I followed the mainstream media exclusively and still realised immediately that nobody actually had a clue what they were doing. My trust in MSM died then. Most alternative sources are even less reliable but i believe spreading a wider net gives me a better judgement. Whatever you do, don't exclusively outsource your opinions and judgement to the MSM. Too often they take up the same wrong narratives. This is easier said then done. Read the opinions and news even from people you despise and be honest with yourself.

[flagged]

> All (virtually all, it's not hyperbole) of the "misinformation" during covid turned out not to be that at all

> There was no science behind social distancing, or masks, or the (so called, it's not an actual one) vaccine

These assertions are provably wrong. Regarding "social distancing" specifically:

  There was adequate empirical evidence for the effect of 
  social distancing at the individual level, and for partial 
  or full lockdown at the community level. However, at the 
  level of social settings, the evidence was moderate for 
  school closure, and was limited for workplace/business 
  closures as single targeted interventions.[0]

> Edit: I would like to remind people that downvotes do not, and never will, make me wrong

It is not the downvotes which make you wrong.

0 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9002256/

But being wrong can cause downvotes.

I didn't intend it as name-calling, but as a more literal statement. Not caring about other people's health is a trait often exhibited in sociopathy.

I can understand people wanting raw milk and that's fair enough as it goes, but selling it or providing it to others is risking their health to some degree - this is shown by the relatively high level of people falling seriously ill from drinking raw milk - this is due to the high level of bacteria that is often found in it. If someone does care about the health of others, but believes that raw milk is safe to consume, then it's more a case of ignorance than sociopathy.

> Might as well call for violence against people who don't agree with you

You're out of order with that comment.

There are countries that did not shut down (Sweden comes to mind). Do you have some quantitative comparison of the reduced damage done there?

You too will be old and weak one day.

We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could. All the anger didn't help.

You can vaguely understand it by looking at hospitals overwhelmed by mass casualty events and then imagine it happening over the course of a year.

I don't disagree with you, but the Spanish Flu killed 50 million. That's twice as much as died in WWI. Seems like it was, overall, a reasonable trade off, to save possibly tens of millions, the world went into a protective state.

And the next time this happens (which it probably will given the statistics), the US will probably handle it much better and the lock down will be less severe. I'm Korean American, and something like 10 years before covid, Korea had gone through an earlier pandemic (swine flu?), so when covid hit, it wasn't that big a deal. They already all knew what to do and the lock down wasn't as severe.

Yeah, our lockdown was overkill in many instances, but it was all so new to us. There's a good chance it'll be a lot better managed the next time.

Would you, personally, be willing to die to save the economy? Or is your expectation that others would die to save the economy for you? The opposite end of completely unrestrained COVID spread could've been the Spanish Flu, which decimated and destroyed entire areas.

Interesting. Just looked into it and it seems like there are some researchers who estimate the lockdowns saved a lot of lives, but the economic toll and subsequent deaths from this toll may not have been worth it (as you mentioned). But they also said that now, "we have more tools to battle the virus. Vaccines and therapeutics are available, as are other mitigation measures." Implying we wouldn't have to do lockdowns in future pandemics.

https://record.umich.edu/articles/lockdowns-saved-lives-but-...

So yeah, I do see your point in the lockdowns were probably unnecessary, but as others have mentioned, pandemics were new to the US at the time, and we didn't have the knowledge and procedures on how to best deal with it. Yeah, we did probably go overboard, but what happened is understandable given how deadly Covid was.

We know now that social distancing and masks (for those that are willing) would probably have been enough, as other countries used to pandemics already know, like South Korea.

It was mainly observed in parts of the USA

There is a difference between 'lets try something out' and we will use the force of law to compel you to do something. A lot of people seem worried about over use of law enforcement but really its not a general problem with law enforcement but rather a problem with what laws are being enforced. They are happy to have law enforcement cracking down on people flouting a mask mandate but less happy when law enforcement is going after shop lifters.

  I don't think that applies if one of the sides is using rational arguments and statistics

Absolutely not playing a semantic game. I chose my side of this crisis -- but steelmanning your own argument and understanding the other side is good to do

   It was simple. People without ethical limits seen their opening to weaponize fear and discomfort ... and succeeded.

weaponize fear and discomfort = get close to others (masked) in public and breathe in front of them