[mvdtnz]

I wonder if COVID revealed to Americans how toxic their individualistic culture is. For a long time it kind of seemed like individualism was working well for you but COVID was the first crisis since WW2 where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together and it really just fell apart.

I'd be miderable too if I learned my entire worldview, and that of my countrymen, was dangerously wrong and there's no way to really fix it.

[chasd00]

> where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together

There was no asking, if the country was asked then the term "lockdown" wouldn't have been used. On the other hand, there were no soldiers on the street forcing everyone inside. People chose to do it and maybe that's where the social strife really comes from, people realized they just do what they're told by authority and they're not the free-thinking individuals they thought they were.

I'm still amazed at the level of total, blind, compliance of the US population. I expected riots in the streets but there was nothing. At least traffic was less. And HN was especially depressing, any mention of "lockdowns" maybe not being the best idea or what Sweden was doing was totally shouted down. I'll never forget that.

[array_key_first]

Riots in the streets because you have to wear a piece of cloth on your mouth and stand slightly farther away from people?

I don't know how people are so delusional to think lockdown was a lockdown. Did we... did we have the same COVID?

I went to work every day, in person, at a restaurant. I served people every day, in person, at said restaurant. I went shopping at the grocery store. I went to the park, to the mall. These were all "essential jobs", somehow.

The only thing that changed is they put those little stickers on the ground telling people where to stand. Oh, and I wore a mask.

[anthonypasq]

part of the issue with Covid is that it was highly state dependent so everyone is talking past each other and accusing people of gaslighting and memory holing stuff.

if you lived in Texas, many people would agree with your assessment. I lived in Massachusetts and I can tell you that was not at all my experience. All communal venues including the beach???? were shut down. there was extreme social pressure to never step outside. I know this sounds like a made up story, but i literally had friends accuse me of killing their grandmother because I as a healthy 24 year old wanted to go to a concert AFTER vaccines were available.

If you lived in a primarily liberal culture, the authoritarianism, virtue signaling and hypocrisy were completely insane.

my little brother didnt get a senior year of highschool or freshman year of college, and yet people like you claim the only thing that happened was people didnt want to put a piece of cloth over their mouths. Its extremely disingenuous and i can tell you my brother has not been the same since covid.

[hirvi74]

> If you lived in a primarily liberal culture, the authoritarianism, virtue signaling and hypocrisy were completely insane.

Perhaps so, but in 2020-2023, it appears that the harsh imposition of Massachusetts was not in vain when compared to states like Texas, for example.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/covid19.html

Sure, correlation does not imply causation, but correlations do imply associations.

> Its extremely disingenuous

It is also extremely privileged and entitled. More Americans died from Covid in a few years than the sum of US solider deaths in all US wars combined from 1776-2026.

[anthonypasq]

IDK why i bother but ill bite.

> Perhaps so, but in 2020-2023, it appears that the harsh imposition of Massachusetts was not in vain when compared to states like Texas, for example.

if youll notice, the difference in death rates only diverges in 2021. in 2020, both states were the same color. this is because the only thing that actually solved covid was vaccines, and republicans were dumb as shit to think the vaccines didnt work.

> It is also extremely privileged and entitled. More Americans died from Covid in a few years than the sum of US solider deaths in all US wars combined from 1776-2026.

this is a complete non-sequiter to the thing i was calling disingenuous. it is disingenuous to say that the people who had issues with the US policy response to covid was simply that they were whiny babies who wouldnt wear a mask. My brother literally had 2 of the most important years of his childhood completely ruined.

besides the fact that this comparison is so dumb on so many levels, (like comparing any death toll to number of 9/11's a day), yes it is tragic that so many people died of covid. But again, the primary failure there was people not getting the vaccine.

[giardini]

So how did Sweden do vis-a-vis the USA?

[tayo42]

There were riots in the streets, it was just over another black guy being killed by a racist cop though.

[chasd00]

yeah and remember when those gatherings/protests got a thumbs up from the CDC but having friends over for dinner was off the table? God, what a ridiculous time that was.

[ceejayoz]

Almost like outside and inside are different, eh?

[embeng4096]

So why were public outdoor areas like skate parks filled with sand to “promote social distancing”?[1] Or parking lots at beaches and state parks closed “to curb the spread of coronavirus”?[2]

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/coronavirus-san-clem...

[2]: https://calmatters.org/health/coronavirus/2020/03/coronaviru...

[ceejayoz]

> So why were public outdoor areas like skate parks filled with sand to “promote social distancing”?

Because we didn't know better yet. Note the date; April 17, 2020; just a couple weeks in.

Restrictions on outdoor activities were rapidly lifted once we got a handle on how spread happened.

[suttontom]

The hypocrisy was most notable in experts who said those protesting against the lockdowns (outside), who were considered right wing, were risking spreading the disease, but then said the opposite when the protests supported a left-wing narrative.

Also the CDC who said you had to stay six feet apart even outside who then were OK with people gathering close together during protests and shouting (specifically called out by the CDC as a risky behavior).

[ceejayoz]

We do a lot of risk/reward balancing in life. Maybe we can discuss specific cases, if you like, but "I want to whine about public health restrictions" and "someone got murdered by the state" perhaps have different risk/reward profiles.

We know ventilation matters. Public health officials flubbed this one pretty reliably; schools and doctors' offices should've had HEPA filters in every room instead of clorox wiping everything obsessively. Outdoor protests, in hindsight (and of either kind), were a nothingburger for COVID spread.

[guzfip]

> people realized they just do what they're told by authority and they're not the free-thinking individuals they thought they were

Nah, no one who seriously thought this has come around to the truth.

[nephihaha]

Lockdown, not "Covid". And that Covid lockdown was a little taste of the extreme form of top down collectivism. (Covid was around both before and after the lockdowns.)

The USA got off lockdown lightly in the main. Continental Europe, Canada and Australia all went nuts with it. Especially the Northern Territory and State of Victoria.

[chasd00]

> top down collectivism

The Dallas County judge was driving my neighborhood berating people for walking their dogs and telling them to get inside. It was totally insane, i couldn't believe what I was seeing. I met him at a fundraiser once and asked him why he wasn't wearing a mask. My wife's friend (hosting the fundraiser) asked me to leave. His little hobby authoritarian regime during that time was the stupidest thing i'd ever seen but what made me the most angry/shocked is everyone just complied.

/I live in Dallas, TX. The judge is Clay Jenkons https://www.dallascounty.org/government/comcrt/jenkins/

[watwut]

But Europeans and Canadians and Australians are not nearly as much "traumatized" by idea that OMG lockdown happened due to covid.

The complete societal inability to adapt seems to be bigger issue in USA.

Neither Europe nor Canada are as much affected despite having more lockdowns. It was not lockdown as such, but something else about Americans

[ryandrake]

Interesting how the stay-at-home orders were much more serious and enforced outside of the USA, yet it was the USA that complained and moaned about them the most. Nobody was forcing us to stay inside our homes, and a lot of people ignored the order and went out anyway. Yet, so many Americans were absolutely outraged and indignant and complaining about Their Freedom, at the minor inconvenience of having their favorite restaurant closed.

[jerlam]

The US may have had the most visible polarization about it. We had a President threatening to "open up the states" while state governors issued more and more restrictive orders. Depending on what news media you watched, there were ERs filled with bodies or there were people on the beach enjoying their spring break.

The contradictory messages from every levels of government for years did a lot to break the underlying faith in the system.

[nephihaha]

"it was the USA that complained and moaned about them them"

There were protests in China but most people never got to hear about them due to heavy censorship. In Australia, indigenous youth started to "go bush" for the first time in many years to avoid living like that. There were also anti-lockdown protests in various countries which were subjected to media blackout. In Australia when their truckers tried to organise protest, internet and phone service was withdrawn from them.

Many more things we never got to hear about.

[nephihaha]

It happened due to government not to Covid. A virus is not a conscious being, it cannot order lockdowns and would continue regardless of whether there was one or not.

By the way, the UK is in a complete mess due to Covid. It destroyed at least a seventh of its businesses. Probably more when we omit the ones that died off in 2022- as a delayed result of it.

There were truckers' protests in Canada and Australia (the latter resulting in internet and phone signals being cut in some areas.)

[pb7]

Europeans, Canadians, and Australians are used to living in nanny states that dictate their lives.

[hirvi74]

People will complain that the government did too little or too much, but the key is that people will always complain.

[nephihaha]

They have the right to, and sometimes they will be justified in their complaints.

Some people will also obey whoever is in charge. History bears that out.

[traderj0e]

But individualism turned out to be ok in that case. By the time vaccines were out, it had already mutated enough that it didn't make much of a difference whether or not people vaccinated, and most people ended up getting some variant of it. The bickering stopped, and US ended lockdowns around the same time as other countries.

If we were less lucky and it turned out to be super deadly and only solvable with more cooperation, that would fall apart here.

[tzs]

> By the time vaccines were out, it had already mutated enough that it didn't make much of a difference whether or not people vaccinated, and most people ended up getting some variant of it.

Vaccines made a huge difference in whether or not when you ended up getting it you got a severe case with a significantly higher risk of hospitalization or death or got a case that was just in the mild to really annoying range.

[Geee]

Actually the less collectivist approaches e.g. Sweden caused much less trouble.

[anon291]

I mean this is just silly. If anything, America was more communal than most countries during covid, as churches, clubs, gyms, continued to meet, even if in secret. Except for the extremists, no one really cared to be honest.

If anything, it made me realize how uninterested in being governed Americans are, and how pervasive this attitude is. Lest you think it's all 'MAGA' types, consider my brother who lives on the Central Coast of California in a heavily hispanic enclave. We visited a few times.

Despite California being one of the strictest states, I don't think there was a single sign or signal that anything was going on. My sister-in-law's large hispanic family continued to hold every family event indoors or at parks, without masking, or anything. We had a great time with the cousins.

Our church continued to meet in secret, flaunting the spirit of the law, if not the letter, and people were fine. COVID ran through once at the beginning, and then we were just there laughing at the government. Great bonding time honestly.

[Geee]

Individualism means voluntary cooperation. Collectivism is state-imposed forced cooperation. Decentralized vs. centralized. It's a common misconception that individualism means no cooperation; actually it means that each individual can choose who they want to cooperate with.

[array_key_first]

This isn't how most people would define individualism and collectivism, I think.

Individualism is the propensity to do whatever is best for the individual, even if it hurts the collective. Collectivism is the propensity to do what's best for the collective, even if it hurts the individual.

Wearing masks and social distancing helps the collective. But because Americans are highly individualistic, and doing so is ever so slightly less convenient than not doing so, many people decided not to wear masks or social distance.

Oftentimes what is best for the individual and what is best for the collective are one and the same. That is the only reason America works at all. COVID was not one of those times.

[anon291]

Does it matter what the cause is for the purpose of the social benefits of community?

[cucumber3732842]

>consider my brother who lives on the Central Coast of California in a heavily hispanic enclave. We visited a few times.

On a local level covid restrictions seem to have had as much to do with economics as they did politics.