[ArkanExplorer]

Its been the same with lockdown. Enforce totalitarian restrictions and tracking on the plebes, whilst the rich and connected routinely ignore or are excluded from the rules.

Its possible that Lockdown is a ploy to distract from the trillions of dollars of money printing that has gone on during the pandemic, to suppress the inflation generated, as well as to normalise location and biological data collection and arbitrary interference in personal liberty and private businesses.

It seems unlikely that the motivation is really the health of the populace, when deaths and ill health from air pollution and obesity, and from the interrupted medical treatments during Lockdown itself, are routinely ignored.

You can follow the same logical pattern for all the other major issues of our time. Are the massive migration inflows of violent military-age males into Europe from MENA really about humanitarian aid, or about injecting cheap labour into the continent and providing justification for giant intelligence agencies, tracking and banning of encryption?

The same for critical race theory - is the goal the betterment of humankind, or to set the working class against eachother and to distract from insane wealth capture of the 1%?

[unethical_ban]

I don't understand people who think that, at hundreds or thousands of municipal and state levels, political leaders were secretly in meetings with robes nodding excitedly over the opportunity to oppress the masses. Or that an unknown, highly contagious respiratory disease causing hospitals to overflow with no vaccine available didn't warrant some kind of mandates against public interactions.

It boggles my mind what kind of conspiratorial, Truman-Show-like mentality people must have to find bad faith so common in life.

It is the party of those in America who were against lockdowns, masks, vaccines, or any kind of precautions who are also against any kind of regulations or limits on the causes of obesity or climate change or pollution. So your comment about "why do 'they' care about the virus but not pollution" is moot.

[988747]

I disagree with GP's conspiracy theory, but still I can see how it could be theoretically possible. Those "hundreds or thousands of municipal and state levels, political leaders" they are not necessarily a part of real elite. Instead, they are brainwashed during their college years to think what they masters need them to think. And then, when the actual pandemic happens they simply do not have enough critical thinking skills to reject the official narrative. Also, it is safer for their political careers to just go with the flow.

[ArkanExplorer]

There was no hospital overflow. I live in Ukraine and even with a totally rudimentary health system and routinely ignored lockdowns, the health system functioned like any other flu outbreak. The temporary hospitals setup in the USA and UK were never used.

If anything I am quite sure that the few lockdowns we did have worsened the spread of COVID, or at least concentrated it over a shorter timeframe, since people were now packed into shopping centres at reduced hours, were forced to socialise in smaller 'speakeasy' venues, and had a greater interaction with grandparents given the closure of schools. Without lockdowns, the virus would have spread slowly and steadily, and been concentrated in younger groups who have more social interaction with eachother, like influenza each season.

Even under a 'best case' scenario for Lockdown, and using Sweden as an example, we have spent about 50 months in Lockdown in order to save 1 month of life - statiscally for someone of advanced age and with serious existing health problems:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...

Is there a health problem in the West? Yes, and its from obesity, which is heavily correlated to negative COVID outcomes:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

Sweden and Ukraine far below lockdown countries for deaths per capita: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Annual deaths in Sweden 2020 only 6% higher than 2018, and even then only after a weak 2019 flu/death season:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

The COVID death spike in Sweden basically aligns with a once-a-decade flu variant:

https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...

So is this conspiratorial? I am using all of the available data to create this attitude.

[throwaway3neu94]

The governor of California was photographed holding a fundraising dinner during a phase of lockdown he put in effect.

It'd be hard to come up with a more obvious scenario.

[tasogare]

Believe it or not, this is exactly what happened. I'm lucky enough to live in a country that didn't went with the lockdown madness (Japan), so I know for a fact an alternative way was possibly. It's sad to read people so brainwashed they defend the ruling class who robbed their liberties (and which didn't followed the rules themselves, as shown in France with ministers going to secret restaurants in Paris[1]).

[1] https://apnews.com/article/paris-europe-coronavirus-pandemic...