This emphasis on trust of government and cooperation from you Hip has always sort of puzzled me. You don't seem to give your or any government high marks when it comes to their response to ME/CFS, yet your trust in other areas is exceedingly high.
It's the aggression and societal discord that manifested during the pandemic which I did not like. This anger and animosity that erupted between sections of the populace and their government and health authorities, fighting over pandemic regulations and policy decisions.
I don't think those animosities helped, because the data show that all the calm and intelligently cooperative societies had lower rates of COVID deaths, compared to the societies where frictions and animosities between government and the public manifested.
The UK or US responses to the pandemic were not exemplary, but they were reasonable. Nothing to get angry about.
The UK had Boris Johnson as PM, and he does not have a scientific mind (reportedly does not understand graphs), so was not the best person to handle a pandemic. Likewise for Donald Trump.
So it's not that I have blind trust in authorities; it more that I think a calm and intelligently cooperative society tends to do better. I have trust in harmony.
Of course we are currently living through an era of populism, where the disenfranchised are sticking their fingers up to the authorities and experts everywhere. And we are also living through an era of identity politics, where people fight from their own individualist corner, only interested in what is good for them and their special interest group, and have little interest in what might be good for wider society.
So this animosity might not have happened if the pandemic had occurred in the 1990s, when if you remember, there was a widespread apathetic lack of interest in politics and the actions of the government (at least in the UK).
Do you remember in 1990s that the intelligentsia were worried about the fact that young people (and the public in general) had become apathetic and disinterested in political matters and government policy?
Nowadays it is the very opposite: people have become highly focused on even the most minor government decision or policy, and get very angry when they perceive that policy might not be in their personal interests.
And people have become highly polarised, fighting from their corner only, and not seeing the bigger picture on government policies, not really considering what might be good for the overall benefit of society.
So these factors of populism and identity politics might in part explain the animosity that manifested in the pandemic in many countries.
Edited by Hip, 12 March 2024 - 05:16 PM.