The problem in 2020/ 2021 is that the "dementors" doom plopping over anyone's hope that schools would re-open, people might go on holiday, might see people at Christmas etc, or berating people for not being in "the spirit of the rules" despite doing legal things is that they weren't isolated internet opinions, they were damaging opinions being fed by dramatic government propaganda such as "look them in the eyes" posters. Those opinions were everywhere with no escape.
It invaded every aspect of life. People jumping off paths. TV presenters jumping 2m apart. Posters in the street. There was no escapism from the situation.
We are free to think each other to be nitwits if we wish. It does me no harm if you think I am. But when you can't see friends/ family, when children are suffering because they're prohibited from goinĝ to school and playing with their peers, when your external purpose is removed for 18m within one week, when you can't see faces on a weekly outing to the supermarket, and can't hear through screens, and you then get called "selfish" because you're struggling and not enthused by the group-think, or you get called "granny killer" because you illegally help your kids over a fence into a playground to spare them from depression, when your hopes of normality resuming in a few weeks/ months/ next year is constantly crushed by hyperbolic rantings, then yes, those opinions weigh heavily.
And we know now that the ADs who questioned restrictions and lockdowns were very often right. We were right that something pretty normal would return. We were right that restrictions came with their own harms (more children died because of the impacts on safeguarding, accidents when not in school and neglected health care than of the virus). We know that politicians were working out restrictions based on populism and what rival governments were doing rather than the science of how infection is spread.
Queuing up outside Primark did not results in "bodies" in the streets. There often was a layer of snobbery to "dementor" opinions. Much harder to "stay the fuck at home when it's a damp riddled flat with no outdoor space. Much harder to shop online when you can't afford a minimum spend. Much harder to keep up with education when you share a bedroom, have no private space and the mobile data ran out and there's no resources. Most of those demanding "proper lockdowns" were doing so from a position where they weren't sacrificing nearly as much as most people.
There always have been people that doom plop over everything and want to drag everyone down to their level, and Covid restrictions were a golden gift to that mentality.
If I don't like an internet opinion, I have choices, challenge it there and then or have a break and leave that thread alone. Getting tetchy about it 2-3 years later is a very strange way to deal with it.
The irony of being called a "granny killer" is that I never saw our granny again due to her rapidly declining health, travel restrictions, and prolonged hospital and care restrictions. We did travel over in 2021 but she was only permitted one visitor.
The irony of "bodies in the streets" is that as a child the police did come to the door to tell us that my dad had died suddenly in the street. Probably why that phrase raised my hackles from the start. People at death's door from Covid were never going to be hanging around outside.
Excess deaths have on balance been elevated for the past 3 years because of poor access to healthcare. All we did was spin the roulette wheel and shift the burden. Granny became so frail she died anyway. Granddad was a "with Covid" death... but the stroke, heart failure and advanced cancer weren't exactly irrelevant. Meanwhile I've also been to the funerals of 35-40 year olds because of suicide and cancer. We just made all their final couple of years lonely and miserable. We didn't save them.