Everything crazy internet people told you about why lockdowns were a bad idea is coming true
Major European countries are now struggling to make allegedly temporary, emergency containment measures permanent features of society

Outdoor public events have been banned in an area of France as a record breaking heatwave sweeps across Europe.
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In Gironde, officials said public events, including some of the official 18 June Resistance celebrations, will be prohibited from Friday at 14:00 “until the end of the heat wave”. Indoor events at venues without air-conditioning are also banned.
Private celebrations, such as weddings, will still be allowed.
“Everyone now faces a health risk”, local official Fabienne Buccio told France Bleu radio.
Federal government considers making masks compulsory in October
In preparing new infection control measures, the federal government is intensively discussing a general obligation to wear a mask beginning in October […] [P]art of the coalition government favours introducing a so-called “O-to-O” [“Oktober bis Ostern” – “October to Easter”] rule, which up to now has been known primarily to motorists, and which requires winter tyres on the roads between October and Easter. In future, a similar rule could apply to indoor mask mandates during this period.
In response to a question from WELT ON SUNDAY, the Chancellor’s Office said that such a rule was being considered among various possible regulations for upcoming amendments of the Infection Protection Act.
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A seasonal mask requirement would be an attempt to curb other respiratory infections besides Covid-19, supporters of the plan say.
The most destructive aspects of containment have been retired, but for what remains, they don’t even bother with Corona as an excuse anymore. All you need is a heat wave to ban mass gatherings in France now; public health officials just have to declare that “Everyone faces a health risk,” and that’s it, your right to assemble is voided. The lunatic German government, meanwhile, is feverishly trying to make masks a permanent feature of winter life, even if SARS-2 disappears tomorrow. Masks might “curb … respiratory infections,” and that’s all you need to mandate face coverings in a major central European country these days.
The depressing truth is that a lot of people – maybe twenty percent of all people – love these policies. We might’ve expected that of petty bureaucratic tyrants, but it’s increasingly clear that they’re joined by vast numbers of ordinary citizens.
I am so, so tired of masks, but more than that, I am sick to death of these unkillable zombie virus solutions that we can apparently never get rid of, no matter how often or how thoroughly they’re discredited by common sense and empirical studies, no matter whether their original justification even applies anymore.
We've been putting up with this bullshit for decades now. Second hand smoke studies turn out to be nonsense? Too bad, still can't smoke in bars. TSA hasn't stopped a single terrorist attack? Shut up and take your shoes off.
The only way this stops is when a critical mass of people just stop complying. We're not going to vote our way out: none of this stuff was ever part of any electoral platform in the first place. We're not going to get public health safetyists fired: those are entrenched bureaucracies that operate with total independence from any form of democratic oversight, staffed by myopic fanatics who could care less what the public thinks. We're not going to convince the NPCs.
The only way out is cultural. We need to develop an ethos of simply ignoring everything the state says, such that their fatwas become about as meaningful as a mullah's pronouncements against immorality in downtown Vegas.
Be of good cheer. Life can't be stopped. Crush people as much as you can, there's still gonna be kids born who refuse to color within the lines no matter how often you rap them on the knuckles.
I'm sure the people sitting in the midst of the Roman Empire falling on their heads thought the end of civilization was a completely done deal, and yet eventually we had the Western Enlightenment.
I'm really grieved for my adult child and my adult child's friends, that they must endure this, but my grandma and her parents and siblings endured pogroms and the Russian Revolution and the loss of family to the slaughter in Uman 80 years ago, and yet here I am, a woman come to adulthood in what had been a reasonably free country where I could read anything I wanted and where at the moment I am a living breathing apostate to two religions who don't take kindly to that. Life can't, as I said, be stopped.