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Wednesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Feb 01, 2024 11:22 AM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included covid lockdowns, a mom's attractiveness, Gen Z's lack of romance will cause the end of the world, and a college applicant's bad choices.

The "Travis and Taylor" thread was again the most active thread yesterday. But, since I 've already discussed it, I'll start with the next most active thread which was titled, "One by one, the lockdown myths are crumbling" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. I had not noticed this thread until this morning and, when I did, I was disappointed to see that not only are thread on topics such as this still being created, but that they are among the most active. It has been clear for some time that some individuals have been so traumatized by the response to the pandemic that they may never get over it. There seems to be a deep set desire among these folks to receive some sort of official acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a full apology. The problem is that very few of those who supported the measures in question have changed their opinion to any significant agree. They don't think anything done was wrong and feel no compulsion to apologize. So, threads such as these result in little more than endless debate that neither advances the discussion nor satisfies anyone. In this specific case, the original poster linked to an opinion article in "The Telegraph", a British newspaper. The author claims that British officials who once promoted "zero covid" now claim to have only supported the "maximum suppression" of covid and considers this to be a significant backtracking that reveals the bankruptcy of the entire lockdown endeavor. Of course, it does nothing of the sort. Whether the officials are truly backtracking or simply making a distinction without a difference — "zero covid" is not that much different than "maximum suppression" — that is a discussion of goals, not methods. It is a stretch beyond reason to suggest the change in terminology amounts to a renunciation of anti-covid measures such as lockdowns. Nevertheless, this is how covid discussions tend to go on DCUM. A poorly reasoned article that most users can't read because it is behind a paywall is accepted as fact and off to the races we go. Many of those responding are, like me, well past the limits of their patience for these topics. They point out the advantages of hindsight (which in this case doesn't appear to have been an advantage at all) and argue that it is, in fact, those like the article's author that are attempting to rewrite history. Moreover, lockdown conditions in the United Kingdom were considerably different than in the United States so the article is not even relevant to our experience. But, those angry about covid measures are not to be denied their opportunity to air their grievances. As usual, there are complaints about school closures. What I have realized about schools is that some families suffered terrible experiences while for others, while the time probably wasn't great, it was not all that bad. Those in the first group tend to fixate on school closures and emphasize any negative impacts. The second group, which in my experience is much larger, has a more nuanced view and is less interested in rehashing the topic. Therefore, what is at issue here is really two different realities. Bridging the gap between the two is probably impossible and this dispute is unlikely to ever be resolved.

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