Structural change on a massive scale is required to change the status quo.
No one can even have a meaningful interaction with this comment. It's also trivial to come up with 'elites' who were not okay with mass death and debilitation.
I do legitimately wonder, after you’ve earned your first few hundred million, why tf do you keep going.
There exist many working class people who wanted to get back to normal (polling demonstrates this), or at the very least wanted policies that tried to keep schools open. They also believe the things you're saying make you one of the elites. It's also easier for 'established elites' to want perpetual work-from-home since they're in work that best positions them to experience little economic pain doing that. It might even be somewhat elitist to dismiss this POV.
That's the problem with using such a vague term.
The way we consume media and culture is controlled by a very small group of people.
Like, some people’s definitions are so warped that a millionaire small business owner (think someone who owns a successful downtown restaurant in a mid-sized city) is “the common man” while an artist who works at a coffee shop and lives in a rundown studio apartment is somehow “elite”.
Of course they dont like all the negative attention so sometimes they will try to designate elites as "anybody with a college degree" as one of many means of rhetorically disguising their power. For example, the economist does here:
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/22/c...
Not the OP but I understand as "the elites" the people who hold the reins of power in the West (I don't know that much about the Chinese or Indian elites, to be honest). That would be multi-billionaires, some national-level politicians, the higher-ups of some supra-state entities (things like the World Bank, the IMF, even the European Union), some recognisable "artists" who are used mostly for propaganda material (think Hollywood actors like Matthew McConaughey, Di Caprio and the like) and last but definitely not least, members of the defence and security apparatus (even though I have lately started having my doubts about anyone higher-up at the Pentagon or at NATO actually thinking for himself). Ah, I had forgotten, also some media people, too many to name, the most recent that comes to mind is this marvellous Guardian journo named Simon Tisdall that just this weekend had proposed that the West should attack Russia [1] so that we'd all get, well, blasted by nuclear strikes. But the journos are mostly tools, truth be told.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/17/putin-...
There really aren't any firebrands or unconventional thinkers, so when someone like Musk came around and wanted to wield control over a tiny sliver of the media, people were freaking out. Think about it, even the former president voiced concern[2]. If you look at political donations of the major influential orgs, they're all highly skewed to D [3]. In fact, if you do donate ($534) to R at a large org (Goldman), you'll risk having some editor in the NYT choose to publish your name and donation which could get you fired [4]. You have to admit, something is weird.
Everywhere you look you'll see the same kind of people saying the same ideas. It's not so much that it's centrally organized. It's just that you wouldn't ascend in any of these organizations without holding completely orthodox views on the topic-du-jur.
[0] https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...
[1] https://www.good.is/money/food-brands-owners
[2] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3463150-musk-buying-twit...
[3] https://www.businessinsider.in/this-graph-shows-90-political...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/nyregion/donald-trump-nyc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_2016_pres...
Just as a crazy example, here in CA shelter is one of the biggest issues. I was shocked to discover that local politicians were bragging about how much housing development they were blocking. that tells you nearly half or more of the population is in support of that.
of course, they'll say otherwise, but look at how people vote.
Did those huge swaths of the voting population that agree existed before the issue became political, or did they spring up after?
To see what I mean, look at abortion. Anti-abortion stance was not common for evangelicals until 1980s; if anything, most of them saw it as some kind of crypto-Catholicism. The rapid swing in public opinion was manufactured. It doesn't make those voters any less real, of course - but the point is that those votes don't guide policy in this model, they're merely a stick to beat your opponents with.
I struggled through Klaus Schwab's "Covid-19: The Great Reset." Klaus talks about Degrowth as a future economic model. He also talks about the Doughnut which is the gap between abject poverty and the limits of the Earth's resources as determined by earth system scientists that everyone must live between. He also says that workers will not be advantaged due to large numbers of them dying during COVID as they were advantaged after the bubonic plague because they will be replaced with automation. I'll say that none of their programs and goals would be benefited by there being more people around.
I don't know what elites you have in mind but the average Spring Break attendee seemed to be significantly more okay with an uncontrolled pandemic than Bill Gates
the few members of the political elite who were okay with it usually happened to be put in their positions of power by the not-so-very-elite section of our democratic electorate.
The lockdowns and staying home clearly affected the labor market, but deaths within the labor demographics were not that high.
If you feel they should have shut down more and harder to save lives you are categorically wrong. It would never have worked in any degree of severity and has caused such damage as to have pushed us to disaster.
The vaccines are nothing more than a redistribution of wealth to big pharma, wealth that many of us can not afford. I work and earn what should be a good salary yet I own nothing.
I will not be locked in my house again by the government or anyone else, you will have to kill me.