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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

I’ve not really come out of lockdown since late February.

Once there was any community transmission on the continent i knew the jig was up, so we were pretty cloistered off about two weeks early.

State numbers look good but I’ve yet to substantially change my behavior since I started working from home. Big restocking food trips several weeks apart, no-contact outside activities only, etc.

We’ve only started doing any kind of outside-only-masks-except-when-eating limited contact with family in the last 3 weeks or so, and even that is fragile feeling.

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Alternate explanation: you work from home (thus aren't forced out of the house) and you are entertained enough by HN and Reddit and Netflix and whatever you do to have no real desire to leave, and since you have any concern about the virus, you confuse your indoor shut-in lifestyle (which most of us have) as some positive premeditated rational character trait that everyone else lacks.

I'd wager that explains almost all of the self-congratulating I see online.

Or I'd really like to leave the house, go to concerts again, go to restaurants, work at my desk at the office where I can better keep life and work separate and have a great view of the mountains.

But I also know several fairly young people that have died with no comorbidities (as young as 38), and several others that have survived but are in a mental fog months later, and know the importance of staying in.

You can't even go outside?

I'm not the person to whom you replied but my answer is: Sure, and I do, quite a lot, but it's not the same. I've deleted 12 different things from my calendar that my family was going to do between early March and now. A trip to see friends in another country, three baseball games (just the ones we'd bought in advance), two different conventions, and more.

All ruined because of this stupid virus.

None are replaced by a brisk walk outdoors.

He says he has done " no-contact outside activities" all along.

That would probably describe me if I lived alone, but I have five kids and not being able to leave the house to even go to the local park has been terrible. But we do it anyway. It did force us to subscribe to Disney+ (the first time we have ever used a subscription or streaming service) just to get a bit of peace and sanity for part of the day.

Your comment comes across as overly hostile. Maybe it would be different if this was an in-person conversation, but over the Internet, hostility is the only tone I can assign to your calling the sacrifices the OP has made "self-congratulating".

Fair enough. Maybe it reads closer to my intention if you replace the "you"s with "we"s. I'm a shut-in HNer patting myself on the back for keeping the world safe without lifting a finger, I just had thought I met a fellow crusader.

i am neither that insular nor that elitist.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Hey, please don't cross into personal attack when commenting here. It only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Same. This article is quite negatively written like the author wants sympathy or something. 2020's a shit year for just about everyone, not that sure what else they're looking for. They should feel lucky that Australia got to squeeze in a few months of relatively normal life in between lockdowns.

article is quite negatively written like the author wants sympathy or something

It is negatively written, but I don’t think they are looking for sympathy but reflecting how much harder this is when you’re repeating it.

Especially when we could have had better outcomes had we all been in this together.

I have seen an extremely concerning drop (plummet?) in empathy being shown for people over the course of the quarantine. Can we no longer hear that someone is having a bad time without telling them to shut up because it could be worse? It's literally always true that things could be worse, but telling that to people isn't exactly constructive.

> not that sure what else they're looking for.

"Damn, that sucks." Is probably about right.

As someone who is relatively introverted, and is very frequently asked to do things outside my comfort zone in order to be successful in life, I can’t help but roll my eyes a little when people are asked to stop being so extroverted for once in their life. I have pity for those losing jobs or being unable to put food on the table because of this, and their complaints are perfectly valid, but for those complaining that they miss being able to go to parties and hang out with friends... I can’t help but roll my eyes.

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