COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure.
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Anonymous
You know nothing about what I did or didn't do. I understand perfectly that some of the rules might have worked and some might not have, but I am not so arrogant as to assume that I ALWAYS know ahead of time which is which. I gather information and try to make measured decisions. People like you called everything "window dressing" because you didn't want to be inconvenienced. And it still stands that both of your examples show nothing other than selfish people flouting rules but give no real evidence as to whether the rules were worthwhile or not. That was my point. But, of course, you missed it. And someone like you would have had an aneurism if they had just gone so far as to shut down air travel. OMG. You truly suck. |
Anonymous
Ah, another DC area rules-following fanatic. I know your type. Maybe you were the person who made hissing noises at me and my kids because we never wore masks outside at the park. This area seems to attract a lot of people like you. Look, I get it that you're deep in your personal sunk cost fallacy, where you need to believe that the efforts you made and sacrifices you endured were somehow worth it. Most people who get conned are ashamed to admit it. |
Anonymous
Nope. Not that kind of person and never did any of that. You have to make up stories about other people to defend yourself. So sad. Stop deflecting from the fact that your little anecdotes didn't mean what you think they did and that you suck. |
Anonymous
| To me the biggest joke was masking toddlers. Everyone who actually observed toddlers "wearing" masks knew it was a fools errand for preventing the spread of COVID and could see the potential harms, but if you said it out loud you'd be branded an antimasker and your posts deleted. |
Anonymous
How about masking on the 30-second walk to your restaurant table and an hour of being unmasked once there? Where does that fall on the scale of rules absurdity? |
Anonymous
China was able to keep it under control and prevent deaths. You can control it if people work together but the problem is people like you aren't willing so that's why it would never work. Something as simple as staying home when sick could prevent a lot of illness. |
Anonymous
Are you just trolling? The Chinese didn’t work together. Their government abused them into compliance. They gave up when they realized they needed to escape the trap they set for themselves. |
Anonymous
But that same kid would not bring it home if they attended a protest against racism. Because that was different. |
Anonymous
Look, if covid had actually been dangerous to the average person, the government wouldn't have needed to force lockdowns. People would have just adjusted their behaviors accordingly when they started seeing others dropping dead in the streets. Some people never got over the media-generated fear, but plenty of us saw through it once we saw that the vast majority of people got covid and moved on with their lives. |
Anonymous
Their virtue signaling kept the virus away. True story. |
Anonymous
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Nobody who needs to hear this will. But the biggest problem for the first 6-9 months was that we had too many (ever hardening) opinions and too few facts. I do complex data analysis for a living. I was more prepared than most to take contradictory, imperfect information and make rational decisions. And I was in no way, shape, or form prepared to make the range of decisions I needed to for myself— and much more importantly my kids. Lots of people had opinions about what I should do. And they got ever louder and angrier and more hardened. But if you were trying to make evidenced based decisions, there were just too many unknowns.
In retrospect, having my college kid start on campus, in person in fall 2020 was the right call. At the time? Way too many unknown variables to make an informed decision. In the end, it came down too: am I more concerned for this particular kid about a possibly catastrophic cascade of cases when a bunch of college kids come together and his physical health being threatened because the small town healthcare system is overwhelmed? Or I more worried about the long term mental health consequences of him spending a year in the basement at this point in his life, given specific challenges he had dealt with in HS? And there were two crappy choices.In the end, I took a breath, said a prayer (and I am not religious) went with his mental health and sent him. But it was terrifying. Nothing went wrong. The college contained COVID very well, and it was the right call. BECAUSE WE GOT LUCKY. Not because I was smarter, or a better mom or am better at gauging risk. 2020 was the year of decision overload. Every day, there was a new decision to be made with very imperfect information. You can only make complex decisions about something as emotionally taxing the welfare of your kids in the absence of good information for so long before you burn out. I couldn’t. So most people gave up on assessing each decision and went into a “COVID=death” or “COVID is NBD” default position. And then hardened that position. Because if they were wrong, that were hurting their kids. And for a mom, that’s a horrible thought. So we all knew we were right because the alternative was so bad. 1.1M deaths. Millions more with Long COVID. Then again, years of learning loss and mental health issues for kids. My musician kid who did virtual lessons and didn’t play her instrument with another human being for a full year. Reality is we overreacted in some ways and undereacted in others. And, that there is no painless way out of a pandemic. But here’s the thing. Fauci isn’t evil. Republicans and Dems aren’t evil. Teachers afraid for their health weren’t evil. Parents who were watching kids struggle and wanted teachers back in classrooms weren’t evil. Now, I’m not talking about a year+ out, when we had vaccines and actual data, and mutated weaker strain. But, in 2020, most people did the best they could in stressful circumstances with limited information. We would all do well to have some humility and empathy for other people with concerns different from our own who were also doing the best they could. And if your family made it through 2020 with everyone’s physical and mental and economic health intact, take a “there but for the grace of God” moment and realize that you weren’t smarter or morally superior because your kid made it through distance learning in one piece/ returned to school and didn’t bring home a virus that killed a member of your family. You were lucky. Full stop. And there are 1.1 million grieving families out there who were not. Because when this happens again— which it might in our lifetimes, I still don’t know a better way to make decisions for my kids than what I did in 2020. But I do know a worse way to make decisions— and that’s with hubiris and with the assumption a future pandemic will behave like COVID and that because my family was lucky this time they’ll be lucky again. TL;DR: if your family got out of 2020 in one piece, it wasn’t because you were “right” and “they” were “wrong”. We simply did not have enough high quality information for you (or anyone) to make smart decisions. You were lucky. Peace Out, DCUM |
Anonymous
I mean, people accepted lockdowns in March 2020 because people WERE dropping dead in the streets of NY. And no one should say— hey, people will know it’s time to do this thing because mass hysteria. Of all the bad ways to make decisions, counting on mass hysteria to lead to good outcomes has to be the worst. The Crucible says Hi! |
Anonymous
Does anyone remember the thread in politics titled “it’s a blue state bug”? The one gloating that COVID was limited to large urban areas because something, something, something rel Americans something? The one people were still pulling up two years later to say “this aged badly”? Well, COVID did hit some urban areas early and hard. And what we saw happening in NY was terrifying. |
Anonymous
You do complex data analysis for a living and your conclusion is that everything came down to luck? Why bother even attempting to analyze data at all? Do you display such a lack of confidence in your decision making ability at work as well? (And why do people regularly write “full stop” and then keep going?) |
Anonymous
No, what we saw in NY was the media selling a sensationalist story. Like I said, some of us saw through it early, some never did. |