Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

In my mind, the main issue with the pandemic response is that it became an exercise in crowd control rather than a discussion amongst equals.

Had the Government at the time said - hey, look, we have two options here - we can lock down for a good few months / a year, it might get rid of the virus, it might not, but it's worth a shot; or we can just sack it off and take the hit - then I think we'd have had fairly similar compliance, and a lot more respect long term.

What happened instead was just this constant kind of psychological warfare - it's just a few weeks, actually it's just a few months, okay you can go outside again, actually go back indoors - and everything was ramped up to 11 - getting on the tube was perfectly safe if you were needed at work, but not if you wanted to see family - etc.

It felt completely schizophrenic - those of us who actually looked at the data could tell straight away that "it's just a few weeks to flatten the curve" was a bald faced lie.

For many I think that it pulled back the curtain on the kind of behavioural manipulation that goes on, and now it's difficult for a lot of people to believe that the Government is actually acting in our best interest.

It just uncovered that no, the government is not acting in our best interest, it's acting in its best interest. Sometimes these two might align in some areas, but that's coincidental.

One of the frustrations is that there are two alternative options to domestic lockdown.

1. International Quarantines 2. Respirators

Both only need to apply until capitalism does its innovation thing and creates nasal vaccines or testing such that it’s possible to eliminate the virus

Offering a “your life will suck” or you suck down SARS2 and if you roll a double you get long covid, looks like less of an appealing choice when you can do 1 and/or 2 until the virus is contained

There's a lot of other reasons people are furious with the medical system. One of my gripes with covid is that it absorbs a lot of this righteous anger into anti-mask anti-medicine yahoos.

This is something that's part of the ethos behind the "thin white line"... which is a toxic ideology similar to the police "thin blue line". Essentially they want to paint all their critics as a number of stereotypes:

1. The tinfoil hat wearer. Anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-who-knows-what, these incoherent loonies are angry because bigfoot is putting floride into the frogs and making them gay

2. The drug addict. Addicts are randomly violent rapists that will claw you to death if suggest they use less drugs or put out their cigarette. Btw I didn't just throw sex assault in there; it's not fun, but this is literally a stereotype from drs/nurses, because there is a higher prevalence (long story on that, but IMO mostly psychos just love drugs, so there's a high correlation; causation is murkier)

3. The fatty, the drinker, the non-complier. This asshole will ruin their body, then blame their doctor. Similar to the drug addict without stereotypes regarding conduct.

4. The primadona. Just they same person that insults the waiter, but now the waiter is the doctor. They expect you to handle them with kid gloves while you wipe their ass, and they'll complain about it anyway.

Medical staff literallly think all their critics fall into those categories. A substantial number of them think they should be able to just kill their patients, just like cops think they can kill people.

There's a really toxic culture that goes unaddressed. They have terrible relationships with a number of underprivileged groups. It may be a stressful job, but it has a hidden culture of abuse and us-vs-them mentality.

There's issues in the profession, systemic and addressable, but there's also a major people and culture issue.

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