Hacker News Reader

Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

The desire to go out is very unevenly distributed. I know people who are desperate to go out, but I also know people who plan to mostly stay in until there's a vaccine, and they struggle to believe the first group really means what they're saying. ("They must be trolling", I've heard from multiple friends.)

View on HN

Yeah I struggle to believe that group is large enough to support restaurants re-opening. I don't know many that are willing to risk themselves getting ill but even the ones I do would rather stay home so that they can visit their family without risking their health.

Anecdotally, the restaurants around us are selling out their reservation spots for the entire week of re-opening here.

My guess would be that initial spike won't sustain them over the following months. When places round here opened they had massive queues on the first day, now its back to nothing.

People tend to surround themselves with like minded people. The best measure is to look at actual demand, which appears to be quite high.

The wide-spread protests demonstrate that most young restaurant/bar aged goers are willing to take risks. The bars and restaurants will be packed when they re-open.

Some people have never had to make a long-term social sacrifice, because society is made to cater to their interests. They feel entitled to "the way things were." I'm sure being told no was a shock.

We are not. You’re free to throw away another year of your life cooped up indoors because of a miniscule (for most people) risk that is not going anywhere, but most people will choose otherwise.

Realistically appraising risks, there are 3 reasons for limiting activity:

1) You're in a high-risk demographic: 70+, have health problems, lack access to high-level health care facilities.

2) You interact with people who are in high-risk demographics: nursing home staff, service industry where your customers are elderly, medical staff.

3) You want to support broader transmission mitigation. Mask-everwhere is the most obvious action here, but limiting high-risk activities helps too.

It's easy to forget that tragedy of the commons also means opportunity for the individual.

Some of us, despite not being in (1) or (2), feel good about doing what we individually can to avoid another broad lockdown. Decreasing R_t through personal choices is going to be a big component of the aggregate number.

My honest reaction to this is fury, but let me instead only say that we do not agree about what is best for the commons, and I will never allow you to coerce me into going along with your plan.

I read the parent comment like four times and did not see any hint of coercion. It is expressed as a personal approach.

Just being candid, in case anyone is under the delusion that it might be worth trying.

My personal decisions require neither your cooperation nor consent.

I do what I do to mitigate the spread, not because I expect you to do the same, but because it's what I feel is right.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

Then you have my respect, and hopefully it has a net-positive effect.

And you mine. We're all in this together, but we each get to make our own choices. Always!

It seems unfair to characterize anyone's response this way ("cooped up," "throw away").

People have adjusted to situations that are not ideal. People will have different comfort levels over time, and they will attempt to reconcile those two things. To imply that a life without Sunday brunch is somehow lesser or worse is myopic.

> To imply that a life without Sunday brunch is somehow lesser or worse is myopic.

It is worse. Claiming otherwise would be arguing that immunocompromised, sedentary, etc folks are just as privileged as myself.

Is it worse, or is it different? Life is what you make of it. I don't have a yacht or box seats at Yankee Stadium and don't think my life would be appreciably better if I did.

Ultimately people are making compromises and finding ways to live within them. People do this every day, with or without pandemics.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm very aware of that. But I think a lot of smart people aren't, and I think that's affecting their predictions of how quickly the economy will open up.

I'm somewhere in the middle, have understood the risks are mostly not for my demographic, and have gone outside to do things like get coffee / exercise almost every day since lockdown began.

Even then I'm aware we're still completely in the dark of what long term effects this might have. Do you have any worries about that? That along with the viral load research makes me pause when people are itching to just get "back to normal."

It’s in the same family as cold viruses. There’s no reason a healthy person won’t recover. If you’re at risk and get in ICU there could be long term issues but that’s a small risk for healthy people.

This is pretty reductionist and simplistic. H1N1 variants were in the same family as influenza D.

One killed 17-50 million people in two years, the other is not yet known to even infect animals.

> Even then I'm aware we're still completely in the dark of what long term effects this might have. Do you have any worries about that?

Nope. I don't have time for (what I see as) irrational paranoia. I've judged the risk to be small enough where if that happens to me, it's OK.

Especially in a culture that puts the individual and his “needs” above those of the larger group. But why should the public good be a consideration?

We do not agree about what is best for the commons. You are constructing a straw monster, but the opposition is largely operating in good faith.

If you’re healthy you have almost nothing to worry about.

For example, on one French aircraft carrier, 60 percent of sailors were infected (none died and only two out of 1,074 infected sailors required intensive care). https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/05/covid-19-aboard...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com