Covid global health emergency is over, WHO says. Of course, for most part of Western society, Covid "has been over" for well over a year. Nevertheless, this formal announcement offers opportunities to appraise the entire “Covid period” – assuming this is really the formal endpoint, that there is nothing further coming on to make it a current event again.
Came here and discovered you thanks to your recent comment on Western Russia fans at "Edward Slavsquat," a comment that was quite lucid and struck me as spot on. Here, you are asking an excellent question that the anti-covid-measures conspiracy theorists have unfairly downplayed : 'Why would the conspirators would foment Covid panic for two years and then switch it all off?'
Now, in answering it, we see things differently.
You think that much of the response coming in after the initial panic can be explained by the search for that elusive One Weird Trick.
As early as April 2020, ministers of health spoke openly how the lockdowns and the masks are tentative measures, while the only final solution is to come from vaccines. Vaccines for a respiratory infectious disease. That's something, a category of thing that has never existed, and medics thought it is impossible. So, rather than being one weird trick after another, but a number weird tricks employed in combination.
Also peculiarly, but in a different way, by April 2020, the online world was swarmed with many professionally done videos of dancing "nurses." It was mightily strange. Especially given that the videos' provenance remained obscure to this day.
If we were dealing by a despairing and frightened establishment, aiming at calming the populace, how come it otherwise promoted fear 24/7, breaking the very basic established standards of conduct during pandemics and epidemics that were in force for decades.
For something the death rates of which were obviously quite low from the get-go in early 2020 (viz. the 'Diamond Princess').
While the extreme theory about permanently re-engineering society within a several years was shown to be wrong, all that happened was very successful if there was an aim to stupefy the public, i.e. anesthetize it, very convenient for the establishments everywhere facing major crisis and war prospects.
You described how that was accomplished.
Also, while it has not served a social re-engineering blitzkrieg, it was useful if such an re-engineering is envisaged in the longer term.
In any case, there were so many odd things in the responses. Maybe much of them can fit your theory, and I just failed to see how.
Thank you for this comment. The whole era has, indeed, seen many odd things. I don't *blame* anyone for adopting a conspiratorial mindset to explain it - like I said, if I didn't actually know people in charge of adopting various measures here, I would probably be more prone to it myself. For instance, when vaccine passports became a thing of national debate here, I wrote a somewhat popular article (in Finnish) where one of my arguments was precisely the very predictable effect of people being radicalized, in various ways, by this idiotic, thankfully-soon-junked scheme.
>Vaccines for a respiratory infectious disease. That's something, a category of thing that has never existed
I believe the obvious comparison was to the flu shot. My memory - as someone who followed the crisis and the response closely from the get-go - was that the very first vaccine prognoses were not that it would completely solve the crisis by itself but that it would blunt the effect of the virus, quite like a (more effective) flu shot might be expected to do. It was only later that the hype started to get stronger and stronger and more and more promises were made about the vaccines actually preventing severe disease entirely, stopping infections and so on.
>Also peculiarly, but in a different way, by April 2020, the online world was swarmed with many professionally done videos of dancing "nurses." It was mightily strange. Especially given that the videos' provenance remained obscure to this day.
I also found the videos weird, but this isn't one of those mysteries I ever found *that* meaningful. Common people are and have been able to create "professional"-looking videos for some time now, and fads have spread among various groups of workers even before crisis, like the "Tetris challenge" of 2019 (https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/20/what-is-the-tetris-challenge-europe-s-emergency-services-photos-go-viral). If anything, the worker dances were probably another (failed) attempt by management to "lift the spirits" among burdened workers in lieu of not actually paying them a proper wage.
>If we were dealing by a despairing and frightened establishment, aiming at calming the populace, how come it otherwise promoted fear 24/7, breaking the very basic established standards of conduct during pandemics and epidemics that were in force for decades.
There were different establishments and different responses. Politicians tried to present an image that there's no reason to fear and they have things under control (and they have just the One Weird Trick) to accomplish it, but often failed, perhaps because they genuinely feared the virus themselves (unsurprisingly, as many of them are old, and may have gone through things that make them a risk group). Media, on the other hand, quickly found that stoking fear gets the clicks and money, and medical establishments also arguably resorted to fear-inducing tactics simply because they thought that anything that keeps people from getting sick and their institutions from being burdened must be good.
>all that happened was very successful if there was an aim to stupefy the public, i.e. anesthetize it, very convenient for the establishments everywhere facing major crisis and war prospects.
I'm not sure if the public is, actually, more stupefied as it was before. People have been prone to supporting authoritarian developments and ignore stuff that's important but boring (ie. increased surveillance, etc.) both before and after the crisis. If anything, the Covid crisis (modestly) increased the number of conspiracy theorists and other people suspicious of current institutions and their plans - there probably are a fair few people who are now concerned with surveillance and other such things, but wouldn't have been before the pandemic.
> Many conspiracy theorists wove grandiose narratives about how vaccine boosters, vaccine passports, lockdowns or masks would last forever and ever, a mark of the elite lording over their cattle.
This isn't quite the steelman version of the argument. That would be "countries will get used to the idea of lockdown and reintroduce it at hair trigger when something scary arrives". And I'm not sure if this version sounds so far-fetched. I have no idea how e.g. the German state will react the next time a respiratory illness with the stats of Covid comes along; all I see is that the pre-covid "lockdowns are not the answer" WHO consensus has eroded, whereas an infrastructure for fairly strict control of the populace has been established in several Western countries. And except for Italy, I haven't seen a Western government pay the electoral price for being too strict. Courts in Canada have rubberstamped governance by emergency order and debanking protestors. Courts in Germany have agreed that you can use curfews to keep people from partying. Good luck having a liberal democracy with these incentives.
I'm fairly angry at the anti-establishment Right too, for wasting their momentum to fight the vaccines instead of hammering the lockdowns. But I expect less from a loose cluster of internet celebrities than from a government with a PhD at every post.
Granted, it's not a steelman, but it's pretty hard to write a steelmant of the conspiracy theorist narrative as a whole considering there are so many theories, wildly careening off to all directions. However, at the very least the idea that there would just be increasing and widening lockdowns/boosters/passports/mandates was a popular one; see, for instance, this "leaked info from Canada". https://thecanadianreport.ca/is-this-leaked-memo-really-trudeaus-covid-plan-for-2021-you-decide/
One thing that might put a kibosh on further lockdowns is that there's now an established lobby against them. I'm not talking about the conspiracy theorists (who, at this point, spend more time squabbling with each other than attacking the state anyway), but the small businesses, particularly bars and similar establishments; pressure from these orgs probably played a large role in why the states moved from lockdown strategies to vaccine first strategies, which then of course brought their own problems.
I daresay there won't be a reckoning against lockdowns due to popular pressure, since authoritarian measures were *always* wildly popular; at whatever stage of the crisis, in most countries, it was pretty much a given that people would have wanted more strict measures than the ones currently at force.
Came here and discovered you thanks to your recent comment on Western Russia fans at "Edward Slavsquat," a comment that was quite lucid and struck me as spot on. Here, you are asking an excellent question that the anti-covid-measures conspiracy theorists have unfairly downplayed : 'Why would the conspirators would foment Covid panic for two years and then switch it all off?'
Now, in answering it, we see things differently.
You think that much of the response coming in after the initial panic can be explained by the search for that elusive One Weird Trick.
As early as April 2020, ministers of health spoke openly how the lockdowns and the masks are tentative measures, while the only final solution is to come from vaccines. Vaccines for a respiratory infectious disease. That's something, a category of thing that has never existed, and medics thought it is impossible. So, rather than being one weird trick after another, but a number weird tricks employed in combination.
Also peculiarly, but in a different way, by April 2020, the online world was swarmed with many professionally done videos of dancing "nurses." It was mightily strange. Especially given that the videos' provenance remained obscure to this day.
If we were dealing by a despairing and frightened establishment, aiming at calming the populace, how come it otherwise promoted fear 24/7, breaking the very basic established standards of conduct during pandemics and epidemics that were in force for decades.
For something the death rates of which were obviously quite low from the get-go in early 2020 (viz. the 'Diamond Princess').
While the extreme theory about permanently re-engineering society within a several years was shown to be wrong, all that happened was very successful if there was an aim to stupefy the public, i.e. anesthetize it, very convenient for the establishments everywhere facing major crisis and war prospects.
You described how that was accomplished.
Also, while it has not served a social re-engineering blitzkrieg, it was useful if such an re-engineering is envisaged in the longer term.
In any case, there were so many odd things in the responses. Maybe much of them can fit your theory, and I just failed to see how.
Thank you for this comment. The whole era has, indeed, seen many odd things. I don't *blame* anyone for adopting a conspiratorial mindset to explain it - like I said, if I didn't actually know people in charge of adopting various measures here, I would probably be more prone to it myself. For instance, when vaccine passports became a thing of national debate here, I wrote a somewhat popular article (in Finnish) where one of my arguments was precisely the very predictable effect of people being radicalized, in various ways, by this idiotic, thankfully-soon-junked scheme.
>Vaccines for a respiratory infectious disease. That's something, a category of thing that has never existed
I believe the obvious comparison was to the flu shot. My memory - as someone who followed the crisis and the response closely from the get-go - was that the very first vaccine prognoses were not that it would completely solve the crisis by itself but that it would blunt the effect of the virus, quite like a (more effective) flu shot might be expected to do. It was only later that the hype started to get stronger and stronger and more and more promises were made about the vaccines actually preventing severe disease entirely, stopping infections and so on.
>Also peculiarly, but in a different way, by April 2020, the online world was swarmed with many professionally done videos of dancing "nurses." It was mightily strange. Especially given that the videos' provenance remained obscure to this day.
I also found the videos weird, but this isn't one of those mysteries I ever found *that* meaningful. Common people are and have been able to create "professional"-looking videos for some time now, and fads have spread among various groups of workers even before crisis, like the "Tetris challenge" of 2019 (https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/20/what-is-the-tetris-challenge-europe-s-emergency-services-photos-go-viral). If anything, the worker dances were probably another (failed) attempt by management to "lift the spirits" among burdened workers in lieu of not actually paying them a proper wage.
>If we were dealing by a despairing and frightened establishment, aiming at calming the populace, how come it otherwise promoted fear 24/7, breaking the very basic established standards of conduct during pandemics and epidemics that were in force for decades.
There were different establishments and different responses. Politicians tried to present an image that there's no reason to fear and they have things under control (and they have just the One Weird Trick) to accomplish it, but often failed, perhaps because they genuinely feared the virus themselves (unsurprisingly, as many of them are old, and may have gone through things that make them a risk group). Media, on the other hand, quickly found that stoking fear gets the clicks and money, and medical establishments also arguably resorted to fear-inducing tactics simply because they thought that anything that keeps people from getting sick and their institutions from being burdened must be good.
>all that happened was very successful if there was an aim to stupefy the public, i.e. anesthetize it, very convenient for the establishments everywhere facing major crisis and war prospects.
I'm not sure if the public is, actually, more stupefied as it was before. People have been prone to supporting authoritarian developments and ignore stuff that's important but boring (ie. increased surveillance, etc.) both before and after the crisis. If anything, the Covid crisis (modestly) increased the number of conspiracy theorists and other people suspicious of current institutions and their plans - there probably are a fair few people who are now concerned with surveillance and other such things, but wouldn't have been before the pandemic.
> Many conspiracy theorists wove grandiose narratives about how vaccine boosters, vaccine passports, lockdowns or masks would last forever and ever, a mark of the elite lording over their cattle.
This isn't quite the steelman version of the argument. That would be "countries will get used to the idea of lockdown and reintroduce it at hair trigger when something scary arrives". And I'm not sure if this version sounds so far-fetched. I have no idea how e.g. the German state will react the next time a respiratory illness with the stats of Covid comes along; all I see is that the pre-covid "lockdowns are not the answer" WHO consensus has eroded, whereas an infrastructure for fairly strict control of the populace has been established in several Western countries. And except for Italy, I haven't seen a Western government pay the electoral price for being too strict. Courts in Canada have rubberstamped governance by emergency order and debanking protestors. Courts in Germany have agreed that you can use curfews to keep people from partying. Good luck having a liberal democracy with these incentives.
I'm fairly angry at the anti-establishment Right too, for wasting their momentum to fight the vaccines instead of hammering the lockdowns. But I expect less from a loose cluster of internet celebrities than from a government with a PhD at every post.
Granted, it's not a steelman, but it's pretty hard to write a steelmant of the conspiracy theorist narrative as a whole considering there are so many theories, wildly careening off to all directions. However, at the very least the idea that there would just be increasing and widening lockdowns/boosters/passports/mandates was a popular one; see, for instance, this "leaked info from Canada". https://thecanadianreport.ca/is-this-leaked-memo-really-trudeaus-covid-plan-for-2021-you-decide/
One thing that might put a kibosh on further lockdowns is that there's now an established lobby against them. I'm not talking about the conspiracy theorists (who, at this point, spend more time squabbling with each other than attacking the state anyway), but the small businesses, particularly bars and similar establishments; pressure from these orgs probably played a large role in why the states moved from lockdown strategies to vaccine first strategies, which then of course brought their own problems.
I daresay there won't be a reckoning against lockdowns due to popular pressure, since authoritarian measures were *always* wildly popular; at whatever stage of the crisis, in most countries, it was pretty much a given that people would have wanted more strict measures than the ones currently at force.