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Comment by SV_BubbleTime | Hacker News Reader

Beyond the pale is if we started over with Covid XL right now, it would go almost the exact same way again.

Everyone would take up the exact same position they had, there will be a little attrition either side. Rabble on the internet all day long.

FEAR was made into a VIRTUE. The good people were afraid and did what they were supposed to do. The bad people vote wrong and we don’t listen to them anyhow. Same thing if we play it back.

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There have been numerous statements along the lines of "we didn't crack down hard enough". Which would likely translate to more restrictions requiring less evidence. I'm sure the opposite side would aim for greater defiance.

The problem with both is we're talking "sides" and not "what should we do based on what we know?" There were far too many politicians involved, and they were all more concerned with appearing to be doing something on our behalf than actually acting in our best interests.

Don’t mistake that those are my opinions on how things should, just what was observed.

Consider why fear was made into a virtue. You said it, “our best interests“, then look at the lens of Covid, and define that. Who got to say with that exactly was? Can you see any scenario where “Considering who the virus effects, doing nothing special is our best long term approach” would have come out of the government and media?

Depending on who said it and how it was said, it could certainly have happened. It's basically what we did with the bird flu years before, and somewhat with SARS.

There may be an argument that if Covid was either more deadly or less deadly it would have had less of an effect.

Disagreements between opposing sides regarding the appropriate pandemic response wouldn't have been resolved by focusing on what we know. Outside of a few fringe groups, most people agreed on what we knew. The disagreements stemmed more from differing values and priorities. And that's not even a problem which needs to be solved, it's just a reality of life in open societies.

> Outside of a few fringe groups, most people agreed on what we knew.

Mine Safety Health Administration advice was to stay home when sick and then business as usual. I was on mine sites when others were locked at home double-masked with fear. Nobody was masked on mine sites because it restricts visibility and is unsafe. Do you think MSHA is a fringe group?

OSHA tried to mandate masks and shots. It was ridiculous to watch the disparity in responses and fear.

MSHA sites are dangerous yet are safe. The OSHA approach was incorrect.

In my observations, the people who are most afraid of Covid and most likely to “take it serious” are those who are white collar and privileged enough to not have to do hard labor. People who do shit for a living that can get them mailed or killed wrote Covid off a long time ago.

It takes an incredible amount of privilege to support the Covid mitigations. Consider that not a single person who enacted them missed a single paycheck because of the mandates. I imagine that holds true to most of the people cheering those mandates on or calling them “minor inconveniences”. A lot of privilege needs to be checked here.

Reminds me that “there are no starving people in Africa with gluten disorders”.

"Outside of a few fringe groups, most people agreed on what we knew". It’s not my opinion, we "know" very little. We think we know because we read things on internet, we discuss with friends/etc but most of it is b.llsh.t as when we thought lobotomy and electrical shocks were sane and efficient treatments.

What fatality rate would a pandemic have to have in order for you to agree to the kinds of public health measures that were taken for COVID-19? 10% ? 20% ? 60% ?

What kinds of unknowns would justify, in your mind, those sorts of policies?

Fatality rate is the wrong point. Fatality rate among specific groups is what matters. In effect young people are at virtually no risk of covid, there is no reason to lock down kids for 2 years. Experts and authorities are running an ongoing farce.

You're dodging their question. You don't have to agree with a number they picked at random, but is there any fatality rate where you would believe that the actions taken by the government in response to covid were justified?

In that scenario, the alternative is locking up the at-risk population, which would once again require a trade off of costs vs. benefits.

How about letting the at risk people decide for themselves what to do? Not a lot of old people want to die alone isolated in a nursing home with no visitation…. Which is exactly what we did. Let we tried to saved grandma only to (literally) kill her from loneliness and isolation.

Absolutely disgusting how many so-called “smart rational” people dismissed it… as if Covid was literally the only thing that mattered and anybody who pointed it out was nothing more than a Fox News watching selfish asshole.

To this day people will defend letting people die alone in a hospital or nursing home with only some crappy video conference as a substitute for real human contact.

It takes a special kind of monster to support the crap we did to the elderly. There are a worryingly large set of people I used to respect that turned out to be monsters.

While I agree it's horrific, I would urge you to reconsider whether or not people who supported such policies were monsters.

That's exactly the dehumanizing language that was used about people who were skeptical of lockdowns and other dissidents.

I think they were normal people who were overcome with fear and placed too much trust in authority. Weak-minded, perhaps, but that doesn't make them monsters.

It’s called the banality of evil. Monsters don’t have green fur and big teeth. They are ordinary people carrying out devastating policies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

> How about letting the at risk people decide for themselves what to do?

So I ask again, what would the circumstances have to be for "letting the at risk people decide for themselves" to be an unacceptable policy? What fatality level, transmission mechanism or whatever would have to be present for you to accept that some sort of centralized public health policy was required?

I’m not sure there should be a threshold. If the threat is real, like ebola, people will naturally adjust their behavior. If policy makers have to artificially restrict individual rights, it indicates that policies are being implemented based on a single variable (covid lives saved), to the detriment of all other important considerations. This slippery slope should not be underestimated.

> If the threat is real, like ebola,

1M americans died of COVID-19. That's a real threat, too. So the difference with Ebola is not really to do with the "reality" of the threat, but the manner and rapidity of death, along with the fatality rate.

> If policy makers have to artificially restrict individual rights, it indicates that policies are being implemented based on a single variable

I do not see how you can draw this conclusion.

> Not a lot of old people want to die alone isolated in a nursing home with no visitation…. Which is exactly what we did. Let we tried to saved grandma only to (literally) kill her from loneliness and isolation.

I agree with you, but we did worse actually.

Some states actually sequestered covid positive patients, and covid suspected cases at nursing homes with highly at risk populations.

We know who covid kills: People with advanced age and multiple comorbidities. The same type of folks you find at nursing homes.

Those governors that did that - in my mind they are guilty of murder.

For those of you that want to fact check this, I will save you the trouble.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/cuomo-sent-6300-covid-19-patie...

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/9000-covid-patie...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/five-governors-cuomo...

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/06/16/michiga...

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/04/whitmer-orders...

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/05/murphy-administration-ign...

Also, here are the cumulative deaths by age group in the USA so far:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

Precisely which groups would be isolated from "young people", and which would not, and on what basis? Do you judge the 44k deaths in the 40-49 cohort (likely parents of older children, along with teachers of many children) to be acceptable? Do you believe that an increase in their death count due to leaving children unrestricted would also be acceptable? Just how would not locking down kids work?

You can start comparing with _serious_ threats like Rabies (100%), aids (90%), smallpox (95%), tetanus (50%) Bubonic plague (40–60%). Yes in _that_ case I think maybe drastic policies would be justified.

Thanks for actually answering the question.

So what do you think your threshold is? If a new airborne transmitted disease with a 30% kill rate showed up, would centralized public health policies be OK?

What would you accept?

I'm inclined to side with the 1-3% mortality rate that came with COVID-19.

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