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I've been doing a large part of what you mention voluntarily for nearly the whole time and I'm curious what you take issue with

- 8pm-5am curfew (you have to be at home)

- no visitors - 5km radius (this lasted for what felt like 6 months)

- you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house (this went for months, we still have to wear masks in shops (even though we have zero cases))

- you could only go to the super market once per day, and you had to go by yourself

- you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)

- no gyms, hospo, group events, activities etc

These all seem reasonable in a pandemic to me. Considering yalls success, I would say extremely reasonable. What is the alternative? A half assed version of those (my state imposed a weak curfew, bans to arbitrary activity, but nothing really targeted at preventing COVID). I think there is a particular horror in the current US (and elsewhere) experience where it quite literally feels like a lottery of who among your contacts will get it next. Is two months of an admitted harsh lockdown not worth avoiding that?

- lots of shops forced you to give your details over and some demanded that you sanitize your hands (these are two things I didn't want to do for my own reasons)

- increase of police powers, fines around $1600

That I find more concerning, and agree with you

I'm not convinced Victoria did anything special to beat the virus, aka I'm not convinced lock downs actually work.

It could of just been;

- seasonality

- Victorians already had antibodies from other strains from years prior

- our population may have not be as old as other places

- we could just be a healthier society in general

- we don't have subways

etc

But that is a rabbit hole discussion I won't have the time to go into;

I think any information about Covid is just noise at this point, everyone (including me) just comes up with some shallow statements about what is going on with just a few data points.

Every region of the world reports numbers on everything differently;

- What test kits do you use, and what are their +/- rates

- How do you report somebody died? (assumed covid, had covid, died from covid)

- When does an active case become inactive?

- How long do you think it incubates for?

etc

There is probably another 100+ important questions to ask.

And then ask all those questions to different states/countries and all the answers are different.

Yet we compare countries all the time.

HIV/AIDS had a similar problem, you could have AID's in America, fly to Australia and we would of reported you as maybe not having AID's.

"Even AIDS itself has a different definition depending on where you’re standing. In the U.S., AIDS is someone whose little virus-fighters, their CD4 cells, are below 200 per cubic mm of blood (normal is 500-1,500) or who is already showing symptoms. The WHO definition is anyone with a CD4 count below 350. In most European countries, you need to have an AIDS-related infection to be diagnosed with AIDS."

https://newrepublic.com/article/117789/aids-data-country-why...

Pretty good article, more or less my stance on Covid at the moment.

So when we say the US had 400k deaths and Australia had 3k, I am extremely sceptical that we are reporting things in the same way at all.

Edit: Co-authored paper by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox talking about the effectiveness of lock downs -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552...

seasonality - We were getting on top of things at the coldest time of year.

Victorians already had antibodies - absolutely no evidence of this and plenty of evidence to the contrary, if we had antibodies the second wave wouldn't have happened.

we could just be a healthier - Healthy people still get covid.

we don't have subways - Plenty of packed commuter trains and trams, having them underground makes no difference.

Aside from all that, the case numbers correlate extremely well with when the lockdowns started and when their severity increased (https://chrisbillington.net/COVID_VIC.html), there are zero other rational explanations.

I like the link you shared, thanks. (Though the graph still could have easily trended the way it did for many other reasons)

Here is an interesting paper too -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552... (Co-authored by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox) (talks about the pros and mostly cons of lockdowns)

Edit: Just adding a link to a paper that suggests T-Cell immunity from previous beta corona viruses might be helping -> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

Melbourne went from a peak of 725 daily cases to achieving 60 days with zero local transmission. Suggesting that all the lockdown measures were ineffective, and that eradication was entirely the result of circumstantial factors, doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Given that the reduction in cases fitted closely with expected modelling, and only began after stage 4 lockdown was enacted, it's a logical conclusion that at least some measures of the lockdown were effective at containing the spread.

That's not to say that none of your suggested reasons weren't a factor, or that every single one of the lockdown measures were effective. But on balance, the lockdown and other governmental measures were effective.

Montreal is a city of similar size, wealth, and demographics to Melbourne, and has 88k confirmed cases, compared to Melbourne's 20k. That kind of difference is more than discrepancies in testing methodology and case definitions. Incidentally, ten days ago the city went into lockdown (although less strict that Melbourne), so if in a few weeks there's a subsequent drop in cases, I think that it will be pretty safe to make the conclusion that lockdowns work.

I don't know what grayed-out text means on HN, but I hope it isn't flagged. This is an interesting response and pretty much sums up how many people are feeling. No, it isn't empirical data. No, it doesn't pass a 'sniff test'. But it is honest, and the state of Covid information is absolutely spot-on (Covid debate at my house! Bring your own data points!).

Lockdowns may work. They may not. Nobody has a clue, despite all the studies, due to so many confounding factors and ways and means of measurement.

Same. I've been doing this voluntarily since March. Does this suck? Yes. Is it better than dying or killing somebody? Fuck yes. I don't understand how it's even a question.

Why don't old people just quarantine?

Why are you so certain of your viewpoint? Other people can't have different opinions to you?

> Why are you so certain of your viewpoint?

because the lockdown in Victoria worked.

> Other people can't have different opinions to you?

Are those opinions shared by the scientific community?

I just posted it in another comment.

Co-authored by Donald Henderson who was credited with ridding the world of smallpox talking about the effectiveness of lock downs -> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552...

Edit. I see that you were probably responding to "Are those opinions shared by the scientific community?", in which case yes you make a valid point. However it still holds that this paper was from 2006, we're in a much better position today in many places to accomplish work remotely. Many assumptions are in fact not met. I'll keep my original comment as is below:

It is immaterial that D. A. co-authored that back in 2006. It was a different time, and the measures that he is professing against have _demonstrably_ proven to be effective.

The paper gives suggestions based on many assumptions that don't hold considering the implemented rules. But they're just suggestions. Offering this paper in the face of demonstrable evidence that these measures do in fact work seems a little irrational in my perspective.

Why is simply being effective the bar for lockdowns? Lots of things are effective that aren't used because we understand that there are tradeoffs and other policies can bring similar effectiveness with less side effects. as the saying goes: "Any idiot can build a bridge. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that is just strong enough to stand given the weight it's meant to bear."

> Screening passengers at borders or closing air or rail hubs. Experience has shown that these actions are not effective and could have serious adverse consequences; thus, they are not recommended.

So his solution is to not screen people and let everyone in?

> Quarantine. As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals

So his recommendation is to let people with virus loose in the community. You really believe that?

Maybe you need to listen to people who have experience with the flu and other corona viruses instead someone with small pox experience.

Lockdowns didn't exist in the literature prior to march 2020. This is all experimental clap trap being sold as science.

No that is wrong. Just read about the Spanish Flu.

Two days later, the city shut down most public gatherings and quarantined victims in their homes. The cases slowed.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-citie...

It worked in the sense that one way to shutdown a computer is to throw it out of the windows.

Look at NSW for how its done. Reasonable sensible decisions taken over months with contact tracing that actually works.

> Reasonable sensible decisions taken over months with contact tracing that actually works.

yes and Victoria's contract tracing was not good at that time and the virus was spreading in the community so the right solution after that was to have a lockdown.

I feel like the demonstrated effectiveness of quarantining old people is the reason you can't do that. It sounds great on paper, but it turns out that homes are staffed with lots of casual workers who work multiple jobs, and keeping covid out of them is near impossible.

Could this be addressed? Sure. Should it in future? Probably. But we don't get a whole lot of tries when there's a pandemic going around. It didn't work at first, how many attempts do you have to give it before you say "we need to solve that next time, right now we need a different solution"?

For starters, it doesn't just kill old people.

And I'm not concerned with other people's opinions. I'm concerned with their actions. If somebody follows public health guidelines, they can have whatever opinion they want. If they're out helping transmit a disease killing millions and wrecking the economy, I still don't care what their opinions are.

It doesn't just kill old people but it would be more sensible policy to note that it overwhelming kills older people -> https://www.health.gov.au/resources/covid-19-deaths-by-age-g...

Everybody is aware. And many countries did try to keep everything open while protecting old people. And it worked exactly nowhere.

But once the human tragedy became apparent, once the people in charge visited one or two hospitals, once it became clear that many people, while surviving, are left disabled - well - opinions changed.

You are free to have your opinion, of course.

Just the side-effects of COVID are bad enough, even for young people. The scientific reports quickly squashed my idea of live vaccination in March. It seems the media mostly focuses on the deaths since these are measurable and deaths are visceral, but maybe they should focus more on the general dangers of COVID for everyone.

How feasible is complete isolation for those who are immune compromised and elderly? How is the national coverage for services relating to basic necessities and the ability to those in this group to access them?

Given that this is a highly infectious virus, a reasonable person will understand that aside from those in this at risk group, every external point of contact is an additional risk. Should they also do the same?

The point I try to make is that with how connected our societies are, the interconnected nature enables the spread to the point where a single group quarantining is ineffective.

Think of it in terms of a spreading fire. The more a fire burns nearby, the higher the chances it will spread even to an isolated area or overcome fire resistance measures.

>Is it better than dying or killing somebody? Fuck yes.

I find the self certainty in the phrasing there so shocking. Why can't you do this consistently with all communicable viruses that call? How do you know you're not being completely arbitrary deciding "just this one"

Because we can look at countries who have done bad and go, yeah we could be like US/UK with all their actual deaths.

Your reply didn't really address the question. There are many communicable diseases that kill, if you're being consistent with this save every life possible approach, you also need to stay in your home any time the flu is going around. Do those deaths not count? Tens of thousands of dead are ok, but a hundred thousand is not? How do you decide which lives are worth saving when you throw out these caviler implied moral condemnations of anyone who wouldn't live in a state of permanent lockdown to save lives? that's the question. I'm asking this due to your super self certain wording.

Basically, I would never make such absolute statements because saving lives is always an opportunity cost. Human life is only so long, if I stay in lockdown a year to save a stranger, I might miss the last Thanksgiving with a parent or grandparent in their last year on the planet and never know until it is too late. That's not a trivial cost when you lock down a million to save one, while all one million lose a piece of their finite lives forever.

That's a great question. While I'm not the person who you asked, I'd like to get some examples from you. Which other pandemic outbreak are you referring to? Or are you referring to some communicable disease which isn't a pandemic?

I'm mostly thinking of the flu. I actually don't know if there are any other viruses that take 1000s of lives in the average year. I also don't know why covid is classified as a pandemic and the flu is just normal. What is the criteria? A specific percentage of deaths? Some specific combination of R factor and rate of deaths? Mainly, I think it is clear that if you say 1% deaths justifies massive action but .01% does not, the deaths are still all human lives and so it is literally a claim that decides how much one life is worth. It is an economic calculus on human life, and so in my mind absolutely deserves an objective justification for deciding.

One example analogy would be increased airline safety regulation. More regulation increases ticket prices. Supply and demand means a high price will ultimately cause a family to decide to make a road trip over flying for economic reasons. The chance of dying in a multi hour car drive is far higher than in one hour on a commercial aircraft. You can at least use numbers in this case to say if new regulation is justified based on the expected lives saved.

Apart from the higher numbers a good reason to be concerned about the novel coronavirus is the "novel" part. The 1918 pandemic was initially known as the three day flu but the second wave mutated into a 12 hour death sentence.

You are correct that I'd phrase this differently were I writing an abstract philosophy treatise or an analytical public health paper. I was writing in a casual discussion forum about what I am currently doing in the middle of a global public health crisis that has killed 2 million people, mostly needlessly. So yes, I'm going to write clearly and frankly.

And my moral condemnation for people is absolutely not cavalier. I actively and vigorously condemn the legion of assholes who think mild personal inconvenience is worse than mass death plus a much greater swathe of serious illness. I also condemn the societal moral failures that have impeded a sensible coordinated response, especially the politicians who, having created and sustained an underclass, now insist for ideological reasons that their suffering should be deepened while at the same time making the pandemic worse for everyone. It's both moral idiocy and moral obscenity. At best, it's obliviousness or IGMFU. But more often, as Serwer wrote, "The cruelty is the point."

If you have any symptoms of a communicable disease you should wear a mask.

The fact that we started doing this in 2020 is the problem, we should have done this every flu season.

It works, it reduces transmission. Asian countries have been doing this for years, it’s an expected norm.

The rest of the measures are debatable, but wearing a mask when you’re sick should not be.

I was caught completely by surprise when the huge mask resistance in the US emerged. I found it absurd, here you are making an ordeal of holding doors for people, like it makes you a great person, a useless gesture, and meanwhile the singular act of goodwill we have needed from others in 100 years is a freaking mask, and it is "robbing you of your freedoms".

I am biased though. I've always had a huge admiration of Japan and resentment that I couldn't wear a mask when sick, because it is illegal in many jurisdictions in the US for anyone over 18 to wear a mask as well as those under when it's not halloween.

I highly doubt after the pandemic masks are going to suddenly be legalized. Cops appear to just be ignoring the law right now, which is absurd.

If I arbitrarily save lives, that's still saved lives. If I arbitrarily reduce the risk of causing harm, that's still reduced risk of harm. Those are good. I value results over consistency. I definitely value results over analysis paralysis, over waiting for a perfection of clarity not available this side of the grave.

And as best I know, I do "do this" with all potentially fatal communicable diseases. I get the flu shot every year. I even do it with non-fatal diseases as best I can. When I'm sick, I stay the hell home. I exercise good hygiene and good food safety.

And I have no idea why people don't do otherwise. All it takes is valuing others' health and survival.

In the US, compliance is not high enough and regions are not coordinated enough to actually make an impact on the danger level. So from the perspective of someone following the rules, the rules are here to stay through mass vaccination. How do you feel about living like this for a minimum of 18 months?

I have made my peace with doing that- it's already been 10 months. And I acknowledge I am extremely lucky to be in a situation where I can do that, and do it in a way that I feel is sustainable (for me personally).

My point isn't that "oh this is so easy". Instead, my point is in a heartbeat I would trade 2 months of extreme lockdown to avoid what we see in the United States. I know that isn't/wasn't possible for reasons you describe but it hurts to see someone who lives in a region where they crushed COVID complain about what was done

> - you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house

> - you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)

> These all seem reasonable in a pandemic to me.

Not really; no evidence has ever suggested that outdoor spread is enough of an issue that either of these policies make much of a difference.

As a counter to your anecdote, I managed to conquer most of my vices during lockdown. I cut my drinking to a couple of beers a week, stopped doing recreational drugs, checked out of a bunch of toxic interpersonal relationships, and sorted my finances out.

I'm not sure what your situation is, but I'd highly recommend going to therapy or finding some other form of support. Signing up for therapy during lockdown was possibly the best decision I've ever made. It was something that I should have done years ago, and finally managed to do it last year, but having that extra support during lockdown was a huge help too.

I don't want to go into more detail publicly, but I can send you an email with some links/resources/advice if you want?

> also bothered by how compliant everyone was.

You are also bothered by the fact there is no community transmission in Victoria anymore or you prefer the US version where you just let the virus loose?

> the US version where you just let the virus loose

Herd immunity by August, with or without vaccines.

August 2022?

Cost of how many lives?

Unknowable.

I get what you're saying, but there is an upper bound of roughly 1M in the US, depending on what the true case fatality rate is.

That's cute. Try living in a country where similar restrictions are in effect. You had it easy and people complying was the only reason it worked so that you can get back to something resembling normal now.

Such as?

The UK. No curfews yet although its being discussed in government now. We are to leave the house once per week for shopping only.

The UK restrictions are not this. You can leave the house whenever you like if you have “reasonable excuse”. There are no explicit restrictions on how often, how long for, and how far and where you can go.

The UK government has been saying one thing, and enacting another in law, which leads to this one of confusion, but what you’ve stated there has never even been said as far as I know.

The regulations: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1374/contents

Amendments for 2021: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/8/contents/made

In the UK. Went out several times in the last week for a long walk. It's allowed for exercise.

Streets were fairly busy with people.

The local town square was packed, every bench spot was taken. Seems people have decided lockdown 3 is for hanging out at the local square. Pancakes were on sale.

At the same time, hospital ICUs are fuller than they have ever been, some hospitals are having to reduce oxygen supply per patient due to overload, and the death rate is higher than it's ever been.

And people are outside those hospitals protesting without masks that the pandemic is a hoax and hospitals are "empty". What a thing for doctors and nurses coming off shift to walk into.

Better one serious lockdown and then having some peace of mind than an endless series of half-assed lockdowns like in Europe.

I've lost track of what "lockdown" we're in now and the people are getting really tired of the perceived incompetence of the government. We also royally screwed-up the vaccine management and it will take at least until end of summer to vaccinate enough of the population.

I don't understand this take. I went the same Melbourne lockdown and am extremely grateful for how the government handled it. I have colleagues in the US and, while they're not under strict and enforced lockdown, they've had to effectively self lockdown since the start of the pandemic. They also have 400,000 deaths and no real end in sight for when some normality might resume.

I'm happy with the measures taken, even if they were a bit draconian, because now I can, without needing to worry too much, do normal things like going to visit friends/family and going out to restaurants/cafes. It sucked to have a curfew and only be able to get out of the house for 1 hour per day, sure, but it would suck much more if we were in a perpetual limbo state with only the promise of a vaccine to hope for.

> with only the promise of a vaccine to hope for.

US here - I'm still not 100% convinced enough people will take it. Even this week I'm hearing and reading and talking to people who are telling me they'll refuse a vaccine. Yet... also complaining about a coming "2 tier" system where people who aren't vaccinated will be locked out of some parts of society... but then also refusing a vaccine because... (no direct clear answer beyond "rights").

So... we have the vaccine to hope for, but if not enough people get it, I'd think new strains might continue to develop and infect more folks. :/

I’m a USAian and I’d trade our situation for yours in a heartbeat. What a mess we have over here! Likely avoidable if our leaders were not so incompetent and cowardly and if our population wasn’t a bunch of selfish morons. 400k avoidable deaths.

I agree. I have been on "self lockdown" since March, in the USA. I've been observing all of the following since then:

> - 8pm-5am curfew (you have to be at home)

Check.

> - no visitors

Other than my girlfriend, who broke up with me 3 months ago, check.

> - 5km radius (this lasted for what felt like 6 months)

Not really all that practical, but I certainly haven't been travelling about to strange places. I'd say my radius has been about 90% within the 5km, except for things I couldn't do within that radius, such as buying things that literally aren't available within 5km. In any case, I take my own car, by myself, and always wear a mask, so it's no more dangerous than going to the grocery store 1 mile away from me.

> - you had to wear your mask as soon as you left your house (this went for months, we still have to wear masks in shops (even though we have zero cases))

Check, mostly. I don't wear it when I take my dog for a walk, but I also never run into anyone else when doing so.

> - you could only go to the super market once per day, and you had to go by yourself

Check.

> - you were only allowed outside for exercise for 1 hour (with 1 person)

Check, mostly. See above dog walks.

> - no gyms, hospo, group events, activities etc

100% been avoiding all of these things since March, except for a trip to Tahoe in June with my then girlfriend, where we met up with her best friend. Other than said best friend, I was never within 6 feet of anyone else, although I was really nervous about how few people were wearing masks. We probably should not have made that trip, even though none of the three of us got sick.

I wish they had just done these things for 2-3 months:

> - lots of shops forced you to give your details over and some demanded that you sanitize your hands (these are two things I didn't want to do for my own reasons)

> - increase of police powers, fines around $1600

The police bit is the part that really pisses me off. Technically, it's a misdemeanor to have a social gathering right now, but local police won't do shit about it. There have been 2 gatherings in my 6 unit apartment building during the time it's been banned. I don't want to get COVID because other people in my building are idiots.

Proper use of lockdowns would have been to reduce cases to the point where contact tracing and testing could take over. Unfortunately, we haven't implemented those measures, either. To quote Death to 2020, "I'd say it was a train wreck and a shit show, but that would be unfair to trains and shit."

I've been doing basically this voluntarily since the middle of March. I haven't stepped inside a building except a Walgreens once to get a flu vaccine.

My own parents have only visited twice, and we only visited outside my front yard. I haven't seen any friends in person except for two brief times when they dropped something off at the house, and we talked outside with masks on.

But then again, I live in the US, and we just officially crossed 400,000 deaths due to the virus, compared to less than 1,000 in Australia, it looks like. I can understand it would be more difficult to adhere to when the virus is so under control where you're at, but those lockdowns might be a big reason why.