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Comment by moksly | Hacker News Reader

I know it’s likely the vaccines are actually going to help against Covid, and I really hope the experts are right, but I can’t shake the feeling that this new world is simply the new normal.

So far, expecting things to turn out semi-shitty seems to be the way to go. At first our national health agency didn’t take the threat seriously. Then they took it very seriously but didn’t think we’d see a second wave because our restrictions worked. Heh, now we’re heading toward a winter with high amounts of new restrictions that are targeted at the second wave that is unlikely to lift until sometime next year. And this is in a country that has so far handled the pandemic better than most.

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> new restrictions that are targeted at the second wave that is unlikely to lift until sometime next year

The actual number of fatalities are dropping in almost every region. The trouble with "new cases" is they just add to the existing insanely high number, instead of resetting to cases-per-month. A lot of these cases aren't even serious at all. Remember during the H1N1 flu, Obama actually reduced testing to quell fear.

And the restrictions are likely going away. It's been months and humanity cannot go on this way. Ecuador high courts have struck down a lot of their lockdown restrictions and emergency powers. In the US, the Stickman decision in PA could be the most important decision of this entire year[0]. We're seeing lockdown protest in Germany, UK and there would be protests in Australia if Victoria didn't go absolutely insane.

I realize a lot of people have died, but in the US, 96% of them are over 55. The "long term effects" narrative is taking hold, and I've read the UK case study of 60+ patients published through a Charlottesville journal, and the majority of them were elderly or high risk.

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/

Only 6k people in the US died without having an additional comorbidity (heart disease, obesity, etc.)

It's time to isolate the vulnerable, and let the rest of the population go back to making their own decisions about what risks they want to take with their lives. Offer subsidies for people who want groceries delivered and never want to go out and take any risks again.

100 year from now, historians will look back at 2020 as the year of mass hysteria.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InCIyID5rkE

Maybe for a year or so but people will just forget about it and move on.

Kinda like smoking which kills 500k americans every year.

All normative opinions aside, this cannot become a new normal. People will not tolerate it. The majority of the population will not continue to remain cloistered in a small area due to the vulnerability of a minority. It's also economically untenable. So no, I don't think it will. We may, however, see significantly more deaths from those at risk, or they may be stuck entirely holed-up as a result.

The alarming thing about the justification of these measures is that it seems it can never be invalidated.

Covid is endemic (it is not a pandemic). When exactly will we experience no mass covid deaths? (we experience mass flu deaths).

Simply, never. Is it really that in 3yr time we will be "happy" with a 0.2% rate? (ie., 50% of current rate). Will "half the number of grandparents" dying be a tolerable amount?

The justification behind everything here is alarmingly short-termism, I can only imagine govs are waiting for some kind of "vaccine" or "health theatre" that will allow people to resume normal behaviour. (cf. airport security theatre exists to encourage people to fly; it is demanded by airlines so people feel flying is safe. One assumes they hope vaccines will play the same role.)

However gov.s are at their financial breaking points re Lockdown as a strategy, and it'll be this that goes first. Hard to say what the political ramifications of that are, many middle-class shut-ins simply refuse to believe gov. is a limited actor.

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