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Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

> Impending global lockdown? You might be well served from a lot less time online and more time with your fellow humans or nature.

Please stop trying to gaslight people. I too would have thought such a thing impossible in 2019/early 2020, but we saw that that is not beyond our leaders. Many people in the world have a lot of trauma from the government-imposed lockdowns and subsequent seizing of basic human freedoms. Unfortunately, one is often unable to mention this trauma without being dismissed as a kook, which you are doing to OP.

Please stop. Global lockdowns are now a thing that has happened and -- given the right circumstances -- may happen again. Given how recent it was, people should be cut some slack, even if you perceive them to be hyper-vigilant.

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Restrictions of civil liberties in times of crisis aren’t new, see nearly every war.

There’s a very significant difference between “the coming global lockdown” and global lockdowns have happened and might happen again under the right circumstances.

There is no gaslighting, a term massively overused and often wrongly, in questioning and pointing out the paranoia in the former statement.

The person I was replying to seems to have a very dim view of the current and future. They reference the increase in “deaths of despair” and I think that online negativity only provide further fuel.

Based on HN's demographics, i'm guessing the poster is American.

In America, war (as defined by a loss in civil liberties) has not happened for over 80 years (true wars must be actually... declared by Congress). The various military engagements since then have not arisen to the same level of mobilization as an actual war.

Nevertheless, COVID was not a war, and the impositions were not made after a majority vote of Congress. They were just... imposed. That is sufficiently different. Claiming that COVID lockdowns were justified because similar reductions in civil liberties have happened in war, despite COVID sharing no characteristics with a war, is the epitome of gaslighting. A pandemic does not justify the mass removal of civil liberties. Honestly, when it's been done in war, it's always been seen as a necessary evil, whereas most lockdown supporters instead seem to view the lockdowns, as you seem to do, as an unalloyed good.

This won’t be productive. You’re making a strawman argument.

I said there are other circumstances where civil liberties were restricted and war was a common one, not that they were justified or anything else you’ve said. Civil liberties have been restricted in past pandemics as well.

I’m not going to debate the rest of what you said because it’s a response to an argument that I didn’t make, but it’s largely wrong.

> Civil liberties have been restricted in past pandemics as well.

Not universally throughout the country, no. There has been none.

I can't take seriously anyone who claims the COVID response was anything other than unprecedented

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is...

There is nothing unprecedented about COVID. It is not the deadliest pandemic by any account. We simply had different attitudes toward civil liberties and the role of government in the past. The Spanish flu saw minimal national level policy and isolated (time and space) restrictions in particular places, along with sensible policies (like outdoor classrooms) meant to ameliorate the worst aspects. The sort of coercion during COVID was unprecedented. It is not something that we should accept.

"The United States lost 675,000 people to the Spanish flu in 1918-more casualties than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined."

0.5% of the US population died due to the Spanish Flu.

Look, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't know that you would actually prefer 1918 policies if the same scenario were to be replayed in the present day.

Bit of a difference between "global lockdowns can happen" and "we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming". Could a lockdown happen again? Sure, if there were another pandemic. But "we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming" is ridiculous new-world-order conspiracy bullshit.

The only surprising or novel thing about the "global lockdowns" of 2020 was the degree of international cooperation on the matter, and even that - positive though it was - left a lot to be desired. It certainly didn't signify any kind of ominous freedom-hating shadow government. Pandemic-driven quarantines, crisis-driven restrictions on movement etc are hardly unprecedented in the 20th century. "Basic human freedoms" are subject to restriction when lives are at stake, that's just a fact of life. Londoners in 1940 weren't even allowed to turn the light on.

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