LeSving wrote:
Well, China still has hard restrictions everywhere and all the time since the beginning
They are now also giving up on it. Why? Their population has seen what happened all over the world and now they get under pressure from their own people. Apart, also there most people are vaccinated by now. I don’t think it is free choice there, you get it or you stay home.
LeSving wrote:
Do you think this is OK in general as well?
It was ok initially and that is how it should have been world wide. Don’t forget, also Taiwan, Australia and NZ had it. The latter 3 looseded up after their vaccination rate was such that they could accept it. Not that they liked it.
Fact is: Covid COULD and SHOULD never have happened if the Chinese would have reacted faster and openly and if the areas concerned would have imposed strict lockdowns, not the pseudolockdowns we had here. Had the whole world followed the example of NZ, Australia and Taiwan, Covid could have been finished in Summer 2020 or, if the war plans would have been implemented in February with total lockdowns, possibly even earlier. As the US and Europe declined to do so, they were the ones who were finally responsible for the millions of people who died from this plague.
Now if you want a conspiracy, some idiots claim that the war plans were not followed and that the covid pandemic was intentionally launched by the Socialist-Green Elite to get rid of old people and to enslave the others with their measures. And if you say, that is nonsense, there may be hope.
Covid did happen, almost certainly via an escape from a Chinese lab (accidental or deliberate).
The real risk to the average person was grossly overstated (never let a good crisis go to waste). What was also grossly overstated was the idea that government action could protect the population from the risks it presented – pretty much everyone got it in the end.
Governments placed unprecedented and unwarranted restrictions on people’s freedom, splurged unimaginable amounts of taxpayers cash to no benefit at all, and caused enormous economic damage and hardship.
The vaccines do work, but not for long because immunity wanes and anyway the virus evolves.
Democratic countries have consigned it to history because populations who get to choose their leaders won’t stand for this sort of nonsense indefinitely. The Chinese people, unfortunately for them, have a very different system and thus a very different experience.
Graham wrote:
The real risk to the average person was grossly overstated (never let a good crisis go to waste).
Would you tell that to the sons and relatives of anyone who has died from this thing? It’s always grossly overstated if you are not involved yourself.
I lost way too many people to this plague than be told they are not important.
Graham wrote:
What was also grossly overstated was the idea that government action could protect the population from the risks it presented
It was overestimated as the obstinance and resistance by the conspiracy nuts was grossly underestimated. They managed to kill several millions of people by telling everyone this was not a real disease.
Graham wrote:
pretty much everyone got it in the end.
After the vaccines and the necessary treatments were out, it’s not so much an issue anymore.
Graham wrote:
The Chinese people, unfortunately for them, have a very different system and thus a very different experience.
The Chinese are guilty for this whole thing. So their methods whatever they are are irrelevant. For me, the examples to follow are NZ, Australia and places like Taiwan. They took it seriously and managed to keep it under control until it was inevitable to release it. And that must have been extremely frustrating after all the efforts.
Graham wrote:
Democratic countries have consigned it to history because populations who get to choose their leaders won’t stand for this sort of nonsense indefinitely.
It has been shown that democratic countries are unable to contain a deadly virus because the population thinks they know better and can behave like spoilt brats. It may well have given some folks who wish the Western Democracies ill ideas on how to eradicate them once and for all. The way the population reacted and was unwilling to restrict themselves for a short while for the common good turned a 2-3 month austerity into 3 years of massive economical damage. This shows that in times of crisis, this kind of behaviour will cause Democracies to eventually fall.
For me this crisis was the worst example of human behaviour since WW2 and at the same time it showed clearly why stuff like that was and still is possible. People will follow any rat catcher who whistles the right tune. So maybe what you and the other Covid apologists are trying to tell us is that those who died did not deserve any better… well, in some countries where the conspiracy nuts took over the government it may well be true. I’ve lost what small hope I had for this society and, to my big surprise, I’ve learnt to hate during this time.
Very well stated as usual @Graham, however in being relatively discreet you did miss the specifics of the grossly immoral and also ineffective Covid Passport travesty that removed the basic human rights of healthy people for no benefit, based on the false premise that being vaccinated prevented transmission.
THAT action happily perpetrated in electronic form by in particular European national governments was the worst example of western human behavior in my lifetime, outside of the communist world.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
So maybe what you and the other Covid apologists are trying to tell us is that those who died did not deserve any better…
Please don’t put such horrid words into my mouth – I’m saying nothing of the sort.
Infectious disease is a fact of life. For nearly all of human history, various potentially-fatal infectious diseases have circulated more or less continuously. It is only since about halfway through the 20th century that we in the western world have become conditioned to the idea that they were a thing of the past, that modern medicine could deal with anything you were likely to catch. Things change, and they’re back in the frame.
Silvaire wrote:
based on the false premise that being vaccinated prevented transmission.
It turned out to be false indeed, but based on what we knew beforehand about vaccines and virology in general the most likely scenario, one that most scientists would have anticipated, was that an effective vaccine would indeed enormously reduce transmission rates. It was a great surprise to the scientific and medical communities when it did not.
Of course we weren’t going to know for sure until the vaccines were out there in the population. Now it’s clear that they don’t curb transmission, any travel restrictions are clearly ludicrous.
‘First do no harm’ is a good and important principle, and it does not mean that in the absence of valid data do everything you can think of doing without regard to morality or side effects. It means the opposite, and not many except the overgrown school kids in European governments would have ever done such a thing as issue electronic passports to control the entrance of their choice of healthy people to buildings. A lesson to those who can see it, for future reference.
I should also note that although states rights largely won the day on this issue within the US, we didn’t have Covid passports outside of a few left wing dominated urban areas, the US still requires two vaccination shots for foreigners entering the country legally, if entering by air. This has zero scientific backup, it does not prevent transmission and the effect of the two shots required has long since waned, but unfortunately we have a similarly authoritarian and juvenile (or more correctly senile) head of state at the moment, one who views issues in political/power terms, facts notwithstanding. The 2023 Congress should act on this, ASAP.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The way the population reacted and was unwilling to restrict themselves for a short while for the common good turned a 2-3 month austerity into 3 years of massive economical damage. This shows that in times of crisis, this kind of behaviour will cause Democracies to eventually fall.
It sounds like you wanted the democracies to take the Chinese approach? For them 2-3 month austerity certainly wasn’t sufficient. Or are you thinking of some other approach?
Airborne_Again wrote:
It sounds like you wanted the democracies to take the Chinese approach? For them 2-3 month austerity certainly wasn’t sufficient. Or are you thinking of some other approach?
I was thinking more of the Australian and New Zealand approach. Both are democracies. Both managed to keep Covid down and deaths low until vaccinations were available. They did prove for 2 years that Covid CAN be controlled in democracies. Once they opened up, their figures exploded from January 2022 on (Australia). Up to then, they had some 2000 people killed by it before they opened up in January 22. Since then: 14000.
@Mooney_Driver we did this before.
Both Aus and NZ are geographically isolated. No one crosses their borders in a casual, everyday fashion like people do in Europe. Closing their doors to outsiders killed their tourism industries, but not much else.
Regardless, say there were another outbreak of something similar, I doubt their populations would tolerate a similar approach from their governments – there’s always an election on the horizon. You may view the fact that a democratic government cannot override the will of the people and do the ‘right’ thing as a weakness, but I view it as a strength of the system. It stops those who are so sure they are right (certainty usually being inversely proportional to wisdom) from imposing their will on others.
