zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels.

I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.

====

Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.

>>csours+kk

  You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.

Interesting how this quote can be interpreted in fully opposite ways depending on what "side" you were on during covid

>>ttoino+Rq
> depending on what "side" you were on during covid

It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue. I can understand differing approaches, but it's the extreme polarisation that flabbergasts me.

>>ndsipa+uU
[flagged]

>>firest+0V
Hmm, the number found online is that Covid killed 1.2 million in the US, so guessing the shutdown and vaccines probably saved millions. But your take is different. Guessing you disagree with the the 1.2m deaths figure? (not trying to be pushy, just curious on your take)

>>comput+s01
The 1.2m number is what’s reported, but whether shutdowns and mandates prevented multiples of that is something we can’t actually prove. What we do know is that shutting the country down caused deep economic, educational, and mental-health damage that will take decades to unwind.

>>firest+R01
We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could. All the anger didn't help.

>>Grapho+b31
I’m not sure it’s right to say we didn’t know what to do. Beaches and playgrounds were closed even though the risk of outdoor spread on surfaces was minimal. Those kinds of choices made the shutdown damage worse without clear public health benefit. We had the science to tell us that viruses don’t survive on beach surfaces for example

>>firest+H31
It was frustrating to have some of the outdoor ban stuff at a point when it was pretty clear that things were safe in highly ventilated environments. But in my opinion, that was relatively harmless compared to the backlash against common sense precautions, like properly fit N95 masks when sharing enclosed space.

There's a lot of criticism of places that kept schools closed for longer than was necessary, in retrospect. But we really didn't know whether it would always be the case that the risks to children were low. The virus could have mutated in a way that brought more risk. Or there could have been chronic effects that could only be seen after the passage of time. Given the infectiousness of the virus, it could have been so much worse.

I get the vaccine hesitancy. But I think a lot of people were not willing to accept that vaccination is not just about their own safety, but a collective safety issue.