Don't be daft. This is exactly the kind of parroted narrative I'm talking about.
It's obvious to any objective observer how this has played out. Initially, three weeks of shutdown, combined with a stimulus program, was going to be painful but bearable. We laid off a bunch of people, cancelled raises, and prepared for a recession. When the "elite" saw how well their stocks, companies, and real estate holdings were doing, well suddenly this didn't seem so bad--for some folks like me and probably you as well. Then, very quickly, it got politicized and ritualized.
I can absolutely guarantee you if home values had cratered, if large businesses were getting their lunch eaten by small businesses, if stocks were on a two year decline and continued to fall, if WFH was only possible for low wage hourly workers, things would look very different and these restrictions would have been lifted a long time ago.
Now wearing a mask for 20 seconds while I walk 2 or 3 meters from the door of a restaurant to the table, only to immediately take it off for an hour to eat dinner isn't a practical mater, its symbolic--the mask is the new flag pin. The staff still needs to wear masks for their whole shift of course--all these COVID measures are falling disproportionately on service workers, I am going through life mostly free from any inconvenience while all the hourly worker I interact with wear masks, "sanitize" any surface I come into contact with, and perform all sorts of extra, mostly meaningless precautions to "keep me safe". I've never worked a job like this, but I can't imagine spending 8 hours sweating in a kitchen with a mask on is much fun.
You haven't really explained how the rich elites are benefiting from mask mandates and restaurant capacity limits. It's actually really annoying to rich people.
If you're suggesting that this was all a big opportunity to lay people off, well, the problem with this theory is that the economy has rebounded and (at least in Canada) we're back at full economic capacity and have re-hired everyone.
> “Employment is now 102.1% above pre-pandemic levels and is among the highest in Canada. This means 56,000 more people are employed in B.C. today compared to before the pandemic.
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022JERI0001-000017
Dealing with the pandemic cost the government a fortune in new debt, which elites generally don't like.
If the pandemic was some scheme by the ultra rich elites to enrich themselves they probably would have done nothing and let the poors die.
You're arguing that I'm claiming this was a premeditated attempt to crush small businesses, but that's clearly not the case. The pandemic response is likely a net loss, trillions has been spent, the opportunity costs are incalculable, the handful of upsides would have a lot to do to make up for this, but there are winners and losers and some of the winners are winning big.
A large contingent of big winners from the pandemic are highly educated upper middle class social elite who tend to have a lot of assets that have dramatically appreciated in value, jobs that they are able to work from home, and work in industries that have benefited from shifts in spending resulting from the pandemic. This was not enough though, and they have now crafted a moral narrative around the necessity and efficacy of these measures that intentionally lack nuance or any consideration of the needs of people who aren't part of their cohort.
It's obvious to any objective observer how this has played out. Initially, three weeks of shutdown, combined with a stimulus program, was going to be painful but bearable. We laid off a bunch of people, cancelled raises, and prepared for a recession. When the "elite" saw how well their stocks, companies, and real estate holdings were doing, well suddenly this didn't seem so bad--for some folks like me and probably you as well. Then, very quickly, it got politicized and ritualized.
I can absolutely guarantee you if home values had cratered, if large businesses were getting their lunch eaten by small businesses, if stocks were on a two year decline and continued to fall, if WFH was only possible for low wage hourly workers, things would look very different and these restrictions would have been lifted a long time ago.
Now wearing a mask for 20 seconds while I walk 2 or 3 meters from the door of a restaurant to the table, only to immediately take it off for an hour to eat dinner isn't a practical mater, its symbolic--the mask is the new flag pin. The staff still needs to wear masks for their whole shift of course--all these COVID measures are falling disproportionately on service workers, I am going through life mostly free from any inconvenience while all the hourly worker I interact with wear masks, "sanitize" any surface I come into contact with, and perform all sorts of extra, mostly meaningless precautions to "keep me safe". I've never worked a job like this, but I can't imagine spending 8 hours sweating in a kitchen with a mask on is much fun.