Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

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> I was not concerned about COVID, I was concerned about authoritarian politicians introducing meaningless restrictions which should have no place in democracy and I was disgusted by majority of population which had no problem with them, I expected bigger disagreement despite having already very low meaning about society in general.

Pandemic prevention isn't a matter of authoritarianism vs democracy. Honestly, what do you think, the president of France imposed a lockdown because he likes the power trip? Maybe he does, or maybe, just maybe, there was an actual health crisis going on? Did you already forget the situation in Lombardy with the hospitals having to triage and leave people to die because they didn't have sufficient capacity? Did you forget the military hospitals being opened in parking lots to help with the load, and still tens of thousands of people dying, with draconian restrictions? Maybe you live in a country where things didn't get this bad - does it occur to you that maybe restrictions helped with that?

The majority of the world's population understood the risks and accepted restrictions. Nobody dis it for fun or because they like being restricted. Epidemic prevention measures are nothing new, lockdowns and quarantines have been proven to work for centuries.

> Honestly, what do you think, the president of France imposed a lockdown because he likes the power trip?

Yes, you hit the nail with little man Macron with his height complex and gerontophile fetish. He literally wanted to "make lives of unvaccinated MISERABLE" and "piss them off" to quote him, what a scientific rational non-authoritarian approach!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/macron-covid-vaccine-france-emm...

> The majority of the world's population understood the risks and accepted restrictions.

Majority of world's population proven once again it's stupid falling for whatever current thing MSM push down their throat.

There were countries like Sweden or Florida state which didn't fall for this mass hysteria, while it was clear already at that time it's inexcusable bad approach. I was afraid of COVID-19 maybe until April/May 2020, beyond that it was worldwide mass hysteria and fascist's power trips.

> There were countries like Sweden or Florida state which didn't fall for this mass hysteria, while it was clear already at that time it's inexcusable bad approach.

Sweden, that had multiple times the excess deaths of its neighbours and the economic slowdown? So their sacrifice of their own citizens served no one.

> Majority of world's population proven once again it's stupid falling for whatever current thing MSM push down their throat.

This is legitimately one of the stupidest takes possible. WHO, the authority on pandemics, and a bunch of local health authorities made recommendations and decisions, which were sometimes criticised by various media, but MSM right? It doesn't get more mainstream than Fox News and Daily Mail and they sure criticised all anti-pandemic measures, including masks, social distancing, lockdowns, vaccines, etc.

Flamewar comments will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

> Pandemic prevention isn't a matter of authoritarianism vs democracy. Honestly, what do you think, the president of France imposed a lockdown because he likes the power trip?

Unfortunately you are not really arguing your point from a position of strength. Tyrannical behavior was rampant and it was intentionally done. Speaking from my US perspective, at almost every political level from the federal government down to local community politicians the pandemic seemed to create tyrannical behavior, and most of the little tyrants were centered around a specific political party.

In my neighborhood of less than 200 homes, there is an “elected” board that controls the common areas (mainly arranges landscaping and maintenance). This board shut down access to common outdoor spaces (literally outdoor walking trails) and threatened to trespass residents if they used them. Democracy within the community would have resulted in those spaces being open. However, because the developer/builder controlled a voting majority, the board was stacked with people who followed the DNC playbook and refused to open the spaces for a full 8 months after our state lifted all restrictions and months after even the CDC knew that contracting the virus outside in sunshine alone was virtually impossible.

>lockdowns and quarantines have been proven to work for centuries

Quarantining the sick, yes. Quarantining the well…that was a bit unprecedented.

This pandemic provided the political class with some pretty solid data on just how far and how long the general public will allow itself to be dominated by tyrants. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the general public accepted tyranny willingly and this will not bode well for the future.

> Quarantining the sick, yes. Quarantining the well…that was a bit unprecedented.

The well.. for an airborne illness with up to two weeks incubation period and frequent lack of symptoms? Many were sick and spreading and had no way of knowing, hence the abundance of caution.

Ahh yes, the old “our intentions were good and virtuous even if the outcome of our actions was more harmful so we should be excused for our bad decisions” argument.

That might be a valid excuse if the tyrants didn’t double and triple down on bad policies even after it became apparent that lockdown policies were more hurtful than helpful to the populace. Ignorance is an excuse until you are no longer ignorant.

How was the outcome harmful? We got remote work widely accepted, very few people were denied treatment when they did get the disease, we rolled out a vaccine in less than a year, the stock market went up, and software engineering salaries reached all time highs.

Listen. We botched the response to the pandemic, and many people died that didn't need to die. But at no point was having to wear a mask to get your coffee at Starbucks even the tiniest inconvenience for any reasonable person.

> How was the outcome harmful?

> We botched the response to the pandemic, and many people died that didn’t need to die.

You answered your own question.

but…to add to your answer, the harm done to schoolage kids is becoming pretty well known. I’d rather not sacrifice our future again to protect a bunch of 80 year olds

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