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> I am not okay with unqualified politicians making inaccurate claims about the virus, and prioritizing economic health in the absence of good governance.

This sounds a bit like you are raising the qualification barrier to participate in the debate, but only if that person disagrees with you.

I think 'inaccurate' was the key word. I think that's a reasonable barrier.

Politicians, journalists and the general population make inaccurate claims all the time in both pro-lockdown and anti-lockdown stances.

Luckily as educated adults we are blessed with being able to exercise our judgement to assess what is right, wrong, an honest mistake, a deliberate distortion, a kinda-bad inaccurate claim, or a dangerously-bad inaccurate claim.

The evidence shows that most adults are not all that sharp.

This. If we’ve learned anything at all.

But who is anybody to say what is or isn't accurate.

Fair point, we are in a post-truth society now.

Facebook and Twitter, obviously.

Before COVID-19, I would have said that we pay for CDC, FDA, Surgeon General, epidemiologists, and virologists to be right about that stuff and they're generally trustworthy.

But then they all tried to convince Americans not to wear masks.

I didn't read their comment that way. The article isn't about doctors with years of experience advocating for lockdown, so this conversation is framed around people disagreeing with how deadly the virus is and the lockdown procedures.

I'm sure that poster, like me, also doesn't want politicians making inaccurate claims the other way about how the virus is the deadliest thing imaginable, or to prioritize saving every single life possible by orders of house arrest.

Yeah, if you're fine with unqualified politicians making inaccurate claims about the virus in order to intensify lockdowns (which, frankly, has been most of the lockdown justifications) then that's pretty unfair.

The burden of proof should be on the lockdown proponents, not people trying to return to the status quo.

We're not used to sharing space with hungry wolves or big felines, in fact humans tend to exterminate them when they move into a new environment.

There's a new predator out there, invading our space and we're its lunch. there's precious little status quo to return to until we have the tools to exterminate it.

We're not used to not being apex predators. That's fact.

A new predator, to go along with all of the others. AIDS, the other things that get lumped into 'colds' or 'flus' (which are different from COVID-19 in degree, but not really in kind), Malaria, and so many more.

Except HIV isn't airborne, doesn't choke you to death within a couple weeks and the other 'cold' and 'flus' aren't nearly as deadly.

Cov2 is both everywhere and lethal, that's quite a difference in kind.

And WRT "Malaria, and so many more" we as humans and our collective organizations have been busy trying to exterminate or avoid them as much as possible. Since forever.

I am commenting on a combination of the motives and the qualifications of speaking as an authority - not on the position of the speaker.

FWIW, I didn't read the the comment this way, and it doesn't seem like "the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says".

From the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Only if you intentionally ignore the very first sentence, which is obviously supportive.

> in the absence of good governance.

This is begging the question, though.

I think a clear distinction needs to be made between normative and descriptive claims: the former, everyone has the right to make and hold their own opinion to, including both politicians and scientists; the latter, should only be entertained by policy-makers when supported by evidence-based scientific research.

For example, a politician has every right to say "I think schools should re-open immediately under X procedures," if that is what he truly feels reflects the best outcome for his constituents. Of course, it would be wrong to say this only for political posturing, corrupt influences, etc.

On the other hand, it is completely unacceptable for a politician (or anyone) to say, "Children are immune to the virus," "COVID is not a serious illness," (okay, technically that is normative but only insofar as the definition of seriousness is normative), "same as the flu," "masks cause oxygen lack," etc. Likewise, asserting these claims in an argument, "Children are immune -> we should open schools," is not right.

But, making a philosophical/policy and/or medical argument based off true, evidence-backed descriptive claims--even if the scientific community does not tend to share that normative opinion, is completely fine. So there is nothing wrong with arguing against a given measure that the majority of doctors support, so long as you aren't distorting the underlying facts.

As a practical matter, of course, this shuts down many arguments. Ex. admitting that masks pose no health risk to the wearer, cost very little, do not substantially limit any right or activity, and have at least a fair probability of public health benefit, it would be hard to argue against requiring them. But if you feel otherwise, make your case by all means. The only thing that is morally wrong is corrupting intellectual discourse by adding FUD and confusing people as to the underlying evidence and data.

>prioritizing economic health

I sense that everyone fairly well off sort of ignores how quickly poor economic health translates into poor social and biological health. We like to act like the economy is this nice to have extra that can shut down, and everything will go on as normal, except our luxuries. But then you realize, you cant shut down ports, railroads, roads, trucking, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target, every grocery store. And suddenly all the interconnected everything requires all the software companies to stay running. All the power companies. They all need their supplies.

>we cannot go full "save every possible life"

Where is the calculation of life lost or years lost of lifespan, because the economy wasn't there to support life.

>thus the term "flatten the curve"

I understood the context of flatten the curve to be in that we needed to buy time to prepare hospitals, manufacturing, and as a tool to prevent ICU overflow. It's now been co-opted to be used in a "until the vaccine" sort of way, which is not how it was used initially. You can see how people might have agreed with it before, but not now, and still have a consistent unchanging view (its the usage around their view that changed.) It's also very frustrating to hear rate statistics used out of context, as if the instantaneous rate is what matters, without the understanding that their denominator, time, extends into the future, and with part of the denominator in the future, the numerator is not very useful.

It's odd that you're attacking what I said when I'm kind of supporting what you're saying. That we can't sustainably lock down indefinitely until a vaccine, that we need to balance the desire to protect lives with the need to live and work.

Your statement about flatten the curve is exactly what I said.

I will say, though, I bet we disagree on this: The federal government should have minted off a few more trillion dollars to keep people home as needed without them losing their jobs or insurance. Our American political/economic system is not built to keep people healthy or economically secure, and the government should take a more active role in fixing that.

Im not sure if I agree or disagree that blindly throwing more money is the right approach, but I can say I think we did a poor job of using the information we had early on (age, weight being major factors) and using that to selectively protect the most vulnerable. Locking down elderly care to an extreme level and having the social support and food to do so, might have saved more lives-years than keeping everyone at home.

All in all, it just wasnt feasible to tell the elderly to stay home while the rest of the world continued humming. This was one way to get everybody to care.

I wasn't disagreeing with what you said about flattening the curve, I'm saying its meaning has changed in some usages, from what you described to something else.

This might make sense if medical experts consistently made accurate predictions, but they often seem to be wrong, and have to change their positions after the fact.

One could go as far to say that it is irresponsible to give their peripatetic claims more credence than they seem to historically deserve, especially when it's clear that there are legitimate trade-offs.

I just struggle to get on board with the premise of medicalizing all of society. Can the harms from social isolation, poor quality education, economic damage, etc. really be reduced to medical factors for doctors to weigh against disease risk? I think these are inherently political decisions; or rather, politics is the process by which a society decides how to make such challenging tradeoffs.

> I am not okay with unqualified politicians making inaccurate claims about the virus, and prioritizing economic health in the absence of good governance.

Who else is supposed to make these types of decisions? Doctors don't have governing experience, and they weren't elected. They can and should serve an important advisory role, but the final call should be up to our elected leaders.

If we have elected unqualified politicians, that's a separate problem. This is still a decision that's within their domain.

Politicians should be the ones making policy based on the data available.