There’s something more to it than just lack of access to information, for two reasons:
1) At the time when mask mandates were lifted, there was still a lot of Covid discussions in the popular media, including a great deal about long-term Covid effects, and pleas from scientists and doctors about how this was too early. The information was very popularly present (in a way it no longer is). People still chose to abandon their masks anyway.
2) With my own friends’ group, I’d been acting as an informational resource through the whole pandemic, and many people were engaging with and using my information to help guide their decisions during much of the first few years of the pandemic. I continued to make new information available long after the mask mandates were lifted, but I saw engagement and interest drop massively. People no longer wanted it, because what they _wanted_ was to tell themselves things could go back to “normal” now. Then they actively began ignoring and avoiding anything that didn’t support that desire.
It may not be a conscious decision (I don’t think it is, in most cases), but I do believe there’s still been a decision made by many people to embrace what they want to be true and ignore anything that would go against that. It isn’t as simple as “they’d make better decisions if they had better information”. I wish it was, but all I have to do is look at my own family and friends - who definitely did have better information but chose en masse to ignore it - to know there’s more. I can’t even get my parents to keep masking around my antivax sister, despite them having had a terrible time the first time she gave them Covid, and me keeping them up-to-date on new research relevant to their age group. I believe they just got tired of the fear involved in having to care.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zvi
(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-22 03:25 pm (UTC)1) At the time when mask mandates were lifted, there was still a lot of Covid discussions in the popular media, including a great deal about long-term Covid effects, and pleas from scientists and doctors about how this was too early. The information was very popularly present (in a way it no longer is). People still chose to abandon their masks anyway.
2) With my own friends’ group, I’d been acting as an informational resource through the whole pandemic, and many people were engaging with and using my information to help guide their decisions during much of the first few years of the pandemic. I continued to make new information available long after the mask mandates were lifted, but I saw engagement and interest drop massively. People no longer wanted it, because what they _wanted_ was to tell themselves things could go back to “normal” now. Then they actively began ignoring and avoiding anything that didn’t support that desire.
It may not be a conscious decision (I don’t think it is, in most cases), but I do believe there’s still been a decision made by many people to embrace what they want to be true and ignore anything that would go against that. It isn’t as simple as “they’d make better decisions if they had better information”. I wish it was, but all I have to do is look at my own family and friends - who definitely did have better information but chose en masse to ignore it - to know there’s more. I can’t even get my parents to keep masking around my antivax sister, despite them having had a terrible time the first time she gave them Covid, and me keeping them up-to-date on new research relevant to their age group. I believe they just got tired of the fear involved in having to care.