An answer which fits both "sides" with each side claiming the other side is the one doing damage.
People - even leading scientists - who questioned natural origin, mandatory lockdowns, school closures, vaccine effectiveness, or any of a dozen other narratives were demonized and attacked in the name of science. "Do your own research" became a phrase of mockery, while "trust 'the' science" was used as a thought terminating cliché.
And neither party are really taking climate science seriously, it's just that one pays lip service a bit more.
And no, there is no "both sides" on climate change. Republicans are actively trying to make it happen.
> School closures worked well for preventing spread.
Show me the data.
And, at what cost? Was the juice worth the squeeze? ... How many teachers have you talked to lately? Because the universal consensus is that closures did serious damage, still being felt to this day.
And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed. Researchers who raised it were shadow-banned from Twitter, Facebook etc. That's not science, it's authoritarian dogma from an unaccountable political class.
There were superior alternatives - putting air purifiers in classrooms would have been a big one. But we weren't permitted to even have that conversation.
> Vaccines actually solved the covid issue.
Or, basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity; like with every global pandemic ever. Did you see any data on this? Or are you 'trusting the science' which you haven't actually seen.
> Lockdowns did worked, actually.
Oh? So, you can point to countries where there were no lockdowns and they got torn apart, can you? ... Because researchers who have looked at that question say it isn't actually that clear [0].
The purpose of lockdowns was to slow the spread so that chronically underfunded and privatized healthcare systems wouldn't utterly collapse. Fair enough - but it wasn't presented that way, and investment in public health hasn't been improved since. Instead, most systems in the West seem stretched more than ever, while we have plenty of money for sending Israel bombs and weapons, or building concentration camps, or deporting people at ludicrous expense, etc.
... But that wasn't even what I was talking about - I was talking about how even questioning mandatory lockdowns was enough to make people lose their jobs, and get censored from mainstream and social media. It's not very scientific to censor scientists.
> there is no "both sides" on climate change. Republicans are actively trying to make it happen.
And Democrats pay lip service to stopping them, but don't seem very effective. And when something like Deepwater Horizon happens, or the DAPL protests, or support for fracking is an issue, where is the Dem leadership? Quietly backing the fossil fuel companies, every single time.
What's needed is radical change, immediately. That's the view of basically every scientist. Democrats pretend not to understand that. It's nowhere near good enough, and I see no reason to expect change; not the slightest glimmer of hope for what's necessary.
0 - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...
Basically, blue states that had more of them had results getting almost as bad as red states without them have it. Lives were saved at some acceptable lowering of test scores.
> And it's an undeniable fact, that conversation (among many others) was heavily suppressed.
Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. Other people telling you that you are wrong is not supression.
And also, bullshit with researchers being censored. Especially hypocritical from someone conservative or republican.
> basically everyone already got corona and now there's a level of herd immunity
Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
Are you seriously asserting that school closures are the difference between red state and blue state mortality rates??
> Nonsense. The points of your side were repeated and laundered and repeated and defended and then again. ... bullshit with researchers being censored
The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
> Not true. Vaccines came, covid went away. Babies cried about vaccines.
Did covid 'go away' in the global south, where they didn't have vaccines? Hmmmmm......
0 - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeate...
1 - https://www.thefp.com/p/i-fought-government-censorship-and-w...
2 - https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/why-did-scientists-...
What's your explanation for the difference?
> The censorship was vast and is well documented, ie, [0], [1], [2], etc. Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
I don't know about you, but I don't use Facebook for science research.
Was there censorship on, idk, arxiv regarding Covid?
> Facebook alone admitted to removing over 20 million posts, and suppressing at least 190 million.
Facebook also pushes false narratives. Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else, and engagement is found on the fringes.
I really like the parent comments you made. They didn't come off as "one-sided" (in any direction), but more so "let's step back and think about it." Kind of like a blameless post-mortem, blameless in the way of saying it wasn't _our_ faults, the general public, because who are we to really fight against these companies who have so successfully weaponized our basic emotions and values against ourselves? And what can we do to "wake up" (not in a "red-pill" or "sheeple" way) and collectively see that all of these narratives that we are fed are for no common person's best interests, and that we've been had, and how can we work together next time (if we even can work together on the same platforms which pull us apart)?
I know that the realization that I came to after reflecting on everything that happened over the past (5, 10, 15) years is that the only thing that _I_ can do is focus my energy towards my community - my friends, my neighbors, those people who I can in someway touch without relying on corporations with ulterior motives to stand between us.
And, like you alluded to, to also accept that most things are out of my control. Nothing I do will ever sway climate change, for instance. An example that sticks out to me is Greta Thornberg. She had what seemed to be very pure intentions about making a stand for a better future (whether that is or isn't the case isn't the focus here), but, no matter what side of the issue a person falls on, the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her - her motivations, her knowledge, her parents; the narrative given to 'conservative'-leaning people were all of her flaws, and the narrative given to 'liberal'-leaning people was the manufactured outrage about what the 'conservatives' were saying - and then, Boom: now nobody is actually talking about the issue, and the divide grows wider, and the focus is taken off of the companies who indisputably take advantage of the world (can anyone actually make an argument that the waste poured into rivers, for example, is _good_ for the inhabitants of the earth?).
What's between us and a better world is class awareness. So, for example, when you say things like "Facebook and other large companies drive engagement above all else", you're missing a major piece of the puzzle.
The daily atrocities in Gaza could drive tremendous engagement on Facebook, were they not heavily censored and suppressed.
Same goes for mainstream media. Look how unanimous the opinion of the media and political class was against Luigi. Look how they chorused in unison with smears against Jill Stein, or against Assange, Snowden etc. Again, all people who had their stories suppressed on social media as well.
This also explains how with Greta "the main story surrounding her turned into questioning her" - there's an agenda that unites the tiny number of billionaires who own basically all media in the West. The element of class even explains neatly why the media stopped covering Greta - because she started connecting the world's issues to capitalism and inequality. (You know, like MLK did, right before he was assassinated.)
So please don't think I have a message of blamelessness for the world's issues. There's more than enough blame to go around, and the problems won't be fixed if we keep ignoring the problems stemming from massive wealth inequality.
What's more, the researchers suggest that adding a strict stay-at-home order on top of such measures "only had a small additional effect" in terms of slowing down Covid-19 – estimated at below 17.5% on average."
Frankly, I think we're all very tired of engaging with anti-Covid response points which have been debunked to hell and back, and then back to hell again.
Scientific evidence is not "dogma" just because you, intuitively, disagree with it. That's fine. The real world does not follow very simple logical frameworks. It's complex, it's messy.
Was our, or anyone's, Covid response perfect? Of course not. But this was a novel disease, one and in which our understanding of it changed day by day. Read that a few times over and you'll begin to understand why we did what we did.