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Comment by usrusr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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