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Comment by grebc | Hacker News Reader

I’ve had a pet theory for a long time that society loses it’s collective mind every 10ish years or so, usually starting with a good reason, but the outcome is mass stupidity followed by mass forgetting leading to a new cycle. War on terror, GFC, crypto, covid, now AI. Although the cycle does seem to be shortening.

Also we’re just so damn stupid to learn from history, or even just people 10 years older than us, that we repeat the cycle.

And there I guess is where saying a new sucker is born every minute is from.

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I have a more sympathetic view, I thought covid could have been much worse. Of course there were silly moments like the existential panic from a toilerpaper shortage but it seems like the vast majority of people acted responsibly and kept their heads over the long haul. In the meantime, we developed revolutionary vaccines that solved the problem.

There's the lingering societal PTSD to consider, but I think most of the challenge in the aftermath are latent issues that preexisted covid and it just brought them to the surface. I think our world a couple decades from now will be stronger than it would have been in a universe where covid never happened, and actually has a better chance at dealing with the next covid-level threat. Perhaps that is this, in a way.

Covid proved that a healthy looking society is not always so healthy, and I think it works in reverse too. The outcome of the upcoming election will tell us something about how far we have to go.

This might be Australia specific, but I think a lot of the movement restrictions were unnecessary. And long term damaging to not just adults but there’s a whole cohort of kids/teenagers who just missed out on certain things and we’re patting ourselves on the back we survived?

The places that needed restrictions such as hospitals & nursing homes still got covid by & large. We didn’t necessarily need to close down the whole show.

I’ve had my jabs, also had covid multiple times. I’m not a disbeliever, I just think the collective reaction was completely OTT.

Kids mostly forgot and adapted back. It is adult, mostly men, who just cant get over fear of vaccines, injury of having to do something a little uncomfortable for someone else.

Trivialising this to fear of vaccines misses the point. The lack of human communication being the new normal, cut friendships and shattered communities are the real killer here. Especially for ones that didn’t have a lot of social life or family to begin with.

Almost every single meetup group in Northern Virginia was completely destroyed and did not grow back. I watched as dozens of local meetups, several running for many years, disappeared over night. I managed one as well and my crew held on to ours for as long as we could. We managed to keep it running online for several more years. But the social damage was done. After running the thing for 12 years, not being able to find anywhere that was willing to host us in-person again, and all of us original organizers having moved to different cities, there was nobody willing to take over.

And the massive damage this did to children's education. I think people who didn't have a child in the school system at the time might not understand how poorly the schools functioned during that time.

My child had two intelligent and supportive parents, including a stay-at-home mother, and it was still rough. Many of her classmates just flat-out lost a year of education. There's still obvious effects on her cohort years later.

The lack of human connection has been a trend for many decades now, covid just accelerated it all at once. Not like there was much choice, lots of people died, we did what we had to.

The communities that did exist were always running on fumes, basically only existing due to inertia. When the inertia was cut, even if only for a couple weeks in some places, they were done. That’s it.

The social damage has been here, and we’ve been zombie-ing our way through it. Covid just let the undead stay dead, and turns out we can’t revive it.

> Trivialising this to fear of vaccines misses the point.

We had concerted anti-vaccine campaign. Literally trying to make you feel afraid of vaccines or feel sorry for kids that might get them. And yes, it was fear spread by men who fancy themselves manly men.

> The lack of human communication being the new normal, cut friendships and shattered communities are the real killer here.

I am particularly salty about this one. Because the exact same ideological and political groups who are throwing complete temper tamptrum over lockdown are the ones who want women to be stay at home moms. I did not, lockdowns were easier, you had a lot more communication and everybody was in the same position so you could realate.

Lockdowns were an easy mode compare to the thing they want force women into.

I live in a relatively wealthy town and most people here had a pretty safe series of lockdowns (bit hair-raising for me as a freelancer but ehh). We are collectively massively pro-vaccine; I know only two people who loudly resisted (and one of them nearly died in hospital from COVID).

But I can tell you that our collective sense of (unusually strong) community has taken six years since the first lockdown (four and a half years since the end of mask restrictions) to truly return to what it was before.

So even in this quite cushioned place I think we didn't really return to a sense of proper ordinary community positivity for quite a long time (it helps that we had a pretty great summer). Last summer things still felt very disjointed.

Kids, young adults, I can assure you, resent what happened and how poorly we managed it.

In other towns where community was weak, a lot of damage has been done, and you can see that in how little collective spirit there is in dealing with new challenges. Even around where I live, things like reduced footfall and contribution shortages in community services have been used as a pretext to cut them entirely. We have done damage to young people by simply deleting community things we benefited from that they no longer will.

Of course kids and young adults resent it: a part of their childhood and formative years sucked ass.

But the resentment isn’t towards the handling, it’s towards the reality. It sucks covid happened and it shouldn’t have. But there’s nothing that could have been done to save their youth; it was already ruined for those years.

I mean, if the lockdown didn’t happen and instead a few million more people died, would they have preferred that? I doubt it, especially considering such a situation would inevitably result in even stricter restrictions going forward. After all, lockdown was a reaction. If you make the thing it’s reacting to even bigger, even more of a problem, then… well… the reaction will be more extreme.

> But the resentment isn’t towards the handling,

Oooooh yes it is. They are so mad at how badly we handled it. And they are right to be.

> I mean, if the lockdown didn’t happen

That isn't their complaint. Their complaint is not the first one (except that in our case in the UK it was idiotically weeks late and major sporting events happened; the older ones understand how stupid that was). It's the fact that we subsequently undermined it, and then did it again. And again. And again.

I kind of touched on this. Lockdown was a reaction. If it didn’t happen, then the thing it’s reacting to would have been worse, and then lockdown would have been worse.

No, but the point is not that lockdown happened.

Kids are not angry that there was a lockdown; they understand the science of it (in many cases better than adults) because it was a pretty rich topic of conversation in their tedious remote lessons.

They are angry that we fucked up the first lockdown (rolling it out too late after demonstrably obviously bad decisions like letting major sporting events continue, followed by utterly stupid measures that undermined it after it was lifted). They understand there had to be another winter lockdown; they thought we undermined that by having stupid, arbitrary "zones" when another national lockdown would have been safer.

The older ones also IMO pretty correctly feel resentful being stuck individually in their expensive rooms at universities when they are not a high risk population and could at least have been quarantined collectively or just provided distance learning without wasting massive amounts of money on accommodation.

Believe me when I say, young people have absolutely got the receipts. They know what happened, why it happened, and who fucked up.

Millions of people die because of covid in Australia? Is that what you’re suggesting the outcome would’ve been if we didn’t lockdown?

That’s basically all the elderly or an entire cohort, I’m really struggling to believe that.

Sorry, I’m saying this from a US perspective, where we had 1 million or so covid deaths. We also had lockdowns, but it was state dependent.

The point is: if the lockdown didn’t happen, would the outcome be better? Remember, it’s not like Covid would go away. It’s not like we get teleported to an alternate dimension in which everything is okay.

Lockdown was a reaction.

I think people would like for Covid to have never happened, and they think that if lockdown didn’t happen then it would be just like before Covid. No, it wouldn’t be, it would still be a new world. That much was inevitable.

That the path we took was the only path is where I draw issue. It was a choice to lockdown, I think it was a bad one. Covid killed even with lockdowns & vaccines. Birdflu is apparently ravaging Australian bird populations, just because it hasn't jumped species yet doesn't mean it won't... maybe we should lockdown just in case right?

I'm not in a position of power to make the calls as if something like this was to happen again, I'd only caution we look the prior experience to be a guide for what comes instead of pretending outbreaks haven't happened before.

We locked down AFTER people started dying, not before!

I'm saying that if did not lock down, then there would have been millions more deaths, and then an even more severe lockdown would occur. It's an inevitability, that's just how life and the world works sometimes. Sometimes bad things happen and they're just bad, and there's no way to make them good. Covid was one of those things. Covid was bad, a lot of people died, and that's that. There's no alternate reality in which Covid exists and everything is fine. That's a dream. A nice dream, but a dream.

In the U.S. we hardly had what you’d call “lockdowns”, more like government suggestions that you shouldn’t expose yourself or your loved ones to a potentially deadly virus. Restaurant goers, teachers, commuters, and others wanted to avoid sickness and death, so many organically avoided activities that would leave them exposed.

The US response to covid was much less locking down than Australia.

If you look at the "deaths by covid" graphs for 2020 and 2021, Australia barely rates a blip. Meanwhile, the US has 850 000 deaths in those first two years.

Kids here don't resent covid happened. If they resent it at your place, it is on adults. But of course it is not exactly the same as before, people adapted and carried some adaptation with them. I work a lot from home and I am not giving it up unless I really have to for example.

For years now, kids go to school as before, they go to do sports as before and those whose parents dont allow unlimited gaming meet each other in person.

> In other towns where community was weak, [...] things like reduced footfall and contribution shortages in community services have been used as a pretext to cut them entirely

That has nothing to do with covid or covid handling. This is about your community not wanting to pay community services regardless of covid.

> If they resent it at your place, it is on adults.

Isn’t that exactly what I said? I mean, who else would it be on?

> That has nothing to do with covid or covid handling. This is about your community not wanting to pay community services regardless of covid.

No, it’s the result of cynical regional government exploiting how long communities took to bounce back from a series of mismanaged lockdowns to claw back some money. But that is not the point. The point is it is another reason young people resent how adults handled COVID and direct consequences. These systems needed time to recover footfall. Instead adults fucked it up gor kids.

Ah yes, lets throw in casual sexism in with your victim blaming.

After being burned by the first wave, Australia locked down hard and early for subsequent waves. It was the correct thing to do.

As a result, they had relatively short periods of lockdown compared to other countries, such as the UK, which had comprehensive vaccination but dithered about going into lockdown.

IIRC Melbourne had the longest lockdown in the world.

The lockdown was not spread equally. There were enough people just ignoring it.

Some having midnight parties because it was extra exciting to subvert the curfew, with incidental spreading of COVID.

Some were outright trying to have "herd immunity" parties to deliberately spread it.

And hence the official lockdown kept having to be extended.

Fuck I hated those people.

For a city, yes - seven or eight on again / off again hard lockdowns with a total of 262 days(?) or so of stay in place isolation.

At the state level Western Australia continuously self isolated for something like 18 months with a 14 day quarantine period for anybody wanting to enter for longer than it takes to turn a truck around.

Very different types of lockdown for sure.

It did. That’s why I said Australia was burned at first and changed their policy.

(Actually the longest lockdown in Melbourne was the second one, but it was only a couple of weeks after the first, I misremembered it as being one continuous lockdown.)

Subsequent lockdowns were shorter than elsewhere in the world because they reacted faster.

That’s the thing about large scale public health interventions like that, if it works it will look like you overreacted and you still won’t know if it’s because it worked or if it was never as bad as was feared.

It's my understanding that there's some room to be skeptical about the value of the lockdowns after a certain point and costs are undeniable. But for a period of time hospitals were basically overrun and medical staff were pushed way past the limit. To do any less would have been utter disregard for human life and the people who were trying to keep us alive. There were huge outbreaks in specific areas because people decided to ignore it and have a wedding or a party. So many videos of rebellious people on social media only to follow up with another video a few weeks later gasping for breath in a hospital room.

Most people didn't do that, and the people on the front line held it together despite the insanity. With vaccines brought the opportunity to open up more safely, and it seems like many places found a responsible balance in doing that based on available hospital capacity. And it seems like others took a more cautious approach and it is a fair question whether it went too far.

At the time:

1. no one knew that much about COVID. Even the authorities and experts!

2. It was a respiratory thing kinda like a cold or flu that killed some people. And then more people. And of course the news hyped that. So many theories and crackpots and experts and armchair-experts spouting all kinds of shit. It was tiring to open a web browser.

3. No vaccine. No vaccine for at least a year. You just have to wait for this tidal wave of sickness to hit you and everyone around you.

4. I recall seeing on the news what was happening in Italy. March 2020, something like 600 people a day dying of covid. Italy's hospitals were being overrun with covid patients. It wasn't obvious who needed treatment and help to survive the night and who could just go home and be (quite) miserable for a bit. There were so many unknowns! Hospital overrun resulted in not just covid patients dying but also anyone else who needed to go to the emergency department was affected to some degree. Partly because the system didn't have the capacity and partly because you'd catch covid on top of the reason you were there. The systems were choking.

I was in Melbourne the whole time, through every lockdown. Everyone has an opinion on whether it was the right thing to do, but for me, it was the society agreed upon (via authority and literal epidemiologist expert guidance) way to avoid killing a single digit % of the population.

Don't get me wrong, I was so fucking sick of being couped up... but I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I had've put some of my neighbours through that first wave harsh covid. I couldn't say as to whether it would have killed some of them.

Yes, many people had it rough in so many different ways. Bureaucratic shit was being made up almost day to day and people were also trying to scam it day to day. So it isn't surprising shit happened. Everyone has a story.

However, to say "We should have.." belies the fact that hindsight is easy and recollection is rose tinted.

Thank you.

1. They still don’t, you just lived through an episode though so you feel good because you survived and it feels like you’re prepared.

2. Cool story.

3. Another cool story.

4. Yeah. People lost their minds because people got sick and gate crashed the ED for what’s to mostly normal person a bad flu.

You’re proving my point that people lost their minds. Our hospitals are more up the creek presently. I can’t emphasise that enough. All the billions upon billions of dollars spent during & since on R&D, staff, resources, beds. PRESENTLY - no covid outbreak - thank the lord.

> You’re proving my point that people lost their minds.

Nah, minds were not lost. Italy simply had the bad luck to show us what "zero response" looked like.

> mostly normal person a bad flu

Nope.

Italy now: flu season for the year = ~3000 deaths

2020 Italy COVID for the year = ~74000 deaths

Bit of a difference. And that was with Italy also trying lockdowns and everything else once they realised how bad it was.

These people always insist on literally ignoring the body count. Drives me insane. It was so far removed from a normal flu and everyone in the medical field will tell you that emphatically yet here people are acting like it was nothing.

I never said there was less deaths, don’t put words in my mouth. I said for most regular people it’s likely a bad flu.

Did you know Italy’s death rate is still elevated, even 5/6 years after? Best go into lockdown since we don’t know why.

Millions and millions of people died, you know.

The biggest damage from COVID will be that it serves as a dry-run for future techno-faschist governance. The way in which the masses were not only willing to give up their own liberties but also pressure their peers into following the outright unconstitutional "emergency" laws was truly shocking.

I appreciate your optimistic view of it. What I got out of it was that Covid was a sort of dress rehearsal for a far worse outbreak that could eventually happen, and we (Americans) failed miserably.

It was a dress rehearsal alright, but for techono-fascist control of the poulation.

I agree with you but I think it happens every 4 years, not every 10.

I first started noticing this in the 90’s .. comp-sci grads were entering the industry with no clue whatsoever how to do software. (Of course its gotten worse since then, but I started noticing it in the 90’s..)

Everything old was thrown away as being archaic and obsolete - only the New Cool Shit™ mattered .. except nobody had ever done anything, properly, with the New Cool Shit™ - everything was still running on the old.

(Unix was dying, everyone was learning only Microsoft tech because “that was the future” ... until it wasn’t. Now, a majority of us are running 21st century Unix workstations given us .. by Apple, of all companies, which didn’t die so easily, after all..)

People entered the market not because they were truly interested in improving the world through computerization, but because they wanted the lifestyle afforded to them by a career in “Information Technology”, a nascent term back then which simply meant “career path for the budding materialists”. Trouble is, you can’t be materialistic with computers, they are almost entirely a spiritual device, which value is determined strictly and only on the decision of value made by humans. It is humans which decide the true value of all that physical hardware after all.

I think this cyclical amnesia is driven by materialist consumerism. People who take a less material approach to technology, tend to build stuff that lasts a long time.

The reason I think it happens in cycles of 4 years, is that is the average time it takes someone to enter the academic churn, and get spit out on the other end, ready to join the work force and do big things.

Or .. not.

  > amnesia is driven by materialist consumerism

anecdotally, but i see this everywhere not just in tech...

Journalists fear mongering and making sure the hoi polloi know their place as powerless pawns in a game they couldn't possibly understand is a constant.

They know what they're doing, the people who fund them know it and the people with half a working brain cell sooner or later hear someone like me and go 'oh, that explains it'.

It's much simpler than some mythical cycles - manufactured 'mass stupidity' is a conscious, deliberate, ongoing choice.

It used to be religious organizations, then it was newspapers, now its social media platforms. The playbook has been the same for thousands of years - nothing has changed.

To save everyone some time - the playbook is you're cattle, I'm shepherd. I'm master, you're slave. It's not anymore complicated.

The bit 'educated' people miss is that most people would love nothing more than to be the master (freedom they call it? American doublespeak). They dislike being slaves, not the concept of slavery.

Anyhoo.

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