I was in Portugal last week and was surprised by how safe it felt.

Everyone still wears masks indoors and in built up areas, sanitiser was available everywhere, people checked our vaccination status when sitting indoors.

They're not major points but it definitely felt like people went out of their way to be conscious of others and the virus which is different to how I feel people in the UK treat the virus now (eg mask usage on the tube is virtually non existent).

Most of this is largely anecdotal on my part but I feel countries that continue to do a little now will get long term benefits (eg mandatory mask use in public transport)

the article in passing mentions the key difference. People in Portugal don't pathologically question every source of authority. If you had trotted out a military general in uniform in the US talking about the war against vaccines one hour later every talk radio host would have started ranting about how the military has been undermined by the deep state and so on.

Conspiracy logic cannot be argued with because if commitment is strong enough everything that is seen as contrary evidence is just incorporated. "Oh great, now they're pretending they're apolitical!" etc. You've seen it already with other military personnel on different issues.

Also the culture in continental Europe vis-a-vis the military is entirely different. It's not that it's less political but more so, a lot of European countries even in very relative history have been governed by military authority at times. one only needs to look at the shocked "army in the streets" articles after every terror attack in the english-speaking press. I don't think this can be transplanted to the US.

I always thought the US should have been harnessing ad agencies and Hollywood production companies in its public outreach for covid. Instead I think it overrelied on basically politicians or administrative heads of various govt depts appointed by politicians.

And somehow we didn’t got our freedom back.

For those who could not immediately interpret the number in the title (before reading the article): the vaccinated in Portugal are 88% of the total population, and 98% of those eligible (principally owing to age).

Portuguese will basically suck up anything that says "freedom" in it... The idea passed around is that the vaccine allows you to freely go anywhere and with that everyone just went because staying home or staying at distance is just something the Portuguese don't really like. They don't have an opinion on anything since 1974... Everything and anything you place in front of them they take without question. Trust me... I'm portuguese but I've ascended from that brainwashed nation of ours.