Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Of course the topic is flammable to begin with, but what you did here stands out noticeably as more flamey than the rest of the thread.
Edit: you posted a whole bunch of flamewar comments to this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please don't do it again, regardless of what your views are or how right they are or how right you feel they are.
> People who support lockdowns aren't interested in facts; their viewpoints are shaped by marketing.
Sweeping generalizations aren't really adding to the discussion here. Please assume the best of others. We're all trying to find the best way forward with incomplete information. And tying ideas too closely to ones identity, or that of others, won't help us adapt as more evidence come to light.
>Sweeping generalizations aren't really adding to the discussion here
That sentiment fits individualist views and policies, where it behooves us to hear out individuals and consider them on their individual merits.
However the view and policy discussed (limitations on individuals for common good) is explicitly a collectivist view and policy. Applying a sweeping generalization to a collectivist view and policy is fit and proper by the very nature of collectivism.
Edit: corrected a typo from "individuals" to "individualist".
It is not possible because it is not possible to arrive at the stance via logic.
If not for the marketing campaign; certainly if not for the "original sin" of Italy's lockdown; we wouldn't even be speaking about this.
If coronavirus were highly transmissible ebola it would make sense. It's just not, most of us know tens or hundreds of people who've had it at this point (the UK has a _confirmed_ case rate of over 17%).
The original “lockdowns” were literally good for some businesses. Conventions and restaurants would have failed (they can’t survive on 10% attendance) but can’t get out of their vendor contracts without the government canceling for them.
Attendance dropped due to lockdowns and the fear campaign.
I was there, remember? The pubs were rammed, Boris started saying "don't do X", numbers decreased a lot, he said "we make this legal now", the world stopped.
I'm bored of debating this now so whatever, all I get online is a stream of trolls. Good luck.
I’m sorry you live in the UK. That must be very difficult for you.
In other places we weren’t nearly so concerned about shutting down pubs; actually the bad case that often happened in the US was leaving bars open (for tax revenue) but closing schools (because parents and teachers are more neurotic than bar goers).
Still I haven’t met a whole lot of people complaining they weren’t allowed to work. Our stimulus worked quite well there.
I don’t think lockdowns are necessary or reasonable in 2022 but at least, as someone temporarily in the UK, I’ll be able to get out of my local family trying to make me see some ridiculously quaint British thing called a “panto”.
> They have malicious intentions a priori because they treat controlling others with the same level of discipline as they would choosing which flavour of jam to put on their toast in the morning.
Not everyone advocating lockdowns is necessarily so flippant about it. Some consider the costs carefully. Please keep in mind that hospitals were being overwhelmed long before vaccines were available.
(FWIW I'm not defending absolute lockdowns since going outside with moderate distancing appears to have been safe at every stage of this phenomenon.)
If you want to lockdown, you can lockdown, and now you are safe. You don't need others to do so, the virus does not travel through windows and walls.
As such the stance is definitionally illogical which makes it flippant - it falls apart under even mild scrutiny.
I've seen about a billion variations on it now, it just gets boring to bat them off. e.g. "if the healthcare system is overwhelmed, you'll die in a minor car crash, so don't go outside, then you won't drive your car or stand near cars, then you can't die in a minor car crash anyway, err... but lockdown though!".
It's tautologically broken. The basic premise is of "not doing X, in order to not do X".
If we don't lock down and you break your leg, you may not get medical attention.
So let's lock down so that it's impossible to break your leg.
I'm totally happy to accept that contracting coronavirus could be triaged lower than acute chronic conditions, heart attacks, etc, that's an interesting debate to have because healthcare is scarce and therefore an ordering _must_ be chosen.
What makes no sense is just flinging our hands up and saying "well, stop the world for everyone instead".
That math doesn't work out, because the infection fatality ratio measures fatality - non-existence - not impaired existence.
Long covid is a thing, and affects a staggeringly large percentage of people who get covid and do not die, significantly affecting the rest of their lives. One recent study claims an infection impaired-quality-of-life ratio of over 50% (https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-people-get-...).
And in the other direction, we have lived over 2% of our lives in the pandemic living our lives, certainly not as well as any of us would have hoped, but living them nonetheless.
So either the math needs to take into account the reduced quality of life from those affected by covid (not to mention those affected by losing family members, caretakers, etc., those affected by knock-on effects like delayed surgeries, and so forth), or it needs to say, well, we haven't died from the so-called "lockdowns," so if any lives at all were saved, that outweighs the 0% of time we spent dead during them.
It is certainly still possible that the interventions were still net negative, but it's not as simple as 1% of the population dying from covid < 2% of people's lives spent in "lockdowns."
Touché, but I think it's pretty clear that even under the most generous but still fact-based interpretation of the effects of "lockdowns," covid kills a lot more people.
Not to mention that the IFR is dramatically skewed by age and obesity. Yes, early indications were that COVID was a serious, deadly pandemic, but we've had more than enough time and data at this point to recognize that this is not the plague that it is being treated as.
Those of us who are immune compromised or obese are people too. I don't expect the whole world to stop for me, though would appreciate if folks take some precautions until hospitals can manage the flood. (In the US over 40% of adults are obese.)
If the vaccine-hesitant are to be shunned and have specific restrictions levied against them for the sake of not overflowing hospitals, then so should the obese and old, IMO.
