When you use a dramatic-sounding word like "lockdown", there's an implicit bargain you're making. You get to have a stronger emotional effect on me, and in exchange I get to call bullshit if it turns out that you're using it for something that doesn't justify that stronger emotional effect.
It sounds as if you're calling _every_ restriction anyone imposed on anyone in the name of fighting COVID-19 "lockdown". In which case, I call bullshit. For instance, being required to wear a mask when indoors with other people (I guess this is the sort of thing that the bare word "masks" in your list means): yeah, it kinda sucks, but it is a long way from anything that justifies the term "lockdown".
The same goes for your words about the government (I'm not sure which government, but never mind) "flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain". I don't know exactly what's happened in your life, nor in the life of anyone else who isn't me; but while lots of things have been worse than usual for the last two years it's a long way short of "flushing my life down the drain". In fact, here are some things that two years of would be (1) much worse than what I have endured for the last two years but also (2) much less bad than "flushing (those years of) my life down the drain". (a) Being out of work. (b) Getting divorced. (c) Having a substantial disability such as deafness or the loss of a limb. (d) Major depressive disorder.
At least one actual underlying point you're making is a cogent one: governments across the world were concerned about their healthcare systems being overwhelmed, they asked or required people to make sacrifices that (as well as protecting the people making the sacrifices) made that less likely, but they didn't take steps to make substantial increases in the capacity of those healthcare systems that would make such sacrifices less necessary in the future.
That's partly because making substantial increases to the capacity of your healthcare system is hard and takes time. Hospitals take time to build. Doctors take time (a lot more than two years) to train. Etc. But, still, it's probably true that one thing we should have been trying to do alongside panic-mode COVID-19 fighting is to make longer-term capacity increases.
And, yes, all those restrictions governments have imposed have costs as well as benefits, and we should be weighing those up and not just assuming we should do everything that has benefits.
But you don't do either of those points any favours by tying them to hyperbolic language for all the things governments have been doing in the short term to try to reduce the spread. Nowhere has been "locked down" for two years, unless you take "locked down" to mean "doing anything at all to try to reduce the spread of COVID-19", and you shouldn't do that because words have meanings and connotations and that isn't what "locked down" means. Some people have indeed suffered terribly, but by and large we have not had two years of our lives "flushed down the drain", unless you take "flushed down the drain" to mean "made a bit worse", which again you shouldn't do because that's not what those words mean.
Say "Wearing masks kinda sucks, and we should actually look at whether the benefits justify the costs" and I'll warmly agree (though I might or might not end up agreeing with you about how the calculation comes out). Say "Working from home kinda sucks for many people and is basically impossible for others, and having everyone do it has severe economic consequences, and we should weigh those up against the benefits and not do it if it's net negative" and I'll warmly agree (though, again, I don't guarantee to agree about how the calculations come out in every particular case). But say "the government is flushing your life down the drain" or "we have been in lockdown for two years" and, no, sorry, I call bullshit. Those things are not true, and when you say them I can't help suspecting motives I can't endorse such as a preference for labelling everything a government does with the most negative labels you can find.
> unless you take "flushed down the drain" to mean "made a bit worse", which again you shouldn't do because that's not what those words mean.
It takes a remarkable amount of privilege to say something like this.
We stole peoples proms, first dates, high school dances, drunken college hookups, funerals, weddings, livelihoods, social lives, you name it and we stole it in a failed attempt to “flatten the curve”.
People who minimize or brush away the impact the last two hellish years of our existence are either privileged as fuck or have a pathetic, miserable pre-pandemic life. I hardly know what else to say.
How dare anybody say last two years was “made a bit worse”. Speak for yourself… but you have no right to make that claim of others. These last two years seriously fucked my shit up and I’m hardly the minority. Screw people who gaslight us by saying “made a bit worse”.
What "takes a remarkable amount of privilege" is equating what has happened over the last two years to the awful, awful things that can actually flush two years (or more) of a person's life down the drain.
Note that you didn't just claim that some people's lives were impacted badly enough to amount to flushing them down the drain. (That might well be true. The Plague Years have been much worse for some people than for others.) What you wrote, to someone about whom so far as I know you know nothing to speak of, was: "So you are totally okay with the government flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain". "Your life", not "my life" or "some people's lives". And, if I may borrow your language for a moment: you have no right to make that claim of others.
To repeat something I already said (but you apparently didn't read, or decided to ignore because if you acknowledged it it would be harder to maintain the desired level of outrage): yes, it's been much worse for some people than others. If you tell me your life feels like it's been flushed down the drain for the last two years then I'll believe you. But you don't get to point at some random person on HN and claim that the same is true of them.
When you use a dramatic-sounding word like "lockdown", there's an implicit bargain you're making. You get to have a stronger emotional effect on me, and in exchange I get to call bullshit if it turns out that you're using it for something that doesn't justify that stronger emotional effect.
It sounds as if you're calling _every_ restriction anyone imposed on anyone in the name of fighting COVID-19 "lockdown". In which case, I call bullshit. For instance, being required to wear a mask when indoors with other people (I guess this is the sort of thing that the bare word "masks" in your list means): yeah, it kinda sucks, but it is a long way from anything that justifies the term "lockdown".
The same goes for your words about the government (I'm not sure which government, but never mind) "flushing 2 years of your incredibly short life down the drain". I don't know exactly what's happened in your life, nor in the life of anyone else who isn't me; but while lots of things have been worse than usual for the last two years it's a long way short of "flushing my life down the drain". In fact, here are some things that two years of would be (1) much worse than what I have endured for the last two years but also (2) much less bad than "flushing (those years of) my life down the drain". (a) Being out of work. (b) Getting divorced. (c) Having a substantial disability such as deafness or the loss of a limb. (d) Major depressive disorder.
At least one actual underlying point you're making is a cogent one: governments across the world were concerned about their healthcare systems being overwhelmed, they asked or required people to make sacrifices that (as well as protecting the people making the sacrifices) made that less likely, but they didn't take steps to make substantial increases in the capacity of those healthcare systems that would make such sacrifices less necessary in the future.
That's partly because making substantial increases to the capacity of your healthcare system is hard and takes time. Hospitals take time to build. Doctors take time (a lot more than two years) to train. Etc. But, still, it's probably true that one thing we should have been trying to do alongside panic-mode COVID-19 fighting is to make longer-term capacity increases.
And, yes, all those restrictions governments have imposed have costs as well as benefits, and we should be weighing those up and not just assuming we should do everything that has benefits.
But you don't do either of those points any favours by tying them to hyperbolic language for all the things governments have been doing in the short term to try to reduce the spread. Nowhere has been "locked down" for two years, unless you take "locked down" to mean "doing anything at all to try to reduce the spread of COVID-19", and you shouldn't do that because words have meanings and connotations and that isn't what "locked down" means. Some people have indeed suffered terribly, but by and large we have not had two years of our lives "flushed down the drain", unless you take "flushed down the drain" to mean "made a bit worse", which again you shouldn't do because that's not what those words mean.
Say "Wearing masks kinda sucks, and we should actually look at whether the benefits justify the costs" and I'll warmly agree (though I might or might not end up agreeing with you about how the calculation comes out). Say "Working from home kinda sucks for many people and is basically impossible for others, and having everyone do it has severe economic consequences, and we should weigh those up against the benefits and not do it if it's net negative" and I'll warmly agree (though, again, I don't guarantee to agree about how the calculations come out in every particular case). But say "the government is flushing your life down the drain" or "we have been in lockdown for two years" and, no, sorry, I call bullshit. Those things are not true, and when you say them I can't help suspecting motives I can't endorse such as a preference for labelling everything a government does with the most negative labels you can find.