611–620 of 695 posts
Well, these kids have basically been grounded for 2 years with no end in sight (lack of hope), and probably feel that it's BS or they're being gaslit given that the risks for their age group are low. Especially since their age group is prone to risk taking and have higher risk activities like learning to drive.
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Happened to a friend at work. Quiet neighborhood, the park is literally on the other side of the lazy street. He was watching his kid from his window when another parent called the police for an unsupervised child. Cue a real legal battle where they could have lost custody of their kid.
Just curious, how old were they?
Edit, looked it up: https://frontporchne.com/article/parents-threatened-jail-fre...
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Are you saying that CVS has been turning away brown people who want covid shots or are you just parroting rhetoric without really knowing or looking into the true root cause of this issue? Yes. My firsthand anecdotal conversations with black friends and family confirms that they are indeed smart enough and able enough to get the widely available covid shots. For free if that is an issue. Where is this black-person-fi…
Well it's wonderful all these black Americans you think so highly of live in states with good public transit so they can get to the pharmacy without a car, and have labor rights and money in the bank to take an unpaid day or two or three off of work to recover. It's even better they all have a smart device or personal computer and internet connection to make the appointment or even know it's available for free. What…
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I agree. But as political Kool Aid goes, talking about a nonexistent US "lockdown" is pretty mild. On the other hand, that this has become such a trope indicates that the stay at home suggestions ended up working. People who weren't paying close attention to details thought the suggestions did have the force of law, without there actually being such laws. (As an aside, I sympathize with small business owners and thin…
The stay at home orders worked because while the government couldn't "lockdown" individual citizens, they could lockdown just about everything else. During that initial period I stayed at home for most of the 2 weeks. Sure I could leave at any time but where would I go? The stores are closed, the gyms are closed, all public places are closed. I went out a few times to drive on the empty roads but the only reason I we…
You could still visit friends and family, public parks, or even have private parties. And since you weren't being physically pulled into work, you could visit distant friends/family or even go on vacation and stay in a hotel. I'm not saying you wanted to do any of these things given the pandemic, but it's fallacious to imply that you were only stuck at home due to government fiat.
As far as why they worked, I ran into enough people who thought such a recommendation had the force of law (and I wasn't going to correct them). At the time I had a bifurcated living situation and was concerned about doing the commute, but looking into it I could continue going about my routine as usual.
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>> The US, as far as I understand, has huge lockdowns and that may be the factor The US never really locked down after maybe the first two or three week period. The “lockdowns” we had were mostly performative and not really enforced. This is in huge contrast to some cities in Australia for example, where lockdowns were both prolonged (lasting months) and those violating them were smacked down consistently.
And every Australian I know was happy about it too. Australia is very similar to the US, but one difference is that they're less oppositional. Helps that it actually seemed to work though I'm surprised there hasn't been more objection to the lack of tourism. Of course, it's ineffective against omicron which is just too infectious to be stopped, and they aren't doing it now.
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I went to the emergency room after working from home for ~6 months when the pandemic hit. I was having severe chest pain, shaking uncontrollably, and feeling very uneasy. I thought something was really wrong, and ended up going to the emergency room, where they told me it was a panic attack, and everything was okay physically. Like you, it was also the first time I had experienced a panic attack and learned what it f…
I thought something was really wrong Yeah, the fear of death as they call it. I really didn't understand this phrase before, thinking it was something abstract. It's unlike any other feeling I've had, just off the charts. And I'm (was) not particularly the guy who is scared to watch a horror movie alone in the night.
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Good for you, you are in a situation where you are not reliant on a small business and it’s easy to follow advisories. There’s far more to life and jobs than that. As for how it’s inevitable - maybe it wasn’t, but look around you. An awful lot of destruction we did for questionable benefits. And I know that with the next pandemic, far less people are going to listen. To them, the credibility of experts has been perma…
How do you measure "questionable benefits"? As a Government you have to protect every single citizen. Lifes have been saved because of lockdowns, vaccination, masks, etc. Not doing that and letting everybody get Covid to see who survives is barbaric. I know that it's no seen that way in the US since this has been your culture but you should accept that it's not seen that way in civilized countries.
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80% isn't protection. 80% still gets you pregnant. Honestly, it's probably healthier for everyone to turn off the news for a half year, and did not worry about it. If you get sick, take care of it. If you don't, take care of those who do. Lose weight. Exercise. Eat healthy. Live your life. Build and nurture friendships. Find and improve hobbies. Grow your family. You'll be fine until you die. But you can die any and…
> If you get sick, take care of it. If you don't, take care of those who do. Hospitals were getting overwhelmed. So "taking care of it" for many was not as trivial as the usual flu. Consider that 40% of adults in the US are obese which is a complicating factor for unvaxed infection.
Self control and discipline suck, but there's no easy button to life. People wanted the Vax to be an easy button.
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>It has been one of the deadliest pandemics in history. By percentage of global population, I beg to differ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics It also overwhelmingly killed the very elderly, an age category which didn't even exist at the times of most of those other pandemics in the list.
There have always been 80 and 90 year olds in society.
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> The US policy response has been far more costly and destructive than it needed to be. As with many things, the US response combined all the worst parts of the left's reaction to the pandemic with all the worst aspects of the right's. We had ham-fisted lockdowns (of dubious effectiveness) that destroyed small business and harmed mental health while simultaneously we had a right-wing crackpot antivaccination movement…
The lockdown was a response to a completely unknown pathogen, presumably airborne, that was causing sickness globally. A “ham fisted lockdown” was completely justified to protect everyone while we figured out what was going on. I love everyone trying to play epidemiologist or public policy coordinator like they know what they’re talking about; what hubris.
For the first two weeks, the lockdown was indeed completely justified. But it's completely unjustified that it lasted so much longer than that, now that we know what's going on (in particular, there's some places with lockdown rules still in effect today, 2 years later).