Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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I would disagree the shutdowns were ridiculous. Governments around the world had limited tools for managing a new situation and made some mistakes, but a lockdown is actually a really good tool for managing one thing, overloaded healthcare systems. If your healthcare system is overloaded the death rate goes up, way up. If you can flatten the curve, slow the rate at which people get sick, the hospital is not overloaded and the death rate does not spike as badly.
Masks were a good option and did work but it wasn't clear that was the case at the start. What medications worked was not clear at the start. What treatment processes were most effective was not clear at the start.
A few years in and things are very different. We know masks work, we know social distancing works, we know the vaccines work, and we know a couple of medications work to a degree. The population is also not as vulnerable given the number who have been sick already and have existing immunity or have immunity from a vaccine.
So now we have to make choices. We now know masks work so we have to decide when to use them. Sick people should wear masks when they go outside just like people in Japan do. People who may have been exposed should also wear masks out of consideration for those around. People shouldn't be fined for not wearing a mask, but they should face social pressure and feel bad for not caring about other people.
Governments should have a clear plan now for how to handle the next inevitable pandemic with lessons learned from this one. They should use border controls much more strictly, pay the cost for quarantine protocols for entrants to the country, fund testing and vaccine development, and have supplies of essential PPE on hand for the next event. Culturally as need to have a stronger sense of responsibility for protecting other people through inconveniencing ourselves a little by wear a mask and wash our hands.