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Comment by drevil-v2 | Hacker News Reader

Australia, 98 deaths and 16 people in ICU. Entire economy destroyed. Either we will make money meaningless by printing it out of thin air or coming decades will witness crushing tax. 5 million people unemployed out of population of 22 million.

Someone fucked up.

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New york city had 0.25% of their population die, I'd say australia dodged a bullet and can be lumped in with countries that best handled the virus. The low death rate is a consequence of good handling, not "someone fucking up".

How many more people would have to have died for you to feel the response was appropriate?

Surely the number of lives saved is the correct thing to measure against the economic cost. It's hard to compare against a counterfactual, of course -- but look at NYC, look at Italy, look at France.

Hindsight is 20/20. Without lockdown it could have been significantly worse. And even if not there was no way to know beforehand.

As restrictions are ended any future waves should provide more insight into their effectiveness.

At what point do we draw the line that a certain number of deaths outweigh a certain amount of human misery or vice versa. In my state they don't even erect a traffic light until a certain number of people have died in that road intersection.

Deaths are one measure. Permanently reduced lung capacity is another. Measuring the costs accurately will take time.

Each community is making those calls as they see fit, hence the variety of guidelines at every level. Would you feel more at ease with a federally mandated reopening which overrides all local authorities?

So, before the lockdowns it was observed that if actions are successful then some people will claim they weren’t necessary.

Since you seem to be one of those people - what’s your thinking here? Do you really think those numbers (98 deaths and 16 in ICU) would be exactly the same if no action was taken? What’s your mental model of how that would work?

Money's already meaningless. Indeed, printing more of it is what's going to happen, but it won't help most of those who lost their jobs.

I read something like this and I think, "this person is a psychopath". So order to "save" the economy (which is a social construct designed to serve the people) you would happily kill a family member? How many would you sacrifice before it was too much?

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