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Comment by RubenSandwich | Hacker News Reader

This author is asserting 5 years of lockdown but gives no reasons why specifically 5 years. They talk about the possibility of no vaccine working and herd immunity not working if the immune window is too small, etc. But how does that equate to 5 years of lockdown? Why 5 years and not just say indefinitely then? Am I missing something?

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I think the point of the title is just to get your attention.

That's a nice way of saying "the title is clickbait."

AKA, fear based clickbait? Probably the worst kind of clickbait, when people are already scared and anxious.

Also I don't think the global economy can afford 5 year lockdown, it will cause starvation among with other cause of death, which might end up 'killing' more than covid-19

No idea why it would be 5 years. But a lockdown would not result in starvation. Why would it? We "only" lock down social life (bad enough with all kinds of negative impacts on people, society and economy), but the food supply won't brake down. Why would it? All necessary things will be kept open.

I think the point was not that food distribution would fail, but that the more disadvantaged slice of the population would not have money to buy food anymore.

Shut down the pubs and focus on the important stuff.

It's already surprising how much of the activity turned out to be "non-essential". And we can have oil at half-price to do the essential. :D

> All necessary things will be kept open.

Worldwide, that's not to be taken for granted. Here in Russia, the police is sometimes stopping agricultural workers from planting their crops because of the lockdowns. (Source in Russian: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4311038)

We've had a few incidents of idiocy in the far reaches of the state but it soon gets dealt with.

Worse thing is, starvation will be the lesser concern if it were to happen. People won't let themselves die of starvation, they will kill for food. Food scarcity will be nothing compared to the ensuing violence.

I don't get the "starvation" point. As far as I know, nowhere in the world does "lockdown" mean "farmers aren't allowed to tend to their fields and animals". I live in Austria, which has been in "lockdown" for almost six weeks now. The shops are full of fresh food: Both food production and distribution are working exactly as before. There are non-staple foods where production is endangered -- asparagus and strawberries, I think -- because they depend on obscenely cheap foreign labor, which will now be flown in and given special exemptions. But even without that, we wouldn't starve without asparagus and strawberries.

Could you explain what kind of lockdown model you are thinking of that would prohibit production or distribution of food?

Maybe it’s taking a page from the or riffing on the infamous soviet bloc 5-year plans, since those were such great successes in planning ahead.

It’s a finger in the air estimate, based on “a vaccine is 12-18 months away”, expanded to “2 years for widespread deployment”, padded a bit for contingency.

As an intentionally pessimistic estimate, to counteract all the over-optimistic estimates, I think it makes sense.

Would you prefer it as “5 years until a return to normality”?

But the argument "These estimates are way to optimistic; don't pay attention. Here's my equally ridiculous pessimistic estimate. Pay attention!" carries no weight. It's that annoying person who always stakes out the contrarian position just because.

So the headline and thesis have been successful in getting us discussing the situation, but the content is weak with no evidence from a source with zero credibility.

I see what you mean, but I’m not sure how it could be improved.

For me personally, just saying “prepare for a much longer lockdown” wouldn’t be better; without a concrete number it makes much less of an impact.

With a concrete number in there, even if it’s very clearly just a guesstimate with huge error bars, it makes you think about what the effects might be in the real world, which I think is helpful (in fact it’s the very point of the whole post).

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