Well, I’m done fucking around. I have enough and desire very little. It just costs a bit more, but that’s what all the fucking around was about.
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Life is what happens while you’re making other pans.
Or choose to scrub them to earn a living, even after retirement.
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Same for me when I go back to the UK. The place is an absolute disaster, for reasons similar to the ones you mention. It’s not entirely because of “COVID”, but because of a cluster of policy decisions that could have had no possible outcome except harm. Taiwan looks superficially better, but the sea of masks suggests that there are simmering problems.
I’m in absolutely no doubt that the destruction of people’s economic security and critical thinking faculties was deliberate. I’ve written before about the professionalism and competence in the UK brainwashing campaign - you don’t arrive at that level of technical fluency just overnight. They must have researched, practiced, and brainstormed how they were going to do it for months in advance. And although there are vague mumblings about “mental health”, nobody is addressing the elephant in the room - that people were lied to, screamed at, isolated, and immiserated as a matter of government policy.
Professional observers warned at the time that “lockdowns” and the associated messaging were going to cause mental harm. They were told to STFU, of course, because clearly they just wanted granny to die.
And you couldn’t escape it. If you recognised that it was all bollocks and (for example) began to document it all in a Humbug thread on social media, you’d be alternately ignored and mocked. If you believed it, your mind was toast. And regardless of whether you believed it or not, you were still subject to having your business shut down or your job taken away, or “mandated” to do stupid shit that you were forced to comply with. Everyone inevitably went a little bit nuts, including me.
Yeah, I get this too (although a fair number of people in my personal social circle are aware that something terrible happened and is still happening).
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Pan makers of the world, unite! 
Guy
I humbly yield my prize to the true source of my wisdom.
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I get what you’re saying, and yes you’re right – some of the lawsuits will take (still more) years to wrap up, and some people who were traumatized will never get over it, and various relationships of different kinds that fell apart will never get put back together – but frankly, all of that is normal.
I mean it’s normal for seemingly oversized disruptions to occur every now and then. It’s just the way this particular package of disruptions occurred that seems abnormal, because whichever previous package one tries to compare it to, there’s always something distinguishable about it. And after a package of disruptions, some things that changed turn out to have stuck, while other things are either put on the shelf or swept under the carpet or publicly conflagrated, but the consensus is that the event per se has passed.
Overall, I agree with Drew that it’s fair to say we’re at that point now.
ETA: Yes I’m aware of the ticking-time-bomb-of-cancer theory, and yes I agree some of the latest numbers are at least disappointing if not alarming, but these things should always be put in perspective. So many things are cancer time bombs, and now there’s potentially one more (or rather a few brands of one more) to add to the list. Still not the end of the world.
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I think in many ways the world has not returned to normal, but not for these reasons at all.
I can travel anywhere around the world, don’t have to endure lockdowns or restrictions on movement, don’t have to wear a mask if I don’t want to, don’t have to work remotely, etc. Seems my life is more or less what it was in 2019. As far as the knock on effects… Geopolitical stakes rising, domestic political paralysis and polarization, social media toxicity, supply chains slowing, worsening climate change, media monopolies, widening class divides, stifling of free speech, mental health concerns, worsening rates of mortality especially for cancers in young people, etc…. I’d argue all those trends were happening before the pandemic and COVID was just an accelerant.
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In other words, if COVID hadn’t conveniently come along, those things might not have happened at all, or they might have been stamped out, or reversed. Several of the things you mention seem to have had “COVID” as the proximate cause:
- stifling of free speech
- mental health concerns
- worsening rates of mortality especially for cancers in young people
- supply chains slowing
As for climate change, if you believe there is such a thing, isn’t it odd that they managed to find several trillion dollars for “COVID mitigation”, but can’t even decide what to do about (supposedly) an existential threat to humanity? I wonder how much climate change mitigation you can buy for a trillion dollars?
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Well said. Nothing ever goes back to normal, but it moves forward to a new normal. The fact that I can travel freely, don’t have to show my vaccination record, and don’t have to wear a mask anywhere (unless I’m going to a Taiwan health clinic), is about as back-to-normal as I ever hoped for. I’d love to see the prices of everything return to 2019 levels, but that ain’t happening ever.
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Everyone would have to give back their stimmies.
This is not at all what Drew wrote.
Guy
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It’s the logical implication of what he wrote, is it not? Let’s say, in 2019, that there was a serious issue with the mental health of younger people (and there absolutely was, due to various factors). Now, what happens when you subject people who are just barely keeping it together to a relentless campaign of brainwashing, fear, and confusing lies? You don’t have to be an expert to figure it out. And what might have happened had governments chose to recognise and address the issue, instead of doing … that?
Do things go ‘back to normal’ when you pivot the brainwashing to different narratives (such as “war with Russia is imminent!” or “gender is a choice and nothing to do with your biological sex!”)? I don’t think they do. As noper said, you can’t go ‘back’ to normal, but what you can do is go forward - and going forward, you can either make things worse, or better. Governments are hellbent on making things worse; as for some things that might have got marginally better, “we can travel without a mask or demonstrating our magic-potion compliance level” is setting an incredibly low bar for normalcy, IMO.
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Please don’t quote me in what looks like a post full of insane conspiracy theories. I want no part of that nonsense.
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I’m not quoting you. I was agreeing with you.
And can we please stop using that lazy dismissal “conspiracy theory”? If you think something I said is incorrect, then spell out why. I don’t think you actually can, which is why you used the phrase in the first place. I can identify three (possibly four) assertions of fact in what I posted. Which one of them is a “conspiracy theory”, and why?
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That’s my point. You’re claiming to agree with me while spouting BS. I want nothing to do with it. I left the US to get away from that crap.
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Good grief. I’m not “claiming” to agree with you. I agree that time and causality moves in only one direction, and you can’t go back to the way things were in the past; you can only go forward. If you want to retract or reframe your idea on the basis that you don’t like me agreeing with it, go ahead.
And I notice you can’t identify where, exactly, I’m “spouting BS”, and that right there is why we have a massive problem - it’s why things haven’t “returned to normal”. A significant fraction of the population simply refuse to look at what’s in front of their noses, and start crying and shouting when people say “here, look at this - just look at it!”.
Here are the claims I made, one by one:
- serious issue with the mental health of younger people (pre-2020)
- a relentless campaign of brainwashing, fear, and confusing lies
- different narratives (“war with Russia is imminent!” or “gender is a choice and nothing to do with your biological sex!”)
- Governments are hellbent on making things worse
(4) is probably an opinion, but the other three are demonstrable facts.
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It seems things have kept fairly stable in Taiwan, at least for the things I buy.
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I was speaking to my mate who is an assistant principal in London. I assumed that he didnt teach much now but he said he does. He told me that the headteacher and he both teach at his school but the head of years dont.
I replied that this is the opposite to when we were at school and asked why the head of years dont teach.
Because they arent teachers. They are all social workers. The situation is bad.
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