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Comment by cxhandley | Hacker News Reader

Imagine this. Your driving down the freeway at 60 mph, accelerating at 30%. The car in front of you puts on the breaks. Before you react, you first gather your speed gun, check the deceleration rate of the car in front, then calculate based on your speed when you should put your breaks on. I'm all for the scientific approach, but in this particular instance, our survival instincts need to take precedence. Please, we need to stop peddling evidence based approaches for an exponential situation.

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Stepping on the breaks perfectly align with what we know scientifically. People think of science as something very narrow – but it's also evidence and rationality. What China and South Korea have done works. What other alternatives do we have?

What all the western countries have done. A half arsed lockdown, not like China's, without testing-and-tracing, not like South Korea's. There's still no evidence that a half arsed lockdown is unsuccessful and good reason to believe they generally aren't.

Except China and South Korea did different things.

Which is consistent with what I wrote.

Except for every time you hit the brakes, they heat up and stop working after some time.

There are significant economic impacts of the measures countries are taking, and the reality is people will only put up with quarantine so long. I think it makes sense to spend some time looking at the evidence because shutting everything down has significant negative impacts, both economically, and potentially with the spread of the virus if people give up on quarantine too soon. Given the evidence I have seen current measures make sense (at least in Ontario) but saying that we should just follow our survival instincts seems wrong, especially when everything is so distorted by the media.

It's an interesting analogy. Instinctual human response is in a way letting nature take over, and suspending analytical thinking. Govt policy making and intervention is more akin to latter, wouldn't you say?

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