Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

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> Failure to follow social distancing regulations, stay-at-home orders, and mask mandates have been held up by media and elected officials alike as the chief cause of the pandemic’s persistence, and “anti-maskers” have been demonized as convenient scapegoats for colossal bureaucratic failures.

This is pretty rich in an article about misinformation. If people had worn masks, we would have better outcomes. If we had locked down, it would have been over already. Full stop. How is this confusing?

> Similarly, censorship of election fraud claims are well-documented, with President Donald Trump, along with a host of other conservatives, being censored for “promoting disinformation.”

Pathetic. It talks about how the Coronavirus response was bungled, tries to pat dipshits who refuse to wear masks on the back, and the only mention of Trump (7 times) have nothing to do with his oafish incompetence regarding the Coronavirus response, and have to do with election fraud. Amazing. I wonder if the author has any political agenda?

The political agenda does not undermine the substantial point: American institutions have been shamelessly lying. This isn't new: the US entered Iraq on a lie and the NSA was caught lying to congress during the Snowden leaks. What has changed is that the public is more aware of the cynical manipulation due to the ridiculous treatment of the pandemic, the very real consequences, and the alternative distribution media that are now more common.

I'd love to just list off the lies. But the problem is systemic. The media has established their own echo chamber on Twitter, policy experts are politically captured if not beholden to special interests, and anyone with a sincere interest in the truth must blog under a pseudonym lest they be cancelled for raising inconvenient lines of reasoning.

The working class public is not aware of the precise institutional failures which happened during Covid, or of credible information sources. They see position "A" being pushed one week and then a month later position "not A" being pushed, and the same for B, C, D,... and slowly they start trusting the conspiracy theorists who say that it's all lies, and actually Alpha, Beta, Gamma...

> If people had worn masks, we would have better outcomes.

Citation needed. People do wear masks. And a lot of places where they don't are doing good compared to places wear they do.

> If we had locked down, it would have been over already. Full stop. How is this confusing?

It's not confusing but it's simply not true. I believed this in March and April, however. How long would we need to lock down in your fantasy land?

Australia has some of the harshest lockdowns and it's not over there "full stop". They still have cases popping up. And even if it worked, you can't just look at covid numbers as the only measure of success. You end up demostrating Goodhart's law. It's a huge mistake to not take all the other side effects into consideration. A couple big ones that come to mind are discouraging exercise and sunlight to generate vitamin D.

> A couple big ones that come to mind are discouraging exercise and sunlight to generate vitamin D.

Quite a few others https://outline.com/JKgfuv

Yes, Australia has cases popping up but it now has 25 or deaths per million vs. 1300 for the US. I think the outcomes are pretty different here.

And .. they're still locked down

If you and the rest of us were not allowed to post on these forums, fewer people might be offended.

If we outlaw all vehicles (including bicycles) and required everyone to walk, all traffic accidents would be avoided already. Full stop.

If we ...

The idea that the pandemic is bad because of failures of individuals to follow mandates or whatever and not a failure of government policy is idiotic.

>This is pretty rich in an article about misinformation. If people had worn masks, we would have better outcomes. If we had locked down, it would have been over already. Full stop. How is this confusing?

Are you prepared to close the borders and imprison anyone who tries to come in indefinitely?

This is what Australia does to illegal immigrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sovereign_Borders

The camps have been condemned as concentration camps by amnesty international. NZ benefits from this policy since it is a further 6,000 km from the usual point of attempted entry into Australia.

You can't pick a third of the policies you like and ignore the ones you don't. I find it astonishing that 'left' people in Australia have taken up a position further right of the white nationalist Australian parties on immigration and no one is even talking about it.

Hang on, what? This seems like a non-sequitur, how does Oz’s (terrible) treatment of asylum seekers by irregular maritime arrival (not illegal immigrants) relate to the point you’re making?

Australia is not indefinitely imprisoning arrivals from overseas, nor is NZ. NZ has repeatedly offered to settle asylum seekers imprison at Nauru. Which ‘lefties’ have adopted white nationalist policies?

Everyone at ports and airports gets a forced 2 week quarantine on arrival in AU and NZ. The only other way to enter an island (check a map to see why this is relevant) is by sailing a boat, since illegal boat arrivals are already being treated as criminals and locked up keeping up quarantine is a lot easier. Even though every two weeks some part of AU or NZ goes into a forced lock down when someone makes it through the cracks.

This would be impossible in America without a wide no-mans land on the Mexican and Canadian boarders where any trespassers are put in the sort of camps Australia runs.

OP is wrong about it 'ending' if the US just wore masks. Victoria alone has shown that without a closed boarder it is impossible to keep the virus out regardless of what hygiene theater you do.

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