Comment by geraldyo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geraldyo | Hacker News Reader

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2. How would we possibly know? The fact is in the short term, open measures are not working. Can you expand on the immense economic and human costs? Are you accounting for the economic and human impact from the millions of deaths from failed open measures? I agree there is a cost, my view is that the deaths also carry a great cost to those close to the dead, which extend the economic and human costs from the deaths themselves.

3. I noticed that, couldn't figure out how to edit, it may not be possible? But yes, I'm aware it's just this subgroup, I just still think it's very careless to brush them off. Yes, statistics, etc... But there is a human element being lost, imo.

4. I agree, sadly. At this point it seems people agreed that COVID is inevitable. But that made me think of another point these articles/advocates for open measures often gloss over: what are the LONG term effects of COVID? Is it even possible to know?

5. Yet another: what about new variants? Open measures = more people get COVID = more likely to have new variants, obviously not as linearly, but you see my point, I hope.

In any case, I'm not saying there aren't awful costs for strict measures, but the devastation brought from COVID is something I hope does not come to anyone's family/friends. And even more so about this article, just feels like a lot of complaining about wearing a mask, being in a room alone, learning over zoom, all things that are fairly inconsequential

Economic costs. For example, the US deficit in 2020 and 2021 is 3T dollars each, compared with .5T - 1T of previous years. This will weigh on generations to come. We are on the brink of completely wrecking the US economy and the US dollar.

Human costs. Spike in suicides, spike in drug overdoses, spike in crime, people disconnected from family and friends, spike in people abandoning their jobs, a generation of kids lost a year of school, mass delayed medical procedures, mass missed childhood vaccinations. Does any of this matter?

Some places (Austria, Canada, France, Germany, NY, CA) are openly forcing complete isolation from society of unvaccinated people (no work, no trade, no travel). The unvaccinated population is not negligible, 10-25%. This is on the level of crimes against humanity, surpassing even WW2 casualty lists. Is this a cost we should consider, or we'll simply dispense of 10-25% of the population with no second thoughts?

The cold reality is that we simply do not have the technology to stop the virus. We are using sand bags to fight a tsunami. Perhaps we can delay it for some time in a few select areas, but the wave is going to raise either way.

Yes, I agree that these costs all exist. What were those same costs where countries kept open measures, on top of the resulting deaths? I honestly can't even find that information, but it seems that it's not being factored in most calculations. It's always "open is bad because increased deaths/infections, strict is bad for the economy". I gather from the world data that the open measures have a comparable economic and human cost, on top of and also from the increased infection rate.

I think your final point is the sad truth, but not because of not having the technology: people, especially in the US, are ultra individualistic. If people thought of the folks around them as real humans with lives that would be devastated by such a disease, we wouldn't have a need for any government measures. But people decided not to wear masks. People decided not to quarantine properly. People decided to write articles such as this, condemning the few institutions that (for whatever reason) are doing even the bare minimum. Appreciate your thoughts.

Forgot to address your point about the imposed isolation: this is a response to the person's individual liberty to choose not to get the vaccine. Yes, you have the freedom to choose to be unvaccinated, but you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

If your immuno-compromised neighbor gets COVID because you chose not to get vaccinated and are not in isolation, then they are paying the consequences of your decisions. I agree, they should not be ignored, but they should be educated on the importance of public health measures. Sadly, again though, some people just cannot and will not be convinced to care about their neighbors.

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