The parent seeks to convey the zeitgeist irrational emotional response of the populace to alternate perspectives during the COVID era and to my mind does so successfully.
As someone who not only mapped the rise of COVID for Wikipedia before it was mainstream media acknowledged in January 2020 - https://github.com/globalcitizen/2019-wuhan-coronavirus-data - but also had the unique fortune of experiencing (catching) COVID in all of China, Australia and the US, while all countries had irrational response I would classify Australian social paranoia as some of the worst. Absolutely, people were being shamed and attacked and removed from society, employment, etc. if they did not have vaccinations or refused to wear masks. While all countries had irrational response, Australia's was certainly "up there". Furthermore, they turned the whole country in to a prison (you needed 'special permission' to leave, even as an Australian citizen), and virtually nobody complained.
There are no such people so hopelessly enslaved as those who believe they are free. - Goethe
I personally found the recent withdrawl of some of the vaccines - which people were hounded and shamed in to taking in to their bodies - with proven mortality risk, as something of a vindication. None of my family had any vaccines, not because we are against them per se, but because we didn't encounter a legal requirement to do so as we visited the US right after the requirement for travelers was dropped, and had already developed natural resistance through repeated exposure. If we were dealing with a more vicious pathogen, we would have been first in line.
My problem is the person engaging the exact things they accuse the other side of doing, all while lamenting the inability to “get people on the same page.”
As someone who not only mapped the rise of COVID for Wikipedia before it was mainstream media acknowledged in January 2020 - https://github.com/globalcitizen/2019-wuhan-coronavirus-data - but also had the unique fortune of experiencing (catching) COVID in all of China, Australia and the US, while all countries had irrational response I would classify Australian social paranoia as some of the worst. Absolutely, people were being shamed and attacked and removed from society, employment, etc. if they did not have vaccinations or refused to wear masks. While all countries had irrational response, Australia's was certainly "up there". Furthermore, they turned the whole country in to a prison (you needed 'special permission' to leave, even as an Australian citizen), and virtually nobody complained.
There are no such people so hopelessly enslaved as those who believe they are free. - Goethe
I personally found the recent withdrawl of some of the vaccines - which people were hounded and shamed in to taking in to their bodies - with proven mortality risk, as something of a vindication. None of my family had any vaccines, not because we are against them per se, but because we didn't encounter a legal requirement to do so as we visited the US right after the requirement for travelers was dropped, and had already developed natural resistance through repeated exposure. If we were dealing with a more vicious pathogen, we would have been first in line.