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Comment by take_a_breath | Hacker News Reader

Based on what data?

As a start, the 21% of people with antibodies in NYC, indicating a 0.5% IFR.

Based on the drop in cases, ludicrously low infection and death rates, the need to balance healthcare system burden with a speedy development of herd immunity,and the economic devastation.

People can’t just say “it’s worth it if we save just one life”. Bullshit. Everything requires context, and being under lockdown has its own severe consequences. Including the loss of life.

==Based on the drop in cases==

Friday and Saturday saw the highest single day totals of new cases.

==ludicrously low infection and death rates==

Nobody knows these rates because we can’t test enough people to know infection rates. People are dying at home so it will be a while until we know actual death rates.

==speedy development of herd immunity==

You and your family should jump to the front line and help build this immunity. I’ll protect my 2 year-old and pregnant wife in our home.

All we have to do is look to the 1918 flu to see the danger of opening up too soon. Making up strawman quotes from your “opposition” doesn’t change the data on this virus or the history of past viruses.

> You and your family should jump to the front line and help build this immunity. I’ll protect my 2 year-old and pregnant wife in our home.

This is exactly how the pandemic should have been handled. Personal risk should have been allowed to be determined by the individual, not the state, at the expense of personal rights.

The obvious flaw is that we know people can be asymptomatic carriers. That means they can put others at risk which violates the personal rights of those individuals.

This also can’t be done without significant testing which still isn’t available 9 weeks after declaring a public health emergency.

If think you at risk then you stay at home. If you force other to stay at home you too violates the personal rights of those individuals.

The Patriot Act violates my personal right to secrecy. Stop lights violate my personal right to cross intersections as I please. And on and on.

Welcome to civilized society, sorry it's such an inconvenience.

Yes, In a society, a right is being uphold because the side who support it, successfully fight and defend it.

>The Patriot Act violates my personal right to secrecy. Stop lights violate my personal right to cross intersections as I please. And on and on.

You don't have those right because you fail to successfully fight and defend it

Thats why elon musk is making the tweet, to fight and defend his rights.

Welcome to society, sorry it work that way.

Well, he won't get that right. People are not stupid enough.

>You and your family should jump to the front line and help build this immunity

Yes by allowing people to go outside, work and do their normal activity. It builds their and other people immune system. Prolong lockdown will cause immune system to go down.

We are on HN, not on a forum on healthy diet and recipe with this "bolster immune system" nonsense (that i accept reading on those forums). If something seems logical and simple, it just means you have to do your own research.

Either you are immunodepressed or you are not. Well, actually you can have an hyperactive immune system, that's what Dr house call a lupus, or a cykotine storm.

Really fast and with no details : You can boost your protective response going out and interacting with other people/kids but this will not boost your immune system. I understand this is an easy confusion as the protective response is caused by the immune system but i assure you, this is not the same thing.

New cases are really pretty meaningless considering the confounding variable of increased testing. New hospitalizations is a much more reliable statistic, followed by new deaths, both of which are down in many (most?) states. In New York for example, new hospitalizations have been decreasing for 15 days.

It looks like it’s several times more deadly than the flu if a hospital can provide optimal treatment. Should we go ahead and rapidly infect everyone the death toll will go to Italy. Additionally, I would suspect that the cost of rapidly developing herd immunity, the subsequent uptick in deaths due to 1 in 5 or so people needing the hospital and unable to receive assistance because the hospital cannot take 1 in 5 people at once would probably crater the economy much harder and longer... Every economist I’ve looked at has said this?

(EDIT: also from what I’ve seen it is entirely possible that infection results in long term reduction in health like lung capacity. That’s super fucked if we infect everyone in that case!)

Faults in your argument:

Hospitals are mostly empty in the US.

Antibody testing is showing that herd immunity is rapidly growing.

Persons who could be severely infected by COVID are generally not in the workforce.

Could you provide sources for these three points?

There is currently no proof that antibody testing is detecting antibodies greater than the false positive rate except in New York, which itself has biases in its study (only testing people who are already out in public, and that's only 1 in 5). Additionally there is no proof that the levels of antibody detected result in immunity or for that the levels of antibody will remain at immunity-levels long term.

Based on economy going to the ruin and risking people life.

Prolong lockdown will reduce your immune system as well.

So, no actual data?

The solution is to risk even more lives by sending people back to work? Again, I’d like to see the data behind that calculation.

If you’re interested in people’s lives, maybe we can work on universal healthcare, increasing minimum wages, or guaranteeing sick-leave?

So you want to risk people life by not allowing them to work ?

Provide data that shows it is a larger risk. Without that data you are arguing based on ideology not facts.

The thing about not working is that we have government mechanisms to help those people. We can beef up social security, unemployment benefits, or direct payments. Then people can go back to work afterwards. Work will always exist. It exists even now with a “closed” economy.

The thing about dying is that it’s pretty final.

>We can beef up social security, unemployment benefits, or direct payments

If you give people money for not working, who are going to work then ? Money will become meaningless if you can't use to buy stuff.

==Money will become meaningless if you can't use to buy stuff.==

I don't follow this line of thought. We already give people money for not working (examples are social security and unemployment benefits). None of that has made money obsolete. Why would a temporary measure in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic?

Why don't I see people make this same argument about businesses getting money from the government? Will money become meaningless for businesses? Do people stop trying to earn money once they reach a certain level? Elon Musk certainly hasn't.

Ok tell me then, let say the government give people money for not working then why would people then want to work on let say grocery store where you suggest its risky ?

Ok, I'll bite: where are the coffins of all the people who have died in the last four weeks from not working?

Because I can show you lots of coffins from people in NY and Italy who went to work whilst the pandemic was raging.

you don't think no people will die by not be able to afford basic necessities due to not working ?

Oh, I do.

So show us the model (we still do that right?) when the death by virus numbers are less than the death by poverty numbers.

But you can't becuase you didn't. You just "feel" its time.

So if the death by poverty is less than death of virus, then continue lockdown ? Must be sucks to be the one who dying due to poverty caused by lockdown.

Of course not, and here is why: lockdown is not binary, there are degrees of lockdown.

So, when you help us all out with the model of deaths-by-lockdown that informed your decision, we can all benefit from it by comparing it against the latest, updated death-by-covid-19 models and making an informed choice about the degree (if any) of lockdown to pursue.

The lesser evil.

But of course no such model exists. Its all just emoting. Happy to be wrong.

So both are evil, must be suck to be the one affected by the "less" evil decision.

So you want to risk people’s lives by forcing them to work?

And yes, it is forcing. Amazon, a fantastic example right now, is removing the ability for warehouse workers to stay at home, unless they take unpaid leave. No pay, no healthcare benefits, unless you go into a warehouse and risk your lives.

I didn't say force, if you don't want to work then don't work.

Every time someone responds to you, you pivot.

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