Covid itself is absolutely ridiculous in scale (1 million registered deaths worldwide - statistically it is barely even noticeable - there were worse pandemics in the 20th century, like 1968, when 100,000 died in the US despite a mich lower population, and wars are not remotely comparable). The hysteria and the disastrous response, however, are unprecedented. The previous generations, which have gone through actual hardship without locking themselves up in their houses like cowards, must be laughing hard at us. There are no mass graves anywhere and not even in third world countries has the healthcare system even come close to a collapse, with the exception of very few localized cases which were hyped by the media.

There is a reason why this is happening on an election year. I feel many right-wingers were enthusiastic about the economic collapse that covid would supposedly cause, and that's why they went onboard. The problem is, it was an engineered collapse, which strengthened the system, made billionaires richer and weakened the independent main street economy as well as national governments. Also, we still don't know the full scale of the disaster. I'd say there is a high chance the birth rate will collapse, and an element of paranoia and obsession with conformity has been injected into our culture that wasn't there before.