Comment by orangecat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orangecat | Hacker News Reader

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the fact of the matter is that if we all would’ve taken this seriously and shut everything down, we would be through the worst of it already

This isn't supported by the available evidence. Spain was forbidding people from leaving their homes except for essentials, and now they're worse off than the US in terms of hospitalizations and deaths. Many other countries also had stronger lockdowns that have not spared them from winter surges.

You can say that they didn't do "real" lockdowns, and that if people would just sit quietly in their homes for six months then it would have gone away. Which is about as useful as saying that if everyone ate less and exercised more then obesity would be eliminated, or if everyone stopped having sex outside of marriage then STDs and teenage pregnancies would no longer be problems. Humans do not have infinite willpower, and if your plan is to assert that they should and then shame them for their horrible selfishness of wanting to occasionally visit their families, it is going to fail.

> Spain was forbidding people from leaving their homes except for essentials, and now they're worse off than the US in terms of hospitalizations and deaths.

That second wave has started months after Spain lifted all those restrictions.

Yes, that is exactly the point. Lockdowns don’t make all of this go away sooner, because as soon as you lift them, the outbreak resumes.

It was only ever supposed to buy us time (to develop treatments, vaccines, reorganize workplaces) and avoid overwhelming the capacity of services like hospitals.

I don't think anyone credible has said that lockdowns were going to put the genie back in the bottle. It is only one component of a complete response.

They _have_ argued that a complete response might permit more economic normalcy somewhat sooner, and that appears to be bearing out.

Spain did do real lockdowns and it worked. And then they stopped doing real lockdowns. So it is in fact supported by the evidence.

It didn’t solve the problem, meaning, unless you are willing to lock down indefinitely, the virus will come back. So in the pedantic sense you are right, lockdowns work, but clearly are not a solution.

Clearly it is a solution. The problem is that places like Spain stopped their lockdowns. What we really need is a flexible and informed approach, where the stringency of lockdowns is implemented on a sliding scale determined by actual real-time case numbers. Masks and other basic measures should be everywhere and always required and more stringent steps applied proactively as hot spots emerge. This coupled with rapid testing and contact tracing works. It has been proven multiple times in multipel places.

The actual problem with Spain is that they have a decentralised system of contact tracing (which is normally good), but which didn't really get implemented quickly enough.

Madrid in particular did pretty poorly at this.

Additionally, their economy is so dependent on tourism that they felt they needed to open back up to avoid ruination.

This lead to loads more cases, coupled with pandemic fatigue and here we are.

I was there and remember the sequence of events clearly. The lockdown worked and cases across Spain were very low right after the quarantine. Then tourism opened back up, because the economy, and tons of people from countries that did not quarantine all flocked to Spain. Spain’s numbers started going up immediately.

Lockdown works; Spain would have been fine by now if they were more careful with opening (not allowing the British in for instance). But alas it is worse than ever and there is no stomach for another lockdown so people wear masks but restaurants are crowded every day and there are few travel restrictions so...

The lockdown brings the numbers down. Contact tracing, quarantines and testing keeps it down. If you do not follow up the lockdown with these measures, you are bound to fail.

Depends on what problem you are trying to solve. If you are trying to make COVID19 go extinct then yes, lockdowns aren't sufficient. If you are trying to avoid overwhelming health care resources (so they are available to dying patients of all kinds) then it can help as it reduces the hospitalization rate.

It's not an unsolvable human nature problem. Look at just about any country in East Asia.

Lo, the flaws inherent in taking assertions way too literally.

Spain has a different economy than other countries. There's depends unusually heavily on tourism compared to other countries in the Western world.

What do you think happened in the last year that would prevent tourists from coming to Spain?

Seriously, HN, we are better than this inanity.

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