Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, some of the strongest voices calling for near-permanent lockdowns came from the well-paid professional classes, who could afford to order Uber Eats twice a day and had zero chance of losing their over-inflated incomes.

The continuing erosion of the middle class isn’t a good thing. Expect populist political rhetoric to continue growing.

View on HN

Whatever the US did was not near permanent lockdowns, what is allowed to continue and be opened is more lenient than almost every country. The only countries with less restrictions than the US are opened exactly because they did a lockdown and kept the virus at bay. What kills the US economy is the virus being out there and making people afraid to get together into public settings.

I would argue the virus itself isn't making people afraid, it's media/government fear-mongering. In reality your average person has little to fear (besides the fear of spreading it to a vulnerable loved one).

I assume most people have a vulnerable loved one, no? The issue is it's one order removed from self, and most people don't abstract that far.

And sickness, long term side effects, in addition to the threat to vulnerable loved ones. They have to keep talking about dangerous it is, because people keep insisting it isn't. It's not about just you, it's about the community-wide effect. But to be clear 30 year olds have been killed by covid 19 and people of all ages report long term after effects like shortness of breath, tiredness, and pain. And some people just can't afford to take the time off-- even a week of missed work can result in not making rent. It's happening as we speak-- homelessness is skyrocketing. These are real effects of the virus, it changes peoples lives

> And sickness

Your average person doesn't fear flu-like sicknesses. It's an inconvenience, yes, but that's about it.

> long term side effects

Again... according to CDC/WHO the average person completely recovers in 2 weeks. Yes, there are cases where permanent lung scarring was observed, but AFAIK that's super rare and has to do with the type of pneumonia synergizing with covid, not covid itself. I'm sure you can dig up other cases where long term negative effects are observed... but it seems rare compared to the normal recovery scenario. Do you have a source showing that the average person should fear developing long term side effects?

I really don’t think many people are afraid to go into public settings. Maybe not into a crowd, sure, but a restaurant? The holdup there is from the government, not the public.

I think it's safe to say there is a large portion of the population that will continue not eating indoors until they are vaccinated, or the infection numbers in their area go down significantly. I can't find articles to back it up, but I have read from restaurant owners saying that even when they were allowed to expand their indoor capacity, they were never hitting that limit.

With that said, this is going to vary by region. There is absolutely a large percentage of people wanting and willing to go eat indoors at restaurants right now, I just don't think that number represents a majority.

If people are scared to go out then why even have lockdowns?

Schrödinger's virus: We need lockdowns to save everyone but even if we didn't have lockdowns nobody would go anyway but we still need to lockdowns.

If the virus were actually as deadly as past examples, there wouldn’t be a need to impose lockdowns. People would avoid each other out of sheer self-preservation.

People still go out. Enough to spread infection. But not enough to maintain the economy.

I may never go back to eating at restaurants. I never really liked them to begin with, they seem like pretty much the least efficient and most expensive way to eat food. I never really understood the allure. Now I look at a crowded restaurant and all I can see is all those mouths and noses in close proximity to each other spraying and snorting god-knows-what into each other. Yuck! I may never look at crowds the same way either. The pandemic has given me a boosted appreciation of personal space and hygiene.

I would be nervous going to a restaurant if it was the same set up as before. i.e. a lot of tables packed next to each other. With the reduced indoors capacity or outdoor seating that's some what spaced out I'm less nervous about it.

People are demonstrably not afraid to get together in public places... whatever public places I've been to (mostly in deep blue states, and also Nevada) are as crowded as they can be. Actually, outdoor spaces were overcrowded, more than usual, during complete lockdown in WA where they were literally telling people to not leave the house except for critical tasks.

This argument always seems completely untenable for me. It's highly improbable that the level of fear hits the sweet spot where without lockdowns it's not enough to prevent the spread, but enough to ruin the economy.

The near-permanent lockdowns needed to be offset by government payment programs like they were in every other developed country except the US. If they shut everything down but don't offset it somehow, what do they expect the result to be? The $1200 check was laughable.

I agree we need more cash payments to humans. But we have to be careful not to confuse money with stuff (the goods and services produced by the economy). Giving money does not produce any more stuff, it only increases the competition for and price of the stuff that is being produced.

We are producing less stuff because of the pandemic, which means there is less to go around (however it gets allocated), and no amount of money will change that.

> I agree we need more cash payments to humans. But we have to be careful not to confuse money with stuff (the goods and services produced by the economy). Giving money does not produce any more stuff, it only increases the competition for and price of the stuff that is being produced.

> We are producing less stuff because of the pandemic, which means there is less to go around (however it gets allocated), and no amount of money will change that.

A large fraction of that stuff is not strictly necessary for anyone's survival, especially in the short term. It's various degrees of "nice to have." Too see this, look at the kinds of rationing they did in WWII.

A successful COVID containment strategy would have identified the truly essential vs nice-to-have parts of the economy, and temporarily shut the latter parts down while supporting all affected workers in those sectors with payments sufficient to provide all needed access to essential goods and services for the duration (including housing). That wouldn't work as a permanent economic policy, but it would work as a temporary coordinated response to time-limited crisis.

Too many HN users have no idea how businesses operate outside the software sector. Many of those "non-essential" businesses and the associated supply chains are simply not set up in a way that can be stopped and then successfully restarted months later. If they're shut down for any significant period then they're gone for good. Crashing the economy into another Great Depression would kill more people than the virus. There has to be a sensible balance.

> Many of those "non-essential" businesses and the associated supply chains are simply not set up in a way that can be stopped and then successfully restarted months later. If they're shut down for any significant period then they're gone for good.

Honestly, that sounds like hyperbole. You'll have to give examples, and not something like retail or restaurants. Honestly, with a little imagination and expertise (and most importantly the political will to deal with the problem), I think it doable to make the legal changes necessary to pause most business like that with little damage, just as long as the aid is there. For instance, make 2020 something like an intercalary year. IMHO, this stuff only seems impossible if you tie your hands and restrict yourself to a limited number of first-order interventions.

The situation we have now is something like an ER doctor who's too busy playing on his phone to save the life of someone who's been shot, and who then turns around and loudly blames "guns" for that unnecessary death.

Example: dry cleaners.

It's what happens when you fixate on optimizing for only one variable (in this case total covid deaths or perhaps hospital ICU capacity). All other variables must be sacrificed to optimize the one variable, even if it means pushing millions into poverty, destroying industries, educationally handicapping multiple generations of students, etc.

If that one variable was actually optimized for in a prompt manner, COVID would already be over in the US. It’s the half-assed waffling that’s causing this to drag on for the better part of a year now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com