Sweden's economy actually dropped harder than ours in Canada. The government was really generous, and while many especially in hospitality are worse off, few were truly devastated.
None of which are the supposed leaders of the manifestation, truckers, which actually did pretty well through all this - ask me why.
You know the reason why things aren't back to normal has little to do with mandates and a lot to do with the fact that, mandate or not, there was a deadly virus hanging around for two years and that's gonna change social behavior anyway?
Don't forget that 2 years of stress, angst, fear, new rules, normal hate of rules, etc. will make almost anyone stressed out and angry no matter how much they believe in the purpose behind it all, or how important it is.
Which when it's society wide, makes society stressed out and angry.
Stressed out and angry people do dumb and counter productive things. Sometimes even to the point of severe self harm.
Society when it is stressed out and angry tends to fragment and be less cohesive. Sometimes even to the point of severe self harm.
Wondering which side (or which sides there are, or why there even are 'sides') is doing the MOST dumb and counter productive thing is mostly part of the problem, not actually a solution, in the same way as a tired angry person trying to figure out who to yell at/blame, instead of getting some sleep or whatever.
Society wide, we need to do some serious self-care and calming the hell down - which would be nice, but good luck. So I expect we'll get a lot more fighting.
I live in a place where you can shit on restrictions all you want. Things aren't back to normal because people are still careful on how much they socialize and what the risk profile is. Things aren't back to normal because people have moved away from offices and it turns out a lot of people like that just fine, meaning a lot of old businesses have shut down, new businesses have opened up, and habits have changed.
The old world isn't coming back, ever. The world has changed. Even post-pandemic (which we are still far from over) I'm just gonna be more conscious about spending time in very closed spaces for extended time. The uncompromising are gonna sit a few things out even more. Also something like 0.5% of the population died and a few percentage points have ongoing long-COVID.
