That's why they should have kept up the economic relief. It IS temporary, sometime next year it will be over. Lots of businesses are still able to stay open. It's awful that they only gave 25% of the paycheck protection program money to small businesses. Then they cut it off completely. That was fucked and I blame congress for that. Unemployment is high, no doubt, but it's only around 10% right now. Yes, for sure some people have been ruined, and that is awful, and wasn't necessary, it was shortsighted to suddenly become concerned about government spending NOW of all times. If we supported businesses and individuals through this, we'd be in a much better position coming out of this.
I think some states were too draconean, but how to handle this, in America, is left up to each state. My state and town have done a really good job, my town was thanked by the governor in a public address for being a model of what towns/cities should do. We have 99% of people following mask guidelines. Most businesses are open. We even have tons of tourists still, but businesses enforce masks or make you get out. We have relatively few cases despite all the through traffic. Meanwhile some other nearby places are faring much worse, because everywhere around my town is super conservative and very vocal about supporting Trump, and lots of people refuse to modify their behavior in public at all because freedom. My town is super liberal and people are taking it seriously, and as a result we haven't had any hard lockdowns at all because we don't have a worrying number of daily new cases. Business is fairly normal around here honestly, other than wearing masks and reduced capacity for restaurants. What I am seeing around me is temporary capacity reductions, and enforced mask wearing. A few places have gone out of business, which sucks and I hate that it happened. I can go anywhere at any time of the day and no one is going to try to arrest me or anything. Places where you can get arrested for being outside have gone way too far.
Maybe I live in a bubble and it's fucked elsewhere. I think various governments worldwide have been too draconean, but my state, in America, actually has done a good job, in my opinion.
A big part of increased lockdown measures is the new cases approaching the level where it becomes out of control. So refusing to wear masks in public is just making the thing you're protesting worse. When the number of daily new cases rises, you get shut down worse. When it doesn't, you get restrictions eased. This is hardly how it would work if there was a sinister government plot to destroy the middle class and small businesses. No, this is simply a sensible (and in some jurisdictions, not entirely sensible) means of reacting to a global pandemic, which, yeah, is not super deadly, but it's some 33 times as deadly as the flu, and in vulnerable people it's much worse. And some people have long-lasting aftereffects like no longer being able to smell or taste... some people still can't. It's a serious disease. Some people don't have symptoms or just mild symptoms, but some people say it's the sickest they've ever been in their lives and it was horrible, and lasted for weeks. This whole thing was a test of the world's ability to handle a global pandemic. There has been learning along the way. The purpose of these regulations is to limit the number of people dying and suffering from a dangerous virus whose long-term ramifications can't possibly be understood yet, not to destroy the middle class.
