"Stupid" is the only word I can think of to describe the positions of the left on Covid from then to now.
Leak vs. crossover is an arguable point. I think it's hard to argue crossover with Patient Zeros working for the Wuhan Institute, but it's not entirely impossible and if someone is really married to the point, I'm not going to pry it from them.
But from the very beginning, the messaging, from media, from science communicators (i.e. media with fancier degrees) and from politicians on the left was "this thing is catastrophically dangerous". When we had first developed a test for Covid-19, due to low numbers of tests, we were testing the hospitalized and the dead. What we found was that ~5% of those tested died. All well and good so far. But then the media used that figure to distort the narrative. It wasn't "5% is the upper bound of fatality" it was "we're barely testing anyone and we're already seeing 5%, it could be much worse!" which is absolute horseshit to anyone with half a brain. You don't need a degree to understand why 5% is the ceiling and not the floor. If you have a degree and you're pushing the narrative that it's the floor, you're a bad, bad person.
Then there was the thing with kids. We knew, from the jump, that it was bad for the old, for the immuno-compromised and for the obese. We also knew that it was not bad for the young and the healthy. You couldn't look at hospitalization rates and fatalities and think that there was any sense in shutting down schools or masking children. I don't care if the idea was a hold-over from a previous pandemic, the data was so glaringly obvious that again, you'd either have to be stupid or very, very bad to support that.
The mask thing was another example. Dr. Fauci came out and said that the reason he initially told people they didn't need to wear masks was because he was worried that the supply of masks would be consumed by the general population and not go to front line workers who needed them more. He lied because he felt that if he told the truth, people would not do what he wanted. That is, and I sound like a broken record here, the logic of a bad, bad man. Telling people only what you want them to hear in order to manipulate them into doing what you want is not a moral good and it is not the way any free and open society should be run. In the light of that, I think it becomes obvious that those first two points were also a case of people who knew better lying to the public in order to evoke the response they wanted. They felt that they should be the ultimate authority. It was and it is the purest of hubris. The intelligentsia is not always right - in fact the progressives of a century ago are a perfect example of this and share a great deal in the broadest senses with the progressives of today. A fascination with separating people by race, an iron-clad self-assurance that their view of science is definitive, a lot of Marxism and by extension a lot of authoritarianism. Beyond the intellectual elite sometimes getting things wrong, you've created the hydra of distrust. Not just in the people who saw through the lies at the time, but when it comes out that we've been lied to, even people who believed are going to be less trusting the next time. Or perhaps I'm overestimating people - after all, we're a mere two decades out from Jr.'s Iraq war and somehow the public was fooled all over again by obvious lies.
As far as bars vs. schools, well, here's a more salient comparison. How about the poor vs. the laptop class. The former will never financially recover from the effects of the lockdowns, their lives have been made measurably worse, their every outcome tainted by what was a minor inconvenience for the hand-wringing privileged trying to tell the poor that the sacrifices were necessary for the safety and convenience of said privileged. I work(ed) in a bar. My savings, such as they were, were entirely wiped out. I'm in my 40's and there is now no hope of ever retiring. My life was destroyed, not by Covid, which made me mildly ill for 2 days, but by a year plus of economic havoc. I didn't voluntarily GIVE that, it was taken from me. I will bear my grudge until the day I die, probably at work.
Michael, I’m sorry you were impacted by Covid policy so much. Sorry if what I said sounded like an attack. Where I live the governor changed rules so that restaurants could do take out cocktails and I think it helped a lot with businesses staying open, though I’m sure they still had less business than before. And it was totally different all across the country.
I can’t disagree with most of your arguments, though I admit I have a different perspective. The one thing I would point out is that though kids didn’t get sick much (except with preexisting conditions like obesity) they, especially the older ones, were still able to transmit the virus to old sickly members of their family/community.
Where I live, they did a school survey and mostly it was rich whites that wanted to go back. Those who needed it least. I wish the efforts were focused on those who needed the help, not just those who were over it. The Asians almost entirely chose to stay virtual in 2021, and black families also supported staying home. I talked to a (black) nurse aid helping a neighbor, and she indicated support for staying virtual because it meant she didn’t have to worry about getting sick from her kids and thus not get paid. I don’t know how common that was, but I heard the concern about being sick = not being able to work A lot from people. My point is just some people who supported virtual school might not be obvious.
I am very disappointed that many of the problems in society that became stark haven’t been sufficiently been addressed. Hopefully, we will just get hoards of tutors and get kids back up to where they ought to be. Maybe get everyone some paid sick leave and some other social safety net kinds of things.
"Stupid" is the only word I can think of to describe the positions of the left on Covid from then to now.
Leak vs. crossover is an arguable point. I think it's hard to argue crossover with Patient Zeros working for the Wuhan Institute, but it's not entirely impossible and if someone is really married to the point, I'm not going to pry it from them.
But from the very beginning, the messaging, from media, from science communicators (i.e. media with fancier degrees) and from politicians on the left was "this thing is catastrophically dangerous". When we had first developed a test for Covid-19, due to low numbers of tests, we were testing the hospitalized and the dead. What we found was that ~5% of those tested died. All well and good so far. But then the media used that figure to distort the narrative. It wasn't "5% is the upper bound of fatality" it was "we're barely testing anyone and we're already seeing 5%, it could be much worse!" which is absolute horseshit to anyone with half a brain. You don't need a degree to understand why 5% is the ceiling and not the floor. If you have a degree and you're pushing the narrative that it's the floor, you're a bad, bad person.
Then there was the thing with kids. We knew, from the jump, that it was bad for the old, for the immuno-compromised and for the obese. We also knew that it was not bad for the young and the healthy. You couldn't look at hospitalization rates and fatalities and think that there was any sense in shutting down schools or masking children. I don't care if the idea was a hold-over from a previous pandemic, the data was so glaringly obvious that again, you'd either have to be stupid or very, very bad to support that.
The mask thing was another example. Dr. Fauci came out and said that the reason he initially told people they didn't need to wear masks was because he was worried that the supply of masks would be consumed by the general population and not go to front line workers who needed them more. He lied because he felt that if he told the truth, people would not do what he wanted. That is, and I sound like a broken record here, the logic of a bad, bad man. Telling people only what you want them to hear in order to manipulate them into doing what you want is not a moral good and it is not the way any free and open society should be run. In the light of that, I think it becomes obvious that those first two points were also a case of people who knew better lying to the public in order to evoke the response they wanted. They felt that they should be the ultimate authority. It was and it is the purest of hubris. The intelligentsia is not always right - in fact the progressives of a century ago are a perfect example of this and share a great deal in the broadest senses with the progressives of today. A fascination with separating people by race, an iron-clad self-assurance that their view of science is definitive, a lot of Marxism and by extension a lot of authoritarianism. Beyond the intellectual elite sometimes getting things wrong, you've created the hydra of distrust. Not just in the people who saw through the lies at the time, but when it comes out that we've been lied to, even people who believed are going to be less trusting the next time. Or perhaps I'm overestimating people - after all, we're a mere two decades out from Jr.'s Iraq war and somehow the public was fooled all over again by obvious lies.
As far as bars vs. schools, well, here's a more salient comparison. How about the poor vs. the laptop class. The former will never financially recover from the effects of the lockdowns, their lives have been made measurably worse, their every outcome tainted by what was a minor inconvenience for the hand-wringing privileged trying to tell the poor that the sacrifices were necessary for the safety and convenience of said privileged. I work(ed) in a bar. My savings, such as they were, were entirely wiped out. I'm in my 40's and there is now no hope of ever retiring. My life was destroyed, not by Covid, which made me mildly ill for 2 days, but by a year plus of economic havoc. I didn't voluntarily GIVE that, it was taken from me. I will bear my grudge until the day I die, probably at work.
Michael, I’m sorry you were impacted by Covid policy so much. Sorry if what I said sounded like an attack. Where I live the governor changed rules so that restaurants could do take out cocktails and I think it helped a lot with businesses staying open, though I’m sure they still had less business than before. And it was totally different all across the country.
I can’t disagree with most of your arguments, though I admit I have a different perspective. The one thing I would point out is that though kids didn’t get sick much (except with preexisting conditions like obesity) they, especially the older ones, were still able to transmit the virus to old sickly members of their family/community.
Where I live, they did a school survey and mostly it was rich whites that wanted to go back. Those who needed it least. I wish the efforts were focused on those who needed the help, not just those who were over it. The Asians almost entirely chose to stay virtual in 2021, and black families also supported staying home. I talked to a (black) nurse aid helping a neighbor, and she indicated support for staying virtual because it meant she didn’t have to worry about getting sick from her kids and thus not get paid. I don’t know how common that was, but I heard the concern about being sick = not being able to work A lot from people. My point is just some people who supported virtual school might not be obvious.
I am very disappointed that many of the problems in society that became stark haven’t been sufficiently been addressed. Hopefully, we will just get hoards of tutors and get kids back up to where they ought to be. Maybe get everyone some paid sick leave and some other social safety net kinds of things.