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Comment by anthony_romeo | Hacker News Reader

But... lockdowns aren't happening in New York City right now? They're on Phase 4 reopening. The problem isn't lockdowns. The problem is that people don't want to suffer or die from a horrible lung disease, or have their friends and family die from it. Pretending that the disease is harmless and gone doesn't actually make it so.

And the only reason lockdowns are so difficult in the US is because most people in the US don't have meaningful savings and are in debt, and there isn't an adequate social welfare system in place to smooth out this very rough patch.

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>But... lockdowns aren't happening in New York City right now?

Yes, they are. Today is the first day in seven months that NYC is allowing indoor dining, but it is at 25% capacity. Gyms, salons, and other similar industries are operating at similar capacity. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio are already, this week, talking about rolling it back.

87% of the entire hospitality industry is unable to pay rent.

>The problem is that people don't want to suffer or die from a horrible lung disease, or have their friends and family die from it. Pretending that the disease is harmless and gone doesn't actually make it so.

Adults are capable of making that decision for themselves. This is a free country. If what you are saying is true, indoor dining today should be relatively empty. I'll walk by a few restaurants and let you know how crowded they are.

> already, this week, talking about rolling it back already, this week, talking about rolling it back

Because test positivity rates are spiking in some areas of the city, and they're also trying to open schools.

> Adults are capable of making that decision for themselves

How do you think people in nursing homes died from it? What choices did they get in the matter?

> How do you think people in nursing homes died from it? What choices did they get in the matter?

I suspect people in nursing homes in NY would've done better without government intervention.

"More than 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s already vulnerable nursing homes under a controversial state directive..."

https://apnews.com/article/5ebc0ad45b73a899efa81f098330204c

Cuomo's record on it is pretty bad! The UK and Sweden also had really substantial outbreaks in nursing homes.

First off, it's hard to call anything that was done in the US an actual "lockdown" - see Wuhan where they welded people into their apartments, that was a lockdown.

> 87% of the entire hospitality industry is unable to pay rent.

And would it be much different if there weren't restrictions in place? People being afraid of catching a disease that could possibly kill them or leave them with long term disability will tend to not eat out or go to theaters. So maybe instead of 87% the number would be 77% unable to pay rent. Still, as it passes around in a non-restricted environment people will become wary.

Where I'm at (Oregon) people can eat in restaurants (with distancing, so lower capacity) but most seem to be choosing takeout or to eat outside. This seems to be keeping restaurants in my neighborhood going at near normal levels (the proprietor of a nearby pizza place says he's pretty much at normal levels of business with takeout only and there have actually been some new restaurants that have opened recently). Of course when the weather changes... we'll see, but takeout will still be an option.

The problem is that "people can make that decision for themselves" only works if they themselves pay the price for their actions. If you're in the age range that is likely to get an asymptomatic or mild development, the price of you getting infected and walking around infecting others are paid for mostly by others.

"Let everyone decide for themselves" rewards the selfish and makes people that restrain themselves jealous of the selfish people. If that's the kind of society you want to live in, well, that's your choice. But I think a lot of people don't.

Yes, you're describing "Moral hazard". That concept is lost on too many.

I'm sorry, but if you can walk across the street and buy a dollar slice, then it's not really a "lockdown" except in the loosest definition of the term.

I'm glad to hear that New York City finally got the virus in control such that they can start to safely open things back up. Hopefully the adults you speak of make decisions not just for themselves but their communities as well, lest the virus spike again and kill thousands of New Yorkers again.

> lockdowns aren't happening in New York City right now?

New York still has very significant restrictions including on dining out and group size. It is not the complete lockdown that happened earlier.

They are even including restrictions on hours restaurants can be open...

There was never a lockdown. People were never restricted from leaving their houses or visiting family. Public, enclosed spaces were restricted, but nobody was ever locked inside. There have been attempts at imposing quarantines on interstate travelers but it's been almost entirely voluntary in practice.

(this is in contrast with western Europe, where there were and are actual lockdowns that made it illegal to leave home without a permit, etc)

edit: NYC did impose a curfew for a few days, but not as a coronavirus measure

Or Wuhan where they actually welded people into their apartments.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/nyregion/coronavirus-orth...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/new-york-reopening-coronav... (June 2020)

I could keep listing stories that clearly say "lockdown". You seem to have a different definition of that word than any other English speaker, including the NYTimes and CNN.

By the way, this included fines: https://abc7ny.com/nyc-social-distancing-fines-coronavirus-n...

No, NYC did not weld anyone inside their homes. The residents were absolutely under lockdown.

I dunno, you can't really have it both ways. Either a lockdown is something stricter than how people would behave in the presence of COVID, or it's not. If the argument is that the lockdown itself has a societal cost, then it's the strict version. If you go by the headlines that refer to lockdowns in the colloquial sense describe the very loose policies of "walk around, order food, wear a mask, sit outside, social distancing, but hey, indoor dining is closed so it's a lockdown", then most if not all of that cost is what would be happening anyway due to human behavior.

This is all really dumb. We need to societally backspace and come up with a couple of popular words that have clearer meanings for this stuff. Lockdown has close to zero semantic meaning.

In my original parent comment, I was more thinking of strict lockdowns. The type where - given sufficient test capacity and responsible contact tracing - a region could limit its borders and strictly lock down for four weeks, and obliterate COVID to the point they could test and trace - and dine indoors.

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