And permantly disfigured even more with long COVID.

They knew what would happen. The US is wealthy with a huge military force. They could have locked down and mobilised their army to protect people until it was over.

But the oligarchs didn’t want to slow their profits and give up even an inch of their wealth and power, so COVID was allowed to run rampant. They sacrified their own people to the virus. These people did not willingly sacrifice themselves, they were killed through purposeful negelect.

They also encouraged other countries to do the same. My own country hardly had any deaths before US officials visited and pressured them to open again.

It’s no longer tracked properly so who knows the full extent of the death.

This could be one of the largest mass killings in history.

The worst part is when the news tries to spin how traumatic it was for kids to endure our pathectic excuse for a ‘lockdown’, instead of how traumatic it was to watch our countries murder millions for nothing and hear our friends and families parrot eugenics talking points to try and justify it.

EDIT: [CONTENT WARNING] There is a blue MAGA from another instance in the comments who is hand waving away peoples COVID experiences, so if you have lost a loved one to this disease or had your life or loved ones affected by it, reading the comments here might stir some trauma. Just a heads up.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s been a worldwide phenomenon outside of a few countries that handled COVID well. In South Africa the amount of death in the first three or four waves was staggering. I saw people dying in shipping containers and tent hospitals in parking lots and fields when I received medical treatment for my spinal issues. Then riots broke out (about a seperate issue) which just made the COVID spread even worse and supercharged one of the waves.

    Everyone has just moved on from the mass death as if nothing happened. No masks anymore, no precautions. And it’s not like COVID went away, it’s still here. Even though it’s killing way less people to the point it’s not outside of the upper bounds of pre-COVID excess mortality, it’s still killing people. And the only reason the deaths are so low now is probably because almost everyone vulnerable to the disease in South Africa is already dead. Over 300 000 people died over two years in a country with a population of 60 million. Which is a horrifying conclusion.

    https://www.groundup.org.za/article/debunking-myth-africa-responded-well-to-covid/

    https://www.samrc.ac.za/research-reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Covid is still killing a shitload of people. I strongly suspect that coroners and doctors are just choosing any cause of death except covid anytime they can. They can choose pneumonia or something, and lib family members will go along with it. Two of my (admittedly very old) family members just died recently and no cause of death was even announced.

      What’s especially wonderful is that my family consists entirely of liberal covid deniers, so I know that if long covid turns my brain into swiss cheese, they’re never going to admit that anything is actually wrong with me. They’re just going to say that communism made me insane, even if an MRI shows them that my brain looks like it’s been blown apart by a machine gun.

      Remember, kids, this is your brain on communism! This is what happens when you question the awesome splendiferousness of the Democrats!

  • moonlake [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    It do be wild that we just lived through a mass death event and kind of nobody gives a shit. Imagine reading in a history book that there was a pandemic in which 20 million people died. You would feel like shit. But we lived through it so we had to become gradually desentisized.

    The correct response to the fact that millions of lives were lost to this virus is to lay on the floor and weep. But nobody has time for that because you have to pay the fucking bills. Every trauma in capitalism becomes stuffed in a box labeled “DO NOT OPEN” and stays there until people can’t take it anymore and shoot up a school.

    Imagine going back in time to 2018 and telling your past self that there is gonna be a deadly virus that’s gonna kill millions of people. But the wildest part is that people would stop giving a fuck after two months of it.

    We must never forget that this mass death was largely preventable. Millions of lives could have been saved if “western democracies” were equally responsible as China. But this was not possible because human life is worthless in capitalism. Furthermore, it was impossible because there is nobody in charge of these “western democracies”. As Matt Christman points out, Capital has completely taken over. China is the only place where there are still people holding the wheel. Every other country has completely lost control.

    • Yes. It is wild, it is horrific, and it is ongoing. The “Covid is over” campaign is a continuation of this brutal, evil policy. Governments have stopped tracking the pandemic and its impacts, but people are still getting sick, becoming disabled, and dying. We have to do what we can to help the people who have survived so far. It would be better if we had a comprehensive, health-centered global policy, but since we don’t have that, it’s up to us to do what we can to reduce the spread on a personal level, combat the “Covid is over” propaganda, and support the people affected. Solidarity!

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Federated Lemmy liberal today :“ACTUALLY the Covid response was overblown from the start and not that many people actually died.covid-cool

  • My mom was one of them. not get the shot. She was starting to come around to the idea of getting the J&J shot because it’s a traditional vaccine, then she was spooked off by the news telling her that it caused blood clots…

    CW: Death She fought for about a day to take her breathing mask off because having things strapped to her face caused panic attacks for her. They sedated her as best they could, but any further and it would have likely killed her. For hours on end she wrestled with my partner, the nurse, and I, flailing in a blind panic until she couldn’t keep it up anymore. Her lungs were obliterated and showed solid white on the X-rays; she wasn’t even a candidate for intubation. I held her hand while she drowned in her own liquified lungs, till her pulse just faded…

    I wouldn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for the individuals responsible for allowing it to play or like it did. But the capitalist system is what made these monsters, and I don’t want the heads of the Hydra, I want to stab straight into the heart.

  • Teekeeus [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Remember when the international community hoarded vaccines, and decried “Russian and Chinese vaccine diplomacy” when Russia and China supplied vaccines to developing countries

    • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Remember when it finally became undeniable that China had done a better job responding to covid so the NYT started pushing the idea that China didn’t care at all about mental health. It was essentially, “they showed us how to successfully contain covid, but at what cost?”

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        “they showed us how to successfully contain covid, but at what cost?”

        the anti-China rhetoric obviously started pre-pandemic but this shit is when it hit comically deluded levels. BAWCing at every single moment that China did anything to stop the spread of the virus or the deaths of people while simultaneously going “Well, those million people were all going to die anyway, because they’re old!!!” truly should have gotten every single journalist who peddled that bullshit fired.

        (out of a cannon, into the sun)

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          There really aren’t many professional journalists left. The profession has been utterly mauled, and it started years ago, more than a decade I think. Most of the people writing now aren’t journalists, and the ones who are lack the resources that made any degree of credible reporting possible in the past. Go look up how most newspapers have shut down all their foreign offices and investigative offices. Most news now is either re-worded reuters and ap briefs or just reading off government and corporate press releases.

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      “China’s lockdowns destroyed its economy even though its economy has regularly outpaced the USA’s by three or four times since the pandemic began!” maybe-later-honey maybe-later-kiddo frothingfash

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been told by very smuglord people that actually china didn’t contain the virus at all and they cremated millions and millions of people because communism governments lies blah blag blah.

  • Grownbravy [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Not a single person had to die, but because the heath of the economy was more important, a million deaths were given that werent even asked for.

  • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Fuck that blue MAGA asshole. That’s the kind of bullshit we never would have had to deal with prior to federation. They don’t usually anger me. Their logic pervert pedantry is too silly to actually get angry about. But the fact that it happened in the middle of a thread about over 1,000,000 people dying. A mass murder event by this fucking government. I can’t not be honestly pissed off.

    COVID is one thing that really broke my brain. I knew i was veiwed as expendable refuse in this society, but this took it and shoved it in my face every day for years. And i can’t ever go back to a mind state pre-COVID. I got it even though i did everything not to get it, and my lungs have been fucked up since then. Fuck liberalism

    Love to all you comrades heart-sickle

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Yeah. There’s no going back now. The veil has been lifted, the mask has been ripped off. Most countries in the world, and many of the people, refused to do anything to protect their citizens, their loved ones, themselves.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      COVID is one thing that really broke my brain.

      From that point onward, every time I was told society could do something to make a bad thing less bad, I am reminded that even fucking social distancing and masking was too much for treat-brained assholes in Burgerland, and their revolt, worldwide, has made covid a constant that slowly eats people away instead of a one-time thing that could have been contained and stopped.

      • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I worked in the treat dispensing business. Overpriced food and wine to fancy treat loving boomers mostly. I remember the day they announced they were closing all nonnecessary businesses. The restaurant was dead right before to announcement. About half an hour later a bunch of burgerlanders came in to get their treat fix while being served by peasants in before it all shut down. They didn’t give a fuck. Last day i ever worked in a restaurant

  • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The mass death from COVID is also weird from a cultural perspective. There’s never been a national grieving for all the deaths. There was this massive event that touched huge numbers of people all over the country and it’s been erased from the cultural memory despite it still being ongoing. There was a bigger event for the queen finally kicking the bucket than there has been for all the deaths from COVID. People don’t even talk about it anymore, it’s like those people just disappeared as if they never existed. We truly live in a completely atomized society, this was treated as a million individual deaths. America has absolutely no shared cultural experience outside of pop culture and consumerism.

    • trudge [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Not just the US, but the majority of the Western world at least. Shouldn’t we have a global remembrance ritual? Some kind of ceremony? A few monuments?

      This handwavy back to business thing is so weird when you analyze it.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I’m usually pretty indifferent on “let’s have a minute of silence” kinda things because sometimes it’s used in lieu of actual action, but we really should like, have something like that. chuds will complain about being silenced but who gives a shit about them.

        I know the UK has a national day of mourning on March 23rd but idk, it doesn’t seem enough to me given how many people died. it’s a massive tragedy that has been memoryholed. we’re more likely to debate whether the lockdowns were a good thing or not than talk about the hundreds of thousands of dead and disabled people that the pandemic created.

        it demonstrates how liberals don’t give even the slightest shit about mass death per se, it’s merely a cudgel to use against other people and ideologies. if they did actually care, they’d acknowledge the deaths from Western imperialism (not even talking about post-1945 stuff, literally just the age of colonialism) as deaths from capitalism, and demand the end of support for wars like Ukraine and Yemen, etc.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        V for Vendetta’s plague had victims that were memorialized in public by the fascists that caused it more than covid was in real life. scared-fash

  • TheModerateTankie [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The economist estimates 8-20 million death worldwide, and it’s still killing and disabling people. The acute phase is a lot less deadly overall, it’s still several times worse than a bad flu season when cases are low. It’s crazy what we’ve normalized.