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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

If you think social distancing is important and are taking the virus seriously, what exactly would you be protesting? You wouldn't be going to restaurants, or theaters, or crowded parks, or shopping for non-essential things. You probably wouldn't be sending your kids to schools either.

I think a lot of the problem here is that people have been led to believe these "lockdowns" are hugely invasive, when they're really about as minimal as is possible. There are no police-enforced quarantines, as there have been in many nations. The definitions of "essential" businesses have been VERY liberally interpreted, to the extent that large numbers of routine office workers are still going to work every day.

What, exactly is the policy you think needs a protest to be enacted?

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Look at Sweden. Social distancing is the official strategy but we can still go to restaurants and schools are open. It's not black or white and the US lockdown is definitely not minimal compared to Sweden.

https://time.com/5817412/sweden-coronavirus/

Yeah... about that.

From a western news outlet point of view, it seems like Sweden is doing it wrong.

That article is old by corona standards. The tone has changed a lot internationally now when Sweden actually seems to have it under control even though essentially minimal measures have been taken.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235979/UKs-coronav...

https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/finanzen/article207268361...

Sweden is slithering into a full blown catastrophy, killing over 1'300 mostly elderly people with their laissez-fair approach [1].

As of the latest WHO status report they count 1'540 dead as per yesterday[2].

Given, that they country only 14385 confirmed cases this indicates that there is a massive lack in testing.

Looking at experiences from other countries the numbers are bound to explode in the next few days.

I understand, given the current yearning for wishful thinking that people point to Sweden as a role model for managing the crisis.

The grim reality, however, looks very different and Sweden is on the best way to one of the greatest corona catastrophies in Europe.

So much for Sweden having it under control.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-swede...

[2]https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

You're assuming too much. We had just 40 new coronavirus deaths yesterday and the curve has been declining for two weeks (from a top of over 100). We still have a 20% ICU capacity in Stockholm (the hardest hit region).

Yes, we've only been testing people who require medical attention. No-one thinks we only have 15 000 cases. We probably have a hundreds of thousands of cases in Stockholm alone but the consensus in Sweden is that Stockholm will reach herd immunity in May.

Neighbouring countries are starting to ease up their restrictions so I think we will see an explosion of cases there compared to Sweden but let's talk again in a few days to see if it really exploded in Sweden like you claim it will.

I find I'm saying this more and more on HN these days - you're being downvoted but you're right. Living in Czech Republic, Sweden has been my benchmark since the population is nearly identical[0] and the responses have been markedly different - Sweden: open, Czech: closed.

Sweden has more than twice the number of confirmed cases Czech Republic has (~14700 vs ~6900). This is a hard thing to compare, this could be attributed to differences in testing, doesn't include asymptomatic cases and some suggest there's a bit of clever accounting going on so let's look at something else ...

Sweden currently has eight times the number of deaths the Czech Republic has (1580 vs 196). This is an absolutely incredible incredible difference! The Anglosphere has for a while had a really unhealthy obsession with the Nordic countries, Sweden in particular (I have my own theories on why). When it was apparent they were pursuing a more relaxed approach to Covid 19 many in the media and the public seemed desperate to latch on to them as How it Should Be Done. However it seems that in this case they should really have looked East for inspiration, rather than North.

[0] = https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+sweden+v... ... and in fact given how large it is and how distant it is from other early hotspots, the Sweden/Czech comparison should be an unfair comparison in Sweden's favour.

The question is what will happen once you ease your restrictions. Nothing is comparable right now.

Not sure why you say the media was praising Sweden's approach. I only saw international media completely bashing Sweden's strategy but that has changed the last week now when the death rate curve is declining in Sweden and we still have ICU capacity.

The UK media was flooded with articles fawning over Sweden’s approach - they loved the idea that you could be open for business but closed for viral transmissions. Which sadly doesn’t seem to be the case and accordingly they’ve reversed course, and observed the decline you have described.

Update: here is an example of the sort of article I mean. At that moment everyone was running with this idea, not just the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200328-how-to-self-is...

I don’t quite understand the first part of your comment - when to relax restrictions is a problem everyone will have and is not unique to Czech Republic. Granted, the huge success of the measures here might make the decision a little harder ... but the fact that we have prevented thousands of deaths is a GOOD thing and shouldn’t be taken as a negative.

We spent 2+ trillion dollars so they could stay home.

> What, exactly is the policy you think needs a protest to be enacted?

A plan for re-opening. There should be reasonable targets of X transmission rate, Y available hospital beds, X masks, etc. that we can aim for and achieve.

The lockdown here in Canada feels 10x more uncomfortable and hopeless than it needs to be because without a concrete plan for re-opening my mind extrapolates into "this will last forever, or 18-24 months for a vaccine".

Nobody is willing to discuss an acceptable number of infections and deaths that we can aim for, they just say things like "health/lives at any cost" which is terrifying as it implies "lockdown until vaccine".

> There should be reasonable targets of X transmission rate, Y available hospital beds, X masks, etc. that we can aim for and achieve.

Is that what you think the protesters were agitating for? That doesn't sound like the complaint upthread, either.

I think that's a great idea, by the way. I just don't think that such a policy would satisfy the people in question.

> Nobody is willing to discuss an acceptable number of infections and deaths that we can aim for

Alright, that's just silly. People, very serious policy people, are arguing about that stuff as we speak.

> they just say things like "health/lives at any cost"

Who is "they"? Who says this? That sounds like a strawman to me.

> Alright, that's just silly. People, very serious policy people, are arguing about that stuff as we speak.

> Who is "they"? Who says this? That sounds like a strawman to me.

I can't find a single quote from Doug Ford or Justin Trudeau indicating what they think an acceptable infection/death rate is that would allow a partial re-open.

I can find plenty saying the opposite (although I understand, you can't necessarily take these quotes literally):

"I understand the actions we are taking are affecting the lives and livelihoods of people across the province, but these are extraordinary times and we need to do whatever we can to keep individuals and families safe and stop the spread of this terrible virus" - Premier of Ontario

(https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/04/ontario-takes-further...)

Respectfully, this seems like a you problem. Most people are more tolerant of the uncertainty and seem content to wait for a clear trend of decline that can be extrapolated toward a target date. Nobody knows for sure how this is going to play out, and a wait-and-see approach is broadly preferred to a premature leap towards what might be a false place of safety.

I don't expect a target date from them, I expect something like "we will re-open (partially, with such and such mitigations still in place) if and only if cases decline monotonically over a period of 7 days and we have 30,000 free hospital beds and 10 million N95 masks in stock".

Is the claim that folks aren’t actively working on these types of guidelines?

This is an information poor environment. I fail to see how any scientist would take such stringent targets as acceptable given that.

This is weird. Most people are just fine with this wait-and-see approach? Is this the uniquely Silicon Valley "I can work from home and my job is safe forever" viewpoint I've been hearing working class people complain about? Have you not noticed that we tech workers are getting axed left and right?

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