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I suppose your gcentral point is that "A lot more outrageous things other than the covid response are concurrently being done, why devote so much bandwidth to that?"
You can reach that conclusion if you think the covid response is entirely in the domain of politics. Which it more or less has been. Evidenced by the vastly different restrictions by country/region.
However, here's a counterpoint. It shouldn't have been. And that is very hard for people to swallow. The covid fiasco turned me into a conflict theorist.
Covid is an outside threat. Its the natural world vs humans. If there was ever any time for all sides of the political aisle to cooperate, it was against against covid. It was prime time for mistake theorists to shine. As opposed to immigration, foreign conflict or almost any other CW issue; the threat of covid could have been minimized using hard scientific metrics. Just argue out the methods, tally up the costs and benefits, let the process of "doing science" deal with it, problem solved....
LMFAO that totally happened! Instead we got vibes based methods (mask mandates, they just work), copying CCP with no regard for cost/benefits (lockdowns), shit that makes no sense (travel bans after local spread), multiple instances absolute retardism (killing 17 million minks ???), LIES LIES LIES (lab leak hypothesis, vaccines 1,2,3,4,5,6,9000), I think I don't need to reiterate any further, its a dead horse.
It showed that being correct or effective is worth noting at all. It's all about the vibes. Our ideas are amazing their ideas are icky. It's nice when our ideas work too, but that's secondary. What you really need is social capital. You need people to get the right vibes off of you, and you can do whatever you want, you are the science!
I suppose if you were sufficiently jaded, this wouldn't have been nothing new. But I and many others were probably not as jaded. Some of us thought that problems will be solved using the most objective means possible with regards to practicality and efficiency and etc, you know.. competence ?
Having that illusion broken was a watershed moment for me. I still continue to talk about covid because it possibly can't be like this, all the way down. There has to be some hope right?
It is absolutely like this all the way down. And indeed that is the only way it can be. The curtain must remain undisturbed, the sausage factory must not be observed. It is only the fictional layer of "Surely they know what they are doing" that keeps our society together at all. There are not truths that keep us together. Only lies. Which is why they have to be protected. That is where your hope lies I think.
Consider this. The original UK response was very muted. They were going to let it burn through. Very little contact tracing, no lockdowns. 6 weeks later they climbed down and changed tactics. Why?
"Initially, Prime Minister Boris Johnson largely kept Britain open, resisting the kind of lockdowns seen elsewhere in Europe. In a speech on 3 February, Johnson's main concern was that the "coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage".[30] On 11 February, a "senior member of the government" told the ITV journalist Robert Peston that "If there is a pandemic, the peak will be March, April, May" and, further, that "the risk is 60% of the population getting it. With a mortality rate of perhaps just over 1%, we are looking at not far off 500,000 deaths".[31] On 8 March, Peston reported that the government believed the Italian government's approach to lockdown to be based on "several of the populist – non-science based – measures that aren't any use. They're who not to follow".[32] "
** and then**
"The slogan "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" was first suggested internally in a government conference call on 19 March, days before they imposed a full national lockdown.[citation needed] The slogan was introduced concurrently with the national lockdown imposed on 23 March, ordering the public against undergoing non-essential travel and ordering many public amenities to close."
Because MPs were getting their inboxes flooded with emails and letters about doing nothing. The public faith was shaken. People like politicians who "do something" and so something had to be done. The faith of the public is essentially the only important thing, and while you can influence that, it is a wild beast and cannot be tamed entirely. Sometimes you have to let the herd have its head so to speak.
The theatre in security theatre is and always has been the most important part. And for that, the suspension of disbelief must be maintained. People must think it is effective even if it isn't. Because the truth that there is very little one can do is too much. And it is the same for Covid. The reason most nations ended up going the same way is not because they were particularly authoritarian in and of themselves (see the UK initially deciding not to) but because it is what their populace wanted. But you can't say that out loud because that destroys the illusion. So you move from:
"On 11 March, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England Jenny Harries said that the government was "following the science" by not banning mass gatherings. She also said, on face masks, "If a healthcare professional hasn't advised you to wear a face mask... it's really not a good idea and doesn't help""
**to **
"Essential travel included food shopping, exercise, medical attention, and travelling for necessary work, which included those working in the healthcare, journalism, policing, and food distribution industries.[66] To ensure that the lockdown was obeyed, all shops selling "non-essential goods", as well as playgrounds, libraries, and places of worship, were to be closed.[67] Gatherings of more than two people in public were also banned, including social events, such as weddings, baptisms and other ceremonies, but excluding funerals.[68]"
We are capable of great things in the service of shared illusions. As long as we don't look down, we can walk on air. But we are also herd animals and it is what the herd sees and does not see that counts.
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Covid measures are very much the equivalent of TSA, the Patriot Act, Shock and Awe, and terror threat levels for people born after 1999 or so. A wakeup call that "respectable" organs of society are often (a) incompetent, run by gladhanding careerists who are trying to implement policies that make themselves look useful while filling the political checkboxes they've been handed (b) cynically trying to push through unpopular reforms by not letting a good crisis go to waste.
Reflecting on Covid (or the War on Terror) is useful. There's a good saying that goes something like "Who you are in adversity is who you always were." Well, the government you see in a crisis is the government you always have.
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