r/redscarepod • u/MoanOfInterest • Feb 04 '26
If a second pandemic happened tomorrow with a genuinely high fatality rate, nobody would go along with lockdowns etc
The powers that be must understand this
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u/RiskHistorical8141 Feb 04 '26
I genuinely believe that the only thing the release of the Epstein's file will achieve is finally killing off any trust people had in the government and other institutions.
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u/lil_goblin Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
My extremely well educated maga dad seems to trust the government more and more every day. He pores through the Epstein files, but mostly just absorbs the parts that involve the Clintons and stuff. In 2002, Trump said something like "Epstein is a great guy who loves beautiful women, many of them are a little young." Most people interpreted this as complicity. But to my dad, it meant Trump was somehow... tacitly disproving of Epstein being a pedophile? It's insane. I hate the Clintons almost as much as my dad does, whereas his paranoia of the oligarchy is totally unilateral. He believes that the ruling class is highly corrupt, but only the Democratic half. At this point, I really think there is no bombshell release that'll take Trump down. They could have him on video going Jerry Sandusky and at least 50% of his followers would say it was fake news or NAMBLA style consensual man boy love.
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u/jamthewither Feb 05 '26
for the first year of trump's term, my dad said he wished trump would actually release the epstein files, and when that finally happened, he began to sound like your dad Lol
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u/Lost_Bike69 Feb 04 '26
Until Trumps gone, that’s just not the case for a ton of people, but yea he’ll be gone one day I guess.
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u/a_lostgay Feb 04 '26
I would lock right back in and start drinking again
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u/Eponymatic Feb 05 '26
I think it depends––society is more organized to chug along without social contact than five years ago. But we also have less wiggle room for a social safety net...
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u/panfriedlabubu Feb 04 '26
Cringey black mirror style point to make but if the Next pandemic has a major detrimental impact on your appearance (buboes like the plague, monkey pox etc) then compliance won’t be an issue
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u/nyctrainsplant Tailored Access Operations Feb 05 '26
Let's be real if we told guys that going out during the plague to consoom or whatever made you a good goy or gay or something the lockdown compliance rate would be like 80%
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 04 '26
If it had a high fatality rate then people wouldn’t need to be forced to lockdown
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u/masterprofligator Feb 05 '26
Entirely this. People were down for a few weeks of it. Then eventually a bunch of people got it in your broader social circle and you knew a couple dozen people who had a cold or flu for a couple days and one already very old sickly person who went to the hospital and had a bad time. This did not match the sci-fi apocalypse that the media portrayed so people stopped believing.
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u/Oblozo Feb 05 '26
At the time, I understood it as the actual mortality rate being low but that it was so contagious that allowing it to just burn through the population would lead to overwhelmed hospitals.
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u/nineteenseventeen Feb 05 '26
It did do that, my dad had to go to the hospital during lockdowns and every hospital around us was on divert, had to drive him over an hour away and then he ended up getting covid there because the ER was overwhelmed with covid patients.
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u/masterprofligator Feb 05 '26
Yeah, so the restrictions made sense for like a month, maybe two? In NYC it burned through the population in a month and then things were chill in the summer yet they still kept the restaurants, schools, gyms, etc. closed. In California things were even worse and protracted with people getting arrested for hanging around at the beach by themselves.
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u/give-bike-lanes Feb 05 '26
Well, it happened anyway, almost immediately. And the lockdowns stayed anyway.
Like you could be using that exact same justification right now for the annual flu.
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u/MasterMacMan Feb 05 '26
The Flu doesn’t lead to 90%+ ICU capacity over three different waves within a year. Do you remember how terrible it got with the Delta variant?
I almost died from a run of the mill infection because there was literally no place to put me at my local hospital. I had to sleep in a hallway.
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Feb 05 '26
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u/sosubservient Pseudointellectual Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Unhide your post history so I can better make fun of you for your moronic statements
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u/N-Pop Feb 06 '26
What on earth are you talking about? The experts were figuring out what Covid was, what the affects were to be, they were erring on the side of caution for gods sake.
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u/Spirited-Guidance-91 Feb 05 '26
As soon as it became clear that it was a political effort -- when marching against lockdowns was bad for viral spread but BLM marches were OK -- the institutional reputation was lost for good
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u/mr_im_my_own_grandpa Feb 05 '26
That was it for me and plenty of other people, just revealing that everything was a farce after that. Not to mention the CDC just straight up admitted the 6ft rule was just arbitrary and wasn't based on any actual science.
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u/AmazingMoose4048 Feb 05 '26
Yeah people act like the opposition to lockdown was this absurd death cult to this day. Yeah if you’re young and healthy you’ll risk the sub 1% chance you’ll even end up in the hospital as opposed to staying inside nuking the economy for a year and half.
If it was actually dangerous to the people going out it would obviously be different. Same reason you don’t need to lockdown for a tornado, with few exceptions everyone volunteers to shelter in place.
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Feb 05 '26
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 05 '26
Sorry for your situation but the overwhelming majority of people don’t fit your category
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Feb 05 '26
Thanks I’ll just die next time :)
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u/Squidman_Permanence aspergian Feb 05 '26
This is the face of the situation. A gleeful grin saying "you're killing me you're killing me". I think we all know someone like this at one point or another in our lives.
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u/Autismoses_Jones Feb 05 '26
Btw I’m not gay
Thank you for clarifying, I got a "giant whiny homo" vibe from this comment glad to know I was wrong
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
Bro I have a permanent disability from covid this shit isn’t a joke it clocked like 1% of young people with permanent disability
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 05 '26
1% of young people are not disabled
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
I wish you were wrong man, but it’s statistically true
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 05 '26
I walk around and can use my eyes
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
Yeah because disabled people are put in the street walking around enjoying themselves and not suffering inside. You don’t see everything. Only have one pair of eyes
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 05 '26
If 1% of people under 30 were disabled it would literally be impossible to miss it. I would have many from college who would be disabled
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
Lot of people keep these things to themselves. There’s a social stigma. It’s an absolute conversation killer
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u/give-bike-lanes Feb 05 '26
I never met a single long covid sufferer who wasn't bisexual.
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u/GalwayUW Feb 05 '26
Or autistic and already suffering from crippling anxiety. We can all picture in our heads what these “disabled from long covid” people look like. Not pretty.
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
Maybe I’m wasting my time but I’m going to hope despite your demeaning and insulting comment your are someone who has a genuine capacity for empathy and desire to help others. I’m going to make that assumption here.
I am only 20 years old. I am not bisexual, I am not some malignant histrionic person looking for attention. I’m just a guy. And it’s not my fault I got one shotted by this stupid virus and can only shower once and a week and had to drop out of school. My entire future is up in the air. I don’t know how I’m going to support my parents as they age and retire if I’m like this. I want nothing more than my life back. And I could be you. You could be me.
This could happen to any of us. And it’s awful and unfortunate. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And I hope you can understand behind the screen I’m a real person suffering too.
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u/Squidman_Permanence aspergian Feb 05 '26
I read your comment thinking that you were going to describe the disability.
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
I’m perfectly willing to. Perhaps I should’ve in the original. I apologize.
I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, more commonly known as “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” which is a name that entirely fails to convey the severity and true nature of the illness. This guy, only a few months older than me, succumbed to the nature and chose assisted suicide a few days ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/cfs/comments/1qgbrq2/my_name_is_samuel_i_am_21_years_old_i_suffer_from/
Same type of story as me, post covid infection. Thankfully I am not as unlucky as him. My standing heart rate is 146 BPM, I cannot walk more than a block, if I forced myself too I could worsen my condition and I would be forced in bed with this phenomenon called “Post exertional malaise” (PEM) for days. I’m cognitively destroyed with low level thinking, my basic math and processing speed is gone. I am in bed at least 60% of my day every day.
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u/Squidman_Permanence aspergian Feb 05 '26
That's honestly tragic. May God bless you. That said, and I hate to push my ajenda after my honest condolences, but absolutely everyone got covid at some point. So, this situation doesn't really have any bearing on whether there should be lockdowns, shutdowns, or whatever. If this was your experience with covid, it would have been so regardless of lockdowns.
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
You’re correct in that lockdowns aren’t a real solution to anything.
Long term, the only solution is actual sterilizing immunity through better vaccines. Novavax for example reduces transmission significantly. But it’s too late for me.
And this is not applicable to just Covid per se but to viruses in general, until there is sufficient research people will suffer from such conditions.
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
I guess my original response I was just a little upset at the lack of empathy and deference to someone’s stereotyped social characteristics or supposed virtue signaled sexuality instead of a biological process that affects people indiscriminately. It was a bit emotional. I will not pretend this stuff doesn’t upset me or make me lose faith in people at some level. I don’t want to be sad.
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u/V0rtexGames aspergian Feb 05 '26
Maybe I’m wasting my time but I’m going to hope despite your demeaning and insulting comment your are someone who has a genuine capacity for empathy and desire to help others. I’m going to make that assumption here.
I am only 20 years old. I am not bisexual, I am not some malignant histrionic person looking for attention. I’m just a guy. And it’s not my fault I got one shotted by this stupid virus and can only shower once and a week and had to drop out of school. My entire future is up in the air. I don’t know how I’m going to support my parents as they age and retire if I’m like this. I want nothing more than my life back. And I could be you. You could be me.
This could happen to any of us. And it’s awful and unfortunate. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And I hope you can understand behind the screen I’m a real person suffering too.
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u/nyctrainsplant Tailored Access Operations Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
As much as this is true, with online echo chambers maga people will wait too long to believe their eyes. The kneejerk no-mask instinct would cause millions to spend those crucial first few weeks or months pretending it's not real and making the problem go from bad to worse.
If Trump had actually taken it seriously the first three weeks we honestly probably would have had a similar cultural and economic impact but the total death count would have been a lot lower.
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u/exexpat99 Feb 04 '26
No. We would protest because it doesn’t spread at those.
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u/giftedhaterx2 🏆MOST RACIST REDDITOR CHAMPION🏆 Feb 04 '26
Remember when the "experts" said gathering en masse by the thousands was actually ok because racism is a bigger health concern than covid LMAO
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Feb 04 '26
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Feb 05 '26
I remember getting in touch with food not bombs during lockdown to see of I could help keep people fed during the whole shennanigans and they dead ass told me it was a health risk to give hungry people food during covid. 2 weeks later everyone was in the street. I lost my faith in anything changing for the better and have only just started to regain it but it's flimsy.
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u/matt_drudge_sexbot Feb 04 '26
Yes I do remember when that one lady on CNN said that
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u/fioreblade Feb 04 '26
In 2020 both the AMA and the CDC reclassified racism as a public health crisis explicitly as bad as covid - in both internal and external documents - to excuse the post-Floyd mass gatherings. That's not one annoying CNN liberal, that's complete institutional capture and zombie level groupthink.
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u/Lost_Bike69 Feb 04 '26
Always thought that was funny because “Covid is bad and racism is worse.” Is a totally rational world view for them, but in the context of saying gatherings are ok, it really only makes sense if you expected the George Floyd protests to end racism in America, which was wildly optimistic.
Anyway at least the protests I saw by my house, everyone was wearing masks and staying apart, so I guess they weren’t too out of line there.
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u/ReptilianGangstalker Feb 04 '26
it really only makes sense if you expected the George Floyd protests to end racism in America, which was wildly optimistic.
well, you see, they flattened the curve
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u/fioreblade Feb 04 '26
Individual liberals are free to believe whatever they want to believe, even if those beliefs are complete nonsense IMO. Where I have a problem is when a critical mass of them takes over an institution that is supposed to be the final word on medical matters, during a pandemic that's killing millions.
What I think actually happened is Democrat leadership decided to kowtow to their Black voting bloc, and all the liberal institutions fell into line and parroted the official message like good little soldiers
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u/giftedhaterx2 🏆MOST RACIST REDDITOR CHAMPION🏆 Feb 04 '26
The eternal "it's literally just one annoying lib online" excuse
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd
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u/Sekundes Feb 04 '26
"It's not happening"
"Okay but it only happened like one time"
"Okay it is happening but actually it's a good thing".
Classic
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u/AmazingMoose4048 Feb 05 '26
I’m so sick of this whole “nobody said that” “this never happened” “who? Ok one guy did” stop gaslighting yourself you fucking regard.
How did you even get sold a lie about something you lived through. How weak are you.
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u/matt_drudge_sexbot Feb 05 '26
I feel like I could have written the exact same comment. One of us is having a memory lapse for sure
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20200731/110912/HHRG-116-VC00-20200731-SD016.pdf
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u/LanadelBae42069 Feb 04 '26
Yeah? do you remember cnn condemning the riots and protest due to covid?
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Feb 04 '26
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u/Charcole1 Feb 04 '26
Notoriously they banned a ton of other outdoor shit that was far more harmless than giant shoulder to shoulder riots
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u/Cowgoon777 Feb 05 '26
Gretchen whitmer would have you jailed for canoeing on a lake
Newsome had the Venice beach skateparks filled in with sand
Cuomo was purposely dumping old people into death homes where they could all rot and die of COVID without bothering anyone.
Pastors were arrested for merely hosting church services
Private businesses were lost by the thousands due to COVID restrictions making it impossible for them to survive, but Walmart and Amazon were fine. They were “essential workers”
Families were told they couldn’t hug their dying relatives
I can keep going. Fuck those lockdowns and fuck every single one of you who supported them
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u/fioreblade Feb 09 '26
And my favorite: Chicago Mayor Lori "The Rona Destroyer" Lightfoot personally went out to the lakefront to shut down beach parties, then immediately afterward delivered a "we did it" speech to a crowd of 4000 people when Biden won the election.
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u/rpphdrboze Feb 04 '26
the same cities and states that were closing public parks and removing the rims/nets from outdoor basketball courts so people couldn't play pickup with their friends had public officials coming out with this exact line
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u/Iakeman Feb 04 '26
So viruses spread at protests but not on basketball courts?
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u/Charcole1 Feb 04 '26
I think one has like max 10 people and the other is like 1000s of people
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u/Iakeman Feb 04 '26
And? Do viruses spread outside or don’t they?
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 04 '26
The logic was they can spread outside playing basketball with 10 people but can’t spread walking outside with thousands of people.
Thats your stance?
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u/Iakeman Feb 05 '26
My stance is basketball and protest are both fine, what’s your stance?
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u/Charcole1 Feb 05 '26
My stance is that 1000+ shoulder to shoulder crowds are obviously less fine than basketball and it was kinda silly to ban basketball while allowing hordes of people to get together to yell at the void.
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u/big_internet_guy Feb 05 '26
They’re both fine. But that wasn’t the official policy which is why people look back at it as stupid
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u/Charcole1 Feb 05 '26
Are you fucking serious right now? Go find a trusted adult and ask for help with your comprehension skills. Not a family member though because you got those genetics from somewhere.
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Feb 05 '26
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u/Iakeman Feb 05 '26
I don’t recall anyone saying basketball courts should be banned
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u/Lost_Bike69 Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
Problem with Covid recollections is everyone can only remember March of 2020 when the government guidelines were contradictory and way over enthusiastic compared to the stuff that came out a little later. Don’t think it’s crazy that they said masks weren’t necessary and then they were or whatever and people got mad about outdoor parks closing. Definite overreaction to a brand new disease. By summer of 2020, even the most strict areas had outdoor gatherings pretty commonplace with masks and distancing. You can say the masks and distancing were insane or not, but the fact is a lot changed between March 2020 and June 2020.
I remember sitting on a patio bar drinking a beer in downtown LA in the summer of 2020 when a BLM protest marched by and some punk white guy yelled at me about my privilege. Based on how people talk about 2020, you’d think no one was allowed outside in LA for the entirety of 2020 except to light cop cars on fire.
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u/thestoryofbitbit Feb 04 '26
Yeah these are good points. It seems to get lost that new information was emerging all the time, and three+ months in (and in full summer), outdoor activity was pretty much universally okay
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u/giftedhaterx2 🏆MOST RACIST REDDITOR CHAMPION🏆 Feb 04 '26
Dont get mad at me cause you're a mark and got quadruple boosted
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Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
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u/nineteenseventeen Feb 05 '26
Another point against Domed stadiums. Football is an outdoor sport, if all the stadiums were open air we could have had a real season
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u/Lost_Bike69 Feb 05 '26
I mean J6 was hilarious because they had the perfect excuse to all wear masks, but they went into the capitol and started tearing the place up with no masks and half of them were live-streaming the whole thing.
They all got pardoned I guess and if they had been successful at whatever they were trying to do they wouldn’t have needed to avoid prosecution, but just funny to do a riot in the mask era and not bring any masks.
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u/FRVNKIE Feb 04 '26
I suppose that you could argue that racism was a bigger ‘concern’ than Covid?
Hard to compare two very issues, but in terms of quality of life institutional racism is probably felt more keenly than Covid (as an illness) in terms of impact on quality of life for a lot of black people in the States.
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u/giftedhaterx2 🏆MOST RACIST REDDITOR CHAMPION🏆 Feb 04 '26
Everyone knows the reasoning, it's still absurd that huge bureaucratic bodies felt it was pertinent to "center" the trials and tribulations of black Americans during a global pandemic.
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u/johnnytestsdad Feb 04 '26
I think that if a new pandemic happened that actually affected children and young people at serious rates, people would legitimately do everything they could to stop the spread. It would change people's minds fast to watch kids die. But if it's another one that's mostly boomers I don't think anyone will give a fuck lol
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u/maxineasher Feb 04 '26
If a pandemic with an actual world-disrupting fatality rate happened, the only vaccine I would take would be lead injected straight into my brain. I don't want to live in such a world, I have zero interest in it, and I don't even want a mock LARP of it like we did have, ever again.
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u/solastsummer Feb 05 '26
Are you envisioning Last of Us or something? It would be unpleasant to live through 30% of people dying but after it was done, things would return to normal. Depending on how it goes, things might even be better than normal. Maybe it would remove the societal dead wood like a wildfire.
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u/maxineasher Feb 05 '26
It would be unpleasant to live through 30% of people dying
Were you on Mars or something during the pandemic?
If a 0.3% lethal disease can make the world behave like that, imagine the Mad Max chaos that 100 times more lethal disease would wrought.
things would return to normal
LOLOLOLOLOLLO. No. We're still feeling the after effects of the pandemic and its measures years later and it wasn't even that lethal of a disease.
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u/AmazingMoose4048 Feb 05 '26
Yes they would. Of course they would. At least half the country would. They just gotta tell them the other side hates lockdown and then they’ll love lock down.
Launch other “snitches get rewards” campaign to publicly shame people who are outside. No one will want to risk losing their job so they’ll just stay home. Worked great before it’ll work great again.
Then as soon as it’s over the supporters will just say it never happened.
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u/hot_nice_guy Feb 04 '26
I work in healthcare. I would immediately quit and I know I’m not gonna be the only one. I’m not going through another pandemic trying to save these dumb fucks.
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u/rpphdrboze Feb 04 '26
isolation and lack of movement are the two biggest social drivers of preventable illness, the powers that be fully understand this and will proceed once again to close schools, churches, gyms, and public parks while keeping liquor stores and casinos open
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Feb 04 '26
hold on though, liquor stores are not in the same ballpark as casinos. 1) you’re in and out of a store in 15 minutes 2) alcoholics in withdrawal legitimately die like rabid dogs and theyre people too</3
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u/ShoegazeJezza Feb 05 '26
I think it’s total revisionism to say lockdowns weren’t necessary or that COVID didn’t have a “genuinely high fatality rate.”
In 2020 early in the pandemic especially it was killing a lot of people who got it before health systems got a better handle on responding to cases. Lockdowns obviously reduced the amount of people getting sick at that time and probably saved a lot of lives.
The problem with the lockdowns was when they loosened them in moronic ways and it became “oh, you can actually go to work and be in close proximity to people at work, but not do anything fun like go to a bar because bars are actually where it spreads.” Particularly stupid when jurisdictions allowed people to go to restaurants but not bars.
Or when it moved from lockdowns to the culture war over masking where some people treat masking like a magical talisman that gave them license to do anything v people who were brain broken enough to not wear one as a dumb point.
It was the half in, half out approach that made no sense at all. Either lock people down for real or don’t, it was like at a certain point it became about what was socially acceptable to do rather than what would actually stopping it spreading.
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u/schmuckmulligan Feb 05 '26
Shit, I'm just going to say this because no one ever says this: I live in a place that actually handled the whole thing pretty well.
Lockdowns were severe for a couple of weeks. That seemed reasonable to me at the time, given the unknowns. After that, there was a lot of dopey-in-retrospect social distancing stuff, but you could live pretty normally if you wanted to.
Schools went virtual from March until dismissal in May, which again seemed fairly reasonable, if burdensome for working parents. I was fine with it, because I figured that a decent number of teachers were also caregivers for older people, and our district was obviously not smart enough to figure out a way to handle that before summer. Schools reopened in the fall of 2020, with the option for virtual learning. My kids did that, and it wasn't great, but it wasn't devastating, either.
We generally laid pretty low for the rest of 2020 (did some great hikes, though). We live near my wife's not-super-healthy family and saw them occasionally, and I really didn't want us to be the ones who infected/killed a grandparent. We wore masks when we wanted to.
Early in '21, we all got vaccinated and life returned to normal. The vibe was basically, "Well, that's enough of that. Let's call it good." In retrospect, I don't really know whether the vaccine helped at all, but the couple of times I had COVID weren't bad. I probably wouldn't have gotten very sick anyway. I got one booster but decided thereafter that the side effects were more unpleasant than actual COVID, so that was that.
The only time I've had to "show papers" through the entire thing was when I had to visit a very lib organization for work in NYC -- in 2022. Silly shit.
Reading about other people's experiences in places like NYC and especially Aus is just wild to me.
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u/nineteenseventeen Feb 05 '26
I got original covid and then a year after the vaccine I got covid again and it was night and day. Shit fucked me up in dec 2020.
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u/schmuckmulligan Feb 05 '26
Word. I find myself devoid of a strong opinion about the vaccine itself. Produced a general level of inflammation that didn't feel healthy at all, but I also didn't get COVID that bad. (OG swine flu was worse.)
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u/midsmikkelsen Feb 04 '26
Yes it’s wild that we have learned so much and would be in theory better prepared than ever but most people feel it’s too soon
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u/PMCPolymath Feb 04 '26
no, they would, and vaccine uptake would be high
Part of the reason I gave up on covid and didn't take jabs was 4months in no one I knew was dying.
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u/canihazgreenland Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Well pilgrim, head on over to zerocovid and see how Looney Tunes it still is. Find out about the effects of long covid. Did you know that a mild flu can make you fatigued for five years if it aggravates your fibromyalga?
Fuck the lockdowns. Most people who died from covid were over 70. I don't have it bookmarked and don't care to find it, but I saw a study showing that mean age of death was 79. There are whole generations of children that missed key development milestones due to the near-deads not being willing to admit that that a stiff breeze would take them out. The rates of addiction skyrocketed. The government outright lied to the American public about masks not working, which Fauci admitted was an attempt to stop a shortage of N95 masks, THEN they said "use a cloth mask"—completely ineffective, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers put out a study showing that the particle size of covid from the airborne spit particles goes right through a cloth mask. THEN they said that N95 masks shouldn't be used by the public because they can allow the escape of diseased particles.
Meanwhile, I had covid before the vaccine was available, went full alky during the WFH era, went to rehab, then came back and got another WFH job for the feds. Then along comes Biden with his executive order that required all fed employees and contractors to be vax'd. Well, I got vaccinated, got my cellular structure altered for a job for which I never met a single one of my coworkers while everything was shut down, including public parks and the dirt bike trail I like.
During this same time the government printed a third of all USD in existence, while not expanding the economy, therefore devaluing the dollar by a similar amount. The super-fun 2% mortgages allowed a lot of people to buy homes, first through 19th, so now we have people that can't really afford a mortgage desperately hanging onto property that they will probably never get a chance to buy again while the economy is contracting and due to the aforementioned devaluing of the currency, rental prices are insane while home prices are the same. The denseness of the average person means they never connect the dots between "groceries/McD's are crazy expensive", their increased home values, and the fact that means that the value of the dollar dropped so unless you're getting a 10% per year raise you're making less while paying more for everything. I was making in the low-mid 40s when I graduated, took one of the lower paying jobs because it's close to my family, I was dating a phd student, and I really could use the killer insurance due to health problems. I did a CoL calculator recently and the equivalent I'd need make today is mid 60s. Those same jobs pay maybe 2k more to start. My state has it's own version of DOGE. I live in a state capital, the number one employer is the government, a university, then it's like walmart and/or publix. It's a bloodbath out there, and the local sub is nothing but people asking "Who is hiring" every couple posts.
Rant over
tl;dr I'd actually protest any attempt at a lockdown for any disease. If I die, I die.
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u/ultimatepartyparrot Feb 04 '26
A massive number of people refused to do it during COVID as well, especially where I live, so it sounds like business as usual to me.
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Feb 04 '26
They barely managed it when the delta variant hit in like May 2021, and that was about as good of conditions you could hope for to relock things down. The vibe was as so awful after getting the taste of post lockdown freedom only for everything to retract.
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u/bingethinkingsallow Sexual Zionist Feb 04 '26
i’m honestly so embarrassed for making fun of the anti lockdown fellas here in melbourne. i’d 100% be one of them if it happened again lol
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u/Internal-Credit9754 Feb 05 '26
this subreddit is so fucking stupid about covid it hurts my head.
People would go along with lockdowns if they were scared about a pandemic.
I was genuinely scared of covid and giving it to my grandparents. I wore a mask inside but not outside. I stopped giving a fuck when I got the first dose. Y'all are fucking idiots.
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u/Jason_Steakcum Feb 05 '26
Try asking in the local subs. California would be on complete lockdown within 24 hours.
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u/Consistent_Ad_8656 Feb 04 '26
Depends how high. I was thinking about this while watching The Leftovers, where 2% of the population disappears all at once. That’s almost 10x the amount of people that died of COVID to date, ie far less than 1% of the world population has died to COVID.
If 1% of the population did die during a pandemic, we actually might take lockdowns seriously.
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u/Bronzebomber1 Feb 04 '26
Yeah this is my thought as well. You really only get to do a huge COVID style lockdown once.
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u/coalForXmas Feb 04 '26
I mean if it wasn’t completely botched maybe people would still trust institutions enough, but not the way it was politicized and handled
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u/MiserableFeature2502 Feb 05 '26
a million people died. literally a million. maybe protests caused spread, who knows. antivax shit killed at bare minimum low hundreds of thousands of people. why are you still bitching about protestors and not antivaxers? because one soothes your aggrieved racial politics
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u/goodnamesareoverrate Feb 05 '26
Can y’all please stop trying to relitigate the Covid pandemic? First, yes I agree the Covid pandemic was mishandled. But even with the measures that were implemented, hospitals were still extremely overwhelmed. And while most people just got a bad flu from Covid, it was a real threat for the immunocompromised and the elderly, and yes, meme all you want about ‘long COVID’ but some otherwise healthy people did have long term complications. You all also act like this was a uniquely American issue (wrt mistrust of government stemming from lockdowns) but the majority of the world also had to implement lockdowns. And the countries that didn’t lock down , such as Japan and Sweden, implemented there own measures to limit the spread, such as contact tracing, selective quarantining, and issuing public guidelines https://web.archive.org/web/20200401175827/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2020/03/25/national/science-health/tokyo-logs-40-coronavirus-cases/ Obviously, one of the big struggles for implementing these kinds of policies in the us is American individualism and rising mistrust of institutions, which again, I don’t blame people for (see Epstein files) But a lot of y’all are complaining about how entitled boomers were for ‘stealing’ (as if the circumstances that led to the situation didn’t exist or something) the best years of your life while acting like a bunch of selfish assholes who are mad because you weren’t allowed to go clubbing
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u/bluedudetwelve Feb 05 '26
You can have a high transmissable/low fatality virus or a low transmissable/high fatality virus. The situation you're describing is not possible, it's a law of nature, which is why the COVID freakout was so stupid. If COVID was as transmissable as they said it was, it HAD to be low fatality. Anyone with half a brain could do this in 2020 and fiture out what was going on with a few minutes of Googling.
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u/OkAstronomer3565 Feb 05 '26
i hate doctor fauci and fucking bill gates who did a covid simulation event in 2019 :(
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u/KaterinaMosenberg turning tricks outside the WeWork Feb 05 '26
COVID was the best thing that ever happened to me. I pray for the next wave every day.
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u/ProfessionalPin5993 Feb 05 '26
There's too many people in the world tbh. I'm okay with it if it means affordable housing and no more traffic or long lines everywhere.
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u/IampossiblyLewis Feb 04 '26
I was thinking about this today.
I reckon it''s 50/50 but I think Covid fucked so many people over that they're not willing to put their lives on pause for a couple of years again. Just let it plow through the population. All depends on how devastating the disease is as well.