> the total erosion of my belief that most people were basically good, and decent, and cared about the welfare of others
Oh my god, this. When the pandemic is over, I’ll be left with the knowledge that a significant fraction of the people around me at any given moment wouldn’t lift a finger for someone else if it meant even the slightest inconvenience or discomfort for them. I don’t know how to recover from that.
In the past, people went off to war and some of them literally died for their country. Today, people won’t even so much as wear a little piece of cloth on their face while shopping for their khakis. We are doomed if the next COVID is 20x deadlier.
I've heard the semi-joke that if this generation was the one involved in WWII, Americans (and many others in Europe and Asia) would be speaking deutsch or nihongo today.
You are drastically minimizing the cost of lockdowns. Demanding that nobody have any physical contact with anyone they don't live with is far more than a slight inconvenience, especially for children, single people, and those with existing mental health issues. It is entirely reasonable to consider whether the benefits are worth the costs, and people who come to different conclusions than you are probably not evil cartoon villains.
I'm not talking about the lockdowns. I'm talking about wearing a mask when in public. Just yesterday I saw a man screaming for being asked to leave a Home Depot because he wouldn't put on a mask. And before you ask, no, his objection was neither medical nor scientific.
Oh my god, this. When the pandemic is over, I’ll be left with the knowledge that a significant fraction of the people around me at any given moment wouldn’t lift a finger for someone else if it meant even the slightest inconvenience or discomfort for them. I don’t know how to recover from that.