Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Reality is rarely that clear-cut. E.g., imagine an airplane.

If the goal is maximum range, we should get rid of first-class seats, life vests, and all sort of useless amenities. (Do we really need four lavatories?)

If the goal is maximum comfort, we should get rid of all economy seats. No more affordable plane tickets.

If the goal is maximum speed, we should retire our fleet and re-introduce supersonic flights. Those suckers living under a frequent flight path can use earplugs.

If the goal is maximum safety...

What I'm saying is: every time we say "our goal is X", it implies an additional condition "assuming other things stay reasonable." Of course, something like COVID is not within anyone's living memory, so it's hard to build a consensus on what's reasonable - but we can't just short-circuit it by saying "Just say what you want and stick to it!"

Our goal should be a nice balance that is preferable to me.

>Our goal should be a nice balance that is preferable to me.

You've just described politics.

The goal of airlines is to maximize shareholder returns subject to regulatory constraints and physics.

The reaction to COVID is not within anyone's living memory. COVID-like events definitely are.

2009 Swine Flu, predicted to be hugely deadly, WHO changed the definition of pandemic so they could declare it one. Ended up being a non-event (nb: numbers are not comparable as there was no mass testing programme like today).

In many countries excess deaths are no different to previous years. For instance in Switzerland cumulative death in 2020 is by now the same as long term expectation. Fewer people died at the start of the year than average, then it went above average during COVID, then it came back to the long term average slowly over the summer. COVID is nothing more than a seasonal flu, here. In Germany it's not even that. Excess death for 2020 is smooth and flat, compared to 2018 where it saw bigger spikes. Also Swine-Flu like.

Even in the UK, which has largely shut down its health care system and imposed draconian lockdowns, excess deaths matched 1999/2000 which were not notable years. Nobody noticed any unusual levels of death back then.

This is why there have been so many people criticising lockdowns so strongly, for such a long time, and now people are paying attention because SCIENTISTS! but you could look at the government sourced data in perspective back in April or May, to understand that the reaction was not proportionate to the threat.

Or we do specialized solutions for each of the goals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com