The loss of smell is one of the odder ones that some people i know have developed... The fact that, for them, it's permanent is concerning. Simple things are now suddenly dangerous for these people, like burning food. How fast can something dangerous result from not noticing you forgot to turn off the stove, a damanged and shorted cable, or something like that? Burning to death is a horrible way to go, and we're not even talking about foods that you can't tell if they've gone bad unless you smell 'em. And, of course, depending on where and how you live, this could all pose a threat to neighbors, too. People don't believe in misinformation because it's cool: they believe in misinformation because the "correct" information isn't convincing. How much misinformation ended up being spread by the mainstream media, the World Health Organization, and our governments before finally changing their minds and suddenly getting it all right, supposedly? I mean, at least have some humility in the areas where we're not sure, to maintain your credibility, else people are going to go with whatever has more, which can very quickly end up being some dude selling magic tonics, 'cause he doesn't have a bad reputation and knokwn special interests. The worst part is, no one learned their damn lesson.

Silver linings and all that, I guess.

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Well said/good points.

That's hard to do with things like limited supplies(as Kohlrak said), and dumb measures put in place by most stores/officials(seemingly more made up to make it look like they cared and were doing something then actually doing something that worked).

(also more above in Post 134)

True, but that's forgetting all the other people who did raise the warning signs and got the "are you crazy?" or "it'll all be fine, I assure you" treatment.

We don't trust them to do the right thing. We expect them to do the right thing. That's their job on paper, and even if we let them do whatever their hearts desired for centuries on end, we should have risen up to the occasion this time and demanded they do better. But I'm afraid it's late, so all we can do is mask up and make sure we're clean.

I'm glad you said this. We are paying for the mistakes of others. I've been wearing my masks and making sure I keep even better care of my hygiene ever since this whole fiasco started, and instead things got worse thanks to their mistakes, if they could even be called that. That's why this whole thing is a dismay. Nobody wants to own up to the things they've done. They just want to take the easy route at the cost of other lives either getting worse or ending.

Ineffective is the wrong word here. THese lockdowns effectively made it worse. The problem is, just like our bad sanitation habits, we have really bad preparation habits. An effective lockdown is untenable, and anything shy of that only makes things worse. You have to lock down for the duration of the virus (incubation plus symptomatic period) and the period that it's contagious, and double that for secondary infections in the household. That's 2 months (actually possibly 3) and that's not counting the possibility of virus shedding post antibody creation somehow being infectious (i don't think anyone's really done a study on that). If this were influenza, maybe, but the incubation period is 2 to 4 weeks (if you're going by the vaccine, and the initial information released by china before the corporate fat cats flipped out that it was too long for self-quarantine). This is particularly why this disease is so much more destructive both inside and outside of the body. At that point where it is our responsibility, we should arguably have been able to do the lockdowns ourselves ithout orders, but, as i said, this is untenable.

EDIT: To be clear, though, the most effective thing would've been an international travel lockdown or proper quarantine, which we did for ebola, which is far, far less contagious.

Well the basic gist being said is good advice, imo....i.e. for less affected people to live their lives and not worry too much(stress being bad overall for the body, etc).

That said, I think grown/capable adults should look into such things on their own(with a mix of good info and common sense) and make their own choices.

We've sadly already had that from the lockdowns(such as depression from lost jobs or businesses leading to some tragic ends, people starving due to not being able to buy food, etc).

Thing is, sometimes the conspiracy theories are right(usually not, but sometimes).....that's why I find it best to not quickly/readily believe everything i'm told, but to also not discount it all quickly/readily either.

(case in point: as Kohlrak pointed out, some "authoritative sources" spread misinfo/bad info as well)

Sidenote: I didn't find that out about shingles coming from chicken pox till later in life as well...though thankfully I never had it myself.

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Yeah, and a good part of such talk came from some of the same ones who are now saying the lockdowns/etc work & that they will end if we follow it all and trust them.

Can you perhaps see how it'd be hard for some to trust those saying such after all that?

Spanish flu had masks and etc as well...eventually people said "eff that" and moved on....I feel that in time our generation will likely do the same(of course I hope they also keep up some of the hygiene habits like washing hands and etc).

Yes, but not mainly those of our fellow citizens...it was more so the ones who are supposed to be watching out for us(the same ones who said protests were a safe exception to the measures and let people stand shoulder to shoulder in major cities during an outbreak)....yet they make us think it's our fellow neighbors/friends/etc that are more to blame.

(btw I replied more in post 137 as well)

Because the decision to lockdown is caused by the large number of COVID-19 cases, not the other way around, perhaps?

The US is, however, the world leader in vaccinations; it's reached the point where, in many parts of the country, you can walk in to a vaccination site and get vaccinated without getting an appointment. In fact, apparently Alaska has plans to promote vaccine tourism; to attract tourists, they're planning to offer vaccination to foreigners who are just visiting.

Furthermore, the CDC has said that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks in most situations, and as a result, mask requirements are disappearing.

(Contrast this situation to the situation in most of the rest of the world.)

In the early days of the pandemic, we didn't know how the disease behaved. We did not know that it isn't transmitted through contact with surfaces, for example. (Hence why people would aggressively sterilize things like mail and groceries.) Now we know how it spreads, and don't need to waste time and effort (and money) on things that don't matter, and can instead focus on things like masks and (now that they exist) vaccines.

The way science works, even (and perhaps especially) in a pandemic, is that new discoveries are made all the time, and some of them invalidate our previous understanding of the world; that's just how science works.

Did the lockdowns help at all?