In this forum, right here on HN, people routinely espouse desire for more authoritarian restrictions. People gleefully discuss Sweden and almost openly hope that their lockdown-free plan fails.
The article makes it sound as if the erosion of democracy is coming from the top. In the USA, it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from everyday citizens.
People aren't asking for authoritarian restrictions. People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks). Instead we have ineffective politically driven responses marked by indecision and incompetence.
People don't want lockdowns, but we recognise that because our containment measures have failed, we have no choice but to shut things. If you don't want a lockdown, the government has to do a better job of coordinating measures to lower the R rate, which they (here in the UK but also in the US) failed to respond promptly with measures that anybody with a bit of common sense would agree with.
Why did it take months for the government to be recommending face masks? Don't say it's because of the shortage of PPE for health care workers because a friend made around 40 cotton masks over a weekend for all of her friends and family back in early April. The Japanese government was giving out 2 fabric masks for every resident at that time while we were arguing over whether they were effective or not.
> People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks). Instead --
We're already doing this.
> because our containment measures have failed, we have no choice but to shut things.
Until when? The shutdowns were supposed to be about making sure that hospitals have time to prepare, research has time to be done, society has time to adapt. This has already taken place.
> which they (here in the UK but also in the US) failed to respond promptly with measures that anybody with a bit of common sense would agree with
Should a layman be expected to know what a common sense response is for a pandemic? If such knowledge were that ubiquitous, we wouldn't be seeing these kinds of issues, so calling it "common sense" serves only to insult people who don't agree with you here.
> Don't say it's because of the shortage of PPE for health care workers because a friend made around 40 cotton masks over a weekend for all of her friends and family back in early April.
Except the virus was thought to be much more deadly at first, and the efficacy of cotton masks has been and is still a controversial subject.
If you truly believe it is "common sense" to do things differently, you might be inclined to think there's some kind of conspiracy going on. I assure you that the more likely scenario is you just haven't taken the actual circumstances into account and are guilty of playing armchair general.
Really? Because all the video's I've seen indicate politicians of a certain political persuasion (and their family members) doing the utmost to avoid wearing masks in situations that they should have known better.
>Until when? The shutdowns were supposed to be about making sure that hospitals have time to prepare, research has time to be done, society has time to adapt. This has already taken place.
Stop building this up into a strawman. Nobody is arguing that lockdowns should last forever.
> Should a layman be expected to know what a common sense response is for a pandemic? If such knowledge were that ubiquitous, we wouldn't be seeing these kinds of issues, so calling it "common sense" serves only to insult people who don't agree with you here.
Is wearing a mask so that your drops of saliva and nasal discharge doesn't reach and infect others that hard to understand?
> Except the virus was thought to be much more deadly at first, and the efficacy of cotton masks has been and is still a controversial subject.
It isn't controversial at the very least, see my post above. It doesn't take a genius to see how a barrier that slows or blocks droplets in and out of your orifices can help to prevent the spread of respiratory disease.
> If you truly believe it is "common sense" to do things differently, you might be inclined to think there's some kind of conspiracy going on.
Nice of you to bring up "conspiracy". And here I am thinking that it was incompetence and politicisation all along.. silly me.
> Stop building this up into a strawman. Nobody is arguing that lockdowns should last forever.
But this is exactly the mindset that I'd characterize as an erosion of "respect for human rights". When the government proposes extraordinary restrictions, it's their responsibility to clearly define how long the restrictions need to last. Answers like "until it's safe" or "stop building this into a strawman" should not satisfy us, because the entire principle of human rights is that governments can't be trusted with such unlimited mandates.
(I should note to be fair that many governments have indeed limited their mandate, saying that they're going to remove all the restrictions once a vaccine is widely available. I don't necessarily agree with that from a policy perspective, but it's much better than an indefinite commitment to stop the disease from spreading.)
> But this is exactly the mindset that I'd characterize as an erosion of "respect for human rights".
Google "positive rights". It is widely accepted that there are some things we are obliged to do. The base state of our existence is not to do nothing.
You're trying portray what is in effect a public health measure into something sinister and I don't think it's working.
I stand by my assertion that the original point was a strawman. By and large, the initial lockdown measures were put into place by different countries with the goal of solving the immediate threat of overwhelmed ICUs and none were designed to last indefinitely. All of which were relaxed in the summer, but now have to be reintroduced partially in many countries due to the lack of other measures put in place to stem a second wave.
What I'm trying to portray is that a lot of people think that Covid-19 is more important than most human rights, and nearly any restriction for nearly any duration is acceptable if it'll slow the spread. I think it's entirely fair to call that an "erosion of respect for human rights", and the source article describes many examples of how that can go wrong. As long as Ugandans share the attitude that controlling the spread is the most important thing in the world, President Museveni will be able to continue oppressing his political opponents.
If you think that the leaders in your area are moral enough that they'd never abuse unlimited power in this way... I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong, I don't know, but I'm skeptical.
I don't see how any politicians are getting much out of lockdowns right now. Especially since polling places are still open and most people can vote by mail.
Again, I'd really suggest reading the source article in more detail, because it lists quite a few descriptions of politicians getting political advantage out of lockdowns.
Your response underscores the importance of civic institutions that the population can trust. When government institutions cannot be trusted, conspiratorial mindsets become the norm.
I believe the common sense solution is to protect the vulnerable and elderly, yet I’ve been in complete lockdown for over 6 months. Lockdowns were never the solution to pandemics prior, so why now?
People don’t wear masks correctly at all, they don’t wash it, they don’t pull it down and fiddle with it every other minute. There has been no attempt at public education around this where I live. Old age homes have been severely understaffed, provided with no PPE, have allowed visitors, and their staff have not been continually tested. Over 80% of the deaths in my state have came from these homes alone
Before taking away almost all of a person’s fundamental rights you have to at least try these less restrictive measures. People have been arrested in their home when they’ve made a fb post about protesting the restrictions. The worst part, there is no lack of people supporting these measures. Only recently has it become politically unpopular
I'm not sure the western style lockdowns work very well. In places like Thailand they try to identify the infected and then put them in separate quarantine facilities rather than making them stay home where they can infect others. The local transmission there and places like Vietnam with similar policies is now basically zero. There's a bit of an imposition on your freedom if you get quarantined - I did there but it's only 2-4 weeks and only like 0.01% of the population so overall it's probably less of an imposition than the half arsed mess we have in England where I now am. Also the deaths have been like 1000x less.
> People aren't asking for authoritarian restrictions. People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks).
It’s hard to find persistent daylight between those two things. (For the record, I wear masks outside and in grocery stores, which are the only shops I go to. I find this at least 75% common sense.)
When it comes time though to force someone who doesn’t want to do what you find common sense, where’s the impersonal, referenced only to ground truth, line that says that’s ok under force of law, but other similar-appearing things, well those things would be authoritarian, but these things are just common sense we can all rally around? If everyone is already rallying around something, you don’t need any government force of law to make it happen. (Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.)
Apply this to guns, drugs, abortion, climate change, restaurant seating capacity during COVID, or whatever topic people tend to have their own individual “common sense” about.
This is a take against all laws if you prop it up a bit more. It doesn‘t make sense. The people enacting these laws are democratically elected. „Common sense“ in this case is not arbitrary. It is the culmination of the „common senses“
if all politicians that were elected by their citizens. This is not undemocratic, it is democracy in its purest form.
At some point in dire situations, as a government, you have to save your citizens from themselves.
That isn't direct democracy. That is a republican form of government. Whenever you have representatives instead of citizens governing themselves, you can have situations where the government saves the citizenry from themselves but also situations where the representatives exploit the government for themselves. Both cases have happened throughout history and are happening with the coronavirus.
In the US, Fauci was initially anti-mask to preserve supplies for health care officers. This theoretically saved citizenry from themselves but at the cost of long term trust in institutions.
Democrat led governments lengthened lockdowns for political gain. Republican led governments shortened lockdowns for political gain.
- Democrats point at the increased infection rates in Republican states as proof that lockdown measures are still necessary but ignore much lower death rates we are seeing.
- Republicans point to the economic devastation that lockdowns cause as cause to end lockdowns without proper planning to limit infection.
- Democrats push for very large stimulus over loosening lockdowns without discussing the long term costs of adding so much to the deficit and the long term costs to the economy.
- Democrats hoist blame at Trump but ignore how certain Democratic run states were some of the worst at initially handling the coronavirus.
- Trump overhypes the availability of vaccines and underplayed the virus.
Fair enough on most of those points, but I wouldn't blame democrats on the slow response. It just so happens that coastal urban centers are blue and were hit earlier and harder than anyone else.
The gravest political failures in regards to the pandemic have been the administration and a few of its most ardent political supporters. (Many republican governors have acted in good faith to protect their state). And that failure was not so much a failure to act soon enough, but a failure to listen to medical and scientific leadership and a propensity to meddle in the public health structure for political reasons.
I think both parties did that. The difference is mostly in the scale of their powers. The administration controlled the federal government and thus had both greater powers and a bigger microphone.
Governors controlled each state. You had Democratic governors and representatives acting just as badly. It is just that they had less scope to do damage. A governor can usually directly harm only their own state and not other states.
Some Republican governors opened lockdowns probably too quickly. Cuomo basically spread covid-19 into nursing homes by sending patients back into nursing homes. de Blasio resisted a NYC lockdown probably increasing its spread.
I would fault the administration on a lack of a coordinated response between the federal and state levels. I wonder if this was from a fear on being blamed for deaths and that they wanted to shift responsibility and blame onto states.
We live in a system with groups jockeying for political power. The groups continue to maintain power as long as they continue to convince enough of the populace to vote for them. They do this in various ways. One way is to form a coalition of subgroups and promising such subgroups favors. Another way is to convince the populace that they are all in it together. One favorite technique is to raise the spectre of an external enemy.
Some current enemies: China, global warming, coronavirus, immigrants, racism.
The longer you live, the more you see these techniques repeated over and over. The situations are rarely as the political parties make them out to be. The political parties mostly lie since entities that don't are disadvantaged at obtaining political power. People as a whole are too easy to manipulate so it is to your advantage to lie.
One thing to note is that the current situation is ripe for massive political power gains since so many things have been thrown into flux. That is why both sides are playing so hard right now. There is much power to be gained and that power will be locked in till the next big change.
When the vast majority of people agree that we should do something reasonable for the common good and you disagree loudly while flailing your arms about, then it doesn't make you a defender of liberty, it makes you an obnoxious moron.
Note the words "reasonable", here meaning "proportionate". We're not advocating mob rule here. We're asking you to wear a mask, not to kill your first-born.
COVID restrictions are way more than just masks though. In many jurisdictions, we’re requiring small businesses to remain shuttered while their competitors are allowed to remain open.
A small toy shop is closed. Meanwhile, Target and Walmart are allowed to sell toys in-person (and Amazon online). What’s going to happen to that toy-shop owner 6 months from now after everyone has been trained to shop at their competitors, after they’ve missed a Christmas season, and after they’ve got 6 months of back rent due? The shadow of COVID restrictions don’t end the first day the government graciously allows them to open their doors.
Many of the “solutions” (send a little money and let them delay rent payments) are answers maybe more fit for W-2 employees but not for business owners.
Yes, I agree. Not all restrictions are agreed upon, and for those issues that are not easy to balance, great care has to be taken.
This is exactly the situation Manchester is in right now. The UK government has put it into a higher level of lockdown this week, but without the same type of financial support from the previous lockdown. The local government has been fighting this tooth-and-nail, with good reason.
I'm talking about the "my rights" crowd and generally these issues don't overlap with those.
Just wear a mask, eh? Tell that to the entire cinema industry. Tell that to the 89% of the hospitality industry in NYC that can’t pay rent.
Mask mandates are actually the least authoritarian and least enforced thing the US has done. We’re limiting actual constitutional rights, selectively, to stop the spread of covid. Despite the fact that we effectively flattened the curve months ago.
I was in the middle of treatments when lock downs started. Then I lost Access to all my doctors. Thankfully things worked out eventually, but had some bad scares.
So yea, Lockdowns put me personally at risk. And since I have young daughters that puts them at risk for being homeless.
It funny you mentioned this because the "science and data" overwhelmingly supports wearing a mask to cut transmission, which is also a major factor in why a overwhelming majority of people support wearing one.
"Based on the best evidence available at the time, it was not deemed that that would have a significant impact on whether or not a healthy person wearing a mask would contract COVID-19," Adams said."
There's not a single western industrialized nation or state that can be pointed to now as a mask success story. There were a few countries in eastern europe (specifically czechia) that were heralded as a primary reason for controlling covid in the spring.
We now know that this apparent good result was not because of masks, but because of geography. Czechia is ranked #1 in the world in cases / million in the last week and #3 in deaths / million (and its numbers are still climbing). Every single eastern european nation had low cases/deaths in the spring and now all of them are having their first large surge.
It's abundantly clear that cloth masks, as a whole, do not play a major role in how the virus spreads in a country.
If you actually looked at each of the other links, you'd noticed that they were all valid.
I just picked the first one as an example of how seriously we should take your words at.
Now you start going on a tangent with meta-analysis of statistical data, comparing Sweden with America with no appreciation of the difference in the culture, lifestyle and handling of the coronavirus and then attribute their relatively good performance just to the lack of a mask mandate?
You are going to have to go way back in the medical literature to find many peer reviewed studies on masks.
For the same reason it might be hard to find recent studies proving that blood letting is not efficacious.
It's basic physics and statistics. A germ of a certain size can only fit through a certain size whole. Masks of any type will reduce the number of particles and thus reduce your chances of contracting. Same goes for your statistical likely hood of spreading to others.
Here's a study from the original SARS epidemic showing that people who had known contact with infected people there was a 70% lower chance of infection when they wore masks[1]. At this point, arguing that masks don't work is absolutely taking the piss -- you only need to look at countries like Japan (which made the political decision to not do widespread lockdowns unlike many other countries in Asia) to see that widespread mask usage clearly works.
> Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting.
Did you read that study? Or did you just read the first paragraph summary? I'm seriously asking. Because if you read that study...which is a SURVEY of 100 or so people..
you would clearly not be using that as your bulletproof evidence that masks work.
Did you just read the title?
"""At this point, arguing that masks don't work is absolutely taking the piss""'
Fanatical beliefs with no evidence?
Is Corona a cult?
I look at countries like Sweden and Norway and know that masks mandates don't work.
The idea that there's some set of coordinated post-lockdown measures that will prevent the need for further lockdowns strikes me as unrealistic. Every country I'm familiar with that attempted to control the pandemic with lockdowns has had to reimpose them at least once.
There are also varying degrees of lockdowns that can be effected depending on the situation. My point being that lockdown is a last-resort blunt tool used to prevent an explosion of cases overwhelming health care capacity, it's not something that people inherently support indefinitely. We don't cream our pants thinking about how great a world under lockdown is.
I don't agree. It seems to me that many people will support it indefinitely - not out of excitement, certainly, but out of a feeling that we've just gotta do it if the government says it's the only option. Some parts of Australia have been locked down basically since the pandemic started.
Over here in the UK, the government was dragged into this with their feet kicking. The fact that we were slow to act to stem the initial explosion of cases is the reason why a longer and more drastic lockdown was needed according to the modelling and borne out by data subsequently.
Three weeks ago the UK government was warned to start re-imposing measures to stem the second wave. The government ignored this, and now this week they are again forced screaming and kicking into a new lockdown regime as COVID hospital admissions start rising to levels last seen in March.
Right, and it's this idea of "forced" that concerns me. Every country that imposes lockdowns on the premise that they were forced, that they didn't have a choice, they just had to stop the disease from spreading. But very few countries have indicated they have a plan for how to permanently stop the disease from spreading - in most countries, experts believe that there is no workable plan and the disease will spread for decades at least. So how can we be confident that lockdowns won't continue for a few years until they just become the status quo?
Let's for a minute live in this world where mandating masks, social distancing, and business closures is not allowed because it's authoritarian and violates people's freedom. So what happens when the hypothetical COVID-2 comes around in a few years, which is 20x deadlier than this pandemic and kills people uniformly across age groups. What do we do?
Do we just have to die, because heaven forbid we infringe on people's rights to go out to restaurants and buy their khakis? We can't make people wear masks, and we can't make them stay home? So everyone just gets the disease and a big proportion of the world just dies. This is what people want??
Honestly, I think we are lucky this one didn't turn out to be as deadly as it could have been. COVID should be a wake-up call, and it should cause us to come up with an actual pandemic plan--so that when a more deadly one comes, we can shut up and save lives rather than argue about whether someone has a constitutional right to get their nails done without wearing a mask.
A hypothetical Covid-2 which is 20x deadlier than this pandemic and kills across all age groups would be a really good candidate to contain via contact tracing well before it reached the point where we needed mass lockdowns - assuming that Covid-19 hasn't totally destroyed trust in the scientific and medical establishments by that point. Remember, 20x deadlier means a lot more people showing up in hospitals, which means a much higher proportion of cases can be detected early on in the pandemic without needing mass testing. Covid-19's fatality rate is probably close to optimal for causing the most damage overall.
Mass vaccination isn't expected to stop the disease from spreading. I know some regions have made plans under the assumption that vaccines will eradicate the virus, but no experts that I'm aware of think that's likely. (Other countries have said that they're just going to be okay with whatever level of disease burden exists after a vaccine, which I think is a defensible plan.)
>People aren't asking for authoritarian restrictions. People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks).
Whether you agree with it or not, how would a mask mandate not be an authoritarian restriction?
- One of the main functions of any government is to mitigate the harm that people do to one another. This is the main thing that distinguishes it from anarchy. Not wearing a mask in crowded places (in expectation) causes harm to others. Obviously there is a cost/benefit involved, so welding people into their homes is too extreme.
- There is effectively zero enforcement of these mandates. I’ve never seen cops or workers enforce these rules. On the other hand, if I walked into a grocery store without pants on, I’d bet my ass that I’d get swiftly carted off to the loony bin.
- Authoritarianism can be supported by majority, and that first point is essentially argumentum ad populum. The US isn't a direct democracy for good reason, as that is essentially mob/majority rule, and erodes the rights of individuals.
- If we're referring to the US, it really doesn't matter what the functions of other governments may be. The founding fathers clearly defined the responsibilities of the federal goverment, and it isn't their job to protect you from any sort of harm. I don't see how that would line up with anything in the enumerated powers. Ignoring the US, the act is still authoritarian whether you agree with it or not, as it's an order from the top down which limits individual freedom. Again, whether people agree with it or not is a moot point.
- Your point here is anecdotal, and I don't think selective enforcement of the law is nessecarily a good thing. If it's not enforced at all, why make it a mandate and not a recommendation? Also the enforcement or lack thereof of a law/order has nothing to do with the authoritatian nature of it.
While these points you're making may be reasons you think it's a good idea, I don't think you've made a case that it wouldn't be authoritarian. I'm not even saying that inherently makes the idea bad, but you should call it what it is.
To be clear, I'm not against wearing masks. I've had N95s since before this pandemic and wear them whenever I go out in public, moreso to help proyrct others than myself. I am however very weary of granting the goverment authority like that and setting precedent during a national crisis that would erode our liberties long after the fact, like the patriot act.
You’re right that majority rule is not sufficient by itself, but public opinion should be given at least some weight in a representative democracy.
The US Constitution grants states the right to enact laws that protect the general welfare, and of course gives courts the authority to interpret the law. More specifically regarding public health, the 1905 Supreme Court case Jacobson vs. Massachusetts upheld the power of states to enforce mandatory vaccination laws (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts):
> ”real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others”
In general, John Stuart Mill’s harm principle is “far and away the best known proposal for a principled limit to the law” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/law-limits/#cand), and it is a core tenet of liberalism. The famous bit is:
> ”That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
This principle is echoed in the party platform of the US Libertarian Party:
> ”Criminal laws should be limited in their application to violations of the rights of others through force or fraud, or to deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm.”
So if masks only protected the wearer, then a case could be made that mask laws are in violation of this principle. But because masks help limit the spread of a (frequently asymptomatic) disease from myself to others, it’s reasonable that states can require me to wear one in situations where it protects others.
As for the enforcement question, I’d draw a comparison to speed limits. These laws tend to be loosely enforced, yet they guide the general expectations/behavior of drivers. In practice, enforcement is reserved for repeat and extreme offenders. Partial enforcement can induce optimal behavior in an economic/game theoretic sense (if probability of being caught * cost of being caught - cost of following the law > 0, then compliance is optimal). Since the “cost” of wearing a mask is negligible (everyone has one already since you can use any face covering, and the only cost is minor inconvenience or embarrassment), enforcement does not have to be very consistent to induce compliance. That said, uneven enforcement of laws is clearly a major problem in our society (that disproportionately affects minorities).
For mask laws, I also think it gives air cover to both business and individuals. You’ll notice businesses pointing to mask ordinances (“welp, thems the rules” etc.) on their signage and such. Then, enough people comply such that it becomes socially enforced—people generally don’t like to be the odd one out. But in practice, I think you can go virtually anywhere in America right now without a mask and the worst thing that is likely to happen is that someone will politely ask you to wear one and come back.
So if you are not anti-mask but are concerned about genuinely authoritarian action, there are current examples to denounced (e.g. stoking political violence against opposing politicians [see Gov. Whitmer], undermining election integrity, state-sponsored misinformation).
The US Constitution grants states the right to enact laws that protect the general welfare
The writers of the constitution have explicitly said in the Federalist papers that the "general welfare" phrase is not meant to imply anything beyond the enumerated powers listed afterwards. That the courts interpret it the way you say they do is just an example how the Constitution became just a parchment which is taken to mean whatever is convenient at any particular moment.
I get you're responding to the other guy there saying we should look at science instead of popularity, but both are invalid if we're talking about responsibility of goverment.
There's plenty of scientific evidence that sugar, alcohol, and tobacco are all horrible for you. Scientifically, it might make sense to ban those things health wise, but that's not the role of government, and would be authoritarian rules that limit freedom for "safety".
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
> “He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.”
In accordance with this principle, I believe in the sacred right for an individual to smoke/chew/snort/whatever tobacco and chug high fructose corn syrup to their heart’s content (or more accurately, until their heart fails). But you don’t have the right to expose others to second-hand tobacco smoke (a new development in my lifetime!), since abundant scientific evidence says that this harms others. You can drink yourself into a coma, but you can’t get blitzed and operate a vehicle even if you insist that you’re safe driving under the influence.
This has been a fundamental organizing principle of society since at least the Code of Hammurabi.
Your argument is the worst possible faith argument but I'll bite and let you waste some of my time with your non scientific citations.
Now here's how misguided you are:
Literally from the first article you posted: (which was a fricking opinion piece!)
“"""If you look at any one paper — it’s not a slam dunk. But, taken all together, I’m convinced that they are working,” says Grabowski.""""
"It's not a slam dunk"
Anecdotal beliefs from a random person named Grabonski in an opinion piece article is not science. And this is your 'good faith' argument?
I didn't even read the rest of the links you posted because they're going to say the same thing: that mask effectiveness is inconclusive.
From the world health organization:
"""" At the present
time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the
community setting is not yet supported by high quality or
direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and
harms to consider."""
Not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence....
It's the world health organization saying that...
It's clear masks stop droplets but maybe at a community level continually putting a plague vector directly on your respiratory system for a virus that stays on surfaces for days is not a good idea...
Additionally Sweden has had no mask mandate and Norway has had no mask mandate and they both have the infection under control they both have less deaths per capita than the United States.
Yet you ignore all of this data that counters your narrative.
Because the Corona cult... was wrong about lockdowns and are wrong about masks...and are trying desperately to justify their mistakes so they don't feel bad for putting 40 million people out of work and crushing people's lives for a year.
Your thinking is as bad faith as it gets and I really hope the Corona cult gets the karma that's coming to it at some point.
Your arrogant ignorance is hurting a lot of people unnecessarily.
The second link I posted was co-authored by the director of the CDC. The others are reviews of current evidence that are readable and reputable. There are abundant studies on this subject.
> “ Masks are a key measure to suppress transmission and save lives. Masks reduce potential exposure risk from an infected person whether they have symptoms or not. People wearing masks are protected from getting infected. Masks also prevent onward transmission when worn by a person who is infected.”
> ” Within wider environments where the virus is spreading, masks should be worn by the general public in settings where it is not possible to maintain at least 1 meter from others. Examples of these settings include indoor locations that are crowded and have poor ventilation, public transport and places of high population density – among others.”
Also, masks are not “plague vectors”. Best practice (from WHO) is to clean the mask daily:
> ” If your fabric mask is not dirty or wet and you plan to reuse it, put it in a clean plastic, resealable bag. If you need to use it again, hold the mask at the elastic loops when removing it from the bag. Clean your mask once a day.”
Your rant is not really worth addressing further. Find a better way to spend your time than spreading obvious misinformation.
Are all legal restrictions on what clothes you should wear in public authoritarian to you? Many of them exist to make sure you don't die (eg. food prep/serving sanitation, medical practice) of preventable causes.
If "authoritarian" includes every rule that affects how we interact with each other in public you've pretty much gone into nihilistic territory it seems to me.
A significant political contingent does indeed object to any and all rules. They call themselves nice words like "libertarian" and "small government", but the basic ideology is really just anarchy.
Except, by definition, you are. We, as a society, have determined that certain freedoms are given up for certain benefits. Is it age discrimination to prevent having a driver’s license before age 16? Yup! Is a freedom taken from you by having a law preventing arson? Yep, and we mostly all agree that is good.
The important part of a new rule or law is that we accept the trade offs. I’m not convinced we’ve reached consensus that we all need to be wearing masks but most are obliging.
> The important part of a new rule or law is that we accept the trade offs. I’m not convinced we’ve reached consensus that we all need to be wearing masks but most are obliging.
The key factor here is that there are very good and obvious reasons to wear a mask, while the trade-off is a minor inconvenience. It's arguably less effort than shovelling snow from the front of your house.
If the vast majority of us are obliging due to the hope that it has an effect, with little to no negative effects, why are people making this a hill they want to die on? Worse still, why are people making this a hill for others to die on?
No, you don't have the freedom to destroy someone else's property.
I get the point of view that "you don't have the freedom to infect others", but where do you logically draw the line with something like that? Why weren't we already required to wear biohazard suits in public? Humans have been spreading disease as long as we've been around.
Your reasoning is so blunt, saying that just become some laws are justified, all laws are justified. Should you not have the privilege to drive, because every time you do you risk your life and others?
I'm only being blunt because I was responding to a blunt assertion.
The fact of the matter is that the temporary restrictions for the purpose of public health are mild inconveniences. Those measure are, by and large, reasonable and proportionate. It's the pushback that isn't.
You're confusing the ease of compliance with the nature of the order itself.
As an example, banning certain words could be considered a "mild inconvenience", but it's clearly a violation of the first amendment.
Border patrol and other police checkpoints, are a "mild inconvenience". They may very well help catch more criminals, but police need to have probable cause and can't just go on fishing expeditions.
As far as a _federal_ mask mandate, it's clearly not within the enumerated powers. I think you could potentially make an argument for state/local mask mandates when it comes to _public_ areas, given that all powers not granted to the federal goverment are reserved for the states and the people. I would still probably consider that authoritarian in nature.
That's just for masks as well. As far as locking down or limiting size of gatherings, while it may be a very good idea to do something like that during a pandemic, Imo it wouldn't be constitutional, as the freedom of assembly is explicitly protected in the first amendment.
Freedom can be dangerous, but I prefer it to the alternative.
You should see the Netherlands, plenty of people are calling for the military to violently enforce their favorite rules, and getting cheered on by others.
Genuinely curious; where is the evidence and statistical analysis that shows the variance of infection rates across the world can be explained solely (or overwhelmingly, as you suggest) by lockdowns?
We have always had a spectrum of choices, and as time goes by we continue to develop new choices that will deliver better results at lower costs.
Broad shutdowns have always been the bluntest possible instrument with the highest amount of collateral damage. This is why even the WHO is inveighing against shutdowns now, noting the increases in cancers left untreated, vaccines not administered, the long-term damage from service cuts when government budgets must pay the deficit, and a massive spike in worldwide poverty. It is cataclysmic, and the worst impacts are in the global south, particularly around education; previous coverage in the Economist has noted that in some places girls are being pulled out of school entirely, and married off at a young age.
At some point, the cure is worse than the disease. We must acknowledge this, proactively declare that there is a choice, and countenance trade-offs which let allow the virus to kill more people — because if we don't, we're certainly going to ruin lives and kill people in other ways. And while it's one thing to make a "Hail Mary" pass attempt and set new world records in vaccine development, the fact remains that if we do not see our miracle then the virus remains likely to kill plenty of the people we "save" in the end anyway.
The type of lockdowns we are seeing now (closure of nightlife and large events) is markedly different than before.
And those drastic measures from back in March and April were only because, at the time, hospital ICUs were being overwhelmed and doctors were dying of complication from SARS-COV-2. I don't think anybody is arguing for us to go back to that type of measure.
Regarding masks in the UK, the evidence for their effectiveness is still up in the air. I think the UK gov didn't want to confuse the messages that were already numerous. I think they gave up on that idea when all the other countries went with the masks.
What a totally disingenuous comment your own links acknowledge the nuances about differences in effectiveness between the types of masks and how you wear them.
To breakdown each of your sources.
1. It specifically notes the cloths masks are less effective and the cloth masks they tested were double layered and made from a water resistant material. It also discusses the need to wash them daily and not to take them off in a given sitting.
Where ever I am I seeing people violating these guidelines. Whether its grocery store workers pulling them down to catch a breath or people at restaurants taking them off and on to eat. Also I see tons of people wearing single layered non-water resistant fabrics. And how often are we all washing them? Probably not a lot.
2 & 4: Both focus on looking at observational data comparing places where masks wearing is prevalent versus places where it is not. It even looks at the same places after switching policies. But these are obviously confounded by a whole bunch of other factors. Maybe places that wear masks are better about physical distancing and washing their hands. I find it difficult to take much from this kind of evidence, but I understand why someone else would.
3. Similar to (1), but even harsher on cloth masks. Specifically notes the effectiveness of respirators, says medical masks were not effective and cloths masks were less effective (I don't know how you can be less effective than not effective). Here is the actual line.
"Randomised controlled trials in health care workers showed that respirators, if worn continually during a shift, were effective but not if worn intermittently. Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective. When used by sick patients randomized controlled trials suggested protection of well contacts."
This is in no way equivalent to the arguments for climate change. And frankly thank god you aren't a public health expert because by comparing the two publicly you would be doing damage to the environmental movement.
Instead of just trying to make someone look dumb on internet why don't you actually engage in a good-faith argument that acknowledges the very real nuances.
Your comment is a textbook example of moving the goalposts and muddying the waters.
No-one is arguing that cloth masks are better than surgical masks. Much of the effort in those studies was focused on how to protect staff in a clinical setting. No-one is recommending cloth masks for health-care workers.
However, the overwhelming conclusion from those studies is that that wearing cloth masks in almost all cases (one exception is fleece material) help. Thus cloth masks are recommended in non-clinical settings.
For example, take a look at this paper measuring droplet transmission through different types of masks (compared with none at all).
I would argue it’s coming from the system. The national two party first-past-the-post system naturally leads to hyper-partisanship and constantly escalating stakes, meanwhile fewer and fewer Americans truly feel represented by the choices they have on offer - and very large numbers of people have their vote effectively ignored because their voting precinct is gerrymandered to ensure stable one-party rule.
Because the system is broken, people are angry and want to tear down the system and replace it with something else. Unfortunately, history says that authoritarianism is a popular response to broken systems, and that it doesn’t end well. If we don’t want to go down that path we need to quit blaming individuals and get very serious about fixing the system: we need proportional representative multi-party democracy, like almost every other western democracy.
I’m with you. I have voted for an Nth party every presidential election since I was 18. Every single time I was told that I was throwing my vote away or voting for one of the major party villains. Every single time, I was told that this was the most important election of my lifetime, and just this once, I needed to bite the bullet and vote for a major party.
> Every single time I was told that I was throwing my vote away or voting for one of the major party villains.
The refrain essentially is that you must vote for the candidate we say is most likely to win and if you don't, then you're helping the next runner up.
I believe that if we no longer reported polling results and had election results reported at the same time, then the problem I describe above would be significantly reduced.
The fact that primaries are not held at the same time leads the results of earlier primaries influencing the results of later ones. The fact that election results from the eastern part of the country are reported while the western part is still voting influences the results.
Reduced? Probably. Meaningfully? I don't think so. It's baked in to the system: if your equivalent (nth party voter) on the other side of the political spectrum switches their vote to the mainstream party and you don't, then the mainstream party you're more aligned with is disadvantaged. There's nothing subjective here; it's just how the system works.
We desperately need a voting system that allows you to express your preferences honestly, and ideally across all candidates, without hurting the outcome. By far, score voting systems are the best at that. Of those, I recommend STAR voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff), because it has some actual momentum[1] (it also has some theoretical advantages, but both it and vanilla score voting, and even Ranked Choice with a Borda count, are such a massive improvement over the status quo that it doesn't matter which we pick).
I think it's funny to see people dismiss those who want to "tear down the system and replace it" as something untenable and hard to achieve, then go on to propose proportional representation.
How do you see any sort of path forward for proportional representation being adopted as an amendment to the constitution? I see no path towards 2/3 majority voting for that.
Actually it doesn’t strictly need a constitutional amendment for the president to be elected differently, as every state is allowed to decide how it appoints its electors. Maine and Nebraska come closer to proportional now simply by allocating their electors individually. Any state could choose to go one step farther and allocate its electors by proportional representation.
However, there is only one president, so for this to really matter it needs to happen in Congress, which would require an amendment. The rationale that it could happen is simply that it has happened before: women’s suffrage, the direct election of senators, and the conversion from multi-member districts to single member districts, are all examples of major reform in the US process that were all “impossible” until they happened.
> it doesn’t strictly need a constitutional amendment for the president to be elected differently
Yeah, I assumed we were talking about the Senate - which would require huge, fundamental changes in order to be made proportional.
With the exception of suffrage, I would argue that that is a bigger change than any of the others you mentioned. It would require precisely the people most hurt by the change (small states) to vote for substantially decreasing their voter power.
I'm not claiming it's impossible, but I think it is silly to dismiss calls for more radical action in favor of a constitutional amendment with no path to get there.
Enforcing restrictions for closed spaces or making people wear a mask is not corrosion of democracy. If you think that making you wear a mask attacks your freedom you are a moron.
Corrosion of democracy is when these rules are used selectively and for political reasons.
So I think you comparison to Sweden in a bit unfortunate.
Also the virus was not the reason for the corrosion of the democracy where it happened, it was the good excuse. The problem is far deeper.
Banning people from traveling, meeting each other, and working to earn a living and support themselves, are very much erosions of liberty, and people have been seriously impacted (particularly the poor). You are right, however, that they are not directly erosions of democracy.
However, there are plenty of direct erosions of democracy, even here in the United States. Our democracy in the US is applied through the rule of law, and many mandates have been issued in a manner inconsistent with the law: arbitrary, capricious use of power not authorized by the law. This is why, for instance, a court struck down Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer's extended use of emergency powers.
> The court didn't find that Whitmer acted arbitrarily or capriciously, they simply ruled that she lacked the authority for the actions she took.
Specifically, it found that that emergency powers act under which she acted was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority; the fundamental error the Court found was by the legislature, in not crafting an emergency powers law with sufficiently defined boundaries (or, alternatively, by not availing itself of the process to amend the Constitution to create broad emergency powers.)
There have been many suits about many measures in the US. My selection of Whitmer was meant as a single illustrative example, and not necessarily meant to embody all possible civic vices; if you simply wish to clarify that Whitmer was not ruled "arbitrary and capricious" then that clarification provides people with additional factual information which is well and good.
On the other hand, you can go next door to Ohio and find a ruling using that language in Rock House Fitness et al v. Amy Acton and Lake County General Health District. I decline to enumerate further suits at this time; I need to stop somewhere or I'll be here all day and it won't do anyone any good.
> Corrosion of democracy is when these rules are used selectively and for political reasons.
Interesting. You see, in the UK there is a large difference between the government guidance on mask wearing (taken to be rules by many), and what the law says. And yet, the police routinely arrest people not for breaking the law, but for ignoring what is in essence the preferences of a few ministers in government. This is the very definition of a police state: enforcing 'rules' without legal authority.
But it’s not the virus that caused the corrosion and the corrosion will not go away if you stop following the rules to help stop the spreading. That’s all I am saying.
As an outsider I do agree with you that democracy in US is going through a small crisis t he last few years, and in my opinion both parties are responsible for that by encouraging hate and trying to polarize people. And both parties are playing games with COVID rules which is a shame.
However by being a mask denier you don’t help fight the corrosion, you just become a pawn in their game.
> The article makes it sound as if the erosion of democracy is coming from the top. In the USA, it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from everyday citizens.
I would say that, at least in current US politics, it's more like a tyranny of the minority, abusing the system to increase the relative disparity of power.
Sure, tyranny of the minority is one of the reasons to be cautious about listening to loud voices and saying "Well, it's democracy, what can you do?" - you want to make sure the mechanisms you've chosen for implementing democracy actually do represent the will of all the people.
However, the loudest voices against lockdowns, masks, and other measures in the US seem to be associated with the minority-but-ruling party in this country.
It is true that the US is a federation of states, and it's a majority party in several states. In those ones, sure, I agree that a respect for the principles of democracy means that the people could choose differently. But if you've come to the point of arguing, "The real problem here is that anti-democratic policy X is being enacted with the support of the people," it's worth taking a moment to ask if policy X actually is democratic, and if saying "We should avoid policy X even if the people support it" is the actual tyranny of the minority.
Whatever anyone else says here, you're on the money. In the UK we overreact to almost any issue and no longer just in the red top newspapers, but also on radio and TV. It's been like this for decades and it's messed up.
This is basically impossible to parse out because HN is global, includes people from countries with various levels of trust and cultural acceptance for intrusive public health mandates.
If you look locally, where we’re at least disagreeing about the same things, I saw a lot of anxiety and a fierce debate about what measures were appropriate, but it was a lot more around whether it was premature to open indoor dining.
I agree with you completely. I get regularly downvoted here for promoting free speech and denouncing all forms of web censorship.
Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment if operating in the United States, similar to how websites operating in the EU must comply with the GDPR.
I forgot how the United States is just about the only country with virtually unlimited free speech, so the downvotes must come from a place of envy.
> Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment
This makes me think you misunderstand the first amendment. It concerns freedom of expression from government interference. Free amplification on private platforms is not covered.
Hardly an interpretation, it's stated in black and white :
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Just because the amendment explicitly addresses the government, doesn’t mean that non-governmental entities shouldn’t respect the vision of the amendment. Not everything in this world needs to be driven by legal compulsion.
What we really need is an honor code, or something even simpler: mutual respect for other people’s thoughts and opinions.
> Just because the amendment explicitly addresses the government, doesn’t mean that non-governmental entities shouldn’t respect the vision of the amendment
The vision of the amendment is the government getting out of the way so that progress can be made by the vigorous use of choice of what ideas to publish and distribute by private entities. Private entities promoting the ideas they like and not doing so with those they dislike with all their resource are the purest embodiment of that vision.
It’s trivially easy for any non-government website to be fully compliant with the First Amendment for there is no obligation to grant someone a part of your platform or other property to enable them to speak.
==People gleefully discuss Sweden and almost openly hope that their lockdown-free plan fails.==
What I see is the opposite, lots of people who want to copy Sweden’s plan regardless of the toll it took on human life. Others want to put mask orders in place to protect more people.
Meanwhile, we have unmarked federal agents roaming cities, a President who fires Inspector Generals and ignores subpoenas without punishment, and a sitting Senator calling for “no quarter” for protestors. Those are all pretty authoritarian moves and they come straight from the top. If you think “everyday citizens” are the authoritarian threat, your risk analysis might be off.
The article makes it sound as if the erosion of democracy is coming from the top. In the USA, it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from everyday citizens.