You know, posts on this and other threads, about the Covid situation, and how it has made concerts going/planning so difficult, does make me wonder:
How would all these keyboard warriors/self-appointed experts/conspiracy theorists/moaners have coped with nearly 6 years of hardship and uncertainty over whether we WOULD "get through this" during World War 2? God forbid anything like that should happen again, but if it did, how would they cope with the food rationing, restriction of freedom, lack of even many of the basics, and general air of futility? Personally, I doubt they would!
Thank God we had Captain Sir Tom to remind us what real people can do.
There are some differences. In WWII those who weren't conscripted into the armed forces were never prevented from socialising with friends or seeing family. Sure there were blackouts and rationing but people were permitted to travel from town to town, hold dinner parties (with blacked out windows), go to the pub and so on.
As someone who is emerging from this with a certain amount of psychological damage due to not being able to do those things I do understand it's not quite the same.....but....I doubt we had the kind of lunacy which leads some people to rip face masks of strangers, scream at them that there's no virus, flout rules which are clearly proven to slow and even halt the spread of respiratory viruses.
One thing I don't understand is the extreme views on face masks that seem prevalent in parts of the USA and do exist in smaller numbers here in the UK....including the demonstrably false notion that masks kill people due to having chemicals impregnated in them or due to insufficient oxygen getting to the brain and so on. Do these people not realise that in several East Asian countries they've habitually worn masks inside and outside in winter seasons for decades? Because they know it's both safe and halts spread of respiratory illness. Is it my favourite item of clothing? No. Is it potentially the most important item of clothing? Yes.
"But you have to wash them between uses. It's tooooooo hard". Don't you wash your clothes?
Part of the problem is that our societies are pretty statistically and scientifically illiterate. Even the basics that we teach in school aren't actually filtering into people's brains. And somehow "Karen on Youtube" seems to have as much credibility to some as a person dripping with doctorates and experience. But in a world where we had to teach allegedly functional adults how to wash their hands 18 months ago.....perhaps I ought not to be so surprised.