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Comment by williamtwild | Hacker News Reader

what effective actions are being ignored?

A reduction of obesity. Living a healthy lifestyle has many benefits beyond Covid.

Stop fat shaming! /s

Everything from filter boxes to masks that are effective. It starts with acknowledging that Covid is airborne and then going from there

Universal N95 and at-home rapid test distribution

Many countries (Japan, India) have used therapeutics prior to hospitalization. In the states therapeutics have been demonized as "horse medicine" and people have been told to say home and take NyQuil until their oxygen levels are so critically low they have to be admitted.

There has been a myopic focus on vaccines and they have performed by any estimation terribly. Any questioning this no matter how qualified are instantly demonized as anti-science. How many lives could have been saved if all options were on the table? Instead we see censorship on a level most of us never even thought possible.

Japan relied on near universal masking (voluntary too, no mandate) and high vaccine take up. Current approved pharmaceuticals are remdesivir etc. refer:

https://www.pmda.go.jp/english/about-pmda/0002.html

If you imply ivermectin has some part in japans strategy, I encourage you to read this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/11/27/no-ivermect...

You're creating a strawman. I only said that our government has demonized self applied therapeutics and pushed vaccines only. There is no scientific reason to demonize therapeutics the way the institutions in the US have done. And what about the censorship? How can open debate happen when qualified individuals are shut down? It's all very anti-science and anti-democratic.

What are the therapeutics to which you refer?

How is the universal masking working out for Japan lately?

Not great. But apparently neither are their special unnamed therapeutics.

Getting vaccinated and moving on with life.

Did getting vaccinated mean other people let you move on with life? I've had three shots, restaurants are currently closed where I am, I have to wait in line to do groceries because there is some kind of capacity restriction, and old women cower when I walk by them on the street (maybe that always happened). I have moved on long ago but people around me, or at least those with a monopoly on violence, are still hysterical

The problem is that we live in an interconnected graph (society), and while you have done your part by getting vaccinated, others haven’t. And the people evaluating the evidence (experts) make recommendations to keep things closed.

Why are you not upset at the other group members who are not carrying their part of the workload? Unless we can remove them from society, the decisions have to be made including their behaviors and risk factors.

If the vaccine works, and you are vaccinated, then why should you care what someone else does with their body? The vast majority of every western population is vaccinated, the number with COVID antibodies at this point is even higher still.

Do you really want to round up and kill anyone that doesn't comply with what you deem to be what they should do?

Because those making the decision are tasked with looking out for the health of everyone. I personally don't care what other people do until it impacts more than just their own health - which is why I'm also against drunk driving. Yes, I consider people's choice to not get vaccinated up there, morally, with drunk driving.

And no, obviously I don't think people should be rounded up and killed for not complying. But you are also aware your comment was not in good faith and not intended to advance the conversation, so the less said about your second paragraph the better.

I was serious about the second paragraph. It was not in bad faith... because that is what tends to happen after mass incarcerations, mass killing. There are people out there who genuinely have expressed those intentions. It's not funny, it's not ironic, and it can and has happened in history.

And no, it doesn't compare to drunk driving... Why, because the vaccinated still carry and transmit COVID, so that effectively means that everyone who goes outside is in your mind doing the same thing as drunk driving.

Where are the mass incarcerations right now? I’m mostly familiar w/ the US, but are people being arrested in droves for not wearing masks or following C19 guidelines? I agree that mass incarceration is a pre-req but don’t think it leads to genocide, while not seeing much mass incarceration.

The risks from C19 go beyond infecting other people. The only way to claim individuality would be if the unvaccinated were willing to bear the cost of hospitalization as well as accept lowest priority for health care. And if optional surgeries, like knee replacements, weren’t put aside to give care to someone unvaccinated.

That’s the problem with saying we all make our own choices and are “independent”. The reality is we are so interconnected that sometimes people can’t get their own way when required to protect the broader group.

You mean besides Australia, Austria and China for starters.

Also, if you are breathing, you can be a carrier for COVID. Are you saying you don't go outside among other people?

Beyond this, you specifically a few reptiles back are calling for mass incarceration. It's not okay, the drunk driving analogy is a false equivalence that applies to the vaccinated as well as unvaccinated.

UK is already completely dropping all restrictions. CDC finally recognizes natural immunity. Nearly everyone in the US has either been vaccinated or has COVID. All further restrictions, vaccine mandates or vaccine passports are FUD and anti science.

> And the people evaluating the evidence (experts) make recommendations to keep things closed.

This is definitely different than my view of what society should be. Other people don't know my priorities, and should not be able to dictate them to me. A representative government (not experts) is some proxy for people's overall priorities, and strong constitutional limits on government power should ensure that democracy doesn't devolve to "two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner". "Experts" should be a data point, and have no direct control over what people can do

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