The point of my hypothetical is that communicable diseases have a tendency to evolve to be less pathogenic over time.

That's not actually a real thing. It was a theory by a guy in the 1800s that's been soundly debunked but spread because people want to believe it's true.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/dec/08/facebook-posts/viruses-and-other-pathogens-can-evolve-become-more/

And notably they're not really two entirely unrelated things. "SARS" is SARS-CoV-1 and "COVID" is SARS-CoV-2.

Office buildings are test tubes, schools are petri dishes.

Polling generally showed Democrats supporting masking by a massive margin. The most recent poll I could find (April 2022) had support for mandatory masking on public transportation among Democrats as 80-5.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/majority-of-americans-support-mask-mandates-for-travel-ap-poll-finds

What's the point of this hypothetical? It's both not remotely close to where we are currently and has redefined the consequences to absurdity.

"Would you still wear a mask if the consequence of infection was a single light sneeze?"

"Would you wear a seat belt if the only consequence of car crashes was a small bruise?"

And pair that with the government saying it's mostly killing old people and those with health issues then just declaring it over. I wasn't expecting lockdown forever, but just like keeping it as an ongoing health concern. Instead they've been wiping their site of tracking, dropping funding, and abandoning workers to just hope their employer isn't going to get them sick. COVID being over is good politically and good for business, so COVID is over.

Federation only duplicates stuff an instance's users subscribe to, so if you're a single user instance it wouldn't copy anything you don't see (if you actually vet your subscriptions and regularly view their content).

Sure, but you're whatabouting an injustice of some people being temporarily detained to FOUR MILLION LIVES. If that was actually all it took, that's a pretty reasonable exchange.

The consequences were way better than the let 'er rip nations. If China had a death toll equivalent to the United States, they'd have 5 million dead. Even the "China is lying" people are talking about hundreds of thousands, or possibly a million, not 5 million.

Staying COVID-zero until better treatments and vaccines are available actually does save lives.

It's not like the rich countries are self-evidently sober and stable in their politics and climate impacts. The richest one just had their own wannabe fascist and has both been responsible for a large part of emissions and rarely met their climate goals.

The account you're explaining is a sterling example of why defederating from Hexbear is a good idea. I'd forgotten what Chapo trolling was like, but it's very much this. Just sort of immature vaguely-confusing "ironic" trolling over and over again. They're fishing for a ban and will no doubt go celebrate it somewhere else when they get it, but until they get it they'll just make comment sections dumber.

I don't even remember what Reddit's statement was, so trust in them doesn't enter into it. I simply don't see any reason to trust convenient narratives from CTH mods. It's far too cute a narrative from a source that absolutely would make something up for the lulz alone, let alone a story that also casts them as righteous heroes against cartoonishly stupid evil.

The userbase of CTH and other socialist subreddits only have that same narrative to repeat. Saying "they all heard it too" means nothing.