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Comment by alphabettsy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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