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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

It’s a trade-off:

> In return for trading away their liberty, Australians gained a huge safety dividend. COVID-19 has killed 194 of every 100,000 Americans, 77 of every 100,000 Israelis, and only four of every 100,000 Australians. That low death toll is a tremendous upside. What remains to be seen is whether Australia can maintain that performance without permanently ending core attributes of life in a liberal democracy, including freedom of movement, peaceable assembly, and basic privacy.

We’re still in the middle of this. If we could have nice things, these restrictions wouldn’t need to be enforced. We’ll have to see what happens once the country is adequately vaccinated.

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None of these death rates is high enough to even begin thinking about overturning the order of society. Safety is not the only goal. Over-emphasizing the value of "safety" is at the root of many seemingly-unrelated areas of societal dysfunction over the past decade. We've turned into a timid, fearful people eager to be controlled. Life is for living.

I would not in a million years trade Australia's restrictions for those of the United States just to exchange Australia's death rate with that of the US, and it's hard to imagine that any reasonable, well-adjusted person would want to do that.

> I would not in a million years trade Australia's restrictions for those of the United States just to exchange Australia's death rate with that of the US

so tell me if you know personally anyone who has died? What if that trade includes someone from your family? Does your tune suddenly change if the lack of restrictions would affect you?

All i hear is that you feel you don't want to make any sacrifices, because it only benefits somebody else.

Every year, 37,000 Americans die in automobile accidents, yet we don't set the country's speed limit at 25mph even though doing that would save most of those 37,000 lives.

We tolerate --- even demand --- higher speed limits because the time saved by driving faster outweighs the additional deaths caused. It may sound callous to put the trade-off in those terms, but it's true. And I bet you, personally, would absolutely hate it you weren't able to drive more than 25mph ever.

Why should COVID be different?

When you optimize for "safety" to the exclusion of all other considerations, you create a dystopia.

A non-zero number of COVID deaths is a fair price for restoring our society to normality. The weird refusal of people to apply cost-benefit analysis to COVID mitigation is gravely concerning. Without cost-benefit analysis, we can't make good decisions.

It's a false comparison for two reasons:

1) You leave out the long list of ways we've tried very, very hard to make driving as safe as possible while not sacrificing the entire point of the car, to get somewhere faster. There is a trade off, but the equation isn't nearly as callous as you make it seem.

2) The equation for Covid isn't "live free or die" either. There's a lot of middle ground that mostly involves taking up limited medical resources for something that could have been avoided while still conducting your normal day to day activities with some minor modifications. That trade-off is a simple one.

so where is your evidence that the cost-benefit-analysis of covid deaths is in the favour of opening up?

We don't drive above 25mph because there is already cost benefit analysis done, at the governmental transportation department level. The average person assumes this analysis is mostly correct, and thus agree (implicitly) to follow the rules.

How come all of a sudden, people stop believing that such analysis wasn't done for the actions undertaken for lockdown?

How come, conveniently, that people who oppose such lockdown are claiming that their preferred option - that of opening up - is somehow a better trade?

> I would not in a million years trade Australia's restrictions for those of the United States just to exchange Australia's death rate with that of the US. it's hard to imagine that any reasonable, well-adjusted person would want to do that.

45,000 people in Australia are alive right now who would be dead if Australia had the USA's death rate.

I'm quite sure the family and friends of every single one of those 45,000 people strongly disagree with you.

But they threw away their advantage by not using the breathing space to get vaccinated. So now they are basically back at square one. They surely can't keep the borders closed permanently?

The lack of vaccination can be squarely blamed at the federal gov't of australia, where they squandered their vaccination roll out by putting all their eggs in one Astrazenica basket, and not ordering enough pfizer doses. Then, after the blood clotting risks of AZ was verified, obviously many younger people in australia is going to be hesitant in taking AZ, when the covid cases are low.

And the AZ deals the gov't has made was not transparent, which reeks of corruption, and it bit them in the ass now. Even now, the gov't (note, the gov't, not the medical community) is recommending that young people talk to their GP and take AZ (conveniently, this absolves the gov't of the responsibility of providing more pfizer, and force the young people between a rock and a hard place in terms of risk).

So if there are any australians here reading this, you will do well to never vote for the liberal party in your life time.

As an Aussie, is all pretty on-the-money. To elaborate further, the details of the AZ deal were blocked from a FOIA request by the government under national security grounds. Reeks of corruption is an understatement.

The Aussie population, by and large, really wants to be vaccinated. There's some who are a bit illogical about the perceived risks of AZ blood clots, but that's firmly on the media who played up that risk at a time when the risk of covid proper was minimised due to our success. This has created a subset of people who insist on waiting for Pfizer.

But that wouldn't be a problem if our government hadn't fucked up ordering vaccines so badly in the first place. Their work was truly atrocious.

I'm locked down, and it's not too bad, but why the hell aren't there rapid spit kits everywhere? I think the federal government is a shitshow and do not have anything positive to say about them, but given that they stuffed up, it's going to take some time fix that. I am fully vaccinated, and I would voluntarily keep going with lockdown so that others don't die. If we had persisted with rolling out AZ, between 20 ~100 people would have died from the vaccine nationally (in australia) At the time, given the low death rate from Covid, that was too high. Of course then the federal government stuffed up quarantine too. If NSW opens up, people are going to die, disproportionally they will be Indigenous people, and poorer people who didn't vote Scomo.

So to clarify, the government was, as the other poster says, corrupt about the vaccine...but you trust them to make the right decision about lockdowns?

Am I reading that correctly?

We'll I wasn't answering for myself, but trying to explain what I believe is the mainstream thinking providing the political support for recent laws. As for me, I don't trust the federal government - they're appalling. I do have more faith in the individuals recruited into my local government to manage the pandemic, but most importantly I have no fear of the government's ability to enact any totalitarian fantasies they may harbour.

>We'll I wasn't answering for myself, sorry I've mixed the comments, that answer was about my views. I'm supporting the lockdown, because it's the best substitute we currently have for widespread vaccination , which is in a diabolical state because the federal government isn't even really trying. Choosing lockdown over a huge death toll is not in anyway about supporting the federal government, who have generally been opposed to lockdowns. I do think rapid saliva tests would do a lot of good, I know some don't trust decentralising the control of testing, but I think it would allow us to ease the current restrictions with some degree of safety.

the vaccine procurement corruption is a high level decision made by only a few people doing the deals. The lockdown is medical advice which is not made by a few individuals but by knowledge gained in the past.

The federal gov't almost didn't want to have lockdown in the first wave, and fortunately it was the state gov't doing it (by medical advice) that pushed it over.

The fact that you somehow confuse it together into one lump, and attribute it to a singular government entity decision, either means you did not really do any research or look into it. Or you are maliciously spreading FUD to cause distrust in existing institutions.

The lockdown is a decision made by the government. The AZ vaccine situation was a decision made by the government.

You trust the government decision to implement lockdown but not the decision regarding the AZ vaccine?

Different governments (vaccine is federal, lockdowns are state). Even between the NSW (state) and federal governments, both with the same party in power (and where the current prime minister hails from) there's been significant disagreements (compared to regular levels) over policy.

I didn't know the goal of life was to live the longest, even if in prison. You might want to invest in cryogenic sleep.

Comparing the condition of Aussies in lockdown to being in prison is disingenuous and unhelpful to the debate.

For example, my partner goes for a daily walk along the foreshore of the beach. On the weekend she'll go for a bush hike. This is all within the strict Sydney lockdown laws because she's staying within a 5km radius of her home.

Moreover, their lockdown means that I can go about my life more or less uninterrupted, because their outbreak is limited from reaching me.

A big goal of my life is to be alive, not dead.

There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well.

>There are 45,000 people in Australia who are alive right now who would not be if Australia had the same death rate as the USA. So they're doing pretty well.

the idea that the difference in death rate is due to some intrinsic policy or mandated behavior rather than something more simple like population density/metropolis commonality/average temperature/humidity, etc seems like a pretty big leap -- and that seems to be your point , no?

is there already some big comprehensive list of social policies that provably worked to reduce death rate during the covid-19 pandemic across the board with environmental factors normalized out?

I thought we were still in the middle of this experiment, but i'd love to see some data if it exists.

Yes. Things like closing borders and instituting quarantine for returning travelers, using high testing numbers, contact tracing, and short lockdowns, to ensure covid-zero.

Also, Australia is ridiculously dense. Most of our pop is in capital cities. it's big and empty.

> We’ll have to see what happens once the country is adequately vaccinated.

You might have missed this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391548

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