First, the term hysteria is from a fairly mysoginist root, so maybe consider whether that is the best word here.

Second, for all the 8 million plus people killed by COVID it wasn't hysteria, they died. They didn't have the sniffles, they died. Dead. Not alive. There isn't really a lot that is worse as an outcome from a respiratory infection, however we have that too! Tonnes of people who didn't die have long covid symptoms, strokes, heart attacks, various thrombotic events, loss of function, and additional complications in the rest of their medical issues. On top of that plenty of people had parents, siblings, children, friends, or other people important to them die or become disabled.

Third, digital dependence? I mean, we were moving in this direction for decades before covid. It used to be nobody had phones at all. My partners grandparents remembered the house down the block getting a telephone and went over to see it. They didn't have electricity. That was less than a century ago. The ramp up of technology over the last century has been insane and accelerating that whole time. In 2004 the coolest phone was a Motorola RAZR flip phone with a terrible 0.3 megapixel camera but a stunning 176x220 pixel display. In 2024 a Pixel 9 has a 1080x2424 display and a 50, 48, and 10.5 megapixel camera. The comparison of a rifle and a spear feels appropriate. We were already heading towards more technology in our lives, it just because super noticeable during lockdowns as it accelerated a little more for a couple of years and it was more obvious.

Fourth, why the quotes around expert? There is such a thing as an expert. Someone who knows more than me doesn't have to know everything to keep knowing more than me. They can be wrong and learn new things and change their mind all while remaining more informed than I am. In fact, being an expert in a field means doing that constantly. Being at the frontier of knowledge means holding your beliefs more tentatively as you are more likely to change your understanding than an uninformed average person. The fact that they didn't know how good masks would be at the start isn't an indictment of their expert status, it is their first guess given previous knowledge. What they did after that is what makes them experts, namely changing their minds when new evidence came about.

That's not a shower thought, that's crackhead "thoughts"

I mean, in the US we didn't even pay attention to the experts past the first, what, year of COVID? And that year we basically eradicated the seasonal flu, which killed ~26,000 people in the 19-20 flu season in the US.That was the last time we even considered that an expert could exist.

As for safety hysteria, I don't even see masks in public anymore. Most of the time I go to a store I'm the only one wearing one, while people are dying, and being permanently disabled by COVID.

Digital dependence is something that was happening before COVID. I think the only bill I've paid using a check instead of paying online was my rent, and that's because they charged extra to pay online. It definitely increased screen time for a lot of people, but the dependence isn't set by individuals; it's set by the fact that paying by check is becoming more difficult, and a lot of businesses are going online-only.

I think that screen time increased for everyone during the lockdown era, and a lot of people probably continue to use their devices more than they used to. But your safety hysteria and expert obedience comments come across as a paranoid, mentally ill conspiracy theorist. Do you want to expand on those thoughts?

Covid? What year is this?