The Big12Ag said:

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Thread title is insulting to anyone who has even had a cursory interest in reading about the pandemic over the past 8 months.

There is a group of people desperate to believe this is a fake pandemic. I don't know if it's a natural fear response (I'm scared, if I prove to myself it's not a real threat my fear will go away), something politically related (my party leadership say it's the other side manipulating us), or something triggered by manipulative articles competing countries embed in social media. This goes the other way too, for people who state this is a health threat that should have us all cowering in our safe rooms. But that latter category was dominant in March on this board, in recent months the "it's not a real disease!!" nocoronabros are posting obsessively.

It's a pandemic. There have been worse pandemics. We (ie THE WORLD, not just the US) may have over reacted in hindsight. Great majority of fatalities are older people, like most respiratory illnesses. It's worse than the flu but not 10 times worse. It hospitalizes enough people to have protected ourselves with some distancing and tactical mask usage. The threat to children is almost nil, as far as risk of fatality, so we should have allowed school if we could protect older school staff. Vaccine investments by pharma show how real this is, and the speed of development, innovations, and fast tracking by government have all been impressive so far. Allow your mind to explore the grey area of the issue to discover the best data possible - it's not a binary "it's the black death 2"/"not even as bad as the common cold!!" issue.

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Agree a lot with what you are saying. But I do not think anyone on here is denying the virus or the fact that it can and is dangerous to some. It is, no doubt, very dangerous to particular elements of the population. The argument between most is really centered around the person's values. Some value doing whatever can be done to keep loved ones who would be at threat most alive and in general populations threatened the most from harm. They value that so much they are completely accepting that while losing certain freedoms and capabilities in the short term suck, to them the bigger picture is to try to keep everyone as safe as possible until a vaccine is readily available. What they miss possibly in this is that there isn't a real end date to these types of things which tends to lead to a very unstable economic situation and that will very much hurt how companies invest, people and families spend their money etc putting too many out of work and forcing businesses, many of which are small businesses that a family depends on shut down There is also a mental and financial health aspect to this that is very real and arguably just as bad, some say worse, than what the virus is doing. Others value their freedoms and certain other choices and see that staying in a "lock down" mode or at least leaning more that way does way more harm than good and they do not at all like the fact that there are certain elements of the population very much at risk, when you look at the numbers, it's still extremely rare to actually die from this. Yes, overall it is worse than the flu but not necessarily to the individual. So this side feels that while tragic and horrible the losses are, there is worse happening overall to not push forward, d everything we can to keep the economy ramping back up as that will save more lives in the end than staying locked down. Think of it this way, both sides want to end this, but the situation inherently can lead to both sides choosing to support very different strategies to mitigate problems caused by all of this.

notex said:

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The Big12Ag said:

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Thread title is insulting to anyone who has even had a cursory interest in reading about the pandemic over the past 8 months.

There is a group of people desperate to believe this is a fake pandemic. I don't know if it's a natural fear response (I'm scared, if I prove to myself it's not a real threat my fear will go away), something politically related (my party leadership say it's the other side manipulating us), or something triggered by manipulative articles competing countries embed in social media. This goes the other way too, for people who state this is a health threat that should have us all cowering in our safe rooms. But that latter category was dominant in March on this board, in recent months the "it's not a real disease!!" nocoronabros are posting obsessively.

It's a pandemic. There have been worse pandemics. We (ie THE WORLD, not just the US) may have over reacted in hindsight. Great majority of fatalities are older people, like most respiratory illnesses. It's worse than the flu but not 10 times worse. It hospitalizes enough people to have protected ourselves with some distancing and tactical mask usage. The threat to children is almost nil, as far as risk of fatality, so we should have allowed school if we could protect older school staff. Vaccine investments by pharma show how real this is, and the speed of development, innovations, and fast tracking by government have all been impressive so far. Allow your mind to explore the grey area of the issue to discover the best data possible - it's not a binary "it's the black death 2"/"not even as bad as the common cold!!" issue.

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Some good points here. Still, I don't think it's been a pandemic for at least 4-5 months. It's a casedemic. Nothing rising even close to the "Spanish Flu" etc. Inarguably the over-reaction has been worse than the disease, culturally, as the 'help' that has been implemented (lockdowns, masks), has not statistically altered the case levels, let alone deaths directly attributable to cases.

Falling in an election year in the US made the hysteria that much worse, imho (particularly with a media/Dem party rushing to panic as many as possible to point blame on the sitting President).

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