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Comment by creato | Hacker News Reader

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creato·

> But like all the above, this entire ordeal wasn't about a virus, it's about control.

How are any of these things a useful means of control? What do governments gain by people wearing masks?

If anything, historically, governments have disliked people wearing masks because it makes people hard to identify.

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It's not about, like, an Illuminati conspiracy. It's about a general attitude that the general public can't be trusted and the authorities have to make sure they do what's right. The obvious alternative to mandatory lockdowns would be to simply convince the public that it's very dangerous to go outside, but most commentators in the US saw the idea of not using government force as tantamount to giving up.

> would be to simply convince the public that it's very dangerous to go outside

That theory is being tested in Sweden right now. No government force, just strongly trying to convince residents to socially distance. And now its one of the highest death rates in all of Europe.

The libertarian ideal of people "doing the right thing" simply doesn't work.

Sweden's doing better on a per-capita basis than the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium and France; pretty much any way you slice the data, and all of those countries implemented lock downs.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Half of the deaths in Sweden are in long-term care homes, and happened to people under the care of the state.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52704836

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