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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

I've already seen people treat the vaccine as the end of the pandemic but I agree with Gates here, the next months are going to be brutal.

50% of Americans are apparently not willing to be vaccinated to begin with and rollout to significant parts of the population is going to take months.

While I'm obviously glad that vaccine development happened quickly, I really wish rather than being so focussed on vaccinations exclusively we paid more attention to the fact that some countries, Taiwan, China, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have managed to quell the disease through correct social policy and appropriate levels of social coordination.

If every disaster will rely on us conjuring up a panacea we'll be screwed sooner or later.

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Also worth noting that many "first world" countries are providing a lot of stimulus for workers - many countries covering 75%-100% of an out of work person's pay.

In the US we've had a single $1200 check. American families don't have the option to stop going to work and have to do anything they can.

It's no wonder this breeds resentment to anything the government says, including to wear masks.

I wish that misinformation would stop spreading. The United States had a very generous unemployment benefit of $600/week. A huge number of people came out of the pandemic financially much better off in July (when the stimulus ended) than before.

It was indeed generous if you qualified and were able to access it (a lot of systems were down / not functioning super well early on - especially in states like Florida). That said, it ended in July and there were many people who slipped through the cracks.

It was so generous, in fact, that I personally know many people who purposely delayed getting a job in order to keep collecting the benefit.

So what? Paying people to stay home is good policy during a pandemic.

The pandemic doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not as if we can ignore everything else and just mitigate for the pandemic at all costs. The economy and social infrastructure/interaction is extremely important to the physical and mental health of everyone on the planet.

To take you literally, all of life lives in a vacuum. Your argument is nonsensical in the worst of times. In the best of times, yes we make do and we ignore the plight of man. But I would hope that in war or in pandemics maybe we would in fact help each other out as these times remind of us our humanity where we all suffer for the common good. And when we get back to the the best of times, I would urge you to read up on Keynesian economics; if you want to float all the boats.

I've done plenty of reading on keynesian economics. I understand that it's not always a zero-sum game, etc. etc. Also, I never advocated for ignoring the plight of humans. We should always strive to help and lift each other. But there are always costs. We can all agree that I, for example, probably shouldn't give away my resources to the point that my children go hungry. But I certainly can make sacrifices to help others. I was never arguing that. Just saying that we can't evaluate the benefits we get without taking into account the costs. And just because the costs might be difficult to measure and don't feel as immediately sharp doesn't mean it is wise to be dismissive about them.

Just wanted to point out that 3 of those 4 countries are surrounded by miles of open water/ocean. And the final one has been lying about the outbreak the entire time. https://www.independent.co.uk/world/covid19-china-mishandle-...

>are surrounded by miles of open water/ocean

So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

Where you're located when a disease hits gives you either an advantage or a disadvantage, fair enough. But it doesn't explain away repeated and continuous inability to act. If NZ had acted like the UK, they'd look just the same. Once you've got community spread the virus doesn't care if you're on an island.

> So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

Exactly. If the US population (for instance) had the community spirit to voluntarily comply with virus control measures, and the social cohesion to support those who couldn't work during that time, we probably would have gotten it under control and life would be something close to normal.

The people who make lockdowns necessary (and the subsequent economic damage) are the ones that fight them tooth and nail.

>So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

What exactly is social failure?

not taking health precautions. Not following guidelines. Politicizing the response to the virus, putting individual interests above the interests of society, not listening to health experts, politicians not following their own rules, the list of dysfunction goes on.

If there was actual compliance with relatively modest rules, that just demand that everyone acts with some sense and makes some small concessions, life could have gone on normally, with a lot of people still alive.

This sounds like the thoughts of someone recently born.

This was inevitable in atomized western societies with relatively high rates of health issues like obesity and diabetes. And how were you to muster people in these fractured societies to "comply"? There is no national identity or Philia. Consumerism only brings us so close. Diversity is our strength, remember?

>If there was actual compliance with relatively modest rules, that just demand that everyone acts with some sense and makes some small concessions, life could have gone on normally, with a lot of people still alive.

Citation needed.

You can add Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the list, none of which are surrounded by ocean.

As for China, I don't think anybody trusts their figures, but it's also quite clear that they do have the outbreak well under control. If their ICUs were full, we'd know about it.

Vietnam got it under control quite well despite a land border with China. Key to success likely were:

- a population that had experience with prior pandemics and was thus willing to play along

- a strong centralized government (this is a guess, and I'm not just talking about the power, but specifically the centralization - other nations that have states/provinces each implementing their own policies showed the dangers of that approach, e.g. USA, Switzerland, Germany)

- extremely aggressive contact tracing and enforced quarantine (for high risk cases, they were put in hotels or barracks, not told "please stay home"). Not just contacts but also contacts-of-contacts (the latter were only ordered to home quarantine).

AFAIK they didn't even have much of a shutdown, because the quarantining was so effective.

Five national governments. Taiwan is not lying. Don't confuse ROC with PRC.

4 of 5 countries.

>50% of Americans are apparently not willing to be vaccinated to begin with and rollout to significant parts of the population is going to take months.

COVID-19, which is now endemic, will be here for the remainder of my lifetime. The vaccines have unknowns. I see less risk for both myself and family with avoiding the vaccines until there is strong data about their efficacy and safety.

>While I'm obviously glad that vaccine development happened quickly, I really wish rather than being so focussed on vaccinations exclusively we paid more attention to the fact that some countries, Taiwan, China, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have managed to quell the disease through correct social policy and appropriate levels of social coordination.

They're either islands, took authoritarian measures, or both. And again, an endemic virus that will only come back as soon as international travel comes back and lockdowns go away.

There is strong data about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

We don't have long term data on either of course, but the data that has been collected so far paints a clear picture of safe, effective vaccines.

>There is strong data >We don't have long term data

No.

They are different things. And the efficacy data is good enough to not be part of the question (if most people get vaccinated the virus goes away).

>(if most people get vaccinated the virus goes away).

Polio. And these COVID-19 vaccines do not grant indefinite immunity.

95% efficacy is not realistic. We struggle to hit 60% with influenza vaccines.

We don't know how long the immunity from the vaccines will last.

The flu is a very different virus, so it's not really a useful comparison (mutates faster, etc).

I guess there will be plenty of proof in the coming months (in either direction really, it will be reasonably clear if it works as well as has been stated).

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