They still had ubiquitous mask wearing, early closing hours, capacity restrictions, work from home orders, at times bans on large indoor gatherings, extremely tight travel restrictions and so on. They surely had it better than the people in Europe/NA/Australia, but to say that they were open for most of 2020 is absolutely untrue.

So no, even in the places which dealt with covid the best, the covid measures were not "temporary".

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 14 2022 05:50pm

one guy from my crypto community is in tokio and he always reported how chill things are, most things were recommendations and not mandatory, walked into most places with no mask without a problem (he did get some looks though) and the government is actively promoting to not discriminate anyone based on their vax status

Depends where you were. In the U.S. everywhere that isn't a major city had virtually zero compliance. I can go 15 minutes from city center where I live and literally nobody was wearing a mask at even the height of the pandemic.

and certain places completely opened up, like New Zealand and Australia. Inb4 "but muh islands". Yeah, Australia is a continent with 100m+ people jammed on the coast, and the UK is an island with major travel. Not a good argument.

Australia has a population of just 26m, not 100m, and they are mostly living in the corridor from Brisbane to Melbourne along the south eastern corner of the continent, which is a distance barely shorter than Boston to Atlanta and more than twice as long as the Bos-Wash corridor.

And again, Australia opened up between frequently recurring, very tight lockdowns. Melbourne, which makes up 20% of the country's overall population, was in lockdown for over 270 days out of the ~540 days between mid-March 2020 and mid-October 2021 when they finally abandoned their zero covid policy.



Also, the situation in rural America with extremely low compliance is very different from what we here in Western Europe had to deal with. When shops/gyms/restaurants/clubs/bars/arenas/campuses/museums/parks were shut by government order, they were indeed inaccessible.






Government recommendations carry much more weight in Japanese culture than in Western societies. They are de facto mandatory and anyone not complying will be frowned upon. They did a decent job not dividing their people with the vax issue though, unlike their Western counterparts.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 14 2022 10:46pm

To me, it is pretty stunning that you feel this way. In my view, the 6-3 decision, among other recent decisions up and down the fed judiciary, have come dangerously close to failing to stop the greenlighting of the permanent administrative state in which "experts" determine abso-fuckin-lutely everything in our lives. No one elected has recourse, it's entirely deferred to federal agencies and appointees who if you argue are in any way meritocratic would make you look insane.

It's alarming that you have this much anxiety about a tipping point where I and most of the right wing have the same anxiety about it tipping the other way. A permanent, unaccountable, unelected administrative tyranny where some pencil-necked dipshit who was selected, not elected gets to Fauci-ize every breath you take from cradle to grave.

This post was edited by Nibthebarb on Jan 14 2022 11:14pm

That's because you live in a fantasy. Not saying that in a judgemental way, just as a statement of fact. You have a very loose grasp of the real workings of the world and it shows in your fear of "the woke mob".

Some day, I hope you learn how to recognize how hopelessly myopic you are to your own bullshit. "Not to be judgmental but" - 100% judgmental statement.

I know you think I "live in a fantasy" but that's not even remotely an argument, it's just another one of your dumbass ad hom concern troll comments. It's not a fantasy to observe what the entire right wing observes, from McConnell to Shapiro to Alex Jones to even Rogan now. All of us are on the same page on what I said. We according to you we all "live in a fantasy" that the administrative state is a tad overreaching. Cool story.

It is beyond astounding, how backwards you are.

Shapiro McConnel and alex jones. You sure do keep totally sane company.

It's an illustration of the spectrum of the right wing, turbo. From this to that to that. A variety of examples, and different walks of life. Whether or not they're "my company" was not stated.

How did you miss that? Where's this 2 standard deviations IQ you claim to have?

This post was edited by Nibthebarb on Jan 15 2022 04:23am