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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Should we have an "end"?

To play devil's advocate, clearly the world can handle a certain amount of locking-down, the social distancing, the mask wearing, etc., so it seems it is better if we just accept these restrictions indefinitely because we can save more people. Maybe we're fine not having mass gatherings, not eating indoors, and not leaving the house without a mask if it means saving the vulnerable. After all, it could be that COVID stays in the body like herpes and creates a different set of problems years later. Until we know for sure, the safest course of action for the public is for them to remain quarantined.

After all, how bad is your life, really? If your life is tolerable, that means the restrictions are tolerable as well.

EDIT: It's like nobody knows what playing "devil's advocate" means anymore. I think it's valid to ask that, if all the measures we are taking are objectively good, whether we should take them from now on.

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Assuming this is not sarcasm, this can be taken to any logical extreme of "tolerable". I'm sure there are many other new restrictions we can put in place that would make people's lives (more) miserable, that are nevertheless "tolerable".

Furthermore, can the world really handle the restrictions in place indefinitely? We've been locked down for a year, and it's certainly starting to feel like the wheels are coming off for many. The economic devastation alone has been staggering.

Epidemiologically speaking, sure, doing this forever would save the most amount of people from COVID. But we can't just look at this from that point of view.

The vast majority of people are not fine with any of those things for an extended period. In fact, in the US, once late spring/summer roll around people are going to be out and about.

Really? That's what people said back when it was proposed that we shut everything down for a few weeks to "flatten the curve". Now look how long we've gone. I'd say Americans have very well tolerated this new way of life and could do so in perpetuity. I wouldn't count the protests and riots last summer since they were politically motivated.

In spite of lots of grumbling and non-compliance in some regions, people have adapted to things they said weren't really conceivable last year. Yes, people have (generally) accepted extended temporary restrictions. That said, essentially no one is accepting this as a permanent condition and as people are vaccinated, I have a high level of confidence that people are not going to accept continued restrictions. You are, of course, welcome to do whatever works for you.

People certainly didn't permanently hide out before there were vaccinations against diseases like cholera.

I kindly disagree. Although I think we'd see next to no resistance if we were told "this is the new normal, deal with it", in reality we'll all be told "by this time next year" in order to keep people hooked on the hopium and ensure the new paradigm.

For the record, I'm not in support of the prevailing COVID containment strategies. Believe me, I'd love to see politicians face some actual backlash over what's been happening.

I dunno. Based on the traffic around where I live, I'm probably more conservative than most but come widespread vaccination, I'll vote against any politician who tries to keep things locked down and I (and most others) are already casual around things like outdoor masks that are essentially theater. And that's not even considering all the business and other economic constituencies which are frankly more important to the politicians. For example, many organizations will not tolerate physical events being shutdown indefinitely.

Absent vaccines it would have been more complicated. But, at some point, countries say that they've done what they can and things are as they are.

> I'd say Americans have very well tolerated this new way of life and could do so in perpetuity.

Except for the horrific acceleration of radical politics, rioting in the streets (and Capitol), effective abandonment of the education of the children of the bottom 50% percentile earners, rise in suicides and substance abuse, etc. Locked down masses are going to be increasingly difficult to pacify.

Have you actually looked into the numbers regarding what lockdowns have done to mental health, not to mention the economic impacts which are going to feed back into people's well being in all sorts of ways? Just because your subjective experience of being a shut-in for nearly a year has been a tolerable one does not mean that has been the case for large numbers of people.

I want my kids to go to a harvest festival again with a live band and tons of people like the one they did in fall 2019. No, this is not something worth giving up simply to preserve a few years of life for some nonzero number of society's most vulnerable and aged. And no, I'm not any more willing to wait five years to see whether there's some lurking complications from the disease, any more than people have been willing to do that with the vaccines which are being distributed.

That sounds pretty close to fighting words to me.

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