Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

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> I don't think any of this is related to politics

I seriously urge you to check your cognitive dissonance to the situation as a whole. This is literally the definition of political theater.

> Covid has actually outpaced cancer and heart disease to become the number 1 cause of death

Not true at all. Did you miss the months of heated discussion when it was found out that hospitals received lump sums of additional money if they checked off "covid" as the "cause" of death? Then they clarified that by making it acceptable to consider covid as the "cause" of death if the patient had any "flu-like symptoms"...aka coughing, shortness of breath. Is it even possible to die without at least one of those "flu-like symptoms"?

I hate to break it to everyone, but we did absolutely nothing to slow down covid. Everything we've seen over the past year has simply been placebos, population control, and political opportunism. Buy hey, can't wait to read Fauci's new book!

Assuming you're serious, how did Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, China etc successfully stop COVID from spreading in their territories?

Different landscapes between cities, different population sprawl, different customs/lifestyles, etc. E.g. cities in northern Australia are separated by vast jungles. Those areas have warmer/dryer climates. Easier to achieve herd immunity in countries like those. Achieve herd immunity in multiple small areas, it turns into achieving herd immunity everywhere.

Obviously if you can force people by gunpoint to not leave their homes, you can slow the spread (i.e. China)

90% of Australia's population is packed into its large cities Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Every single one of them had outbreaks, which were successfully tamped down with lockdowns, masks, and contact tracing, the tools you earlier decried as useless.

There are no cities worthy of the name in northern Australia: Darwin, the largest by some measure, is only 140k. The entire Northern Territory has a population of only 240,000, or 1% of Australia.

You can't get herd immunity without a vast majority of the population getting sick, which demonstrably (antigen tests) did not happen in any of those countries.

Last but not least, COVID spread like hotcakes in the warm/dry (often oven-like) temperatures of central India in April.

> which were successfully tamped down with lockdowns, masks, and contact tracing, the tools you earlier decried as useless

Not true. That's what you want to believe, and what you've been led to believe. Show me the science that proves this isn't all a load of horse shit. Show me literally anything that remotely proves any of this had a meaningful impact. Anything. Oh yeah I forgot, people here aren't a fan of science and data when it goes against their fragile leftist beliefs.

If what I said is in fact true, it would all appear the exact same.

Here's a few studies on it:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/22/11875

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33664169/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33712573/

There's many more. At this point there's a pretty good set of studies on transmission data. It seems to all indicate that proximity to other infected people increases risk of transmission, and that contact of contaminated surfaces or others is not necessary. Then you can see that transmission in the air in aerosol and droplets are both possible, and then you can reason about this with the physics on them. The closer to someone else breathing the more virus particle is in the air for you to breathe, the further away, the less of it. The more ventilated the place you are in, the less you breath in other people's air.

The CDC also does a great job at being transparent about their assessment and sources. Read those, and if you scroll down on each page you'll see large list of reference to the studies they've based their assessment on.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

I live in Melbourne, the city that had the worst outbreak in Australia, and I have followed the news and scientific discussion across the political spectrum very closely from when the virus was first identified in early 2020.

Melbourne really did suppress the virus, after it started spreading wildly in July/August (mid winter – Melbourne is the only large Australian city that has a cool winter climate comparable to Europe and Northern US) last year, particularly in aged care homes. By November we were getting zero daily cases, and it has mostly remained that way until the past few weeks, when winter weather and hotel quarantine leaks have led to another small outbreak, which is again successfully being suppressed.

The measures used to achieve suppression: lockdowns of varying severity, masks, and smartphone-based contact-tracing.

That said, Australia's isolation from other countries, spread out geography, lower population density and climate absolutely make it easier to achieve suppression. I don't believe what we've done would have been possible in the Europe or the US, though I believe the evidence that these measures slow the spread anywhere they're implemented.

> I seriously urge you to check your cognitive dissonance to the situation as a whole. This is literally the definition of political theater

You have Republicans who chose to impose lockdowns and mask mandates.

You have Democrats who chose to impose lockdowns and mask mandates.

You have communist run countries who chose to impose lockdowns and mask mandates.

You have democractic run countries who chose to impose lockdowns and mask mandates.

You have many other countries of various political entities that all chose to impose lockdowns and mask mandates.

To me it seems like a cross-cutting concern that affects everyone no matter their political leanings.

Now the decision to have lockdowns and mask mandates where you reside is obviously political, that's the point of politics, to dictate the laws and regulations for residents in a particular place, but I don't see a political motive behind it. The motives seem very much about controlling the spread of Covid within an area and balancing that with the economic impact. Politicians will make their own assessment for this and determine the public policy they think best manages the spread and maximizes the economy.

I would say there is some appearance of political motives from politician who seem to play the "conspiracy" card. Those seem to have self-driven motivation. But I really doubt any politician putting lockdowns and mask mandates in place is having a good time, being the one to do this is possibly a career ending move, it's a big deal, and I can't imagine what political driver you'd have for it, beyond wanting to not cause a mass spread of Covid in your population and look like a failure at preventing it.

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