I can only speak for the UK but for quite a while now, McD's has become an uninviting experience, with miserable staff, menu screens that visibly tell you to hurry the f*k up and choose the product. Not to mention customers vying with delivery drivers for orders. I think the problem applies to all-income customers.
At least from my perspective, COVID broke everything. People are more awful, quality is more awful, and prices are way up. I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service.
There's an argument to be made that inflation is ultimately the driver of all three complaints, but boy did that all happen seemingly overnight.
Absolutely. I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world. They will never even know what was taken from them.
I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.
I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20 hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.
To be fair to the parent, despite what they think about the lockdown decision now, it says nothing about whether or not they thought it made any sense then.
It's perferctly possible to believe that the lockdown was a reasonable decision with what was known then, and still believe that the lockdown is to blame for certain unavoidable consequences down the line. Again, the parent might not believe this as well but their point can be taken separately fron your complaint.
Since several generations of Americans are not familiar with a drawn out sustained attack on acceptable cost-of-living parameters, the observation that "people are more awful" should be familiar to many people who lived and endured in places that have had decades-long deteriorating econonmies. If the economy or subjective economic perception had not tanked post-lockdown, the awfulness of people would be much less pronounced I believe.
Nobody knew, that is true. But not everyone was in agreement, it only seemed that way because dissenting voices were silenced. Do some research and you’ll find that there were plenty of people predicting bad outcomes from the lockdowns. I was not one of them, but they exist for sure.
From day one, I was hearing about suggestions of social distancing and NK1 masks would do 80% of the work for you. It took waaay to long for that information to disseminate.
My standing statement is: The idea of a pandemic was so well established that Hollywood made multiple bad movies about the idea.
The other key piece that gets magically brushed aside is that there was a pandemic during the Obama administration. Obviously not as severe, but nonetheless a warning.
Yet we were somehow unprepared just a few years later? And those same incompetent entities and experts were the source of our inflation understanding and response to COVID?
I think not. Very little passes the smell test. It didn’t them. It’s even less so - if you look & listen - now.
What you’re failing to acknowledge is the public was right. It was “leadership” across the board that failed. It’s been documented and continues to be documented. It’s simply not advertised, else the lack of trust gap would widen and be more than justified.
The failure(s), we are worse off for it at this point. The handling of the COVID 19 pandemic was as misguided and anemic as Bush’s “Keep shopping” (i.e., his advise to the country in response to 9/11).
Blaming those without power for the shortcomings of those with power is revisionist history bullshit. T
It’s not anti-social, it is pro-social. To stand for the right of people to live freely, for children to get an education and to socialize with their peers, for businesses to serve their communities and provide jobs for people to feed their families.
You are the anti-social one, who would condemn entire populations to house arrest based upon dubious-at-best ideas. In my city, even outdoor gatherings of more than five people were prohibited. It was so absurd as to be almost comical, if the consequences weren’t so tragic.
Are you truly blind to the damage wrought by shutting down the entire world at the flip of a switch? Children are in crisis, inflation skyrocketed, people cannot afford to live, buy homes, start a family, get an education… and you have the nerve to call me anti-social?
And what did it accomplish? Did it actually save lives? I think not, especially when compared to targeted protection and support of vulnerable populations (elderly, immune compromised) rather than a blanket shutdown of the entire country.
Once this issue became a red vs blue thing, everyone collectively turned their brains off. The above commenter is a prime example.
Basic logic here: the things you’re defending only work when the people who make them possible aren’t getting knocked out by uncontrolled spread.
Kids don’t get an education if teachers and staff are sick. Businesses don’t serve communities if workers are out in waves. Families don’t stay afloat if workplaces shut down because too many people are ill.
You can absolutely critique the execution and the results. Plenty of it was messy. But pretending that doing nothing was somehow pro social ignores the obvious: collective safety is what keeps all those freedoms functioning in the first place.
Early on , it was clear the rate of covid complications did not merit the lockdowns. I was an early supporter of lockdowns and an even earlier supporter of ending them. It was a cold... Can we say that now? A relatively moderate flu like cold for the vast majority of people. It did not merit shutting down or slowing global trade
Early on, there wasn't any lockdown, so instead we could see whole villages and regions being in emergency state, with the military handling the logistics of moving coffins around, because there were so many. The lockdowns after 2 years were avoidable, but the first one absolutely wasn't. I'm quite content with my governments actions in the beginning and I'm not alone, the governmental approval during the first lockdown absolutely skyrocketed (>10%).
When did I say that doing nothing was the correct course of action? Oh wait - I didn’t! But it sure makes a convenient straw man for you to argue against since you are incapable of addressing my actual position, which I contrasted hamfisted lockdowns against: the targeted protection of vulnerable groups such as the elderly or immune compromised people, rather than the blanket shutdown of the entire country.
> Kids don’t get an education if teachers and staff are sick. Businesses don’t serve communities if workers are out in waves. Families don’t stay afloat if workplaces shut down because too many people are ill.
Do you not realize that the virus is still out there in the world? And that we’re not locking down? And hardly anyone is wearing a mask, social distancing, or getting vaccine boosters?
And yet, somehow, we don’t have piles of dead bodies being cremated in the streets by FEMA workers in hazmat suits. Curious, isn’t it?
It couldn’t be any more obvious that the lockdowns were totally unnecessary and a giant mistake. Just take a look around.
It almost seems like the truly dangerous epidemic is of people forming such strong attachments to emotional dogma and propaganda that they are unable to perform kindergarten-level logical deduction.
Being against lockdowns from day 1 wasn’t some principled pro social stance. Day 1 was when we had no vaccines, no immunity, no treatments, and hospitals were already buckling from basic spread. Opposing mitigation at that moment wasn’t foresight, it was ignoring exponential math.
You can absolutely argue the execution was messy and the fallout was real. Lots of people agree with that. But holding up early blanket opposition as if it was the reasonable position is just rewriting the conditions we were actually in. The only reason things look manageable now is because immunity and treatments exist. Day 1 without them didn’t magically support the world staying fully open.
> Being against lockdowns from day 1 wasn’t some principled pro social stance.
As much as people like you want to position yourselves as objective arbiters of morality, you’re anything but.
> we had no vaccines, no immunity, no treatments
So? Covid is simply not that dangerous for otherwise healthy people.
> hospitals were already buckling from basic spread
That speaks more to how brittle, under-resourced, and plagued by perverse incentives our healthcare system is, than to the threat posed by covid.
> But holding up early blanket opposition as if it was the reasonable position is just rewriting the conditions we were actually in.
You’re saying that opposing the total annihilation of societal norms, behaviors, and patterns is… unreasonable? Do you hear yourself? It’s so painfully obvious that your “thinking” is purely motivated by your desire to be morally and intellectually superior than those you bitterly attack. I can’t fathom how your self awareness is so poor that you can’t see it.
> The only reason things look manageable now is because immunity and treatments exist.
Pure bullshit. The virus was simply never that big of a threat to a healthy person, full stop. You live in a filter bubble-fueled alternate reality where you indulge your most basic and animalistic emotions of fear, anger, and hatred of “others”.
Get a grip! Practically nobody is getting vaccine boosters or any other anti-covid measure. If your fallback is to point to herd immunity, then you’re effectively aligning yourself with the Swedish approach.
Your comment above was sufficient, nothing here added additional meaningful information, it's not worth your time or the parent's to go down this road. It wasn't believed to be a flu in the beginning and I think the excess death stats bear that out. Once the people tracking it think it's equivalent to the flu, rigid policy makes less sense.
I wish people would just accept that public policy need not align with what's right for them personally based own their health own situation. I can simultaneously understand why a public policy of lockdowns on Day 1 makes sense, while at the same time fight for exceptions to the rules due to my personal situation. Everyone I think is aware that the future is personalised medicine, that we're at the very beginning of that awareness, and that the current state of the art in medicine is very crude from that perspective.
Hell, if we had infinite money we should have just sent anyone 60 plus or in ill health to Florida, Texas, SoCal and Mexico for a 6-months/year vacation and mandated that they try to spend most of their time outdoors.
This isn't about the later stuff. My statement was that being against lockdowns is an anti-social viewpoint and that you were rightly attacked for being against them. Nothing you've written challenges that. In a spherical vacuum of a society with no left right blue or China, no Epstein files, a pathogen has been introduced to your society. You don't know anything about it at all. It could be Ebola, it could be a total nothing buger. What do you do in response? Do you stay open and infect your populace, or do you lock down? It's a huge disruption, to everything and everyone. In the face of the unknown, what do you chose to do?
In the face of not knowing something, do we try and be safe, or do we say YOLO and fuck everyone who's role puts them in harms way?
> Nothing you've written challenges that
Apparently your reading comprehension is low
> You don't know anything about it at all. It could be Ebola, it could be a total nothing buger.
Except that’s just not true. You’re just inventing scenarios to scare yourself and others. Covid is a respiratory coronavirus, they are extremely thoroughly studied and well understood. We didn’t “know nothing” about it. That’s just a total fabrication that you invented because you’ve been thoroughly trounced in this debate.
> What do you do in response?
For the last time, TARGETED PROTECTION OF VULNERABLE POPULATIONS.
> Do you stay open and infect your populace, or do you lock down?
False dichotomy, see above paragraph where I once again spoonfeed you basic common sense.
Locking down is the extreme position, and should require an extreme amount of evidence advocating for it.
Don’t bother responding. You’ve made zero interesting points, and rely solely on sensational rhetoric, accusations, false dichotomy, straw men, and ad hominem. There isn’t an ounce of logic or maturity in any of your comments. Thus, I’ve grown bored of walloping you.
But you must admit it was a gamble at the time. My mother got Covid early, before lockdowns. She spent a week in the hospital and almost died. She then had a stroke, she can no longer walk. She also got cancer, and now can barely talk. Please don't tell me it was not deadly dangerous to older folks.
If the bird flu comes, and with it a mortality rate of 50%, and there is a vaccine, everybody will be locked down and forced to take the vaccine. It wont matter what anybody's opinions are about the possible harmful effects of lockdowns or vaccines.
I seem to remember that Sweden applied the WHO recommendations as they were written and didn’t lock down because the damage of locking down is huge and everybody dog pilled on them about how it was stupid.
Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental health did better if I remember correctly.
People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly managed.
Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.”
Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/
You are only looking at 2020 and posting a source from 2021. Now look at 2021, 2022 and 2023. That’s the whole point. Sweden had slightly more excess mortality the first year especially amongst the elderly but they ended up doing similar or slightly better than their neighbours if you look at the whole pandemic.
They did significantly better on other metrics however like youth mental health and education.
I posted a ton of sources in another comment.
It’s not that surprising anyway. It’s not like Sweden did a weird and surprising experiment. They just stuck to the already existing plans designed to contain influenza while everyone else freaked out after Imperial College published their dubious models and started acting irrationally.
That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls.
The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.
> That’s not what the Nordic data show. Sweden didn’t “end up doing better.” It had by far the worst COVID-19 mortality in 2020, because it kept society open while its neighbors used strict controls.
> The only reason Sweden’s later all-cause mortality looks “similar” is mortality displacement: COVID killed so many frail, high-risk people in 2020 that Sweden had fewer dementia and respiratory deaths in 2021–22. Nordic registry papers explicitly note this. Sweden didn’t outperform anyone. Its early losses were just so large that later excess deaths looked artificially low.
Exactly, that's exactly what I said and what the data show. We do agree except obviously there is absolutely nothing artificial about it. You can't discount the data because you don't like what it shows.
So, indeed, what the data show is that other countries barely postponned death despite Sweden having a dry tinder effect in 2020 - plenty of people vulnerable to respiratory diseases - following two years of mild flu. Sweden has indeed less excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 and tellingly the overall number is in every way comparable when it's not slightly better than the other Nordic countries. Sweden early losses in 2020 weren't even that large by the way.
To which I reach the inevitable conclusion, lockdowns were entirely useless, massive distruption of society - disproportionately impacting the youngest with schools closure - to gain mere weeks of life for the most vulnerables. Focusing on shielding the most vulnerables and putting in place containment habits were totally adequate counter measures. Once again, this is not in any way surprising, these were the WHO recommendations for containing an influenza pandemic.
To the people downvoting me, you are welcome to actually look at the numbers. [1]
Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns. [2] [3] [4]
I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic into a political debate and people hate facing that they might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a polarised and abusive moment in time that even some experts are scared commenting on the available data.
When I was younger, I thought of dems as the party of logic and reason, and repubs as bible-thumpers. I don’t think this was entirely wrong, but the unthinking dogmatism of left-leaning people about lockdowns did a lot to disabuse me of that notion.
Anecdotal, my uncle, several friends' relatives died from COVID during those lockdowns. I don't know / heard anyone died because of flu (in my extended circle of people I know)
Most people are not a "hospitalized older adult". Yet they treated everyone, regardless of age, gender, health as if they were on death's door. The lock downs were absolutely overkill and went on far, far too long.
Propaganda? COVID was the third most common verified cause of death in the US in the first 18 months after the lockdown started in March, and that's despite the lockdown. That's 10x more deaths per month than the particularly bad flu last year. Do you not remember the morgue trucks? The whole health system was overwhelmed.
Too many people either never saw or forgot about the morgue trucks. Or the footage that showed flocks of vultures circling over south american cities from afar. Desperate people coughing and dying in their own cars in hospitals' driveways. Body bags littering the floors of hospitals in third world countries.
All of that happened, but it went right over a lot of people's heads, and nobody talks about it anymore because it became such a sore and divisive topic and we're all glad it's over.
I remember well the video showing a whole column of military trucks transporting bodies out of the city of Bergamo, Italy, on March 19th, 2020. I took a screenshot because the magnitude of what this meant gave me shivers. It was one of those moments when the world seemed to stop for a minute and was changed forever like on 9/11, to me at least.
Ever since, I can't find much common ground for discussion with people claiming it was just a flu. You either acknowledge the difference or you don't.
So then why isn't it happening now? Why did Israel not fare better despite their much higher vaccination rates than Gaza without any vaccinations? It was never a pandemic and never anything more than a severe flu.
Yep, mock it all you like but it's because you can't explain it and it would make you too uncomfortable too acknowledge you don't know what you're talking about at all. Follow the school of fish into the net. Have at it.
Real people, citizen journalists documented empty hospitals and ERs with no activity while the mass media tried to sell you on "morgue trucks" lol. Trump got that whole ship sent to NYC and they never used it.
I walked by the morgue trucks, so no. You've been blinded by propaganda made by the same people who "document" alien encounters. If hospitals were actually empty the rates of healthcare worker burnout and subsequent shortage wouldn't have happened.
Maybe, outside the nursing homes that racked up tons of excess deaths due to Andrew Cuomo's policies and later cover-ups.
But at hospitals? I'm sure you can point out a few specific times and locations but on the whole, they simply were not overwhelmed with Covid deaths to the point where anything like "morgue trucks" were needed.
For me yes. I'm not the same, much more depressed. I was already prone to it but two years of home imprisonment while living alone really damaged me. I also have a really bad reaction to the masks due to a youth trauma where I nearly choked. Being forced to trigger that memory daily was terrible. I did wear them of course (I'm in Europe so we had quite heavy restrictions). Maybe it was necessary for society but for me personally the damage was much higher than the benefit. On the bright side when it was over in 2022 it did make me go out again and I go out partying every weekend until 6am still. That probably wouldn't have happened because I'm in my 50s.
I think the measures were a bit overblown though some were necessary. But shit like curfews was ridiculous. It made contagion worse because the shops were only open during the day so everyone had to go there during a much shorter time. So they were always chock full of customers, exactly the thing you don't want during a pandemic.
It can be that social order is partly maintained by conformance and a bunch of people found out that there aren't consequences for choosing not to conform.
In the local facebook rants group, any time someone posts about someone doing something that is mildly antisocial (a reasonable thing to rant about), there's always several comments saying "So what, who cares".
Like sure, it isn't the end of the world to park like an asshole, but it would suck if everybody did it, so it's better if no one does it. And it's the same for dozens of other minor little things you might encounter in a given week.
Normal people were shown that they had no real bearing on the world, and were forced to live without being rushed for a year or in some places two. Without the need to constantly look over their shoulders for encroaching crises people started to examine the world around them. They had time to enjoy things without constantly battling with mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that lead to procrastination just to recover a little bit. So many realized they were being deprived of not only recreation, but fulfilling their basic needs outside of food and sleep. So they shifted from fearing the systems that deprived them to loathing them and the people who administrated them, and resolved to deny contributing to those systems as much as possible. That's why there were so many sweeping changes starting in May of 2020, not in the way the systems of the world were run, but in the way the public at large engaged with them.
Much of what's been happening over the last five years can be compared to the behaviours of those suffering through trauma after long term abuse. Some continued the cycle against new targets, ignoring a collective truth. Others realized they were victims of the cycle and chose to work towards safeguards that would prevent it from continuing. Another group learned about the cycle and thought they would benefit from being new instigators for it.
That's like asking "why would one car crash that lasted a few seconds change your driving habits for years?" - or perhaps your entire outlook on life, the consequences of not appreciating the things around you in the moment, the realization that life is fleeting, that maybe "getting to work on time" shouldn't be as high a priority as it once was, etc, etc. All it takes is one major shake-up for people to be changed, often for life.
It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd happily ran along with.
January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests.
February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask.
Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further.
The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.
I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
And all those years could have been avoided by treating a new unknown disease as it should have been treated instead of trusting China's word on it. Go figure.
>I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
I think it might be. In my experience, the ignorance goes together very closely with political ideology. That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people.
Anyway ...
West Bank and Gaza: 941.84 deaths per million people, 29% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
Israel: 887.20 deaths per million people, 64% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
>That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people.
You're projecting. I fully understand the goal, but all the evidence shows they did nothing (air still escapes, people wear them incorrectly, the virus was never even proven to be airborne). They were telling people to take their masks off between bites/eating at restaurants. It was security theater. People who don't understand this just take safety in following the herd. They certainly aren't exhibiting critical thinking skills.
You also don't understand how to compare apples to apples. How did those death rates change from 2021 compared to previous years? I bet it was virtually unchanged. That's the point. Compare Palestine 2021 to Palestine 2015 and Israel 2021 to Israel 2015. The vaccine saved no one. If the vaccine was truly effective, you would see Israel vastly outperforming Palestine starting in 2021. Did it? And how is 63 per 1,000,000 a statistically significant number even if your argument were true? I would likely attribute that to other conditions like lack of resources compared to Israel. Otherwise, you're telling me Israel vaccinated more than 2x as many people and only saved 63 people per 1,000,000 and you think that proves your point?
Saying "google them yourself" removes the ability for people to refute you and your stated position here.
A surgical mask is most often used not to protect the surgeon but rather the patient from transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
I would suggest by refuting Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4480558/ which describes several studies about transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
Face masks were suggested not only for protection of the individual wearing them, but also as a layer of defense for transmission from someone who may be asymptomatic at the time. As such, face masks were in part to prevent transmission from someone who is in public and might be contagious and not know it in addition to than preventing someone wearing it from contracting an airborne disease (though this may require a higher grade of filtration).
> Wearing a mask can help lower the risk of respiratory virus transmission. When worn by a person with an infection, masks reduce the spread of the virus to others. Masks can also protect wearers from breathing in infectious particles from people around them.
> ...
> Generally, masks can help act as a filter to reduce the number of germs you breathe in or out. Their effectiveness can vary against different viruses, for example, based on the size of the virus. When worn by a person who has a virus, masks can reduce the chances they spread it to others. Masks can also protect wearers from inhaling germs; this type of protection typically comes from better fitting masks (for example, N95 or KN95 respirators).
Note that the first point is that the mask is to prevent the spread from the individual wearing the mask.
> Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes.
> Johnson et al. (70) found that no influenza could be detected by RT-PCR on sample plates at 20 cm distance from coughing patients wearing masks, while it was detectable without mask for seven of the nine patients. Milton et al. (71) found surgical masks produced a 3.4-fold (95% CI: 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral copies in exhaled breath by 37 influenza patients. Vanden Driessche et al. (72) used an improved sampling method based on a controlled human aerosol model. By sampling a homogeneous mix of all of the air around the patient, the authors could also detect any aerosol that might leak around the edges of the mask. Among their six cystic fibrosis patients producing infected aerosol particles while coughing, the airborne Pseudomonas aeruginosa load was reduced by 88% when wearing a surgical mask compared with no mask.
No, I have no burden of proof because I'm not writing a scholastic paper and I made my argument using critical thinking that you can easily infer if you just think about it.
People aren't wearing masks anymore, do you see a dramatic increase in COVID deaths? Then your point is self-evidently wrong--no further analysis needed.
You're conflating so many different things. Surgery with an open wound is not the same as spreading COVID which was never even proven to be spread airborne. You're either intellectually dishonest or naive. Either way this is pointless. You clearly just like being told what to think. I get it, there's safety in feeling like if you just follow the rules you'll be safe. You can follow the school into the net, because freedom is not what you actually want.
They just wanted to sell you masks. Don't you get it? It's just about the money.
> I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.
Possibly true in some places. I think it very likely did in the UK.
> I feel bad for young people growing up in this broken world
The world has always been broken. Look at the 20th Century, two world wars, multiple smaller wars, Gulag, great leap forward, cold war, genocides.....
In many ways the world is better than its ever been.
What is true is that the golden age the west had from the end of the cold war until the early 21st century has come to a close, but that was an exceptional time for people in a small proportion of the world.
> I realize that I’m probably going to get dogpiled for saying it, but I think that the response to COVID (ie lockdowns) did far more damage than the disease itself.
You're going to blame Covid and/or Covid response for the fact that monopolies can jack up prices without consequence? That's your conclusion? Seriously?
What's happened is that McDonald's assumed they were a monopoly supplier like everybody else and jacked prices. McDonald's unfortunately discovered that "not eating out at all" is a viable substitute to their monopoly. Whoops.
However, if you want to fix the enshittification that is going on, you need to aggressively break up the monopolies everywhere in order to insert slack back into the system to re-enable competition.
On top of that, basing everything around "Always Late(tm) Inventory" (aka "Just In Time Inventory") means that there is zero slack in the system so even IF you want to compete, there is no upstream provider that can supply you with enough material to make a meaningful difference.
Want to fix modern capitalism? Bust monopolies. Over and over. At all levels. In all fields (not just tech). Aggressively.
> I dread even eating out anymore as I fully expect to overpay for bad food and service.
I don't know if HN is the place to say this. But, it's just infinitely better these days to cook your own meals. With some modest initial investment and planning, you can minimize the average time and cost of doing it, while still having access to a reasonaly healthy and delicious menu, though slightly repetitive. But if you really want to indulge, setting aside a couple of hours will give you dishes that taste way beyond anything you can afford from outside.
Some people are natural born chefs with an intuitive understanding of tastebuds. But if you're like me in that you're clueless about it, there are still some exceptional recipes you can steal online. I treat cooking more like chemistry, insisting follow exact measurements and time. It still works out really well for me. You might even tweak the recipe over 4 or 5 repetitions to your at most satisfaction. Anybody who hasn't given it a try really should, at least once.
Yup. Something really simple and cheap, and definitely not worse in nutrition than McDonald's: Buy a pack of chicken legs, marinate them to your liking (for example: olive oil, salt, pepper, smoked or unsmoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, chicken or veggie bouillon cube), let them sit for an hour. Put it into the oven for 50min to an hour at 160 degrees Celsius. Cook rice on the side. After chicken legs are done take them out, and mix rice into the juices. Add some ketchup if you like. Put chicken legs back on top. Bake for max 4 minutes at 200 degrees. Enjoy.
Now, that will take you about 2 hours to make in absolute time, but the actual time to do this is very little, a few minutes.
Practically anything you can find online videos for are better than their counterparts from low end restaurants. I have a lot of favs, but most are regional dishes that are not very well known internationally. Pastas are an exception. Cakes too taste a whole lot different and much richer when you do it.
It always was? These discussions imply the existence of a large class of people subsisting primarily on restaurants and takeout, who surely are only a few percent of the population?
Restaurants are for special occasions. McDonald's is, or used to be, a cheap "treat", or standard food for travellers.
Yeah in the documentary “supersize me” the subject says, while he ate 30 days straight of McDonald’s, that the restaurant considered a person who ate there once a week to be a heavy consumer.
The UK is still blaming all sorts of stuff on the pandemic that are actually structural failures showing effects. It's a especially convenient time for cover considering Brexit happened in early 2020 and between then and now no major party has been willing to come out and say that Brexit has been damaging.
I don't even think it was necessary for Brexit to have been a net negative. There are plenty of ways the UK can thrive outside the EU, but the UK governments have basically done the square root of fuck all between 2016 and now to plan or execute on anything substantive.
That said, long-term problems included a lot more than Brexit, like the slow euthanasia of the industrial base and the parting out of anything but nailed down to the highest bidder.
100%. My wife thinks I’m crazy, but every issue she observes my answer tends to have its root in covid.
An economy is an ecosystem and it’s been seriously knocked out of balance by covid, annd the fuel issues aa a consequence of Russias war hasn’t helped either. Everything that was, no longer is.
You’re not crazy and don’t let your wife say that to you, since it’s clearly ignorance or possibly rationalization to justify her positions during that time. People will rationalize immensely just to avoid having to admit they were wrong in general or also possibly that they contributed to their own consequences.
Don't worry, we know each other well enough at this stage. From her point of view I think she's tired of me relating every issue to covid (which is mostly correct).
But you're right, people can get caught in their own filter bubble, build walls and be defensive, rather than open their ears to a second opinion.
Probably varies where you are, but in the UK (especially outside London) there are lots of places you can have reasonably good food an service at a decent price. A lot of pubs with good food now, for example.
I don't think COVID is responsible. I think COVID was the straw that made more people use doordash and then retailers saw that doordash was making profit on their product by bundling a service and they got greedy for that profit.
After all, if you'll pay $8 for a big mac + tip delivered to your door, then you'll pay $8 for a big mac. Then to get it delivered is another $2 or so, so you'll pay $10 for a big mac. Then to get it delivered is another $3 or so, so now you'll pay $13 for a big mac.
The app drives me crazy on the occasions I do have to use it.
Picking fries brings me to a one-item category where I can... pick fries again.
Latency during the order process is insane, and then they add animations and little popup alerts throughout that actively interfere with me getting my all-important order code while I'm sitting like an asshole in the drive-through.
Yeah, the McD app is ridiculous. For some items it gives me an add to order dialog and then an add to bag dialog (I might have the order of those two swapped). I'm not sure what the distinction is between adding to the order and adding to the bag.
It also has some ridiculous restrictions. Nearly every week I take advantage of their in-app deal for free medium fries on Friday if you spend at least $1 on other stuff. I make a sandwich at home, order a couple cookies plus the free fries in the app, then go pick them at the McD that is about half a mile from my home.
Occasionally though instead of making a sandwich I decide I'd like to use my McD reward points to get a free burger. But you can't get both a rewards points item and a deal item on the same order.
I end up doing a rewards points order for a free burger, picking that up at the drive through, parking, then doing a cookies plus free fries deal order, and going through the drive through again to get that.
What's the point of not allowing both a rewards item and a deal item on the same order? If the rule was you could only use one reward or deal per day, then it would make some sense.
I don't think the app will let you start a second order before you've picked up your first order, although I've never specifically tried it.
I once had the app fail to realize I had picked up my order and I was unable to do new orders. I ended up deleting the app and reinstalling it and then I could order again. That was a few years ago, though, and they've changed the app several time since, so maybe I shouldn't assume that an order still awaiting pickup blocks new orders.
Maybe I'll try it next time I want to use points and a deal at the same time and see if you can order while another order is still in progress. If that still isn't allowed, I should probably then try placing the second order on a different device (one on iPhone, one on iPad for instance) to see if the limitation is because an instance of the app can only handle one order or because some account limitation is the problem.
If that doesn't work, two devices logged into different accounts would be the next thing to try--that's got to work. I'm using "Login with Apple" for my McD account. I could make a new McD account using "Login with Google".
There's at least two in the Cardiff City Centre, one on St Mary St and one on Queen St.
Having used both at normal and at peak pisshead hours, they're both alright.
Not great, not a disaster. Slightly understaffed, and occasionally short on English language skills, but there's not an issue if you want hot food (inc vegetarian and vegan) or drinks at a daft hour.
Australian here and the sentiment is the same. Drive-through is tolerable but dine-in is not pleasant due to basic cleaning like sweeping, wiping of tables not being done.
Canadian who agrees and will add that 95% of the employees are also new immigrants which really rankles us who have had to look hard for any kind of unskilled job!
Here in Japan I have only had good experiences, but I can't say I love going to McDonalds. The breakfast offerings are decent and it's extremely fast service. During peak times seats will be around 95 percent full but the restaurant remains very clean. I think the cleanliness in part is due to the patrons being responsible.
I’m an American living in the San Francisco Bay Area who travels to Japan twice per year. McDonald’s in Japan is better than McDonald’s in America. McDonald’s in Japan not only is cleaner and has better customer service, but is cheaper.
McDonald’s in America wasn’t always expensive; I was in high school and college in the 2000s when the dollar menu had double cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and small orders of fries. The regular menu didn’t break the bank, either. Prices started shooting upward in the 2010s; first the Double Cheeseburger on the dollar menu got replaced with the McDouble (one slice of cheese instead of two), then it exited the dollar menu and became 2 for $3, then 2 for $4. But after COVID, prices exploded. I remember the first time seeing a fast food combo meal selling for more than $10 sometime about five years ago, but it was the most expensive meal on the menu. Nowadays in my area $10-$12 combo meals are the norm. It’s sad and maddening; my salary hasn’t risen at this level!
Meanwhile in Japan, I could get a Big Mac meal for around ¥800. Even when the yen was strong, $8 beats $11. At today’s yen valuation ($5.09), it’s more than half the cost, and with better customer service at that!
I make six figures but I feel like fast food prices in California are a ripoff ($10+ for a crappy meal? No thanks!), and so I quit eating out except when traveling or for entertainment, such as hanging out with friends.
Yeah pretty decent in Spain. Give it another 10-20 years when McDonald's realise the customers need them more than they need the customers (ie addiction) and that'll change!
Yes here they have the Uber cheap menu4you option too. A double cheeseburger which is pretty much a big Mac (but with nicer sauce), fries and coke for €5
From the UK too, and your experience is matched by mine. The last time I was in one (I mean "the last time" in both senses of the words) I waited over 20 minutes for my food; I do not know how long it would have actually taken because at that point I got bored, wrote it off as a loss and walked out. No sense in complaining to anyone because that would have consumed even more of my time.
McDonalds is not food and it is not even fast anymore.
I cannot blame their staff for any of this anyway; if I was being paid that little to be treated like garbage I wouldn't give a shit either.
It is not apparent that we are ambivalent because of compensation.
I would argue an inverse corollary. I would argue that the most qualified people for the job are applying.
What I am noticing in my own work is fatigue from processing volume.
It's not personal. You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal. Only then we can actually solve your issue because we have a person to relate to.
I am curious about this notion that fast food workers don't care. I see it a lot. We absolutely care.
I think that merits an apology from me, then: what I said was wrong and I'm sorry. If I'd thought about that sentence for more than ten seconds, it'd be clear that it's all better explained not by indifference from the staff doing the actual work, but because (as you said) they are asked to work under impossible conditions, and as long as some line on a chart representing "money" goes in the right direction it's the people that set the conditions of the job who don't give a shit.
Some part of me understood this already, because...
> You are a statistic until you walk up to the front counter and make it personal.
Aside from the fact that the "front counter" is apparently deprecated these days...given what I know about my personality flaws, I am sure I'd not want to do this. It's not like they could make the food appear 20 minutes ago, and they're not responsible for the conditions that made it take 20 minutes in the first place, so what would it accomplish other than making their day worse? Maybe some warm feeling of "well I fuckin showed 'em" followed by "oh damnit, I was an arsehole" 15 seconds later which would hang over me for a LOT longer than 15 seconds. Walking out was a better outcome for everyone, including me.
That's already happening. Roadsides aren't being cleaned up because the local DOTs aren't being paid enough. That leaves fallen rocks, mud buildup from floods, tree branches, and overgrown bushes very close to the roadway. Grocery stores have empty shelves because they don't get enough stockers. If you go to the meats aisle it's a good chance you'll either find some pork that's started to turn yellow or some beef that's started to turn brown because nobody wants to dig through the freezer. They get told the meat's old, they find the visible one, and the put a price reduced sticker on it. Walk into a hospital and the grating at the entryway will be filled with mud, the baseboards along the walls in the hallways will be scuffed to hell, and the walls will have scrapes taken out of them because the maintenance staff aren't being paid enough to care. Go into a bank and you'll have one teller working both the drive through and the front desk, and they'll take their time getting to you because the drive-through counts towards their statistics since the interaction with the drop off point is tracked. They aren't paid enough to work back and forth in the down time when either is doing something the teller doesn't need to be involved in.
Apathy's just setting in across the board, and it's entirely warranted. One hour of work can't even afford you one hour of reward anymore when it comes to most non-specialized and non-salaried jobs.
I'm in the UK and have McDonalds semi-regularly. A few times a month at least. Get a receipt, fill out the online feedback form, get a code. Put the code in the app, get an offer for £2.99 sandwhich (McPlant, Big Mac, whatever the chicken thing is) and either fries or a salad. £2.99 for a McPlant and fries at 3am is a godsend.
I'd rather just skip a meal than resort to McDonald's, but I've noticed in so many places there are more deliveries going out than people eating in. This seems to go for any place that does delivery. It's even hard to read reviews for places as so many of them are rating the delivery when the food in question doesn't transport well.
Yup. McDonald's in the UK is a truly horrible experience that only "addicts" still put up with
Staff barely even look at you, they're miserable, fries are only 50% full, orders always wrong, no please or thanks or sorry for keeping you waiting 20 mins in the bay for a hamburger etc. Stopped going ages ago
What is strange is McDonalds at one point was by far the most consistent fast food place in the US. Personally it wasn't my thing but it was always a step above all the other chains.
That hasn't been the case in a long time, quality control and customer service has fallen to be just as bad as any other place.
On the kcal/£ basis, Tesco biscuits (for Americans: cookies) are more than an order of magnitude better, 487 kcal/100g, £0.22/100g, about £0.15 for as many kcal as that McMuffin: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/290329100
On the basis of an actually balanced diet, boiling a pot of water and adding lentils, rice, and value frozen veg on a timer, are likewise. Which is of course why that's a staple diet in parts of the world much poorer than the UK.
For £5.09 you get the hash brown, so it's 500+ cals. It costs 25 mins of paid labour and it also saves N minutes of domestic labour if one were to have similar hot protein+cals at home. High-income people tend not to understand this part, they'll say you can eat beans and rice for nothing.
I have quite a lot of difficulty eating out once you start cooking at home, because think of what you are buying:
- one English muffin (is it called an English muffin in England?)
- one slice of cheese
- one egg
- one slice of ham
- one cup of coffee
- one hashbrown
£5.09 for that? Obviously when you buy from a restaurant you're paying for their labor, rent, electric, and much more so it makes sense - McDonald's franchisees tend to operate on single digit profit margins even at that cost. But mehhh, still. And then the food you end up buying is packed full of preservatives and other additives and artificial ingredients.
Dude you’re not even trying, why buy muffins and eggs when you could grow wheat, grind flour, raise chickens and get eggs for free, slaughter your own pigs and cure the bacon yourself… because labour costs nothing and convenience has no value amirite?
I find it bemusing that so people are simultaneously extremely agitated by high prices but also completely disinterested in doing anything except paying them. With this mindset it's not particularly hard to guess which direction they'll trend in over time, even if the world wasn't going nutters.
I mean these things are not difficult to make. They even freeze extremely well, and then you toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes while you're getting ready and they're done. And the food you create is not only much cheaper, but also way healthier and also higher quality. When you go to a McDonalds you're getting the cheapest possible find they can source on a global level. The only reason they dropped pink slime [1] is because they were outed using it on television.
Incidentally that was a long time ago and while Wiki is quiet unclear it seems that the USDA chose to reclassify back as simply ground back in 2018. If it's been rebranded and remains legal, that's probably what people are now eating, again, at least in the US - as it's deemed unfit for human consumption in Canada and the EU.
I did not say that. I was responding to a person who engaged in banal snark implying that making food for oneself is a herculean task, but it all depends on what you're making, and things can be extremely stream lined. In the case of what we're talking about (mcmuffin stuff), you can even cook and freeze them in arbitrarily large quantities and it's way cheaper, healthier, and even faster since it's in your freezer instead of having to go out.
I do think that the fast food (or even eating out in general) starts to lack any real selling point for households that are capable of cooking, and so this is probably going to weight the customers, especially regulars, of these sort of places away from households that do cook. I suppose you'd argue time is the selling point, but one can even remain competitive on there with things like pressure cooker meals. There are even one pot rice cooker meals which are also great.
The UK comparison for home cooking vs fast food breakfast should be really be Wetherspoon. Spoons makes a solid stodgy full English breakfast and bottomless coffee for 5-7 quid depending on the size. Classic hangover food, and you can start the morning where the night ended.
Obviously you can beat it with home cooking, but the calorie value for a sit down meal out is compelling: 1300 cals for 7.50 (more if you go for hot chocolate).
Wetherspoons is amazing and a great replacement for McDonalds. They bring the food to your table, with cutlery, on a plate and you get unlimited coffee and tap water. I paid £4.78 for a muffin of sauage+bacon+2 eggs+hash brown and unlimited coffee this morning.
You got to choose very carefully from the menu as lot of things aren't good value.
My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant. But I remember being more or leas enjoying the food. Now I just can’t. Maybe I’m getting older. But I would swear the quality is much worse now than say 5 or 10 years ago.
> My experience is that quality in McD is rapidly declining. We may agree was never a Michelin star restaurant
That's the thing with McDonalds.
You could go in to any store no matter where you was and know you got a consistent level of hygiene, cleanliness, good fast efficient service and while not gourmet food you knew the food you was going to get was a consistent standard. It was the reliable, dependable safe option in a list of unknown options. McDonalds was McDonalds know matter where you was.
Now it's no longer clean as they got rid of all the staff replacing them with screens. Stores are generally filthy with mess everywhere.
There is no consistent service as they got rid of all the staff and replaced them with screens that sometime work, sometimes don't, often out of paper for receipts/order numbers.
It's no longer fast as you need to mess about with broken screens, and repeatedly declining up sell options each step of the way vs giving a order at the counter and being done.
The quality now varies from store to store
It's no longer cheap. For the price of a McDonalds, in Australia I can go in to a Pub/Hotel and get a better meal if i get a special.
The last time I was in a McD (this year), it smelled faintly of feces, and yep it was a mess. It really did put me off going to any other McDonald's. I know that's one experience but prior ones had been trending in that direction.
The problem is they’re in an uncanny valley. They’re too expensive for low income customers and their food is too shitty to compete with other things you can get for the same price. Starbucks will give you food that’s similarly priced and much tastier and healthier. McD is disgusting.
For me it's the competition. So many competing chains and independent burger joints have sprung up and spoilt me. For 20%-30% more than mcd prices I can get something way way better.
My family and I ate at one this evening. My son wanted to try to the McRib. I'm not sure he loved it, but it looked fine. My wife and I both had the $5 McValue meal, and we got a free medium fry because it was Friday. We shared one of the drinks because I'm not supposed to be eating lots of sugar. Some McD's don't have a drink station in the public seating area anymore, but the one we go to does. All in all, it was not a bad meal for like $15. I don't see any degradation in their quality at all. I think that quality is highly dependent on which one you visit and how well it is managed.
I’ve had McDonalds twice in the past 12mo. Once locally just because I was for whatever reason craving it, once on a late night last minute road trip in the middle of nowhere midwestern USA.
Hasn’t seemed to have a discernible quality difference since back when I ate it regularly a decade ago.
Prices noticeably up, but I refuse to use the app and am willing to pay extra for the privilege.
McDonalds tastes the same as it always has. Food consistency is what they excel at, along with owning valuable real estate.
Also, the quality of a fast food restaurant (cleanliness and service) is directly correlated to the median income of the area it is in. Wealthy suburbs will have much cleaner restaurants than inner city restaurants from the same chain.
I'd say you've just grown up and experienced decent food now. McDonald's is marketed to children and caters for the child-like palate: sweet, salty and acidic, like tomato ketchup.
When I grew up in the UK in the 80s/90s we ate typical British food. Potatoes every day, boiled veg, baked beans, beige protein things. Back then it was possible to have "Chinese" or "Indian", but it's all total shit: overly sweet, not spicy, greasy as fuck bastardised rubbish. Nowadays I can actually find real Indian, French, Italian etc. that is actually delicious. It's difficult to imagine going back to beige stuff I grew up on.
I think this is under-appreciated. The technology of food has progressed immensely in the last decades! Even recipes from the 90s don't hold up as well, because home cooks have access to more knowledge, techniques, tools, ingredients, foodstuffs. And of course if you look at photos of food and typical dining from the 80s you can sort of spot a difference visually as well.
Here in Greece, we have so much good quality street food that McDonald's is street trash by comparison. I don't consider it food, there are only about eight or nine restaurants in the entire country and I think most people go there because of the novelty.
Please don't let Greece get too wealthy, the quality street food will get pushed out and replaced with overpriced yuppie food that all gets sourced from the exact same company!
Austria resident checking in - since I moved here I noticed the quality of McD’s is way, way better than in the UK. And apart from the regular menu being a whole different experience, you’ve got great quality coffee and cakes. It’s a whole world of difference.
Here in Sweden they changed their recipes a few years ago. I can’t stand the Big Mac now. Previously it at least felt kind of fresh although low quality. Now it has a weird freeze dried sensation to the vegetables :/
It's pretty hilarious because your comment is exactly their goal.
McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers. They do not want to compete in the middle income space, as they don't visit as often and there's ton more(and better) competition.
Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back. Dire straits ahead for them, they've priced themselves into a place they don't want to be nor will they be able to succeed in.
> McDonald's is laser focused on low income customers.
Like some other fast food restaurants, they're desperately trying to be thought of as being Starbucks tier, with Starbucks prices, trappings, etc.
It's like Taco Bell desperately trying to be thought of as Chipotle tier, with Chipotle level prices and trappings. Like McDonald's, they significantly raised their prices without any quality improvements to justify it.
> Their CEO has been blunt about this recently, and trying to find ways to get low-income customers back.
It's lip service because news like "low income people abandon McDonald's" makes investors get bad feels about their investment.
I don’t like how the CEO is portraying this as something solely caused by outside market forces. In the last 10 years, their profit margin has gone from ~17% to ~32%. The pricing is an intentional decision that they could choose to change at any time.
Terrible take. Of course they want middle-income customers, that's a big part of why they raised prices, because they thought middle-income would absorb them. And they arent entirely wrong - those drive-thru lines are still miles long at peak times, mostly parents getting an entire family's dinner. However middle-income is still price sensitive and notice when $30 becomes $50+. Executives talk about appealing to "value-oriented" consumers (i.e. almost everybody).
It's actually Wendy's right now suffering, vs rivals McD and BK: "Wendy's (WEN) same-restaurant sales, or sales of restaurants open at least 15 months, declined from a year ago for a third straight quarter, while those of rivals McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Restaurant Brands International Inc.'s (QSR) Burger King increased over the past two quarters."
It's not that they don't want middle class customers, of course that would be foolish. It's that they don't want to be positioned there. The CEO has made this abundantly clear.
Their financial reports are a better source of truth than anecdotes. Q1 was an absolute disaster, Q2 surprisingly OK, Q3 missing expectations but not terrible. This is not where they want to be, regardless of lip service. They will not thrive in this space, as Wendy's has found out. IMO Wendy's was the de facto try 'middle/lower middle class' fast food option.
