I've come to the conclusion that calling what happened in the usa during 2020 a "lockdown" is the biggest propaganda tool pro-covid liberals have. Don't know why we all settled upon that word, probably some combination of 1) applying it to China first in late 2019/early 2020, which was actually a "lockdown" (of course lockdown there also had negative connotations and was also used as propaganda), 2) it being used by liberal journalists in liberal urban centers like New York referring to what was occurring around them, which can more accurately be termed a "lockdown" than anywhere else in the US, although I still don't think what happened in New York can be considered a "lockdown," and 3) the right pushing the term because it was good as propaganda, and the left pushing the term because we saw the need to take similar action to China, and "lockdown" seemed more serious and strict than "quarantine" (also quarantine seems to imply there is sickness involved, while lockdown seems like a more broad action), and it was also the term used to describe China's actions, and many by March 2020 thought we should take similar actions - like, we knew we weren't in a lockdown, but we should've been.

Anyway I've been trying to push back on anyone calling 2020 a "lockdown" recently