Corona virus, China major city lockdowns, etc.

[Niya]

My gut tells me to eat pizza.

However, yeah, my gut, my education, my experience with vaccinations, my experience with pandemics, all tells me that what is being covered in the mainstream is at least mostly right. The inability of the other side to come up with a coherent message, the problem that they can't come up with anything other than Youtube videos to support their cases, and when they use official data they misstate it, doesn't give me any confidence that they even have the basis for a solid argument.

Then explain to me how it is that this pandemic has been happening for 2 years now and I've heard of every vaccine from Johnson and Johnson to Pfizer but I never heard of Ivermectin until yesterday? What's that about? Are the stats behind Ivermectin made up?

Mark my words: We've been there for over two centuries. We're getting better, not worse. We're just doing it slowly. Every generation is better than the last, but that's what it seems to take. Yeah, there might be some mild discrimination over pronouns. When you consider that it was only a few decades back where you could get assaulted or murdered for your beliefs, the color of your skin, the church you attended, and so on, with the full expectation that your attackers would be exonerated, that's not so bad. Go back a century, and your attackers would be celebrated.

You raise a good point here. However, let me bring it into focus a little bit. Average people haven gotten better. Your neighbors aren't going to kill you for worshiping a different god in 2021 and yes, this is far better than what we've had in the past. However, rulers(not just the government but powerful corporations too) have not changed. In fact, a good argument can be made that they have gotten far worse. In the past, their conquests were violent and genocidal you are right but just because they aren't doing that as much anymore doesn't mean they are sugar and spice and everything nice.

You think you know history, but the US is all about pretending our history didn't happen, and you're joining in. We created a lot of the economic problems in the Caribbean nations today, but you don't have to go very far back to find where we would have just come in and slaughtered people (though the ability to slaughter was less than it is today in terms of bodies/day). Now you have to look for the subtle effects of the invisible hand. A hundred years back, it would have been neither subtle nor invisible. You have the luxury to speculate on secretive conspiracies. You didn't use to have that option. We're getting better, and at this pace, perhaps our grandchildren will get there.

Ask the people of Iraq if the invasion of their country by the US was invisible. Ask the people of Libya if the so called "intervention" by NATO was invisible. I'm sure no innocent hard working average people died in these countries as a result of these invasions. Right?