Now I'm a big believer in keeping things shut. I thing prudence is super-important. But QAnon's actions are mainly talk. The state's, however, are different.
Let me be contrary: who shut down millions of businesses and put millions out of work?
Sweden provides an imperfect but interesting what-if scenario for countries wondering what would have happened if they'd imposed little to no lockdown restrictions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-t...
Their economy is still taking a very severe hit despite retail businesses remaining open there, because people are shying away from making purchases and visiting shops.
You can (correctly) say that many governments took the decision out of peoples' hands. Perhaps the people of country XYZ would have made a different choice. But Sweden's example suggests that economies would have been screwed pretty hard no matter what.
Exactly.
In most countries, people are willingly staying mostly at home. More, they continue to restrain from shopping and eating out after the lockdown ended.
I don't think this is the case for Germany, Switzerland, or Denmark either.
What countries do you have in mind where lock downs ended and most people are staying at home?
If you believe the disease is rampant in Sweden, it’ll be much higher now. If it’s not, then the hard lockdowns elsewhere were superfluous.
"The disease-induced herd immunity level is 43% ... when immunity is induced by disease spreading, the proportion infected in groups with high contact rates is greater than in groups with low contact rates"
We obviously need to deal with both problems concurrently. There are a lot of actions that can be taken which can help one which doesn’t come at the expense of the other, so it’s not purely a either-or decision.
It would be wrong to turn a blind eye to either effect. The death toll is an immediate concern, but so is a functioning food supply chain, and indeed a healthy economy is critically important to everyone.
No having lived through an economic collapse or a hyper inflation event, for example, it may be hard to appreciate how difficult (and deadly) that situation can be.
From what I gather, the scale of current economic damage is seriously compared to the Great Depression in mainstream media[1][2]. Well, the Great Depression brought Nazi into power in Germany[3], WW2 followed and took lives of 70-85 million people[4] to say nothing of the post-war devastation.
Or look at Venezuela for an example of a bad economy in modern times, where "families buy rotten meat to eat"[5].
Also, if you ask families of people who will die because their cancer wasn't diagnosed in time, they will probably consider lockdowns too excessive[6].
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/unemployment-today-vs-the-gr...
[2] https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-economic-cost-and-hum...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Germany
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II
Also, the Great Depression was one of many factors that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The tensions that led to WW2 were brewing for before WW1 even started so don't try to claim that an economic depression caused all those deaths. There are far too many factors to make that claim.
Yes, I think I understand what you're saying.
My point is the harm to the economy directly translates to lives lost too. Bad economy leads to surge in violent crime, opiods addictions, gang violence, lost access to health care...
"... the Great Depression was one of many factors that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The tensions that led to WW2 were brewing for before WW1 even started so don't try to claim that an economic depression caused all those deaths. There are far too many factors to make that claim."
It wasn't the only cause, sure. But it was a huge one, afaik. History isn't a hard science, of course, and I'm not a historian (not even an amateur historian) but this quote from Wikipedia doesn't strike me as particularly controversial:
"The unemployment rate reached nearly 30% in 1932, bolstering support for the Nazi (NSDAP) and Communist (KPD) parties, causing the collapse of the politically centrist Social Democratic Party... Large-scale military spending played a major role in the recovery."[1]
When we all look back in 5 years, then 10, then 15, there will be different "obvious" conclusions drawn. Right now, anyone who sides with any action as correct should have a confidence level that is extremely small.
The more varied the responses, the more we learn as a species, and I am glad that not everywhere assumes they are NYC or Lombardy, and acts in varying ways so that in 5, 10, and 15 years the coming studies have different data points of comparison.
Whether lockdowns are justified anyway is a question for another discussion. But economies are hit by lockdowns not the pandemic itself. Let's look at info we can find about Sweden.
Sure, people in Sweden are staying at home more, but the decrease in activity is hardly on the level of locked down countries.
"When people became aware of coronavirus around March 12, we lost almost overnight 30 per cent. It’s OK. For a couple of months, it will work. But after that it will be very, very tough,"[1]
[A pedestrian street in Stockholm on Apr. 1](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2020/04/01/TELE...)
[A market in Malmo during the pandemic (no exact date)](http://archive.is/2siwt/5d1b19d61fd21d052c2cc190f13f722c0bf8...)
[Pubs, eating out](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/newsbeat-52618788/coronavirus-ho...)
It absolutely doesn't look that Sweden's economy took a downturn because people are afraid to go outside.
Their economy seems to be hit by supply chains dependent on locked down countries being suspended[1]:
"One big reason is that Sweden is a small, open economy with a large manufacturing industry. Truckmaker Volvo Group and carmaker Volvo Cars were both forced to stop production for several weeks, not because of conditions in Sweden but due to lack of parts and difficulties in their supply chains elsewhere in Europe."
So, to reiterate, it looks very much like the majority of damage to economies are caused by lockdowns.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/93105160-dcb4-4721-9e58-a7b262cd4...
QAnon is an FBI-registered domestic terror organization: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-...
They've been connected to multiple attempted acts of violence. They aren't just talk.
The FBI memo cites at least two violent incidents or attempts purportedly linked to QAnon: An Arizona man harassed and doxed locals he suspected of participating in the child sex trafficking ring at the heart of the conspiracy theory; and a Nevada man at the Hoover Dam whose truck was found to contain rifles and other ammunition, who was later discovered to have sent letters to President Trump containing references to the movement.
Doxing and keeping guns in your car are not violent acts and the connection is tenuous at best. By that measure you could easily classify The Young Turks as a terrorist organization, Elliot Rodger was their subscriber on Youtube. And the violence was real.
Why would people on HN of all places take FBI at their word. How many hackers have been defamed, and even jailed, by FBI like that.
Isn't QAnon directly promoted by some people directly related to the president of the state?
Don Jr. wears it:
https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/716574473/the-official-q-...
The President himself reused their hashtag:
https://www.businessinsider.de/international/trump-retweeted...