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Comment by protoman3000 | Hacker News Reader

What are the reasons why we can’t have a very hard 4-week long Chinese style total shutdown?

It took Victoria, Melbourne over three months of a hard lockdown to get the numbers to Zero.

If you compare some of the attitudes in both policing and policy to Australia and the response between parties you'll understand why the UK can never get there.

Consider this:

- Victoria handed out 20K~ fines by August 26 [1]

- England & Wales handed out 25K~ fines between 27 March and 16 November [2]

- The UK has 120K~ police officers [3]

- Victoria has 21K~ police officers [4]

An Australian State which has only 10%~ of England's population (6M people vs 55M) and only 17% of England's Police Force size managed to get 20K~ fines by August.

The attitude there-in lies down to effective policing and policies.

Eg Melbourne made it a mandatory requirement to wear face masks in public - I don't think the UK could get close to that. Time will tell.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/victo...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55134562

[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Police

Australia also forecasts that it will increase its Federal debt by AUD$500 billion due to the pandemic - AUD$20,000 per person.

Meanwhile aged care deaths in the most heavily affected state, Victoria, are actually down 1,000 YoY. Its almost certain that the majority of the COVID deaths that did occur in Melbourne were with COVID - ie. people of advanced age and serious existing health conditions who would have died around this time anyway.

My comments weren't about Australian financials; however the lockdown isn't the only contributor

- The political fallout between China and Australia is worsening, the long term ramifications don't look good. This isn't attributibal to the lockdown.

- Australia's short term economy is currently recovering well after lockdown [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/australia-economy-budget/aus...

The fallout between China and Australia is because of Australia's incredibly aggressive Covid strategy and rhetoric.

The COVID strategy isn't the reason for their fallout. It is the government's attack on the CCP and pushing for an inquiry.

That is the Covid strategy. If they weren't heavy handed they wouldn't have these opinions and push for an inquiry.

You're conflating Diplomatic Strategy and Pandemic Control together

It's basically the same heavy handed strategy: Go hard!

To put it simply, the UK government is continuing a decade of placing their and their friends' financial interests ahead of the interests of the country. Many own properties that are at risk when nobody's going to work, or are indebted to party donors who do. The idea is to put up with people dying (after all, austerity caused the deaths of over 100,000 people in the UK, and that was apparently acceptable) as long as the economy keeps going. Of course this will fail in the long term, and the result will be a collapsed economy and a lot of dead people, but long term thinking has never been a requirement to be a Conservative government.

Because UK is not a dictatorship. China is.

Yeah, lockdown parties are a basic human right.

Agreed. No man has the right to violently hinder free people from living free. My body is my property and not the property of the state.

Any state on the planet will violently hinder their people from doing certain things, that one of the jobs of most police forces. Often it's to protect the rights of other 'free people' in the population.

Like my body is my property are the bodies of others also property of theirs, and I have no right to violate their property right. It is instead right to proportionally defend rightfully owned property.

Gathering is a basic human right:

     Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There is no reason stated. There is no exception for "virus." Human rights laws were not written for fair weather. They were written for crisis and disaster.

Quoting the US constitution in a thread about the UK doesn't make much sense. Is there a similar legal doctrine in the UK?

Our natural rights are God-given and true since all men are equal children of creation, and thus no man has the right to stand above any other and deny them their right to speech or to gather.

I am the property of myself and have the sole right of ownership - not anyone employed by the state.

This was worded well by the writers of the American constitution, but the idea is as old as time - it’s the idea of universalist ethics.

Well, maybe God wants the government to lock you up. How do you know?

It’s colourful language, I’d advice reading it as such

By that logic when the UK should have done nothing as Germany Invaded Poland and France. And then nothing as German troops landed.

The real fact is people that argue and resist taking action against Covid because 'mah freedumbs' are seriously undermining democratic governments. Basically making authoritarian governments point for them.

Lots of politicians are refusing to get the vaccine. Something about waiting their turn. That seriously undermines democratic governments in a pandemic.

I don't understand mocking freedoms. There are many people in nursing homes that want to see their families but can't. They are angry because the caretakers can see their families but they can't. Will you mock them too?

I'm not mocking freedoms are pointing out that if you want to keep them you need to act like you can be trusted with them.

It doesn’t seem self evident to me that we can afford the economic hit. Despite the US being “the richest country in the world” we run massive deficits and have a massive debt. I suspect Euro nations are similar. There are known and unknown economic consequences to just borrowing to pay for a lockdown on top of what we already charge on the card.

Why would I want a measure that is more damaging than the virus ?

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