Comment by thex10 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thex10 | Hacker News Reader

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> And I am absolutely willing to sacrifice possibly a few years of extra time I could have my grandparents around for that. My grandparents are also happy to make that sacrifice so their grandchildren ...

Sigh. I can’t believe this needs to be spelled out for you and your ilk.

There are other people out there beyond your grandparents. Regardless of how you and they personally feel — I don’t want to die just because your personal definition of “living” (hello, a few months of lockdown or similar is still alive) facilitates disease spread. I AM NOT WILLING TO DIE PREMATURELY just so your kids can avoid going a few months without physically engaging peers, or just so you all can avoid having to take simple personal precautions when outside.

Lest anyone accuses me of not understanding without raising children- I am literally holding my sleeping 5 month old as I type this.

It’s not about being told to be afraid of everything (where does this idea come from? literally no one is advocating that). It’s about responding to existing, real dangers with appropriate measures.

I think this is really unfair to OP. Who among us hasn't taken health risks because we enjoy our culture? When I heard about heart disease as the leading cause of death I did not immediately change my diet. I assume many others here did not as well.

And yet isn't not eating bacon a relatively easy step to take so one is around to spend time with family? The answer is not so clear.

One question I have is why you believe lockdowns will help? A vaccine may be approved but it's likely it won't work for obese Americans that make up 40% of the population.

> “Will we have a COVID vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way,” said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

> “Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

> In 2017, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill provided a critical clue about the limitations of the influenza vaccine. In a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity, they showed for the first time that vaccinated obese adults were twice as likely as adults of a healthy weight to develop influenza or flu-like illness. [0]

This essentially means we are going to have large numbers of cases for the next 3+ years.

[0] https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/09/americas-obesity-epidemic-th...

But how many people? Should 10,000 kids lose school and all the problems that can avalanche into for the future to save 1 year of 1 life of one person who already has degrading health?

I would happily trade away:

- 1 whole semester of in-person instruction for all 56 million school-aged kids in the US

In exchange for:

- The cumulative remaining years of the 50k(?), 100k(?), possibly even more that will die directly from the virus in the US alone

- Freedom from long-term health issues caused by the virus for another several hundred thousand at minimum who won't die but also won't get "the flu"

Now your turn. What is your number?

I acknowledge that we are choosing between two bad alternatives here. I personally believe that we should trade all N hundred thousand lives for a normal school year for 56 million kids.

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