This would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking true.
Hurts too much to make me laugh.
Oh, this reminds me. I was asked to go to a Chiropractic “doctor” this weekend for a check up. That’s nonsense to begin with, but I went anyway.
She asked about my back hurting, and I mentioned that I threw it out really badly when I got COVID a year or two ago, and was stuck in bed coughing super hard for a week. Her immediate response was “I’ve heard the vaccine can do that.”
… Like, fucking what? How god damn stupid do you have to be to hear “I threw my back out coughing really hard.” and instantly try to insert your anti-science bullshit into the conversation?
Chiropractor. Stupid. Anti-science bullshit.
You repeat yourself.
Oh man it gets worse. Medicine is so fucked now.
My (telehealth) doctor noted my testosterone is a little low and suggested I use another online practitioner for testosterone replacement therapy since they can’t do that from their practice.
She gave me a few places to check out (from her companies list, she didn’t personally vet them).
They all have some anti-science bullshit or “As seen on JRE/Infowars”.
I’m like…yeah, I’m not doing any of that. I’ll try diet, exercise, and proper sleep first. I’m not giving any of them my money, patronage, or information.
Gross, definitely fuck them.
It makes total sense from a cynical profit-first standpoint though. Where can I get the best bang for my buck reaching damaged young men who desire so much to be manly and alpha, but feel so inadequate inside they must do something about it? And they have to be conditioned to eat up bullshit they want to hear.
I had the same thing except from an in-clinic consult about my general health.
Testosterone supplementing was presented like “Well levels vary to each man but some do a little better with more so it could help your endurance and energy levels.”
Ok sure, why not? They’re a doctor right? Trust experience? Trust science? All that?
I got a shot 2 or 3 times but then quit it. I’m so freaking glad I did, after I discovered all these accounts about it causing heart problems, possibly reproductive issues, and all this other crap. It was difficult to find someone who was actually glad they did it.
Happy with the hormone levels I’ve got, thank you very much.
I felt so scammed, like I was just used as some “lead” for another clinic to profit from me over something that potentially would cause a ton of long-term harm.
When looking for a pediatrician for my kid, we shopped around because we don’t want an idiot treating them. One doctor’s nurse looked us straight in the eyes and said “We follow a strict vaccine schedule for children, will you have a problem with that?”.
Yeah, we found our pediatrician that day.
If you want a bone medic go to the traumatologist, not those shaman-like chiropractors
A shaman would be a step up because I don’t think shamans actively make anything worse.
I don’t get why anyone would want to be a chiropractor.
Nurse: 4 years of schooling, high salary (yes it should be higher), useful to everyone around you in medical situation, good benefit packages, respected, and you can do so much with that degree.
Chiropractor: 6 years of schooling, salary is low, useless in a medical situation, terrible benefits, not respected, and the only thing you can do with that degree is what you “trained” for.
Become a nurse instead!
The fact that Chiropractic is pseudoscience; realigning your spine to allow magical spirit energy to flow better, because they think every single aliment from acne to cancer is caused by blocked chi flow, isn’t enough?
Are you saying a ghost can be wrong? ;)
😆
I was a teenager and was having back issues. My mother sent me to a chiropractor, which I didn’t know was a bunch of bullshit back then. She took an X-ray of my spine (how is that legal?) and told me she’d fix the issue in my upper back. I told her the pain was in my lower back and she kept insisting that no, it was an upper back problem that I needed to be treated for.
And that was when I realized it was all bullshit.
Now I know that it was come up with by a guy who said he got the information from a ghost. Seriously.
I was super mad when I went to a new dentist after my last one retired and he prescribed me homeopathic medicine.
A chiropractor once gave my mom homeopathic pills. I was a kid and didn’t even know what homeopathy was at the time, but she gave me one and I said, “mom, this is sugar.” She tried to argue with me about it and I kept telling her I know what sugar tastes like.
Nicely done. The best case scenario is sugar. Most of the time, it’s nothing but water, and maybe a single drop of 100x already diluted more water, that maybe once had something non-water in it. That is, of course, assuming the machines doing the literal magic shaking didn’t spill the “active ingredient”.
I’m curious. What for? Something non-dental the dentist noticed or something dental-related?
I hope you used homeopathic payment.
Given them payment in diluted dollar water.
“I set this bottle of dasani by a bank for like three months so it would absorb the essence of currency. Don’t trust ‘big money’ out there with their ‘coke covered paper.’ This is organic! Water is natural!”
Measles, that old-timey disease we didn’t really think about as kids because of vaccinations. Welp, that’s coming back. Thanks to fucking idiots.
It’s coming back thanks to those vaccine mandates that were brought in.
You don’t put people at ease about a new vaccine by saying “you must have it otherwise you can’t participate in society”. That has the opposite effect and makes people even more reluctant and sceptical. It also gives anti-vaxxers more ammo for their nonsense that they can spread online.
All that combined has led to a big increase in vaccine hesitancy and scepticism, and the worst thing is that it’s now harming kids as a result.
There’s always one!
I hate to break to to you, but public health policy does not and should not consider the opinion of lunatics. I legitimately cannot believe this isn’t obvious.
Always one what?
Someone trying to justify allowing soft policy on vaccinations.
I don’t think it’s controversial to be against forced medication.
At least it never used to be.
See this is exactly why people are calling you out. We’ve seen this exact same bullshit so many times where it’s just like “oh we are being reasonable and just asking questions and doing due diligence” but they you always end up with the loaded language of “forced vaccinations” and “product testing.”
Yes, in the middle of a pandemic, where people were dropping dead and entire medical systems were on the verge of collapse, timelines might have been advanced a bit. Your incredibly privileged language manages to leave that part out somehow, and replaced these very justifiable motivations with unfounded malevolence. It’s frankly insulting to those traumatized by not only the pandemic, but these selfish and toxic attitudes.
And the worst part? You were proven wrong. Again. None of your concerns were validated. The vaccines were a miracle which brought us out of an extremely dark time. There was no corporate malevolence, no serious side effects, just good science and better outcomes. But still, for some reason, you will cling to your utterly selfish positions and bullshit concern trolling, and that’s why everyone is pissed off at you. Because you’ve clearly learned nothing, and will obviously force all of this same nonsense on us the next time there is a tragedy.
My concerns? What were my concerns?
I’m talking about trying to prevent diseases coming back due to increased vaccine scepticism that started with governmental COVID responses. I wasn’t sceptical of the vaccines and nowhere did I say I was.
no serious side effects
Not widespread, but none at all is patently untrue. There will always be serious side effects in rare cases in any medication.
The person you are talking to isn’t an anti-vaxxer though. They are pointing out that vaccine mandates are questionable at best in terms of ethics. The campaign to push vaccines was also fraught with issues that helped create more antivaxxers.
The anti-vaxxers are lunatics, yes. But they always were and it doesn’t really matter what they think.
But you think anyone who felt a slight concern about a brand new vaccine was a “lunatic”? These people needed reassurance, not “Do as you’re fucking told, idiot”. The fact people can’t see this baffles me.
Problem is those people didn’t want to listen to doctors who had the nuanced view of “there might be issues with a vaccine which development we’ve had to accelerate, but the alternative of not taking it is demonstrably worse for everyone”, they only wanted to listen to the people who shared their position.
My healthcare professionals: “it is mRNA, it creates the spike protein and then is gone from your system in a matter of hours. Those proteins trigger an immune response that works as an inoculation.”
Vs.
Guys on the internet: “the mRNA is experimental gene therapy that will alter your DNA and make your ovaries or testes grow spikes like a chestnut. It crosses the blood/brain barrier and gives you Creutzfeldt–Jakob.”
I feel you. The psychological aspect of crisis management was a complete disaster because it was made yet another political battleground and news panic sensation. The lack of nuance in this discussion even today is proof of that.
It was so mishandled and used for politics that they were desperate and heavy-handed because it was already allowed to go wildly out of control.
I understand vaccines have worked for many years and are a wonder of medical science. I’m all caught up. I also know all the conspiracies about microchips and “5G receptors” and other ludicrous claims are obviously bunk.
But even I had to pause for a second when, in the middle of a tornado of bullshit from every direction, they’re like “You better get this pharma-corporation-product injected soon as possible or else.”
Like, it just automatically triggers that “You can’t make me” response in everybody. I got over that, but in a country that has such abysmal education already, and a ton of people who fill that education gap with Facebook? Holy crap. Misinformation was a viral pandemic as well.
I can pity and empathize with people, not the crazy ones pushing stupid insane agendas, but the ones who were simply confused and panicked, especially with how often we’re burned by megacorpos on the daily.
To people who don’t understand the details, it had a feeling of beta testing. “Uh, we rushed this through. Just take it, we’ll worry about potential side effects later!”
Such a mess.
All of this is absolutely right.
The last 8 years or so in the political landscape has turned everything into “us vs them”. The election of Trump in the US, and the EU referendum here in the UK started it all off and it has just spread since.
It’s sad, because everyone now sees someone with the opposite opinion as being the “enemy”.
Like, it just automatically triggers that “You can’t make me” response in everybody.
Maybe it triggers that in people with like an oppositional-defiant personality disorder.
If your response to someone telling you to do something is “I don’t want to because you told me” rather than assessing if the thing is a good idea, you’re an idiot. Get help. See a therapist.
For real. When there’s a new illness spreading across the globe and the medical community says, “we have this new vaccine, everyone should take it but we only have enough for high-risk groups right now. Everyone else continue to quarantine” my reaction was not “well now I’m not doing any of that” it was “sweet, we’re almost through this.”
Hindsight is great when you can distill it down so simply as a clear, coherent message coming from a reliable single point of trust! Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy back then.
I didn’t mind the staying home (although I was privileged enough to be paid to do so for at least the beginning, as everyone should have been.)
I concluded that the logic behind some secret plot was hilariously full of holes…
…BUT, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not consider the possibility that maybe a rushed corporate product was contracted and pushed through normal channels way faster than usual. Why? Because Capital was losing money, and the ownership class wanted to hurry and shove everyone back into offices as quickly as possible. (The same ownership class that paid us ‘essential workers’ in pithy piano-tracked commercials instead of money)
We’re immensely fortunate the vaccines worked like they always have, but at the time it was a series of mixed messages and uncertainty and noise, and that was just from trustworthy sources! Not even counting all the ones masquerading as such and people with cabin-fever wanting to pick fights over the Internet and crazy family members.
We agree the vaccine made sense and it was a useful tool that saved countless lives, and if we had a consistent trustworthy source of information much sooner like other countries had, instead of the crackpot reality show that is American news, many more could have been saved. So I don’t get all the down votes for simply saying “It was a scary time and there was lots to be concerned about.”
Maybe realizing it’s impossible to be 100% right about everything scares people, idk.
I consider any person who thinks they know better than the medical professionals a lunatic, yes.
Problem here is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Your brush is simply too big.
Yes when a vast majority of the medical community at many levels achieves hard-debated, critically vetted consensus, awesome, we can generally make that bet, and someone who graduated from “school of hard knocks” would be a lunatic to disagree because they wouldn’t have any grounds to do so.
But unfortunately what’s also true and rational, is that medical professionals are highly fallible, and we have a problem of credentialism where we’re inclined to trust anybody in a labcoat with a medical degree.
Turning everybody into zombies? No. (Although I love Resident Evil lmao), but I wouldn’t blame someone who’s gut reaction was “Wait, are we being used for free product testing?” Because the privatized medical community is rife with profiteering skullduggery and villainy, if not simply dangerous incompetence.
Yes, trust research and doctors, but also don’t do so blindly.
Medical professionals also said that Thalidomide was safe for pregnant women to take, and it turns out it very much wasn’t.
This is the kind of thing that leads to that concern about any new medication.
It’s coming back thanks to those vaccine mandates that were brought in.
Nah, it’s because the US is full of whiny babies who don’t want to recognize other people’s authority and expertise over their whims, and rather have disease and mass murders than let other people say to them there is a better course of action.
This is not a US-only problem.
This is mainly US problem
No. It’s called people aren’t scientists and they are NOT qualified to make decisions regarding public health. Shut the fuck up and do what you are told. If you can’t find peace in knowing that someone is smarter in the field of biology and sociology, get a therapist and talk to them.
Shut the fuck up and do what you are told. If you can’t find peace in knowing that someone is smarter in the field of biology and sociology, get a therapist and talk to them.
People say this and seriously don’t see how this messaging might not be all that encouraging to people.
I want more people to get vaccinated for diseases. This is not how to go about it, as society is now demonstrating.
I’m not trying to encourage anyone. There are rules to society and people are having full on temper tantrums rather than accepting the rules. I’m just sick of fighting over things they are not qualified to assess. It is insulting to everyone that goes to school for a decade to save their life, do the research, come up with a solution and then “dO yOu KnOw WhAt’S rEaLlY iN iT?!”
You seem to be only thinking of the anti-vaxxers and the types of people who won’t get vaccinated whatever happens.
I’m talking about the people who are just apprehensive, for whatever reason that may be. Getting angry with them isn’t going to help anything.
Also, vaccine mandates for COVID were not endorsed by the doctors or scientists due to them being counter-productive to getting more people vaccinated: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2957/rr-1#:~:text=Evidence does not justify mandatory,to informed choice | The BMJ
Who is the House of Lords? And this is from 3 years ago.
One of the British houses of Parliament
Hey, if people don’t want to get their kids vaccinated, that should absolutely be their decision. It’s a shitty decision, but I do believe that parents should have the authority to decline.
That being said, if they choose not to vaccinate, their children should absolutely be banned from any public school or community rec league sports, or anyone else publicly funded.
And the private institutions that focus on children (day cares, private schools, etc.) should have a requirement in their license agreement where all children they serve must be vaccinated as well or else they lose their licensing.
Basically going non-vax should be handled in a way similar to how they should handle these idiot sovereign citizens: sure, you don’t have to have your vehicle registered or interacted or even plated…but if you choose not to do that, you better keep it on your own property. The minute you turn onto a public road we’re gonna throw the book at you.
I get what you’re saying, but what you’ve described isn’t really giving people a choice. Even if that choice they’re making in not vaccinating their kids is a bad one.
Wrong.
It’s absolutely a choice. It’s just a choice with consequences.
Anti-vaxxers always seem to want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to enjoy the benefits of herd immunity and participation in society without doing the things that society agrees upon to keep everyone safe and healthy.
Decisions have consequences, and those who would make decisions that put others at risk should be the ones to bear the burden of the consequences of their decisions.
How is it a choice when you can get fired for not having a vaccine? You live in a society that requires people to be employed in order to survive. If you need a vaccine to be employed, then it is not a real a choice at all.
I AGREE! Even though before Covid we also couldn’t participate in things like travel or schooling or sometimes even workout with the Right Vaccine!
“BUT MAH FREEDOMS!”
They’re free to die however they choose. Or however death chooses them.
Or forced to die however their parents choose for them.
That’d be fine if they didn’t infect people who can’t protect themselves and didn’t ask for it. Plus it would have been cool to have wiped another disease off the face of the planet.
I was assaulted by a family member for not giving “IV Ivermectin” to someone with COVID who I had just crash intubated (honestly thought they were going to code, but somehow didn’t) back during the Delta wave.
My view of humanity has gotten pretty pessimistic since COVID. If I had the guts I’d honestly love to go create an insulated community of people who actually think about stuff and want to help each other.
Yeah, covid broke my faith in humanity. When we encounter a real global threat that could wipe us off the face of the planet, we will not rise to the occasion and band together.
Climate change, disease, aliens, asteroids, a super volcanic eruption. Just not gonna happen the way it’s portrayed in movies.
And it’s this weird thing where a decent percentage of humanity was working super hard to save everyone else—did save most everyone else—and a ton of people are just going on about the “Fauci Ouchie” and nanochips.
The general public has no idea how many people we saved with the mRNA vaccines and critical care medicine. They’re blatantly oblivious to it. The death toll would’ve been monumentally worse without a coordinated effort of public health, healthcare, and research. Yet no one has any idea. COVID was simultaneously one of humanity’s greatest unrecognized accomplishments and one of its greatest blunders.
If you’ve ever read or watched The Expanse series I feel like it’s spot on as far as humanity’s response to disasters.
Turns out conservatism was the real plague all along.
I still see “heroes work here” banners outside of healthcare facilities and nursing homes. I imagine a number of the low-paid and overworked staff say “fuck you, pay me more” every time they drive by too.
Covid was the most terrifying time of my life (i know covid itself is still here). I have a severe health anxiety disorder and a single ache of spot on my body can instantly convince me i have a terminal cancer or illness and i WILL die. After about a year i finally build up all courage to go to the supermarket with my partner, wearing a good fitting mask. We stood at the checkout and this guy asked another guy who wasn’t wearing a mask, and standing waaaay to close to them, to please keep his distance and to please wear a mask. The guy instantly got aggressive and knocked the man out for asking him to please keep distance and wear a mask. I didn’t go anywhere again.
I still struggle with all of this. After 2016 it felt like people got a free pass for conspiracy and fascist shit. I’m from europe but the trump presidency had a big influence here too. So many conspiracies that trump shouted got popular over here and fascist parties got A LOT more popular. Hell, a fascist party won the election here less than a year ago.
I lost a lot of hope and love for humanity. But i also see smart and beautiful humans fight for us every day. Whether its with climate and antifascist protests or through videos i find on social media or the news. And i cant give up hope or stop fighting for them. I cant let those people down. Because if people like that exist, there is hope.
Governments have way too much control
Covid awareness? On Lemmy? Getting over a thousand points? It feels like I’m in a dream.
Reminder to everyone that wearing a well fitting n95 mask in public takes very little effort but helps others (who may be immunocompromised, already battling long covid or other conditions, or otherwise vulnerable) and yourself avoid getting sick which can save people from chronic pain, disability, death, and more. Please do what you can to take precautions and prevent the spread of disease!
PS: I recommend 3M’s Aura respirators. I know 3M sucks (understatement) but they do make a good and affordable n95. If you have issues with your glasses fogging up with masks on, this one is for you.
Bootlicker vibes
Worked through this myself. Not as a nurse or care assistant, but as an NHS binman. Still saw lots of shit I basically cant talk about (not due to emotion but due to Trust policy as its a bit too specific). Saw doctors, nurses, care assistants walking around like zombies after having worked 18 hours straight. Saw morons walk in and film them thinking there was some major conspiracy. Heard the lungs of patients rattling as they struggled to breath. Two workers I knew died. Heard from colleagues how some other morons had “served legal papers” on the staff (thats not how you get “served” here btw) and then saw it on the BBC 6 oclock news. I also saw the hard work of every delivery driver, supermarket worker.
What did I learn? That some people will fight to save your life, even if you’ve not taken heed of all the advice.
I have a two year old niece now. I’m reminded of when I was a kid in the early 80s and war veterans would come and talk to us about WW2 and Korea. I am thinking it would be good if some of us did the same for these kids in a few years. If we went and talked about what we saw, not the scary/nasty stuff, but the stuff that makes people hopeful for humanity.
I currently live in a province in Canada, that is currently ruled by a government that is governing under what’s basically an MO of Covid and vaccine revenge.
There’s no hope for humanity. Absolutely none. That’s my lesson from Covid. The majority of the people around me, my neighbours, etc, are basically all incapable of logical thought and highly susceptible to disinformation and rogue actors.
deleted by creator
I don’t usually do this, but…
In the context, “I know, over a million Americans have died” stinks nationalism from a distance - because it implies that the tragedy is not people dying; it’s only when those people pay taxes to the same government as you. (16~28M people died, regardless of country, by the way.)
Not sure if the author realises the nationalism in that. Probably not.
Seeing the worst meaning in everything, eh?
As a species we are more worried about things happening close to us. That’s how we work.
A kid dying in Uganda does not move you because why would it? A kid dying in your hometown is something else.
Don’t pretend to be superior about it.
The very conflation between “my hometown” and “the territory controlled by the government that I pay taxes to” is nationalistic in nature.
Your assumption that I’m seeing the worst meaning in everything is partially incorrect. Pragmatics taught me to look for the implicatures of what is said, but it is not just the worst. And the implicature is there, due to the maxim of quantity. (Note that not even in this case I’m “seeing” the worst meaning, as it wouldn’t be justified by the text.)
Regarding your Uganda example: if someone lives in, say, Texas, why would they care more about the deaths in Maine than the ones in Uganda? This gets specially nasty once you swap “Uganda” with “Coahuila”. I see the exact same thing where I live, by the way, before some assumer starts distorting this into a “y u bashin unired starians? i is so confyuzed…”.
Don’t pretend to be superior about it.
Yet another assumption: that I’m “pretending to be superior” about not feeling attached to a government or the concept of nation. Please distinguish between what’s implied by something said/written vs. what you assume from it. The former is to retrieve information; the later is to make shit up.
The main reason that I’m pointing this out is to highlight a specific right-wing discourse (nationalism) that is so ingrained into society that even us, at the left, give it a free pass. I’m focusing on the discourse, not putting myself on a higher ground.
[EDIT reason: clarifications + trying to be slightly less verbose.]
You often have the same relation to the kid in Uganda and the kid in your hometown. But they are still different.
This comic is probably made by someone American. They made it for a target audience. That’s why it’s specified. Making the message more targeted is an effective tool. It’s called pathos.
Believing people on the left care for everyone on the planet equally while people on the right only care for the nation they tax to is a strange take.
You’re allowed to be proud of your country or people without being a q-anon nuthead nazi.
Believing people on the left care for everyone on the planet equally while people on the right only care for the nation they tax to is a strange take.
Don’t be disingenuous (or worse), you’re distorting what I said. Refer to the first and third paragraphs of the very comment that you’re replying to.
Now, if you really want to pretend that your hometown should “magically” coincide with the territory controlled by your government, by all means, do it. But then let’s call a duck a duck - then you are a nationalist, and should be treated as one.
This comic is probably made by someone American. They made it for a target audience. That’s why it’s specified.
I’m not going to guess the author’s “intention”. I’m focusing on what the character says, on the light of the maxim of quantity (refer to this or this for further info).
If I told you “I have two books”, and I actually have three, you’d correctly point out that I’m saying something untrue, right? Because of that maxim - by saying “I have two books” I’m implying that I have no more than two books.
Now look at what the character says within that context:
- [A] “It’s the anniversary of a great tragedy.”
- [B] “I know, over a million Americans have died.”
The exact same maxim operates here; the implicature being created is that the tragedy does not include non-Americans dying. It’s probably an accidental implicature, but the very fact that people don’t pay attention to this shit is concerning.
It’s called pathos.
It’s pathos only in the original meaning. Because damn, it’s a really miserable discourse! /s
Etymology aside, “pathos” in the meaning typically associated with the usage of the word in English can be easily conveyed without that nationalistic discourse.
You’re allowed to be proud of your country or people without being a q-anon nuthead nazi.
Let us not fool ourselves that the only nationalists out there are the Q-Anon tier Nazi. In that situation you’re still a nationalist, and promoting a harmful discourse.
“Hometown” is not a metaphor. A country is not a hometown.
Absolutely radical.
This pretty well sums it up. It’s hard to believe it’s been four years. It used to feel like it’d been ongoing for forever. Now it feels like a dream. What a fucked up thing we went through and how fucked is it that my brain can just sort of “forget”. I guess that’s how we cope. It isn’t evolutionarily advantageous to dwell on the real threats. Only on the stupid social fuckups that happened that embarrassed me.
Why are you talking about it like it’s over? Roughly 30000 people are getting long covid per day, right now. That shit is disabling. We’re still in a pandemic and we’re not taking it seriously, at all.
Just to say, as a hospital worker, that Covid is still very much around. Its not killing in the same numbers but it does kill many. Many who will be missed by their loved ones. Covid still leads to long covid in some.
both sides, and I truly mean it
Are we still pretending the measures they took actually worked? I mean really guys, if you think that we needed more intervention to stop the covid then I dont really know what to tell you.
Well, we took a ton of half measures and performed a lot of safety theater. Big shocker, it didn’t work well. Either way, the point wasn’t to stop the disease entirely, but spread out the cases to “flatten the curve” and reduce load on hospitals, which it did do.
No, it didnt work at all. We literally knew lockdowns didnt work in spring of 2020, it was all a steaming pile of bullshit including flattening the curve.
Strange, because the countries where they did implement those measures came out better than the ones that didn’t.
I’m sorry, but you can’t argue with history.
Apples and oranges. There was a study in spring of 2020 by JP morgan chase that showed the exact thing that anyone that was looking at the data would see, the lockdowns did absolutely nothing. Literally nothing.
Man, a massive corporation whose bottom line would be hugely impacted from a proper lock down said a proper lockdown wouldn’t work? That’s craaaaaaaaazy 🙄
Gotcha, we are just going to do science denial now.
Bruh you’re the science denier
The measures worked much better on the countries that applied them more throughly. As far as European countries go, Italy got struck the earliest without taking measures and their healthcare system collapsed; Spain took note of the situation, applied extremely harsh measures, and while some regions went through severe problems, we got through it far better than Italy.
You are comparing apples to oranges, why not compare america to america to see what worked instead?
I’m comparing very similar countries in terms of culture, economics, geographical region, climate, education and technology, which are in the same market and have freedom of movement towards each other, except during the lockdowns.
Sounds good, but they compared america to america and found zero benefit to the lockdowns. Literally we knew this in spring of 2020.
What America needed to do was lock down interstate travel but we didn’t do that. We had no real quarantine, and people only broadly respected the mask mandate for a few months.
Because we have rights and if mini-lockdowns dont work, I dont think crazy lockdowns would be justified. Why should I a healthy person not be able to do anything because other people might get sick? Why dont they stay in their house and let the other 90% of the population keep working?
Half-measures are often far less than half-as-effective. Mini-lockdown didn’t work because it wasn’t a real quarantine, isolation was not achieved. Did you know the word quarantine comes from Latin meaning forty days? Because that’s how long ships were kept out of Venice in the late 1300s to make sure nobody on board had the plague. That’s the kind of harsh policy required for success, but the world decided that the immediate economy is worth more than permanent eradication of dangerous pathogens.
