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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Why do you want to curb the infection rate? What’s the end goal?

I’m strongly on the Swedish/Trump side here. We know that the virus is practically harmless for youth and young adults. If immunity persists, we should let them get infected ASAP while protecting the old/vulnerable. If immunity fades, then waiting for the vaccine is pointless anyways. As a young person, I won’t be taking the vaccine anytime soon anyways, not because I have anything against vaccines, but because I have many doubts about barely tested drugs in general (I’ll take it after it’s been tested for a few years).

But hey, say this on YouTube and I’ll be banned!

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How do we know it's harmless for youth and young adults? You know what you've seen. Again, this is a novel virus. It's new. It could be setting up shop in your brain, heart, kidney, liver, semen -- wherever.

It could be invisibly weakening your lungs just enough that a flu can come through and kill you.

I would suggest a deep dive on mercury poisoning, radiation poisoning, lead poisoning, asbestos, and whatever other reminders you may find throughout history that assuming you know what nature is up to without the benefit of lengthy scientific review never turns out well for the cocksure.

It is a coronavirus though, it's not an entirely new type of virus that we have never seen before. It has limitations.

Well we won’t know what it’s long term effects are for the next 70 years... hell we’re even now figuring out that Herpes virus might have something to do with dementia...

And say we get a vaccine next year. Don’t you worry that if we relax lockdowns, we’re just gonna trigger the next devastating virus?

Let’s face it, life is a risk, and we accept a certain amount of elevated risk in exchange for comfort/utility (e.g. unprotected sex, industry-produced food, driving). This virus seems in line (at least for young adults). So the only real risk here, is government repression.

You're perfectly fine with potentially killing family members? Do they know this?

He presumably lets them drive cars, and probably doesn't implore them to cut sugars out of their diet. So yes.

I don't know about "practically harmless for youth and young adults" - but as they say, I believe in your right to express your opinion.

Seeing the downvotes, I suppose the majority here disagree with the statement. But at least the comment is still readable/visible. I think it's healthier for public discourse to have differing sides and points of view expressed, to argue in a good sense of the term, by logic and evidence, to hopefully arrive at some common understanding.

"Fact checking" and judgements of "misinformation" are necessary, I can see, but a question remains - who checks the fact-checkers, and judges the censors?

I don't trust Google to be a neutral party in such decisions - maybe in this particular case they're right, but we shouldn't depend on a for-profit corporation to be a trustworthy judge of anything in general.

Do they have the right to ban whatever they see unfit on their platforms? Yes, I think so.

> Why do you want to curb the infection rate? What’s the end goal?

To not saturate the healthcare system.

> practically harmless

We still don't know the long term effects of the disease, or please define the term "practically harmless".

> If immunity persists... If immunity fades

So you want to expose an entire healthy population to a deadly virus and stop looking for a vaccine based on a couple of "if"?

> But hey, say this on YouTube and I’ll be banned!

Saying it here wouldn't get you banned (probably) but your comment will probably go grey (whenever you care or not).

You could make a similar argument about destroying most small businesses and replacing them with amazon, permanently, for an 'if'.

Yes, but no. This virus is insidious, so we have deal with it the way it is.

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