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Data Humanist's avatar

Excellent, detailed description. A combination of policy study and recent history in a short compass. I hope at some point you will have the time to organize the short posts and various essays into a longer work or collection. I will mention one more aspect which has been discussed elsewhere, including in your own work. The imposition of this new normal has always included an excluded class: a group of people to whom some restrictions in part or at times in whole did not apply, but who benefitted financially and politically from the restrictions on the majority.

I am not arguing for a crude economic explanation, but pointing out what respectable journalists have covered:

From The Nation, 22 March 2022: The Pandemic Made the Rich $1.7 Trillion Richer https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/pandemic-rich-richer/

From Time Magazine, 30 April 2021: America's 1% Got Way Richer During the Pandemic https://time.com/5974430/wealth-tax-covid-19/

Historically, pandemics have had the opposite effect. Pandemics had a levelling effect. Societies would emerge with lesser socio-economic inequality -- not greater. There are morbid reasons for this, but the historical pattern nevertheless was fairly consistent.

The response to this pandemic resulted in concentrations of wealth and power, new systems for tracking people and enforcing behavior, and censorship by mainstream and social media intended to enforce ideological conformity. But in the USA, it also resulted in dubious public health outcomes compared to many other highly developed nations. It also resulted in many other harms: social, economic, childhood development, etc.

Yet in response to all these failures, the only answers have been: (a) we need more control; (b) you must further sacrifice and cooperate more fully.

If someone had predicted this to me just five years ago -- and certainly, ten years ago, I would have dismissed it as paranoid nonsense. Beneath my serious consideration. But now we are living it. I am honestly still struggling with it all, and wondering how we best go forward in resisting and even dismantling this "new normal."

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John E Martin, Ph.D.'s avatar

Oh that our National leaders would read Dr Kheriaty’s brilliant piece, understand, then repent, reverse, correct and “never again” respond so foolishly and ignorantly. If only. Unfortunately will likely require that political and cultural upheaval. “We the (wise) people”

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