I am indeed from Europe, where streets were at times completely empty and at other times you had to walk in designated lanes. Mask mandates everywhere and unvaccinated people were ostracized.
I wrote that it was a real crisis and I didn't use the term "brainwash". The fact that people complied to official guidelines is of course a good thing in the event of a pandemic. But there was also overshooting. Not everything made sense. And there was definitely a lack of critical thinking and an absence of open debate. But my point is that it was apparently possible to create a high degree of conformity from above, a useful insight when you're trying to eradicate democracy and supplant it by fascism. How else would you explain the ease of what has been described as a coup for the past 5 months?
What strikes me about the covid epidemic was how obedient people were. It showed that it was possible to shut down whole societies on a global scale. It was a real crisis that provided an unexpected opportunity for mass propaganda. Political strategists surely took notice. It must have looked possible then to submit a whole population into fascism and that's what we're seeing now. Real power is with the people though. It lays dormant and it merely needs to be awakened by a timely spark.
I'm so tired of this "antisemitic" bs