You somehow missed the cold war, the draft, ... Societies have a lot of power and at times use it; and such use might not be wrong. People believing those things don't exist were just ignoring history. If you want to check out of society that will need quite a bit of doing.
You might have missed how the West was during the cold war then.
But why then complain when societies act? Having strong reactions to pandemics is historically normal nor can I see anything to wake up to in terms of oppression.
