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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, soooo restrictive of civil liberties that half the country refused to wear masks, partied hard, and caused not one, but two resurges.

You know what, man? I'm getting so sick of hearing this, "but muh civil liberties" line from the anti-lockdown crowd. You weren't planning on going to any protests. You're not pretty enough to consider "showin' muh face in the grocery store" to be protected speech. This is just childish feet kicking. It's ex-post-facto rationalization to come up with some way of complaining about being asked to care about the other people in your community.

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I think you need to do some research before being so flippant. You should have understood that the United States is in the middle of the pack with mask wearing at nearly 80%. That's higher than Britain, Germany and Denmark and just below China and Canada. Furthermore countries with higher compliance are also seeing additional waves (Italy and France).

Perhaps instead of acting like a fool on the internet you research the nonsense you spout. Spreading lies just makes the world more divisive.

Source: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic...

Let’s please keep HN discussion civil and communicate in good faith, without snark and sarcasm. HN is such a rare community for this reason.

You are free to argue why the stance my country Sweden has taken is misinformed or unwise but let’s keep to data and first principle arguments rather than snark and sarcasm.

You only argue in good faith with people who are arguing on good faith. People bringing up civil liberties and suicides are just puppetting conservative think tank scripts, trying to "pwn the libs".

HN is an international community and not everyone ascribes to the conservative/liberal paradigm of politics that dominates the U.S. I'm probably way more left than you but I also do not think giving up civil liberties to curb the spread of Covid-19 is worth the cost. In France they fined people who were outdoors on "non-essential errands". That's fucking insane. No one should be required to give up their right to take a walk in their own hometown. Forcing people to do that is Soviet-level authoritarianism.

It of course also sets a precedent. If the rulers can whip the masses into thinking a curfew to stop a virus is necessary, they surely can do it for other reasons again and again. Bye, bye right of assembly.

If you have actual evidence or data to share about suicide risk this year or if you have a bona fide legal opinion on civil liberties, please share. Otherwise, your comments have added next to nothing to this conversation. Here is a study that isn't a conservative talking point if you'd like something to read.

https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/113/10/707/5857612

Early data on suicide doesn't appear to show any increase in deaths yet. These are preliminary data and we do need to guard against an increase in future, but we're not seeing an increase at the moment.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6...

http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861

Not being able to respond to scripts you're aware of quickly and concisely shouldn't be a point of pride. The game isn't to detect a conservative, it's to discover a strategy that does the least harm and to convince others of its merit.

I’m the furthest thing from a conservative, even in Europe I’m on the left.

Still, I believe that the massive restrictions on civil liberties in the form of lockdowns are completely unacceptable. I’d explain my arguments, but they’ve been repeated over and over by “conservative think tanks”.

I argue that using force to stop free men from living free is a greater moral evil than being out and about, also when there is contagious disease in the world. All men are equal children of creation; no man is born with the right to stand above another, unless it’s on owned land.

I promise that I’m arguing in good faith, and having spoken with countrymen of yours I am certain they too do. I’m glad my country never enforced anything COVID19-related, although I disagree strongly with my socialist rulers.

A good exercise to do with a friend, or on pen and paper if it’s socially uncomfortable, is to try to make your opponents argument as convincingly as you can. If your current understanding is true, you’ll learn to argue for it from another perspective, else you will have learned something. Kind regards

You can't go round dismissing the central core of the opposing side's strongest arguments like that.

And you are puppeting think tank scripts too. Why not calm down and let the facts speak for themselves instead of trying to bully people into silence. That isn't going to work.

Yeah, I'm sure the increased suicide rate, drug overdoses, and alcohol related deaths are just childish feet kicking. They hate wearing masks so much that they kill themself instead.

Citation needed.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/predictions-suicides-overdoses...

There's been tons of articles and research supporting this if you care to look. And honestly, while citations are always good, this claim is so common-sensical that the knee-jerk "Citation needed.", as though OP were suggesting that there was a teapot floating in space halfway between here and Mars, comes off as unnecessarily disrespectful.

Here's some stuff from actual research orgs, and we haven't yet seen an increase in deaths by suicide.

http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6...

Lots of caution needed about the data, and these are early data and the situation may change so we do need to pay attention to prevention, but:

> Nevertheless, a reasonably consistent picture is beginning to emerge from high income countries. Reports suggest either no rise in suicide rates (Massachusetts, USA11; Victoria, Australia13; England14) or a fall (Japan,9 Norway15) in the early months of the pandemic.

Ask a bunch of self-centered people to stay home and suddenly they become experts on all the suicides the kids are doing.

You are just bringing that up to argue.

Of course not, that's what the experts are for. I couldn't find much about young people, but data on adults should be suggestive enough (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...):

"In this survey study that included 1441 respondents from during the COVID-19 pandemic and 5065 respondents from before the pandemic, depression symptom prevalence was more than 3-fold higher during the COVID-19 pandemic than before."

And not to antagonize you, but just a post earlier you were talking about protecting people in your community. Caring about their wellbeing is one of the ways of doing that.

Was the depression higher because they had to stay home because of a mandate, because they had to stay home because they were scared of the pandemic, because they were scared of the pandemic, or because the pandemic killed their friends/family, or because they had empathy with all the people who lost friends/family/employment because of the pandemic?

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6...

If old and fat people have a high risk and everyone else is basically fine, why not just lock down the old and fat people?

Because "old and fat" people make up about half of the population and you can't isolate them from the other half effectively when the infection is rampaging there. This has already been explained countless times.

If young and healthy people exercising on the road are at high risk for being struck by drunk drivers, why not lock down the young healthy people?

For the same reason why you're expected to wear a mask even if you had COVID-19 a month ago.

You are a hero!

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