidance"! When they were "blowing off steam" in underground orgies or similarly unable to hold their urges. Do you need reference for that?

There was no justification for anything. Masks were mandated on a whim. Premier of the state went from "wearing a mask for this virus is a waste of mask" to "you are an extremist and far-right if you don't wear one" in one day. Some "health advice" was cited, but request to release that advice later on was denied, and denied it stays to this day. Apparently, it was "not in public interest" to release. Yeah, sure. I totally believe it wasn't pulled out of.. thin air.

On a personal front, not showing unbounded enthusiasm was branded "conspiratorial thinking" and "actively wanting 10% of over-60s dead". By people I considered friends, not less.

So, who really engages in revisionism and newspeak here? Who is an extremist - the one who shuns a useless mask or those who point a (rubber bullet) gun at them or break into their home with handcuffs? What is this derogatory, offending rhetoric spouted from highest level of political and bureaucratic power, if not gaslighting? Who is "spouting full throated delusions as fact"?

I cannot possibly fit all my points into this HN post, or I won't have any time left to work today. But for every bit of nonsense we have a pile of receipts completely refuting it. Even if some "measures" in isolation could be argued reasonable, the whole well was so deeply poisoned that it is absolutely impossible to look at it positively. My most charitable interpretation is that they wanted the measures to be first and foremost visible, and effectiveness or even necessity was not a priority. But my appetite for being charitable went away too, as the stench of their BS was overwhelming. It probably does not matter for establishing the truth, as the trenches have been dug out and the war is declared for many decades ahead. Covid enthusiasts' camp "won the battle" - we were all subjected to all these outlandish orders and demands. Did it help in the end? I do not understand. Not only they were successful with inflicting the maximum pain, but they also now demand us to remember it fondly??? Why? How twisted one's mind has to be? Or is it intoxication from the high of righteousness? Righteousness is a hell of drug, indeed.

If I may address the "such as?" insinuation in the GP post. I'm sure they aren't really genuine in wanting to hear the answer. Otherwise their claimed "education" would have allowed them to see at least some of reasons. If "education" doesn't stand for "brain-washing" and "indoctrination", as it mostly does these days, unfortunately. But I would like to point out at least some political harm. Prior to 2020 I didn't care about politics at all. I do not "consume" news, I didn't know my state's Premier name, and only know our federal PMs for the laughing stock they are, "left" and "right" alike. I can say I was largely onboard with "consensus" on "climate change" and an "ally" on most cultural "issues". But living through the stress of three-year-long torrent of vile, unadulterated lies not only broke my physical body (I developed a condition which will finish me much sooner than I would like), but also made me feeling so incredibly dirty for even remotely associating with that camp. If anything was "baked into my perception", it was by this experience only, not by my apriori position or any media influence. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to wash off this filth, but the only way I'll be able to live with myself and not to finish myself off before my condition does it for me is to deny, defy and sabotage every initiative of everyone who sits atop of this pyramid or wants to climb up to it. No matter how "educated" they are, it is now proven to me that they have less capacity to reflection and learning than even the worst LLMs of today. In fact, calling them "bots" or "NPCs" is an insult to bots or NPCs. In my opinion all they deserve is Nuremberg trial and guillotine, and by association all others who are willingly singing the same song.

[Zenzero]

As expected, instead of a cogent argument for why you believe what you do, you simply deliver a rambling stream of anger and emotion.

Fundamentally, COVID public health recommendations revolved around minimizing transmission and preservation of medical resources while awaiting development of treatment options. No amount of ranting about being forced to sit in your house, other people being mean to you, or political gamesmanship changes that. No amount of complaining about imperfect solutions like masking or distancing detract from the overall validity of why they were recommended.

As a doctor I have had to have this kind of talk with people over and over. The underlying biology cares zero for your schedule or convenience in life. Given how noncompliance is a constant problem on an individual healthcare level, it's not surprising that we ended up with millions of people just like you who can't follow simple instructions and formed communities in support of their collective failure to do so.

[AlexeyBelov]

You really, really need professional help.

[ben_w]

> What the Covid “side” did was abhorrent and history will not look fondly on them at all.

History will look on this the same way as it did on Spanish Flu:

Barely at all, even when it has valuable lessons for the next pandemic.

The former told me that people would stop wearing masks very very quickly.

[lc9er]

I’ll never understand the people that want their offense at being labeled a “Typhoid Mary” to be taken as seriously as their anti-social, Typhoid Mary behavior.

[aakresearch]

Mary Mallon's case was singled out of many more similar cases. She was treated unfairly and with prejudice. No wonder she behaved "anti-socially".

[ben_w]

Two people being treated unequally doesn't tell you who was being treated unfairly.

In her case, if there were indeed comparable cases of people repeatedly refusing to follow medical isolation, it's the others who were unfairly given freedom to continue to infect and kill innocent people.

[ben_w]

Mm.

Humans are social animals, I find a lot of things makes a lot more sense through that lens — shooting the messenger included.

[wruza]

Somehow? For some internally obvious reason I never expected that.

One person is clever, two can talk, a group is clueless and a crowd is an idiot. It is only expected that any non-standard regulation will meet all sorts of resistances and division across axes most of which will make no sense even.

Personally I believe that the best way to handle it is not an open information, but total social manipulation into FUD with proper control points. But that’s incompatible with democracy and all. It’s not because I’m an inherently bad anti-humanist, I just don’t see how that could work cause it’s absolutely naive. A crowd is a separate being from a human that stands in it, and it requires non-human interaction. Treating it as just a set of humans to whom you speak directly is an error.

[steve_adams_86]

I meant more so from an individual point of view. Any health authority literally did need to use forms of manipulation to get desirable results, but it’s clear from where I was looking that they did it with the express intent of saving lives at first. Eventually they had to work in a strange grey area where protecting lives and the economy was essential, and it often looked dubious because they didn’t clearly comply with their initial missions. At least in the US and Canada, it seems.

I was more disturbed by how individual people handled the situation, even with people they were close with. It was remarkable how rapidly relationships fell apart over covid. And slightly beyond that as well, into the “crowd” category, but like you say… That’s arguably more predictable.

[wruza]

Heh, welcome to humanity. It’s a very thin line we are closely revolving around and when it bends, all goes to hell. You were basically given a chance to see how complex, different and often obsolete or contradictory are the fundamental beliefs that drive people. That’s why you sometimes meet someone you can’t predict or understand (we tend to write it off and stick to our circle, thinking it’s just a deviation). Covid measures simply dropped a highly potent contrast into the society. It’s all smiles and flowers until a little change.

[steve_adams_86]

Welcome indeed. I can be cynical at times (I try not to be) but some aspects of how the pandemic played out truly surprised me. And confused me.

I like to think I know better now. But, I’m also reminded that I’m still young. I was 35, and way too accustomed to quiet Canadian life. The biggest news we saw over on this side of the country for a long time was a hockey riot, otherwise things happening elsewhere (generally speaking).

Then again, maybe the hockey riot was all I needed to know going into the pandemic, haha. I should have learned more from that.

[simianparrot]

What scares me so much about the Covid debacle is that despite all the information that's been coming out about how most of the restrictions placed on people -- like hindering people from gathering _outside in the sun_ -- and effectiveness of both pharmaceuticals and PPE's -- of which I won't name any because then I'll be booted out of here quite quickly I imagine -- despite all of this data, government hearings around the world, and respected studies.

Despite all that, people still cling to the fantasy that it was comply or be complicit in the death of anyone who died from covid.

You're absolutely right. It was and remains scary as all hell.

[josephg]

Early in the pandemic we just didn’t know what the death rate from Covid would be. 1%? 0.1%? Or maybe 10%? How many people get long covid, and how bad is it? Does it kill the old or the young? What is the death rate for people who get Covid, and can’t go to hospital because there are no beds?

If Covid were to wipe out 10% of the population, all the draconian measures make a lot more sense. Slow it down as much as possible, reduce pressure on hospitals and give scientists time to make a vaccine.

But it turns out the death rate from Covid wasn’t that bad - and Americans would, in hindsight, largely prefer a 1% (or whatever) mortality rate over the inconveniences of masks, staying at home, and so on. But a lot of things weren’t obvious early on like they are now. We didn’t know that.

If there’s another pandemic in our lifetime, there’s almost no chance society takes those preventative measures a second time. Let’s hope we don’t get something a lot more deadly.

[lukan]

"Does it kill the old or the young?"

We figured out very quickly, that mainly old people were at danger.

The lockdowns happened, when this was known for sure.

"If Covid were to wipe out 10% of the population, all the draconian measures make a lot more sense."

And no one even claimed back then, that a unhospitalised 10% death rate was expected.

In my understanding as a parent - the old in charge freaked out and locked everyone in, to protect mainly themself - yet the young generation suffered the most of it, despite not being at danger from the disease as well. So trying to prevent the collapse of the hospitals did made sense - but not the way it was done, at the expense of the younger generation.

[simianparrot]

Locking people indoors with limited ventilation and no UV radiation is never going to be a reasonable approach. Why? Because UV radiation kills viruses very fast and thus drastically reduces their capacity to spread between hosts. Not to mention the obvious factor of air circulation in a near-infinite dimension thinning out particles per cubic meter within seconds. Also turns out fresh air is generally good for sick people too. So is sunlight.

Studies on the coronavirus circulating showed this at the very beginning of 2020. And that’s just one of the anti scientific measures that were taken.

[josephg]

> Studies on the coronavirus circulating showed this at the very beginning of 2020.

This is only "obvious" with the benefit of hindsight. There was a mountain of rushed studies early on reporting all sorts of conflicting "facts" about covid. Of course using what we know now, you can look back and cherrypick a lot of great stuff from the pile of early results. But that doesn't mean you could have done the same thing in early 2020. How could you tell which studies to believe? Everything was rushed, had small sample sizes and nothing had been replicated yet.

At the start of 2020 it wasn't clear how long viral particles stayed airborne, and whether you could even contact covid from breathing it in, or if you needed physical contact of some sort. I remember one scare where people were worried you could catch covid from the cardboard used for amazon packages - before we realised covid dries out and dies if it lands on materials like that. Thats not true of all viruses.

Government policy, science and software share something in common: They can happen fast or happen well. You can only pick one. Rushed science gets small things wrong. Rushed software is buggy and brittle, and rushed government policy makes mistakes.

Its easy to forget, but the start of 2020 was a madhouse.

[GuB-42]

In the early 2020s, studies have shown everything and their opposite, so you can cherry pick anything that supports your view. I find it was a particularly interesting time because it showed how "messy" science really is. In normal times, you typically don't see scientific results before you have at least some amount of certainty. Some research get through the cracks (ex: LK-99), but not to the extent of what happened in the early days of the pandemic.

Also covid and other diseases spread well in open air summer festivals where UV is at its peak. And for covid specifically, we had peaks in the summer, where, again, people tend to get out and UV is high.

[empath75]

IMO we should have had more draconian lockdowns much sooner, when it would have slowed the spread more effectively, and we should have opened up much more quickly once the initial wave went through and it was clear that it had already spread every where. Especially the schools, once it was clear that kids weren't especially badly affected by it.

There's basically 4 categories of people that fucked up the discourse about lockdowns:

1) Health professionals who in a well-intentioned way recommended what _would actually work_ to stop the spread of the disease: ie -- a complete draconian lockdown, without considering what would happen if that draconian lockdown wasn't actually complete (that it would still spread quickly and widely)

2) Paranoid conspiracy theorists and anti-science types who believed that the lockdowns were part of some nefarious agenda.

3) People who wanted (and still want) a permanent lockdown for their own reasons -- whether for the valid reason that they have some kind of immune disorder or because of crippling social anxiety or introversion or because they just liked working from home

4) Professional doom sayers and rabble rousers who got engagement on social media from pushing apocalyptic scenarios (on both sides of the issue)

---

They were all so loud that like the rational voices in the room (ie: People who supported a lock down early and then wanted to open up more quickly as we learned more about how it spread and how it got treated) just got shouted down, with really negative consequences -- like how all the far right crazies got voted into school boards on this issue and then got into all kinds of stupid shit (banning books, etc). It was crazy to keep schools closed even after it was clear that the virus was in a pandemic stage and kids weren't really affected by it and schools weren't a major vector for transmission, and it was especially crazy to keep them closed after the vaccine came out.

Somehow people got in their mind that the goal was an eradication of covid and that _was never possible_ once it escaped Wuhan. The goal was the slow the spread until it was endemic in order to give us time to learn how to treat it effectively and to stop hospitals from being overwhelmed. Once it's was endemic, we were never going to stop it.

[Buttons840]

Wasn't a lot of the authoritarian concern around COVID based on the idea that "this is just the beginning, today they require masks, tomorrow they'll require implanted tracking devices"?

I think history will look at the COVID years and see a remarkable and worldwide pandemic, and society made some rules to try to deal with it, some of the rules may have been a bit much, or poorly informed, but after a few years things were back to normal.

I don't see COVID being more than a blip on any radar. If future historians analyze the history of authoritarianism, there will be lots of things more significant than the COVID years I think.

[likeclockwork]

Conspiracy theorists refusing to wear masks, which grant anonymity, made me realize that these people aren't actually paranoid they're just contrary.

[ben_w]

Good point.

I didn't make that particular leap, but it does also explain why none of the people "worried" that Gates put a microchip in the vaccines seem fussed about Musk developing an actual brain microchip.

[ben_w]

> Multiple people I knew and respected wished me a horrific death for expressing my opinions

Someone here took exception to me saying that I have never had any trouble with wearing masks, went and left a generically threatening comment on my blog.

> I mean god forbid anybody express any disagreement with perhaps the most authoritarian, unscientific power grab in human history. The shit that went down was pure evil.

Are you still talking about the wearing masks during a global pandemic that lowered global life expectancy by about 2 years, or to put it differently "killed between 1 and 3 times as many as the literal Holocaust"?

Because that's way out of touch if so.

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

[cruffle_duffle]

> wearing masks during a global pandemic that lowered global life expectancy by about 2 years, or to put it differently "killed between 1 and 3 times as many as the literal Holocaust"?

And forcing people to wear completely useless cloth masks for years did almost nothing to change those numbers. Same with virtually every single other non-pharmaceutical intervention.

Virus is gonna virus. You can’t stop it and even if you could it doesn’t make the means to do so ethical, legal or moral.

[ben_w]

There's a reason nurses and surgeons wear masks, and it isn't fashion. And calling it "cloth" is like saying "silicon" can't take pictures or do maths — surgical masks (when real and not scams to rip off emergency government funding) are carefully engineered specifically to be useful in this kind of context.

And we literally can and have made interventions that work on viruses. Even non pharmaceutical ones — that's one reason why condoms are so promoted.

Several non-pharmaceutical interventions have been demonstrated to be effective for covid, specifically. Real masks — N95 for example, not generic 'cloth' — were one of the ones that reduced probability of infection, with different probability depending on if your were measuring "person has virus and wears mask, probability they infect person at 2m distance in 5 minutes?" or "person wearing a mask and doesn't have virus, chance of them being infected when standing 2m from an infected person without a mask for 5 minutes?" and all the other combinations and variations because stats is hard.

They also work like this on influenza, IIRC, but not the common cold. That (not the imperfections) is on purpose, and is why medical staff wear them as standard.

Hand sanitizer, which sold out, as I understand it that didn't help at all with covid, but the memes around it probably reduced something else.

> even if you could it doesn’t make the means to do so ethical, legal or moral.

I have yet to meet a militant nudist — you are, after all, objecting to being forced to wear something you dismiss as "cloth", which is what your clothes are made of — but PPE seems to wind up a lot of people. Condoms, to use a previous example, but also seatbelts.

[simianparrot]

Nurses and doctors wear masks to protect the patient from their own moisture droplets which may contain contaminants when breathing or talking. Same with dentists.

Do note they don’t wear N95 masks so they can’t filter smaller particles like viruses. It’s just to protect you from their saliva and breath droplets and spreading larger bacteria.

N95 masks are fairly effective if worn precisely and close fitting, but barely anyone used those because they are harder to breathe in.

A cloth mask or thin medical mask does practically nothing except protect others from larger droplets.

[Hikikomori]

Do you also not wear seatbelts?

[jemmyw]

> I’m sure if we continued this conversation and it was allowed on this forum you too would verbally wish at my death

Do you think it might be personal rather than anything to do with your opinions?