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Comment by synquid | Hacker News Reader

I wish that people who say things like "learn to live with it" actually meant it. We do indeed need to learn from the past two years, and that will result in something quite different from pretending that we're still in 2019.

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One lesson learnt is, shutting down the borders does not help. It can at most delay the inevitable by a few weeks. If you don't have a vaccine ready to be administered to all your population in 3-4 weeks, shutting down the borders is pointless.

Another one, politicians need to stop using science for propaganda. The mistrust in scientists has cost us dearly.

"weeks" is off by two orders of magnitude. Two years into the pandemic, less than 1% of the population in Taiwan and New Zealand have been infected. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Shutting down borders works if and only if you're successfully implementing an elimination strategy. In North America and Europe it was pretty pointless, but it was absolutely useful in New Zealand, Australia, China and Hong Kong.

I'm quite sure it will be much more like 2019 than you think. People will learn to live with the deaths if it continues as it was in 2020/21. Prolong the lock downs more and most of the population will go crazy.

I'd argue a lot of people have already gone crazy and will do anything to avoid going back to normal and letting people live their lives. The obsession with the need for a "new normal" amongst some is really terrifying. There needs to be some targeted campaign to "deprogram" the people that have become obsessed with covid and make them move on. I'm serious about this, if we just pretend it will get better on it's own, there will continue to be these lingering theatrics - I don't want to see the world end up like air travel did.

No improvements to ventilation standards? No changes to work culture that encourages "working through it" instead of briefly isolating?

Like we have massive infrastructure in place to prevent diseases like cholera from being a problem. We should do more to mitigate airborne transmission.

Most of the hospitals near me are near capacity for ICU beds due to people refusing a free vaccination.

If I have a heart attack or car accident tomorrow, I’m at serious risk of not getting a bed and treatment.

If the anti-vac morons weren’t taking up so much space at the hospitals, I’d agree. But with numbers the way they are, “return to normal” is a pipe dream.

People have different situations. I'm severely immunocomprimised - while I get and understand that the world can't remain locked down indefinitely for a small segment of the population, I'm absolutely going to advocate for my own survival, and that doesn't make me "crazy" or that I need "deprogramming". It's not irrational to not want widespread transmission of a virus that has a 20% CFR for people like me.

It's unfortunate for you, I understand. But where do we draw the line? I'm severely allergic to birch tree pollen, should I start advocating to burn down all the birch trees in the world?

CFR?

Case fatality rate.

Even with the spike in covid, death rates per capita are lower now than when I was born. The world has never been safer!!

Lol find me one place in the United States where there are “lockdowns”.

Lots of places outside the US. Nobody said a word about the US.

Why do you mention the US when the article is about Ireland?

“Great! Other countries need to follow suit.” Reading 101.

It always bothered me growing up, the lack of elbow-operable doorknobs and other measures for what would seem to be basic hygiene in public spaces. Cities are disease kettles, it never was appropriate to design them with the same low hygiene standards as our homes.

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