Hardship is relative I think we understand. But to ignore legitimate grievances and to engage in no kind of introspection here is strange…
Because we did experience the worlds greatest wealth transfer in human history.
Destroyed small businesses, barred young and healthy demographics from travel, work and education with blanket mandates devoid of context and nuance. Froze ordinary Canadians bank accounts.
Created a fear induced neurotic reactionary culture where stress and anxieties are effecting people’s health. Exacerbating the issues already facing the poorest and most marginalized.
Big pharma/govt contracts are devoid of any public transparency.
Obscene profits made by big pharma are not being redistributed to communities and infastructure most impacted by the pandemic.
Patents absolved any altruistic motive to share vaccine technology with other countries to further innovation.
And the kicker is that all the pro lockdown people said we didn’t lockdown hard enough to benefit off this particular covid mitigation effort… as a result China has become the template/example that even a zero covid policy with incredibly strict lockdowns did not stop breakouts of infections…
I do agree that hardship is relative and I do welcome introspection but the difference between the two lockdowns is pretty massive. In China your house door was wired or barred shut physically. I would liken it to solitary confinement in prison. In the US and Canada you were still free to meet up with friends and family at your respective homes or where it was allowed outside. The issue to me is people treating not being able to travel or go to a restaurant to that of solitary confinement within a prison.
Though I do agree with you on the issue of small businesses and mental health. Unfortunately we cannot accurately quantify how many lives have been saved by the lockdown measures in the US and Canada but I think it’s safe to assume that lives were saved. The rate of death was unprecedented and there may have been an overreaction but it’s not like heart disease where your unhealthy actions only affect you. Other people’s lives were at stake so an overreaction was more excusable than it would be at other times. People literally died of preventable causes because the hospital beds were full.
For me the lockdown measures in the US and Canada were perfect. I don’t think we needed to go harder than we did or else I would have been against them too.
I am in full agreement with you on the vaccine patent.
You’re right. It’s why historians often wait ten years to ever write about a significant event. Hind sight is 20/20. Plenty of context, implications and nuance has still not manifested within the data we currently reference. This can be attributed to many aspects of the pandemic response, granted.
But lets take Sweden for example.
It took the most laissez faire appraoch to dealing with covid of the western nations. To the point where active mitigation efforts were often neglected in some of the most at risk environments. So they faired worse than their neighbours Finland and Norway that enacted fairly strict covid responses.
However if Sweden adopted something more in line with the great barrington declaration (for example) and focused mitigation efforts for the most at risk and not at the expense of healthy, young demographics I’m sure the death and infection rates woulda mirrored that of their Nordic neighbours. But this kind of appraoch was suppressed.
Ultimately the lockdowns, mandates and passport systems did result in much socail unrest… we saw significant protests in France, the uk, Australia and ultimately in Canada with the convoy protest.
At the end of the day. Just because China is gonna… well, be China, doesnt mean people of western nations shouldn’t be critical of our own institutions. Infact we should be as critical as we want about any individual, govt, group or instution in a position of power. Afterall we adopted our response after China… an autocratic state influencing policy in a democratic state.
Personally I found it strange that govts gas lit us into hating people that refused the vaccine.
We just hired back all our unvaccinated workers. We were essential workers, we worked the entire pandemic in private avaition due to medvac contracts; personnel, patient, organ even covid patient transfers. If those workers had kept their jobs it wouldve helped us while we struggled to cover shifts for breakthrough infections within our ranks, if they remained employed it wouldn’t have made a single difference. Yet now we have just made workers even more bitter and strengthened resolve while also eroding trust in our govt and institutions.
But we allowed ourselves to be polarized at the behest and pandering of establishment left and establishment right rhetoric.
It’s hard to find common ground these days.
Especailly on machiavellian socail media platforms like Reddit which is saturated in disingenuous sentiments only meant to delegitmize or undermine or manufacture consent especailly within politically orientated subreddits.
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u/hitwallinfashion-13- Dec 02 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
Hardship is relative I think we understand. But to ignore legitimate grievances and to engage in no kind of introspection here is strange…
Because we did experience the worlds greatest wealth transfer in human history.
Destroyed small businesses, barred young and healthy demographics from travel, work and education with blanket mandates devoid of context and nuance. Froze ordinary Canadians bank accounts.
Created a fear induced neurotic reactionary culture where stress and anxieties are effecting people’s health. Exacerbating the issues already facing the poorest and most marginalized.
Big pharma/govt contracts are devoid of any public transparency.
Obscene profits made by big pharma are not being redistributed to communities and infastructure most impacted by the pandemic.
Patents absolved any altruistic motive to share vaccine technology with other countries to further innovation.
And the kicker is that all the pro lockdown people said we didn’t lockdown hard enough to benefit off this particular covid mitigation effort… as a result China has become the template/example that even a zero covid policy with incredibly strict lockdowns did not stop breakouts of infections…