The only thing I find cringeworthy is people who revel in “Covid Culture”, making a deliberate spectacle of what a good, compliant, obedient individual they are and what awful crimethinking, irresponsible saboteurs anyone who takes a taste of proper life again is. People who use the “it’s a pandemic stupid” line to sweep perfectly legitimate concerns about civil liberties, generational inequality, and the futures of businesses who aren’t massive chains under the carpet concern me far more than people ditching masks and going to parties do. Zero Covid is up their with young Earth creationism and homeopathy in terms of completely irrational policies. Living where avoiding getting sick and avoiding others getting sick is your primary goal isn’t a life at all, it’s an existence like that of a diary cow or a battery hen. That might be distressingly close to how politicians and their patrons privately see us mere mortals, but it’s no way for a free society to function. We aren’t just economic fuel to be burned up for the benefit of society and discarded when we’re not longer useful, we are human beings and we need a life that’s more meaningful and dignified than “stop the spread covidiot”.

So much to unpack here...

Until recently, Victoria has managed to bring all previous outbreaks to zero. COVID zero works until other states started undermining said goal in the name of business. By saving NSW businesses 3 weeks of not locking down, they've geniously bought themselves 2 months and counting of lockdowns along with high highest number COVID ever seen in Australia.

> We aren’t just economic fuel to be burned up for the benefit of society

By not locking down (and providing you with payment), you literally become their economic fuel you mention to keep their markets going.

Stop listing to what the right wing media are pedaling. You're literally goosestepping into their freedumb.

This isn't a partisan thing, the liberal/authoritarian axis is independent from the collectivist/individualist axis. I'm against authoritarianism full stop, I don't care about the other policies sold alongside authoritarianism. Trying to tar me as right-wing for being anti-authoritarian is ignorant at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

Zero covid is a fool's errand unless you want to be a North Korea-style hermit kingdom shut off from the rest of the world. It is at best a policy that buys time to get people vaccinated, but attempting to carry it out indefinitely is nothing more than an iron fist of tyranny concealed in a velvet glove of safety. The way out of this is vaccination against covid and society coming to terms with the objective fact humanity will never be rid of this virus. We will be forced to live with the virus one way or another, it's just a matter of how much collateral damage zero covid zealots do to society on the way there.

Put it this way, if some tinpot dictatorship in the developing world was preventing dual nationals from leaving they would be sanctioned to Hell and back in a month.

I cannot accept a policy where people are imprisoned within their borders and not allowed to leave as ethical. Free countries don't have laws to stop people escaping, and there's no threat on earth where a genuine police state is an ethical response.

> and there's no threat on earth where a genuine police state is an ethical response.

Pandemics need a centralised, coordinated effort to combat. Sure, being a Libertarian is great, but unfortunately Libertairism is about the individual. You don't fight a common threat by individualism.

There's a huge spectrum of opinion between libertarianism and wilfully endorsing authoritarianism because you happen to agree with a particular policy. You don't fight a common threat individually, but the government isn't always the best organ either. In my country the pandemic response has primarily been an exercise in tearing up civil liberties (there's now permanent legislation against protests for example which I doubt could have happened without the climate of panic that the pandemic precipitated), enriching a self-serving sociopolitical elite with all kinds of unethical behaviour such as dodgy PPE contracts, and arguably failing anyway at preventing widespread loss of life despite the immense collateral damage. That's not even mentioning the devestating effect on generational inequality which was a terrible problem to begin with.

I'm particularly disgusted by the use of military-style behavioural psychology tactics against our own citizens to terrify people, I cannot conceive of the kind of person who'd think that's okay in a free country. The only thing we've actually done with any distinction is the vaccine rollout, which was excellent mostly because the government left the details alone and simply gave the existing infrastructure the resources to do its commendable work (I'm willing to be proven wrong on this, as my information is conflicting).

All the "all in this together" talk is complete crap in the cold light of day, sometimes collectivism is required but parliaments and certainly partisan politicians in a power-drunk executive branch aren't a good organ to do it with. We do not need to build a permanent surveillance state or other organs of tyranny to defeat COVID, nor do we need to build a society of mean-spirited, curtain-twitching moral authoritarians which will takes decades to undo.

EDIT: made some clarifications

This is, in some form, the new normal. I'd suggest finding a way to make it work for you.

A pandemic where healthy, vaccinated people have a far, far lower chance to die or be seriously injured than driving to wherever they are going. You can hide in your home for the rest of your life in order to minimize any potential change of future risks, but good luck forcing everyone else to do so at the point of a gun. This virus is never going away, and people are getting sick of the authoritarianism being carried out in the name of "safety". Life is inherently risky, and this is just another one of life's risks. Myself and my friends have been vaccinated since spring, and we have been living life exactly the same as we did before the pandemic started here in New York - and we will continue to do so.

Which place are you talking about?