More seriously,because it would simply be impossible to run these social experiments in normal circumstances.
There are other examples; New Zealand and Australia tested a "closed border" approach, Sweden adopted a "personal responsibility" approach. Some places had curfews. The shere variety and scale of the last two years have generated enormous amounts of data, and matching data to long-term consequences will keep anthropologists busy for years.
And just might inform better choices when the next one happens.
The closed border approach had fascinating consequences.
Little impact on many factors that had previously been put down to population growth.
It decisively proved that overcrowded infrastructure and inflated house prices were definitively supply side problems, rather than demand side problems.
Not sure that was proved at all - at least where I live, demand was almost certainly propped up by significant numbers of cashed up people in the prime of their working life selling up overseas and buying property when moving home. borders would need to be closed for longer to allow that affect to work out before you could truly see how it would be without immigration.
>many countries took the opportunity to run large-scale social experiments under the guise of Covid Restrictions
Regardless of how you define tyranny, how can you be so blithely supportive of rule-by-decree in supposed democracies? Especially for the purpose of running "social experiments?"
Covid Restrictions gained the grudging mandate of the masses, and in many places only by a hair, due to legitimate public-health concerns. Even in that context the subversion of legislative processes should be concerning. Running "experiments" on a non-consenting populace is at least the definition of dictatorship or oligarchy, if the word tyranny doesn't work for you.
> how can you be so blithely supportive of rule-by-decree in supposed democracies
Because that is the reason we life in a democracy with checks and balances implemented. In Germany some decrees were canceled by our (up to the highest) courts, others were declared to be in line with the constitution.
We elect officials (setting the policy) every four years to rule us in our name. So we hand them the right and the power to "rule-by-decree" as long as they do not leave the grounds of the constitution (and we have courts to check against that).
> for the purpose of running "social experiments?"
I actually think (and believe) that most politicians in most countries tried to safe people. As much people as possible while also taking other factors like the economy and the health sector and stuff into account. And yes: They overshot sometimes. Yes, they made massive mistakes. Yes, they sometimes filled their own (or buddies') pockets. Yes, the more this pandemic progresses the less I think our politicians really know what they are doing.
But I never felt, that policies were implemented for the purpose of running an experiment. But the different implementations now offer the possibility to learn from them for the future. Like scientists looking at different implementations of daylight savings time and learning from that. Or different implementations of regulations regarding wearing helmets while driving motorcycles, regarding seat belt usage or even regarding the ability for contraception and abortion.
The fact that we are allowed to disagree and publicly argue against restrictions, to challenge them in court imho shows that we are living in a democracy.
But yeah - keep going on arguing about a straw man (that nobody but you put in place) like:
> Running "experiments" on a non-consenting populace is at least the definition of dictatorship or oligarchy, if the word tyranny doesn't work for you.
No, I was specifically responding to the person who said that it was "cool" that governments used covid resstrictions as a pretext for running "social experiments." I am specifically quoting an individual, not creating a strawman. Read the comment thread I was taking part in carefully for evidence.
For what it's worth, I think many of the covid restrictions were at the time believed to be necessary measures, but that's actually not the debate that's taking place here.
They were "experiments" in the sense that the actual outcomes were predicted (or not) but in normal times would be difficult to achieve at scale.
I'm not suggesting that they were unrelated to the issue at hand - and I'm not implying they were unethical.
I believe most govts acted in good faith, with limited information, and (quite literally) no experience to draw on. Even today we don't really know what the "best approach" was, what we can say though is that a future pandemic will have better data to work with.
Had all countries had the exact same response we would not really know if what we did was best or not. Lockdown, travel restrictions, alcohol bans, closure of businesses, closure of sport, limited social mobility, police enforcement, no enforcement - all these and more were tried in one place or another.
They were experiments with forseen, and unforseen consequences.
Sure there was over-reach here and there, but for the most part it was a best effort response from no known experience.
Not to minimise your experience, but in most countries the actions were not politicised as they were in the US, and were applied to a very much consenting populace.
It was understood this was a temporary health emergency, and the primary goal was to save lives. In most places, most people, saw this as a fair trade-off - and least in the immediate term.
One interesting analysis in years to come will be the effect of politisizing a health emergency as a party-political event, as distinct from there being broad political consensus to the action taken.
Tell that to the families that had loved ones in the Unit 731 experiments?
I'm just saying that by prefacing something with "well since we're in a state of tyranny it would be neat to [do a thing]"... it doesn't always fly and not all data is necessary to have when it comes at a cost of human lives.
I feel maybe too much is being read into the word "experiment". I meant it in a hypothesis-action-result sense.
Every action taken by every govt was in effect an experiment since nothing of this sort had occurred in living memory, and past instances occurred in a very different world.
In SA there was a hypothesis that reducing the burden on the health sector was a priority, and that a significant contributing factor to hospital load was alcohol, hence limiting alcohol consumption (via limiting sales) was worth testing.
The experiment upheld the hypothesis, but at the same time highlighted negative impacts on the alcohol sector as a whole. To determine the best hospital outcome, while balancing industry requirements, a number of approaches short of an outright ban were tested. These outcomes will likely influence policy moving forward and equally provide important data for the next time hospitals need to be protected in this way.
New Zealand experimented with a sealed border, and eradication approach (successful), Australia did the same with somewhat less success. Again the impacts of those policies can be studied for sometime to come.
The opposite of these experiments was to experiment by doing nothing (Sweden for example) - even doing nothing was an experiment.
I'm not saying covid was fun, or that the very real human cost should be minimised, but clearly some countries fared better than others. Being able to understand why that is the case will be really important next time.
More seriously,because it would simply be impossible to run these social experiments in normal circumstances.
There are other examples; New Zealand and Australia tested a "closed border" approach, Sweden adopted a "personal responsibility" approach. Some places had curfews. The shere variety and scale of the last two years have generated enormous amounts of data, and matching data to long-term consequences will keep anthropologists busy for years.
And just might inform better choices when the next one happens.