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Comment by gizmo686 | Hacker News Reader

In what universe am I, a software engineer, remotly qualified to know how important staying at home is, or what symptoms indicate I should self isolate, or how long after symptoms I remain infectious.

Expertise is important. And so are secondary and tertiary sources who can synthesise the mass volume of raw information those experts generate in a way that is consumable by the non expert.

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In what universe are healthcare experts remotely qualified to understand the economic ramifications of optimizing for health-related variables? They have little to no expertise in economics, government, or other areas whose variables they are massively altering in their quest to optimize the health variables they care about. Apparently they are willing to collapse nations, create millions of homeless, etc. with their advice.

It is not their job to consider the economic implications. Their job is to advice on the public health implications. This is just advice. Government executives are expected to consider this advice, as well as the advice of economic experts when deciding what actions to take. You could, argue that executives placed undue weight in the concern of the health experts, but that would be a critisism of government executives, not health experts.

Economics and government are both taught in many public health programs. It has long been recognized that many public health problems have significant economic drivers. Public health policy analysis has long had cost/benefit as critical.

Collapse nations, create millions of homeless maybe the short term economic result of the health advice. But it's very highly likely to be a much better long term economic result than not taking the advice.

Your commentary reads as skeptical of the value of the advice of healthcare experts during a pandemic, which, to me, is truly a confusing position for anyone to take other than someone who only understand the splash, and not the ripples, of this global situation.

In a universe in which you are the result of millions/billions of evolution, you are an absolute expert on survival. And none of the official experts will have your and your families best interest in mind, as much as you do.

Also coordinated effort is required.

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