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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

While you're being downvoted, I agree with you. The artificially low interest rates are a huge burden to society, so while I'm optimistic about the vaccine, I believe that getting back to a society based on savings instead of debt will be extremely painful.

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I'd happily trade wealth for being able to meet friends and family freely again.

This is a false dichotomy that you shouldn't be forced to choose.

I've been enjoying both.

Wow, how are you pulling that off (the freely seeing friends and family part)?

I'm talking about the next 10 years, people are so focused on 2020 that they don't see the big picture, that the economy is getting worse every year, and it effects everybody, even people who have wealth...we're all connected.

And even on the healthcare side, we will have to deal with the consequences of the lockdown. Massive backlog in hospitals, cancer screening and vaccination campaigns not happening, obesity up, psychological consequences, and also the knockdown effect of disruptions and economic crisis on treatment and vaccination campaigns in developing countries.

The consequences of the pandemic. The government orders have been a small piece of it.

The government orders are a huge part of it! Case in point, look at the employment numbers and other economic indicators from early April vs today. It was so, so much worse in April, yet the pandemic is mostly the same. But today we don’t have nearly as strict lockdowns.

These are only results of the US-specific lack of welfare protection mechanisms, not a lockdown per se - especially unememployment and to a lesser degree also the negative growth are significantly less accentuated in the other OECD countries.

The high unemployment was because of how the US structured the spring legislative response. Businesses were ordered to close, and that made employees eligible to collect unemployment insurance. A federal program paid those unemployed people $2400 a month (in addition to their unemployment insurance).

The US poverty rate went down during the period. So it wasn't a lack of welfare protection, it was just a (likely bad) implementation choice, paying individuals instead of paying businesses to keep them on payroll.

The lack of response since that expired in July fits your description though.

I know, I'm not from the US but I tried to follow the US development closely. Many other countries have furlough-like systems where workers get money in cases of force majeure like floods or a factory burning down, without losing employment. One usually gets payout as a percentage of regular wage (depends on the countries, I'd say it usually lies between 60 and 90% of net income). These institutions were already in place, and when lockdowns were ordered the government just had to inject more money into them. All the red tape and all logistics were already in place. Most countries also allow soft fade-outs (I'm lacking the proper word here, sorry), i.e. 80% furlough and 20% regular work in month 1, 50/50 in month 2 etc.

The big advantage of this approach (in addition to the obvious advantages for the workers) is that companies don't lose the organizational knowledge held by the workers: With whom to speak in case machine X fails, whom to approach in customer company Y for a new deal etc.).

The government orders have been overwhelmingly the largest piece of it! I wrote this a few months back; the secondary effects from government intervention, and they fear they've brought with them, have been far reaching and disastrous:

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

You are a death count truther still?

The citation for gunshot wound victims being counted as Covid deaths says it was 5 deaths, and it was only on the publicly-available dashboard to track deaths. Not being used for official reporting purposes. In my opinion it's kind of dishonest how you present that.

I'll admit it made me lose interest in reading much further because I don't trust you to have used the other 42 citations in good faith.

Anyway, that was just meant as constructive criticism. Just something to keep in mind in your writing in the future.

It was one account, but during that time period, there were tons of reports, every single week, from miscounted deaths. The No Agenda Podcast guys covered it pretty well.

If it's just a couple here or there, there are miscounts for sure. But with news report after news report from local stations, I think the issue might be enough to be statically significant, or at least warrant investigation and not outright dismissal.

Furthermore, Sweeden seems to be doing alright as far as fatality numbers across their population for the year, even though their covid orders were much more limited:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

> because I don't trust you to have used the other 42 citations in good faith.

We're getting into this really interesting era where we're attacking people's views for their sources .. even though there has been obvious bias in all mainstream reporting for over a decade. If you're not willing to entertain viewpoints you don't agree with, that's on you, not on me.

Entirely reasonable of OP to posit bad faith on your part, especially given how you've reacted and the way you constructed a strawman to get upset about.

That's on you, not anyone else.

> even though there has been obvious bias in all mainstream reporting for over a decade

Fortunately we're getting into this really interesting era where I don't have to waste my time with their bullshit, nor with yours. Cheers.

The secondary effects from a pandemic rampaging through society unchecked by government orders would be very bad as well. At some point people just stop showing up for their jobs and then you might even end up with a barter based anarchy were big cities would simply starve in absence of the required logistics.

Seriously? In my big city, people are generally behaving as if the disease doesn't exist, at least on weekends. Restaurants are pretty full, stores are busy. The only time it feels different is during weekdays, when the city is empty from forced WFH. When people are given the choice, they are choosing to go out in the world, risks and all.

I think a majority of people stopped giving a shit in June[1]. The government's continued lockdown policies are 100% at fault for continued economic distress.

[1] https://covid19.apple.com/mobility

Hmm, "counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions" is different than people actually going places, though. If you look at the Google location data reports, the retail and recreation category was down 16% when the Apple graph was at its peak: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-08-14_US_Mobil...

> When people are given the choice, they are choosing to go out in the world, risks and all.

That could change pretty fast when hospitals have to start sending seriously ill home to die. That would still only directly affect a small minority, but the same people who feel safer than they should now would then start feeling more in danger than they should. There's a certain irony in how a lot of people think that the rules are unnecessary exactly because they do work.

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