In my mind, the main issue with the pandemic response is that it became an exercise in crowd control rather than a discussion amongst equals.
Had the Government at the time said - hey, look, we have two options here - we can lock down for a good few months / a year, it might get rid of the virus, it might not, but it's worth a shot; or we can just sack it off and take the hit - then I think we'd have had fairly similar compliance, and a lot more respect long term.
What happened instead was just this constant kind of psychological warfare - it's just a few weeks, actually it's just a few months, okay you can go outside again, actually go back indoors - and everything was ramped up to 11 - getting on the tube was perfectly safe if you were needed at work, but not if you wanted to see family - etc.
It felt completely schizophrenic - those of us who actually looked at the data could tell straight away that "it's just a few weeks to flatten the curve" was a bald faced lie.
For many I think that it pulled back the curtain on the kind of behavioural manipulation that goes on, and now it's difficult for a lot of people to believe that the Government is actually acting in our best interest.
Had the Government at the time said - hey, look, we have two options here - we can lock down for a good few months / a year, it might get rid of the virus, it might not, but it's worth a shot; or we can just sack it off and take the hit - then I think we'd have had fairly similar compliance, and a lot more respect long term.
What happened instead was just this constant kind of psychological warfare - it's just a few weeks, actually it's just a few months, okay you can go outside again, actually go back indoors - and everything was ramped up to 11 - getting on the tube was perfectly safe if you were needed at work, but not if you wanted to see family - etc.
It felt completely schizophrenic - those of us who actually looked at the data could tell straight away that "it's just a few weeks to flatten the curve" was a bald faced lie.
For many I think that it pulled back the curtain on the kind of behavioural manipulation that goes on, and now it's difficult for a lot of people to believe that the Government is actually acting in our best interest.