>>395
I believe this corona virus pandemic is basically over. Life is slowly returning to normal and people are beginning to realize that the virus was far and away blown out of proportion. Effectively people have realized that the government has lied to them. Obviously the status quo won't change. People simply aren't willing to risk their own livelihood in order to risk something that is an unknown. Sure it maybe better than what they have now but they aren't willing to risk it. The main problem with people today is that they aren't willing to risk anything due to lack of any greater ideals. Corona in this case just reveals the weakness of the people in contrast to the people of the past.

>>396
Well, 90% of the people of the past were killed by the Black Death.

>>399
Ugh... I think you may want to check that statistic again.

>>399
Actually the statistic of the amount of casualties for the black death was around a 1/4 to a 1/3 of Europe. That's much worse than this corona pandemic which is nothing more than the media fearmongering.

>>401
But back then they panicked just as much as people now, for reference. So what good does panic do?

>>402
It's usually a natural response to danger. It's something people naturally do.

>>403
>something people naturally do
no, it's something morons do, glued to their fucking smartphone waiting for big bro to tell them what to think

>>411
Look what I'm saying is that it's natural response for normalfags. I never said anything about imageboard users. I should've phrased it better. The point though is normalfags are completely dependant on the government.

>>412
I think they are much more dependent on their jewtubes and facebergs and twatters and leddits (for newer generations; replace with cnn/nyt/fox for the older), since we were talking about opinion formation. they may or may not be dependent on the gov too, but that would be on different matters (e.g. economical). in the whole West there's probably not one gov that has as much power as, e.g., twatter to shape sheeple's opinions

Funny story:
I was walking down the street today (without a mask of course). Some fat old boomer with the mask and gloves sees me walking in his direction, so he hold out his arms to prevent me from passing too close to him. I could see the anger in his eyes and feel the seething hate radiate off of him as I got too close. This is the mental disease caused by media hysteria: the true modern pandemic.

>>414
sure, that's an example (a minor one) of how totally out of whack people's common sense has gotten: masks do serve to reduce the rate of spread of the disease but that's a stochastic phenomenon, the risk reduction is a probabilistic one and needs to be analysed in large enough populations to observe significant statistical significance
but as I said that's a relatively minor example of paranoia, after all masks do offer a certain degree of benefit and, well, they aren't too much of a burden anyway. but just compare that with the absolute insanity of suddenly halting dead on its tracks a major part of the economy of entire countries for fucking months with no more justification other than "those guys over there are doing it too" (and secretly, "and we are too afraid of the backslash in twatter/faceberg/etc if we didn't and we wish to maintain a favorable public image above all"), which is what happened around april or so during the peak of the hysteria (at least in europe). even countries in the global south that at the time were still close to summer climate started to close down schools, businesses and public services
I reached my conclusion then: the western civilisation doesn't have long to go if the pusillanimous scum in mass media and government are allowed to continue to hold this much degenerative power over the minds of the stupid masses. the core of the problem here is the ease with which masses of imbeciles, across national borders, be them part of government or governed, endowed with the right to suffrage, are controlled by the bullshit that some globohomo silicon valley company decides to push to their "smart" devices.

>>419
You kind of have to stop the economy. One, you don't want to look cruel and heartless to your voters, you don't want it to look like you don't care and two, if other nations do it and manage to get it under control but your's does not then it's your economy that will suffer in the long run when people start opening borders to each other but not to you.

>>421
lol no "you" fucking "kind of" don't have to, provided "you" have any integrity, although that might be too much to ask of media, politicians, and people like you. in fact, yours are likely close to the internal arguments a politicians would make to himself.
>don't want to look cruel and heartless
i.e. public image is what matters. some 1000s of deaths (mostly made of old or sick people, so mostly expected deaths that have been accelerated) are too "cruel and heartless", but dumping billions upon billions of $$ of the national GDP, decimating entire sectors of the economy (specially the small, familiar and medium-scale businesses), and harming the economical progression of the newer generations for years to come is compassionate and caring. and as you well know only old and sick people are voters, oh wait
>if other nations do it and manage to get it under control but your's does not
ah, very good, there's that political thinking: groupthink to the rescue. since politicians and proto-politicians such as yourself have no fucking technical clue about what the proper policies should be, and neither do you give a shit as long as it doesn't harm your own purse, you ask yourselves: from a "social" pov what's the safest decision (for yourselves)? the safest decision (for yourselves) is to do the same as your group, to follow the herd like a good sheep. that way, if the herd happens to be moving towards a precipice, then you can excuse yourself by simply pointing out that you were not really out of the norm, you couldn't predict the idiocy of your actions but neither could the majority of the sheep around, so you should get a pass, you will argue. but if don't follow the herd, then the costs (for you) of making a wrong decision are much more serious. in the first place, now that there's no blessed groupthink to guide you, you will have to dust off that old brain of yours and who knows whether that thing still works at all. and if you do fuck up then all fingers will point at you. do you have the balls to stand by your own choices? of course you don't
btw, one of the few countries that escaped the malady of lockdowns (in europe) was sweden, fucking "sweden yes" of all places. deaths/population numbers in sweden are very similar to those of hardcore "curve flatteners" such as uk, spain, france, italy, etc. yet it didn't have to pay several % of its GDP in just two months of mass hysteria