My view on Covid from the start has been that the damage, much of it permanent, done by the endless lockdowns and everything associated with them outweighs the damage we would have seen without lockdowns. It's almost limitless. The measures have gone too far, for too long.
Kids growing up through this nonsense will be scarred or at least psychologically conditioned for life - as if they're not having enough garbage shoved down their throats.
People have lived in fear and wasted precious time in their lives.
Livelihoods have been destroyed, businesses lost, entire sectors ruined.
More suicides than ever, more depression than ever.
More deaths from other conditions due to cancelled appointments or being scared away from visiting hospitals.
Breakdown in relationships, families falling apart.
Permanent conditioning regarding things like mask wearing, distancing and OTT hygiene considerations.
Work from home will become normal. That's not a healthy thing.
Things that fly in the face of the freedom people previously took for granted will become permanent.
The vaccine passport to enable free movement possibility is despicable.
On and on.
It's going to be a strange world moving forward. A worse one than before.
I absolutely hate how it's highlighted the vulnerability of the population. They've swallowed everything, bought into the fear, panicked and obeyed. Trusting and giving themselves over to a clownish government and the ever unquestionable 'science'. People brainwashed to the point they walk around outside with masks on, etc. It hurts me to see it. They could be told to do anything, and they'd do it.
Young people coerced into getting vaccines they do not need. Vaccines only approved on an emergency basis, that have not been tested over long periods. Vaccines that can have deadly side effects such as heart inflammation - especially among young men, according to that video. The healthy have nothing to gain, only something to lose. But the young people will now fall over themselves to get vaccinated - all for the wrong reasons. The month delay to 'freedom day' here was a masterstroke. It was always going to be the case that depriving people for barely a year would be enough to get them to resort to anything. Weak. Then you see some of the pathetic sad fucks celebrating deliriously over having a needle stuck in their arm...... Jesus.
The push to get young people vaccinated for something that poses them no threat is unprecedented and makes me suspicious. The level of control and dictatorship exerted in the name of Covid across the world has gone above and beyond what's reasonable and also makes me suspicious. I struggle to believe it's just about public health. Some of these cu nts in governments and science have never had so much power, and they don't want to let it go.
It was all 'just wait for the vaccine'. Now the 'vulnerable' are all double jabbed yet we have to carry on as if......... the vaccines don't actually work. Or maybe mask wearing has simply become such a strong woke cult-like gesture of virtue that we're just not willing to let it go.
It's set up perfectly to have no end point. A great tool was 'don't need symptoms to have Covid' - fantastic control mechanism. Now just wait for the Venezuela variant, the 26th wave and various declarations that 'we need to develop new vaccines' and anything else they think of that will allow this thing to go on indefinitely. Maybe we don't stop until zero deaths?
The survival rates are ridiculously overwhelming, even among the very old, to the point that it makes a mockery of the entire narrative around it. You could be forgiven for thinking it's the plague, and that it's been our modern equivalent of wartime, with us bravely battling through it! And many of the 'Covid deaths' haven't even been Covid deaths - it's just on the certificate.
If you're old, and aren't going to have any more kids, getting the vaccine is less of an issue. But brainwashing and forcing it on the young is wrong. Suppressing, hounding, threatening and 'cancelling' any educated voices offering a balanced guide and the information required to make a decision on what is a serious matter, especially regarding kids' vaccinations, is incredibly wrong and if that doesn't indicate what a fucked up dystopia we're living in nothing will. I listen to people like those in that video, and to think they're enemies of their country is sickening. Canada in particular seems to be in a horrible state.
I'm going to have to disagree with some of what you've written Herbs, although we do agree on several points. I've read 1000 posts on a 1000 forums, telling me about the 'damage' that lockdowns do. Some of it is anecdotal, some like suicide numbers are just made up to sound shocking. The fact is that everyone, including the people imposing them, know that lockdowns cause damage. The question is, is it worse to lockdown or not lockdown.
From the evidence we have, and the evidence on the 'let it rip' side is fairly patchy but also somewhat damning, suggesting clearly that slowing the transmission is a very good thing, I'd suggest, then lockdowns absolutely work.
The knock on from fewer people being infected is that fewer people have needed to have time in hospital or die as a result. In the end, lockdowns have given the breathing space that was needed to find the real solution which is the vaccine. This is one thing.
We have to acknowledge that there isn't a good solution, by means of one where we get far more good outcomes than we have by doing what we've done. People said 'Sweden', No. People said, 'Brazil', no. This is a situation where lots of us were going to lose, and lose badly. There was never a great alternative.
I dont find it sad that people have followed advice, largely, and that they continue to do so. There are more people than I thought who can see above their own petty views and predjudices to a 'greater good'. Its not exactly the 'Blitz Spirit', well even that wasn't what it has been cracked up to be, but enough people have thought about their civic responsibilities to bear it with good grace.
Experts. It has become self-evident that 'experts' are really nothing more than the sum of their opinions, and that their opinions are coloured, biased or even downright wrong or corrupt, often from their political views. We should never forget that experts by their nature, imagine themselves to be right, and that being an expert on one subject automatically seems to make them an expert in everything. I understand why their advice has been taken as read by the politicians. However, we should not be afraid to question the advice much harder, much of it has been shown to be wrong.
(We might also ask hard question of people who are predicting climate change over 50 years from now when most of them can't get their guess right for the next two weeks of Covid.)
What we have also seen another really important factor.
When the chips were down, the Mainstream media have been beyond appauling. Grindingly negative, attempting 'gotchas', undermining officals at every opportunity, spreading fake news. If there is to be an enquiry, their role should be very carefully scrutinised. No-one wants a 'happy, happy' message all the time, but the focus on deaths, and on trying to trick ministers with irrelevances has done more to damage mental health in this country than any lockdown ever could. I include HM Loyal Opposition, who appear to have treated this as a wonderful opportunity to advance their own political ends. Shame on them.
You talk about Covid passports and jabbing kids, neither of which has happened and looks unlikely to in the future. I was bitterly disappointed by the extension of restrictions myself. I feel like the whole class got detention for one kid not doing their homework. I think it was overly cautious, as the numbers are now bearing out, but I also understand that this is a one way gate, and no-one wants to have to turn around in three or six months time and come back again.
There is a great deal of work to be done in our society to bring some sense and context to thing that have really got out of hand while we've all had too much time on our hands. The sooner we can draw a line under this and start to tackle that, better for us all.