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Comment by RalfWausE | Hacker News Reader

I think the psychological toll of the lockdowns in different countries is highly underestimated.

I myself have no real economical shortcomings due to the lockdown, but even as a person who is normaly a total loner and who can spend weeks completely alone on a excessive hiking trip i am slowly going crazy... For my wife, who is a highly social character, its even worse.

And i am not the only one in this mindset... what i hear and see in my region let me believe the mood is slowly turning into some sort of "Torches and Pitchforks" way...

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Different countries, and different situations.

Living in a big old house in the country with your family? Your life is probably basically the same as it always was. Potentially better, depending on the work situation. Okay, sure, you're not going on as many holidays, and depending on how strict the rules are where you are, dinner parties are off the cards.

Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

I have no issue with how people choose to live their lives. I'm sure one day when I settle down I'll be in that group too. It sounds lovely.

But we have to be very, very clear about this - a month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group. There are limits, you can't just delete my lifestyle for a year and counting as a risk-aversion play and expect me to roll over and take it. Nah.

I understand your sentiment but for me the realization is different.

For me seeing the streets of my capital city completely empty at beginning of lockdown, as well as the trams and buses (even though you could ride them), made me realize that I was living in an environment that is fundamentally not pleasant. That it was people that made it alive.

Without people, I saw that this city which I always thought of as "the place where I can do anything, almost any time of the day" is really just a conglomerate of gray buildings, commerce, lots and lots of roads and noisy traffic, and very little green.

The spell was good while it lasted. That said I am also past 45 now... if I was younger I might still want to come back to a big city when I can in order to have access to more activities.

Wasn't that something we all knew already? People are what make cities worth living in, the point of living in a city is to be close to more people, and that naturally involves some compromises (though I'm all for non-grey buildings and minimising the space devoted to cars - something my city is fairly good at).

I was living in the center of a major city on the east coast when the pandemic hit. I was renting a 400 sq ft apartment, but that was ok because I really only slept there — the coffee shop nearby was my living room, the park was my backyard, the restaurants my kitchen. That’s city life.

With all of that gone, the 400 sq ft apartment stopped being livable. That apartment wasn’t cheap, but I was able to afford to buy a house in another part of town. So I did — as did every other person in that downtown area that I knew.

Those areas are now severely depopulated to the point it’s not safe to walk around in after dark, despite being one of the nicest areas of town a year ago. Businesses are continuing to fail because their customers keep moving away. City centers will be absolutely dead for a decade or more. People are underestimating the long term impact to cities because office workers aren’t coming back en masse any time soon either — if ever. People are what makes a city great, and they’re not coming back for a long time.

To an extent - but city-dwellers also often deal with the high density by ignoring one another, to a much greater extent than they would in a smaller community.

I've heard city-dwellers claim (perhaps partly in jest) to have spent decades standing with the same people at the commuter rail station every day without giving them so much as a nod or smile, let alone learning their names.

I'm in between the two groups. I live with my partner in a mid-sized house in the centre of a small city.

Financially I'm doing great, I've worked throughout and there's literally nothing to spend the money on. My mental health is starting to deteriorate though. I'm not sleeping well most nights, I've turned very much inwards, I feel angry and despairing a lot.

Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable. There is no plan. There isn't even a set of criteria around which a plan could be built.

I don't agree that this is "a risk aversion play" here in the UK though - we have well over 100k people dead from this disease, hospitals beyond capacity and all sorts. Cancer treatments being pushed out, causing more death down the line. I don't think you can say that trying to control the spread is unwarranted.

Poorly communicated, yes. Mishandled, screwed up, too little, too late every time, yes. But unfortunately necessary to stop it just getting worse.

There is actually a provisional timetable now: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-loc...

Heh, the old "leak it to the press and if there's no immediate outpouring of rage, announce it properly next week" trick.

Been very popular over the last year or so. Yeah I've heard a few of the trickles of info. I'm hoping for the official reveal on Monday. Guess we'll see.

(and thanks for the link)

I'm so confused as to how excess money can be enough fuel for so many people's positive feedback loops that it keeps them working. That already wasn't working for me, but as soon as there was almost nothing to do, I crashed and lost my job.

In my case there's a goal. I'm putting together enough money for a house deposit in another country when we emigrate later in the year.

When I'm tired as all hell and wishing I could just go back to bed, that's what keeps me going. When I'm not tired as all hell I actually still enjoy the work, so that helps.

Out of curiosity, where are you planning to go? I am planning to leave the UK too and would like to know some options. So far my plan is to end up somewhere in Eastern Europe. Cost of living is low enough that I can actually afford a property instead of burning piles of cash for a shitty London flat.

Western Australia. I lived there for a couple of years about 10 years ago as a skilled migrant, then came back to the UK. I was (really, really unexpectedly) lucky enough that when I applied to reinstate my long-expired visa they said "sure, you have a one-year window to get back over here".

Cost of living is pretty high, salaries are pretty OK (better than a lot of UK perm, not as good as UK fintech contracting AFAICT), houses are big if you live out of the city centres, the sun shines and the beaches go on forever :)

The part of me that isn't horrified by the death toll or frustrated by the inconveniences in my own life has thought about a million times, "man, I bet we're getting so much interesting data out of this pandemic."

Beyond the bucket of cash dumped onto new vaccine technologies, the international DiRT for all of our emergency preparedness, the data on pandemic spread and transmission reduction strategies, we're also getting all sorts of psych and social data on how people respond to a crisis, to government orders and to isolation. A thousand dissertations and new departments of study will spring from this.

I guess I don't know what the alternative would be. I miss travel/events and getting together with people socially. But it's not like those would exist if I weren't working either. I almost certainly have more personal contact than if I weren't working. Plus I'm fairly close to retirement so I might as well put some more money away.

> Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable.

I can understand why people want things to look forward to - and why businesses and people whose jobs will reopen would want dates in advance so they can plan.

But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

That's what they did with the second lockdown - announced upfront that it was from to 31st October to 2nd December. Then they kept to their timetable and reopened things even though every metric on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ made it clear we hadn't stopped the second wave - and now we have a third lockdown.

> But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

This is also why I mentioned criteria - even if not a fixed timetable, we could at least know what sort of criteria would trigger a rule change. I.E. when we get down to X cases per day, X deaths etc etc, the schools will open. If it keeps falling then the rule of six reapplies in outdoor public spaces ...

At least something rather than just being locked down indefinitely.

I agree the lifting of Lockdown 2 was a really poor choice.

> Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. After the second timeline turns out to be completely made up, people will stop trusting them and add "more distrust of government" to their despair.

So come up with a timeline that's not made up, then.

In the absence of Government leadership, I've had to do it for myself - I have a set date beyond which I will no longer follow social distancing. If I didn't have that, I'd have snapped long ago, which is strictly a worse outcome.

People individually snapping and choosing to do whatever they want is more dangerous than the alternative of the Government explicitly announcing that lockdown is a time-limited policy (and as such providing more support to the hardest-hit individuals).

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Well, if that's even a good analogy, since lockdown is clearly nowhere near perfect, it's trading life for life.

Again, I think that's why criteria need to be set out, rather than a strict timetable.

One thing that helped for me was to treat this period as also life, rather than something I must sit through.

I still highlight dumb holidays (next week is International I Hate Cilantro Day), read by the candlelight, explore abandoned buildings, ride my bicycle around etc.

I had to delay the plans for which I have strived for many years, but I don't consider that time lost. I got to try things I wouldn't have tried otherwise, and to invest my time in different places.

When I get hit by a wave of despair (usually after they push the dates further), I do something that reaffirms this.

I'm trying to treat it as a good time to get things done.

I can't go anywhere so I have time to finish painting the hallway, fixing the garden etc etc. It helps I also have a home-based hobby (brewing) so I can carry on with that.

I should cycle more, and I'm sure I will when the weather picks up a bit. It really helps my state of mind.

Also my city feels much more dangerous now. PReviously with loads of people always milling around I would feel safe walking around alone at 2-4am going home from bars.

Now it can feel pretty dodgy as soon as its dark in the city centre. No one has any reason to be there so the junkies, homeless and others have seemingly gotten more brave.

I was in the city centre around 9-10pm a little while ago and it was almost 100% drunk / high / homeless looking at me really weirdly and got approached by a couple in a semi-aggresive way.

That had never happened to me in the five years I've lived here previously.

Anecdotally my experience has been the opposite in my mid-sized US city. Previously the only people out during the weeks at night would be drunks from bars.

Now even in the dead of winter, on my nightly walks I see people strolling around at night. Many times the same people, assuming they're just looking to get out of the house.

Summer was even more drastic, I don't think I have ever seen more people take to cycling and walking for enjoyments sake in my area before.

What a weird comment. You think people with families don't miss their social lives? You think it has been easy? People aren't meant to spend so much time together. Not to mention work and full-time child care don't really go together.

I'd say if anything, I considered maintaining a social life to be a form of self-care, one I was already struggling to get enough of.

> A month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group

Why wait a month or two? I'm not saying I agree with you, but nothing's going to change in 2 months. I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.

> Why wait a month or two?

Because I have just about enough left in me, and by then, in the UK we will have vaccinated the groups which make up ~99% of preventable mortality.

At that point, the moral argument of "go outside and you're putting people at risk" completely falls apart in my view.

If there are variants which escape the vaccines, then at that point it's game over since I know I definitely won't be able to make it through another year.

Honestly, unless we vaccinate everybody in the entire world, it seems that vaccine resistant variants are inevitable.

I don't know what the lockdowns are like in the UK. Are you guys not even allowed to go outside?

> I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.

Given the speed in which effective vaccines were developed I think this is a rather bleak outlook.

Sure, a lot is still unknown with the new virus variants and as has been expected vaccination drives had their teething problems. But in a few month time (almost) everybody who wants their jabs can get it (in rich countries, that is).

I for one, see myself on a 3 week vacation in Asia later this year. Optimistic? Maybe, and certainly dependent on a number of factors beyond my control. But I think it's a much better perspective than wallowing in misery and not seeing a way out.

It is worth reading what the epidemologists advising Western governments actually think. Many of them are arguing for social distancing and border closures to continue until the entire world is vaccinated, regardless of how many people are vaccinated within your own country. That is expected to take probably until 2026, so the OP's worries about five years are founded. Some outliers among those advisors are even arguing for social distancing for the rest of the 2020s, or (because they want to take the opportunity to end flu transmission as well) in perpetuity.

That would be pretty dystopian.

Thank god the epidemiologists are not the ones making policy. Most state and local governments in the US have not shown a willingness to follow such a hardline approach, and we're already seeing reopenings as numbers drop, long before the vaccine has even had a major impact.

Pretty sure one of Biden’s main talking points of his election campaign was that America would start listening to the scientists more closely.

Nothing Biden has said or done has implied he wants to take a hardline approach to COVID restrictions, aside from briefly floating the idea of limited domestic travel. And he made no effort to tie the massive relief package to restrictive state polices. Beyond that, he has limited authority over state and local restrictions.

One of the Biden administration's first moves was to reinstate the ban on travel to the USA from Schengen that was about to expire. And it was just announced that this ban would now be extended indefinitely. The US ban on travel does not just affect tourism, it affects family reunification as well, and I would consider that a hardline approach.

That travel "ban" is riddled with exemptions.

Can you cite those exemptions? There is a longstanding campaign on Twitter (loveisnottourism) that complains that the US policy is preventing partners from seeing one another. Also, even if in some cases one could theoretically board a flight, that means nothing if you need a visa and your local US consulate won’t issue you one, because it says no visas will be issued during the pandemic.

To say nothing of control over how people actually act.

In any case, listening to scientists means you take their input and factor that into the tradeoffs that drive policy. Which may well involve simultaneously that there is e.g. some risk associated with allowing people to travel by air while allowing them to do it anyway.

So far no meaningful action has been taken that indicates he's particularly concerned. He's focused on trying to reopen schools, last I heard.

Some people have argued that the vaccinations are evidence of his success regarding Covid-19 but I don't see any part of that that wouldn't have been proceeding with or without him. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Trump and Biden's handling of covid has been "Biden knows to keep his mouth shut about specifics and predictions, because he might be wrong" which is exactly the kind of playing-both-sides I've seen from many state and city governments for the last year (talking a lot about how we need to follow the science and keep locking down to keep the spread low, but also taking no steps to enforce the rules or financially support people/businesses.)

Oh I'm sure he's concerned. But there's precious little he can do other than doing what he can to get vaccines rolled out faster and closing borders to foreigners. Most people certainly support the former and most are at worst indifferent to the latter. He can also set a "good example."

But getting into a tussle with states he thinks are opening up too much, etc. is almost certainly counterproductive at this point.

Do you have a source for that?

Many of these advisors are speaking directly to media. Devi Sridhar, one of the advisors to the UK government, for example, has been doing interviews recently about maintaining long-term border closures and requiring expensive hotel quarantines.

Right after I posted my comment above, at 15:12 comments regarding Canadian forecasts appeared in The Guardian's COVID live blog, in which epidemologists say that restrictions must be preserved within the country because the vaccine rollout is a global problem, not a local one.

The only article that seems to be quoting Devi Sridhar is behind a paywall, but doesn't seem to be supporting your argument.

I can't find anything on The Guradian's COVID live blog talking about what you're referring to, can you provide a link?

If you go to Google News, set your location to the UK, and search for "devi sridhar", you'll find abundant content that is not behind a paywall. Here is just one article[0] of many in which she advocates for an approach where borders stay closed until the whole world is vaccinated.

Apparently this[1] is the permalink for The Guardian post.

[0] https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19036150.covid-scotland-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/feb/19/coronavir...

There is zero chance that democracies will conform to those kind of restrictions. Once most people are vaccinated, people are going to shift back to business (mostly) as usual subject to changes like more remote work. Governments can't enforce policies if people won't follow them.

Are you sure this is the case? From the Norwegian news it seems very much like the epidemiologists that are advising the government in many cases are advising lesser restrictions than what is actually implemented.

I think it may be tough to imagine what being alone and isolated for a year does to a person if you are someone who is stuck inside with the same people all day. I would imagine the situation for those with family is very difficult and exhausting... but not suicidal ideation level of difficult, which has been my experience with this extreme social isolation. This is in spite of devoting a lot of time and energy to self care: exercising daily, eating healthy, not drinking alcohol, and many other things. Maybe my assumption here is wrong and there are plenty of people out there living with their families who are in as precarious a situation as I currently find myself. Either way, everyone is suffering right now, but my experience has been that long term social isolation is a unique form of torture that can really push a person to the edge.

> Maybe my assumption here is wrong and there are plenty of people out there living with their families who are in as precarious a situation as I currently find myself.

Yes, you are wrong. Everybody I know with little kids is suffering the same social isolation as you. 4 year olds do not count as socializing, especially when all of our kids are also feeling the negative effects of isolation as well.

Besides that, you specifically mentioned doing self-care. It's amazing you have the time and energy to do it. My day starts at 530am (if I'm lucky) and the only time I could work out is after the girls go to bed.

I could think of plenty of ways to get some form of social interaction if I wasn't so stretched. All my single coworkers are playing video games together and doing zoom hangouts. My friends do a poker night and I can't stay up late enough because I'm so worn out by the time it starts. I've barely spoken to anyone besides my wife, who is also being slowly ground into dust, unless you count my weekly one on one with my manager.

I'm not trying to one up anybody. If anything I think that most of us are going through some comparable form of mental anguish. The irony is that Covid keeps us from seeing how other people go through it too

Sorry to hear all that. It wasn't my intent to imply that those with families aren't struggling - I know plenty who are.

The idea that nothing will change in the next two months is absurd because things are already changing. There's already been an easing of restrictions over the last few weeks as the rate of new cases declines. And this is before the vaccine has had a chance to make much of an impact. Because of the vaccines, we have very reason to believe the rate of hospitalizations and deaths will only go down, which will inevitably lead to a further easing of restrictions.

The parent comment was wrong to assume that people with families aren't also struggling due to dampened social lives - we're all struggling.

The people who are isolated by themselves are struggling much more.

In prison, the worst punishment you can receive is to be taken away from the all rapists and murderers, and put in solitary confinement. Being stuck in a prison cell with a partner and family probably sounds like a dream to the person stuck in a prison cell alone.

Depends on how abusive that family is. Because in reality, being alone with internet in appartment is not comparable to prison solitary lock down.

They are massively different.

People in solitary confinement aren't allowed to go anywhere or speak to anybody. What country has restrictions that keep you from socializing online or calling people on the phone? In most places you have never not been able to interact outdoors or go food shopping.

Yes, it's terrible. Even those of us who are "coping" aren't coping terribly well. But ironically the disconnection has made the costs of the disease invisible as well. The zoom funerals. I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.

The death toll dwarfs every single "disaster" in UK modern cultural history. Aberfan, Lockerbie, Dunblane, Piper Alpha, Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Herald of Free Enterprise, Marchioness, Titanic, Lusitania, Harold Shipman: COVID exceeds all of those put together. Invisibly. Any given one of those is dwarfed by the daily COVID death toll.

A rate that starts to rival wartime deaths. At the recent peak the death toll for 19 January was almost one HMS Hood per day.

But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich too, and the decision-makers behind them fall into the high-risk categories.

Sobering thought: if you think COVID-19 is bad now, wait until there's a pandemic of something like the Spanish Flu that does target and kill the young and healthy too.

> while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway.

The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail]

I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the parent comment: “I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.”

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid

> If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

I think you missed this part of their comment. They were arguing the deaths weren’t the same kind of deaths as in past catastrophes, but the long term ailments are bad and real.

Though I agree the years lost is bigger than people think.

I'm sorry if it comes off as callous, but we're comparing incidents of mass death here and disability-adjusted life years is how insurance companies and demographers do it. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a good thing that 500k people have died from COVID in the US, but simply that having same number of young, healthy people getting gunned down in the Battle of the Somme is almost any measure objectively worse.

Do you really not know any young people who have been permanently damaged by COVID? I know multiple people in their 20s and 30s that spent weeks in the ER and will never be the same. I'm always surprised to find people who think the lockdown is excessive. COVID is absolutely no joke even if you're young, it's not the flu. Not even close, you don't want it.

My anecdotal experience is the opposite of yours - everyone I know in their 20s and 30s who had a positive COVID-19 test got through it within a week and it was about the same as the flu.

If my anecdata is irrelevant, then so is yours.

The only people I know who have had permanent damage from COVID-19 in this age range, have all had their trauma caused by excessive lockdown policies.

You know what's even less of a joke than COVID-19? Our histrionic, insane, and completely violent overreaction to it.

> You know what's even less of a joke than COVID-19? Our histrionic, insane, and completely violent overreaction to it.

Quick question: how would you propose dealing with a global pandemic? Social isolation seems like the most common sense solution, since in 2021 we know how disease is transmitted and how to deal with that.

Social isolation may be the best solution. Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I am not going to entertain further the notion that we have locked people into their homes, given trillions of dollars to multinational corporations, and restricted the lives of everyday people, just because of a pandemic that kills less than 1% of the people infected. This is such an obvious cash-grab and overt attempt to impose further fascism upon people, just like what happened after 9/11 in the US with the imposition of the Patriot Act.

I'm not making any cash on this, and I want the lockdown to continue. Because I don't want COVID and have a rudimentary knowledge of how disease is transmitted.

> Social isolation may be the best solution. Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I think your own statement is proof that this is not the case. We know social distancing works, yet you don't want to implement it.

> just like what happened after 9/11 in the US with the imposition of the Patriot Act.

I agree that governments will always do this. That doesn't make COVID any less of a threat though. The lockdown isn't the only lever of authoritarian control. There's plenty of others you can fight to increase individual liberty. Things that won't put millions of others (and yourself) at risk.

> I think your own statement is proof that this is not the case. We know social distancing works, yet you don't want to implement it.

I said I don't want to force it on people - I never said it was a bad idea to remove yourself from close contact with strangers during a pandemic. Forcing it on people is how you get deaths of despair, run everyone's businesses to the ground, and ruin every healthy person's life who isn't at risk.

You don't have to force it. Social distancing is a decision an individual makes, and a rational individual would choose to do this if they wanted to live without the risk of getting infected.

> I said I don't want to force it on people - I never said it was a bad idea to remove yourself from close contact with strangers during a pandemic.

Allowing anyone to opt out disproportionately negatively affects people who are unable to isolate for whatever reason: essential job, medical emergency, etc. People not isolating creates more risk for the grocery checkout person or power plant operator, for example.

> Social distancing is a decision an individual makes, and a rational individual would choose to do this if they wanted to live without the risk of getting infected.

It's just selfishness (or at best rank ignorance) to believe that whether or not you personally isolate only affects your health.

We are unable to identify when, where, and how an individual got infected with COVID-19. It is absurd to say that people "not isolating" creates more risk, unless those not isolating are the people at risk in the first place. Those at risk of dying from something as benign as COVID-19 ought to be nowhere near a power plant or a supermarket. The responsibility to not die from COVID-19 is in the hands of the individual at risk of dying from it. If you are that frail and in such poor health, stay away from the public. You don't need a damn law to enforce that, since this is typically what is done naturally in human populations; the sick & frail stay home and out of the public, the healthy live on and try to keep the world turning.

Consider this: influenza almost disappeared due to the lockdowns and other measures we took.

Yet 3000 people in the U.S. are dying each day from COVID.

Does that not indicate that this virus is a particularly nasty virus worthy of special measures? That it’s still spreading widely when the flu can’t?

I have considered it for an entire year. And my response to that is: who cares?

People are still dying from respiratory viruses at a totally unacceptable rate. We're a very sick culture who cannot handle a respiratory illness without freaking-the-fuck out.

We have way bigger problems than COVID-19, which is nothing more than a symptom of those problems.

> Fine. Don't force it on us. If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

Do you actually, really believe this? Do you really believe that if that the research studies come out and say “hey stay inside” that everyone will read the studies front-to-back and go “oh, it’s in the public interest for everyone to stay inside”? Is this a thing that you think will happen in America?

> impose further fascism

What is fascism?

> What is fascism?

When the government does something I don't like /s

Locking people inside their homes for arbitrary reasons was a practice in which all officially-fascist governments engaged.

> If it's the right solution, then it will be followed

Social isolation isn't an opt-in kind of measure. Furthermore, the average person doesn't have the background or tools to evaluate whether it works. It's a public health matter, and you do have to follow the advice of the relevant authorities.

This is like the law against drinking and driving in many countries: you cannot decide to opt-out of this restriction. It negatively affects others who do decide to comply with the restriction. If caught, you will be subject to some kind of penalty (such as having your license revoked), for good reason.

Awesome.

I'm opting out anyway.

"What are you in for, son"?

"Being outside without an excuse."

Clown world.

"What are you in for, son?"

"Drinking and driving, but I actually drive better while I'm drunk, these cops know nothing!"

Outside without an excuse.

It's illegal in the UK to take a picnic to a park bench.

I'm sorry for your loss. But no, it's not drunk driving, it's existing as a human being.

Best of luck.

It's not a dystopian martial law and you're not summarily shot or arrested. Maybe it's different in the UK, do they arrest you there?

It's about not being selfish and helping contain or flatten the contagion. It's about thinking about others and not just yourself.

> it's existing as a human being

A selfish human being, yes.

300 days of restrictions.

If your country is less restrictive, I'm happy for you.

It's been illegal for me to have a friend over for 100 days.

It's illegal to have a picnic on a park bench.

So yeah, I'm not doing this any more. If you think that's selfish - cool, I'm selfish according to you. I'm not going to kill myself for your social credit score, stop trolling.

> 300 days of restrictions.

What country is that? We've had about 295 days of social distancing -- we recently moved from almost total lockdown to a less restricting stance, which also requires social distancing and discourages gatherings of people.

> If you think that's selfish - cool, I'm selfish according to you. I'm not going to kill myself for your social credit score, stop trolling.

I really hope nobody gets sicks or dies needlessly because of you then.

As for your accusation of trolling: please follow HN guidelines and do not encourage flamewars.

I'm simply refusing the concept that my mental health is "opt-in".

If you don't want to interact with me, that's cool. If you want to ban large gatherings and restrict smaller ones for a period of time, I get it.

When it gets to the point that it becomes illegal to be outside without an excuse, 300 days in, you're just subjecting people to cruel and unusual punishment at this point.

The idea that people are going to die in greater proportion than the damage caused by preventing people from going for a walk to the park and sitting down with a cup of coffee is not backed by evidence, and I absolutely believe that you are trolling if you think we can all just endure this indefinitely. You're just gonna have to throw me in prison because I will treat those basic freedoms as absolute until the day I die.

I hope you stay safe, best wishes.

In the UK it's neither illegal to go outside, nor illegal to have lunch on a park bench as you keep claiming. Your entire argument is false (and selfish).

It's not about you, it's about not spreading disease to others.

Sorry but you're wrong. Take a look at the UK lockdown rules (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home#w...) and you'll find that...

"You cannot leave home for recreational or leisure purposes (such as for a picnic or a social meeting)."

So your statement that the commenter's "entire argument is false" is, well, false.

That’s in the “meeting other people” section. It says repeatedly you can go out to exercise, including with someone from your household.

> If it's the right solution, then it will be followed.

I'm sorry, I simply cannot let this go unchallenged. Even a moment's thought should demonstrate that that's not the case:

* It may be the objectively-best-solution for society as a whole, but not-best for an individual (for instance, a young healthy individual who is at low-risk for long-term impact for COVID, but who could act as an incubator and carrier to spread it to more vulnerable folks). The overall-harm-done by these free-circulating individuals will, I am willing to bet, be much more than the "harm" done to them by asking them to stay home. * It may be the best solution, but to recognize that as such requires specialized scientific knowledge that the average person doesn't have. Meanwhile, propagandists are free to influence society as they wish with more-easily-consumable (but, possibly, less true) messages. * Similarly to the 2nd point - it may be the right solution, but that might not be obvious until late in the process. In this situation, trusting experts and following their advice earlier will reduce the overall harm done.

The calculus of impact here is "what is the harm done by following advice if it's wrong?", vs. "what is the harm done by not-following advice if it's right?". Folks are free to make their own decision on this, but almost-every analysis I've seen suggests that "staying home" is the massively better choice, _even if_ the global pandemic turns out to have been less-severe than first expected (in fact, the opposite seems to be true). All of that is leaving aside the fact that much of the harm done by isolation could have been offset by basic social welfare programs (stimulus cheques, UBI, etc.)

Contrary to the common American mindset, freedom is not, in fact, always an unalloyed good - especially when incentives for an individual are in opposition to incentives for a group. (ironically, I wrote this summary _before_ reading your second paragraph, but it works even better. Your argument that "a previous social program restricted freedoms in an unproductive and unhelpful way, therefore any social program which restricts freedoms is unproductive and unhelpful" does not hold)

* I'm not assuming that you are American, but I _am_ contrasting my position with a mindset that I have noticed disproportionately _among_ Americans.

I know zero people that have been permanently damaged by COVID. I don't think my social circle is all that small, either.

Consider yourself lucky. Would your opinion change if you knew a few people your age that almost didn't make it?

It's anecdotal for sure, but once you see it with your own eyes it definitely makes you take it seriously.

My mother died of cancer in her mid-40s. She had me pretty young so I had a front row seat to the entire thing. Terrible, terrible thing to go through. I do nothing to reduce my risk of cancer. I just can't live my life like that. Some people can and do. I wish I were one of them.

Thank you for the honest answer and personal anecdote. Sorry about your mom.

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

“Findings: 236,379 patients survived a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Among them, the estimated incidence of neurological or psychiatric sequelae at 6 months was 33.6%, with 12.8% receiving their first such diagnosis. Most diagnostic categories were commoner after COVID-19 ... including stroke, intracranial haemorrhage, dementia, and psychotic disorders.”

It would be interesting to do a relative comparison of physical and psych effects of lockdown versus post-Covid complications. It isn’t clear what the severity for the “33.6%” was.

> physical and psych effects of lockdown versus post-Covid complications

The control group in that study is people who had the flu during lockdown.

Not the parent poster, but I still think a bunch of people getting killed in a war is worse than dying from COVID, even if they are literally the same people dying in both cases.

The latter is just nature being nature, and while we can respond in some ways to reduce deaths, it will never be perfect. I get that in some ways that feels worse, because there's a feeling of powerlessness. But the former is humans being shitty and murdering each other in the name of nationalism, land, resources, religion, whatever.

It's "natural" for humans to fight too, it doesn't make it pleasant. I don't know that war and disease need to be ranked. Both are horrible and humanity has a long history suffering with both.

We now know enough about the nature of disease that we can be somewhat effective dealing with it. If people embrace the science that is.

That's not how anyone should assess risk. You can't take an average and assume that it applies to everyone. The elderly hare far more likely of losing 10 years off their lives than young people who are very unlikely to lose 40+ years off their lives. For instance, the chance that I will die from COVID at my age and health are, for all intents and purposes, 0%, according to the CDC. It would be ridiculous for me to take a statistic that is more apt for the sick and the elderly and use that to determine the course of my life.

By the way, the truth can be very callous. I don't think it's particularly useful for you to point out how callous someone sounds on the internet unless the other person has some demonstrable intent of cruelty. We all know that we have the potential to sound like bad people through text online.

The metric you're looking for is QALY "quality adjusted life year". It's studied a lot in health economics but generally disregarded wrt covid because we don't have 2060's actuarial tables yet.

Yes there is evidence that 10-30% of covid infections have not resolved at 6 months

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

which is roughly what SARS 1 looks like (and those people are still sick). But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

“A study published in the Journal of Public Health finds that for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost.” - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.h...

> But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

That isn’t relevant to the 10 year statistic although it is an interesting point - you are saying the final result for years of life lost due to Covid could be a higher number than 10 years (after we get to finally tally the numbers in the decades to come as people die). Depends on how you paint your statistics I guess. [para edited to add clarity]

The point I made is that an average of 10+ years lost is strikingly different from the canonical “nearly dead elderly don’t matter” argument that I see far too many people use (and which my comment replied to). Obviously averages are very poor indicators when a distribution is wonky, and it is preferably to deep dive into the data.

Note I am all for people doing whatever they want with their own lives - if you want to go to a Covid party I would love to support that. I love taking certain risks myself.

However, when the choices of one age group can kill my mum, dad or friends, I would hope we agree to serious restrictions to help prevent that. With engineering balance to the compromises, given that prevention techniques cause significant human costs.

I am from New Zealand, so I can resoundingly support everyone acting together in concert to protect everyone else (as most kiwis did, with a good outcome for us).

> COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway

What a disgusting attitude.

How is this different from "Why bother treating cancer patients? Most are going to die early anyway"? Do you think old and sick people simply provide no value to society?

I think you're trying to argue that it's worse if a young, otherwise healthy person dies, but it's really not necessary to rank lives against each other in this way.

This attitude seems to be what's largely made this pandemic so bad: it was viewed as "just the flu" and "only affects people with pre-existing conditions" and so rather than fast, decisive action (reducing burden on healthcare system, preventing deaths, reducing the need for lockdowns and shortening the time they take), many countries instead delayed and did half-measures, causing an exponential increase in cases, which causes everything to be worse. The completely obvious outcome of willing to let old and sick people die to "save the economy" was an economy that's in turmoil as well as a massive death toll.

> I think you're trying to argue that it's worse if a young, otherwise healthy person dies, but it's really not necessary to rank lives against each other in this way.

No, the GP is pointing out the well-established social-psychology theory that people already implicitly rank things this way, and that this is why the death toll doesn’t have more of a mental impact on people in changing their decisions, even when they hear about it.

It’s the same reason that news like “baby of suburban WASP nuclear family gets kidnapped” turns into a whole-community man-hunt with special ribbons that gets remembered for years, while news like “baby of urban black single mother gets kidnapped” never even gets acknowledged by the community.

When people who are high-status to society go away, the whole of society mourns. When people who are low-status to society go away, only those directly affected mourn.

Any death-toll number, in the mind of most human beings (or rather, of any human being who’s only engaging with the problem using System 1 thinking), isn’t interpreted as “raw numbers” of lives lost, or even QALYs lost — instead, it’s felt as an aggregate of social-status lost, subjective to the listener’s personal social-status ranking function.

For the same reason that people don’t tend to worry much about disasters half-way across the world (the aggregate social-status weight computed through their status ranking function still sums low), people won’t tend to worry much about the impact of a local disaster if it’s only directly hurting local low-status people. Even if it’s indirectly impacting high-status people by taking away people they care directly about, that still doesn’t generate the sort of performative shame for not having acted that comes when high-status individuals are taken†.

And since that very performative shame is what policy-makers rely on as a group impetus to for getting changes pushed through on a society-wide level, a lack of it means that nothing can really change, even when there are clear rational reasons to implement change.

——————

† Evo-psych just-so hypothesis (i.e. take this with 50 grains of salt): people are expected to sacrifice to protect high-status people; people who do so are rewarded by the high-status people; and so, over generations, it became a eusocial instinct to feel an urge toward performative shame when you “fail to protect” a high-status person in your community—even one you never personally knew.

But people aren’t expected to sacrifice for low-status affiliations of high-status people (since it’d “only” be the high-status person, and not the rest of the community, enforcing the norm on you), so a similar eusocial instinct toward performative shame for failing to protect those people never arose.

At some point the exuberance of the young and their ability to determine their own lives has to take priority over the comfort of the old. I am nearing middle age myself and I might be in a risk group, but I want restrictions lifted. People in their teens and twenties need to have their big social coming-of-age and courtship rituals. I see restrictions as an approach to COVID, as the greatest betrayal of young people since May ’68.

> rather than fast, decisive action

It is worth noting that even if there had been the "fast, decisive action" that epidemologist advisers wanted, that would have still imposed border closures in perpetuity. Life might have gone on "like normal" within a country, but people could not interact with their neighbors.

We see already some Australians advocating for hotel quarantine to be obligatory even after COVID, because a year of closed borders has made them regard outsiders as dirty. How long before border closures awaken old nationalist conflicts that freedom of movement and actually getting to know the other side had largely put to rest?

But that's real far off from how the US does things. 30% of Medicare is spent on people who die within a year for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_rationing_in_the_Un...

And global warming might as well not exist as far as lawmakers are concerned. The comfort of the old is our nation's top priority.

> How is this different from "Why bother treating cancer patients? Most are going to die early anyway"?

You do realize that every day we decline to treat cancer patients because they are close to dying anyway, right?

Treating elderly cancer patients does not negatively affect the lives of other people.

Locking down the near-entirety of life has long-term physical and mental health implications that we probably don't fully understand. There have already been suicides directly attributable to COVID-imposed isolation.

It's possible -- and even likely -- that the lockdowns are the right move overall, but the lockdowns themselves have destroyed lives too. Taking measures to protect against something that overwhelmingly affects one segment of the population has a big negative effect on everyone else as well.

Boo! Life is life, who are we to judge who's is more or less valuable?

We are doing so now, by choosing to take the suicides and mental health problems lockdowns will result in over the deaths the pandemic would cause without lockdown. I mean, I'm not opposed to the lockdowns generally, but you can't pretend we aren't making choices about who suffers.

Mostly we're choosing to take our chances on the unknown long-term consequences over the fairly well-understood risks we face now. The people who pay the cost will be different.

Yup, and I wish more people would recognize/admit this. The lockdown decisions may be the best decisions, but let's not pretend we're not trading some deaths for others.

That's fair, I agree.

More to the point, I think these statement show a lack of empathy on the part of the person making them.

'at least they're old'

This has wiped out FAMILES. 2.4M worldwide and nearly 500k in the US. And it flies past people due to fatigue and habituation.

2.4M people is 0.03% of the global population. Heart disease alone kills 0.23% of the global population per year.

> 2.4M people is 0.03% of the global population. Heart disease alone kills 0.23% of the global population per year.

One would have thought that by now we wouldn't be comparing fatality rates of a disease that propagates exponentially when left unchecked, with a more or less stable family of diseases that isn't contagious, but here we are, apple pies to orange sorbets.

Masks and social distancing alone would have sufficed. South Korea is proof of that.

If we're talking about South Korea, you need to add widespread testing, mandatory quarantine for confirmed cases, and isolation for people possibly exposed.

Regardless, areas of the US that have mask and social distancing mandates still have high case rates. It seems like the driver of surges in those areas are mainly due to people violating other restrictions, like having indoor gatherings.

> the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

It's a hell of a thing for someone who only had a few short and precious years left, to have those ripped away from them as well.

I'm hard of hearing - people joke that there's no point in wearing ear protection since I'm already deaf. No, the opposite. Because I have only a little hearing left, it's so much more precious to me than normal hearing is for most people. I protect it jealously.

I get your point, but I can't forget the human part of that equation.

The death toll is greatly exaggerated. Remember the "shocking" scenes from China? People dying on the streets, running out of coffins. Now we are in theory in multiplies of those infection rates and we don't see that anymore. What happened?

The media chose to stop covering it?

Or maybe not even that. The 6pm BBC radio news just read out the latest 500+ dead and apparent R number. It's just ... not important to the discourse somehow?

The death toll in Britain so far is about 3 times the number of British civilians killed in WW2.

The problem of course being that after extreme isolation and/or social breakdown, even those of us that know full well how large those numbers are start to snap.

Approximately 0.2-0.3% of the UK population has died due to coronavirus.

But my personal risk of psychosis as a result of lockdown is far higher than that, it's starting to approach 1, and when it happens, it doesn't matter if those figures are 10%.

Maybe it's just me, but I really doubt it is. Social unrest is coming if we do this for much longer, I can't see any other way.

I can't live in a world that doesn't allow me to have a friend over for a cup of tea indefinitely; compromise really needs to happen soon.

> Living in a big old house in the country with your family?

This might be exactly situation where you might desperately need to go out to keep sanity, to escape the family.

>Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

I've more had the mindset that everything I normally do can put other people in danger and potentially kill them or someone close to them. Or leave them with lingering side effects from illness for who knows how long.

But yeah, also kind of going crazy.

I feel better now that we have competent leadership enforcing rules and rushing to get us vaccines. It has made all the world a difference for my mental health knowing that others are now doing what I am doing and we are all pulling our weight. It makes me feel connected again even without going to bars, theaters, vacations, etc. I don't know why that makes all the difference for me but it does.

> Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

And unsafe, too. I'm not not going to restaurants because I'm not allowed to (they're actually opening back up a little bit here now), but because under the present circumstances it's not safe to do so.

Open-air dining with six feet of separation is almost certainly safe. There's literally no evidence to the contrary despite multiple court orders to produce any.

It's below freezing here right now, currently snowing, and with high winds. No one's eating outdoors. I did it a bit before winter started but this entire season has been a wash.

Unfortunately when restaurants around here could open, they didn't have the required distancing between tables because that'd mean they'd make half the money. Your country culture may vary.

Have you quantified that? How unsafe it is to your personally?

I don't know anything about your personal situation, but if you're healthy and relatively young the risk from Covid (first catching it, then having a bad time with it) in resuming these aspects of normal life may be extremely low, even compared to activities you wouldn't think twice about doing pre-pandemic - like taking a short car ride for example.

I think there are probably a lot of people struggling with this sort of thing. Cognitive behaviour therapy incorporating aspects of exposure therapy could be useful here.

Are the young as at big a risk as older folks? No. CAN THEY COMMUNICATE IT TO OLDER FOLKS? Yes. Yes they can.

This kinda falls into the 'social obligation' column. Just because it doesn't affect you personally, doesn't mean you shouldn't be part of the solution. Sooner or later something WILL happen to you and you'll benefit from being a member.

I understand that aspect. Vaccinations, social distancing, mask wearing, mass testing, self isolating with symptoms or while vulnerable - these are all tools designed to get society running again, while minimising risk. The OP said they felt unsafe about going into restaurants which were open in their region. My opinion is that is incumbent on all of us to get back to normality as swiftly as possible within the guidelines set out by our local governments. That is my idea of social obligation, thanks.

> within the guidelines set out by our local governments

Your local government may not care about you. I'd look to respected civilian experts or at least government agencies staffed by respected experts.

I'm basing this on Texas' Lt. Governor Dan Patrick being willing to tolerate a lot of death for the sake of the economy:

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/21/texas-dan-patrick-ec...

I understand that aspect too.

I mention local guidelines since I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble with the state.

The economy is not an abstract thing, it represents living people and their lives. People who feel its important to prioritise the economy and a return to relative normality generally don't think that way because they're callous about Covid deaths, they're simply more concerned about the death, ill health and strife that result from a long term economic downturn. We can discuss the degree to which those views represent reality without impugning people's characters.

Local guidelines have been highly politicized throughout this pandemic though and a lot of governors have been making terrible decisions for political reasons. I'm not seeing any rational reason to listen to local guidelines when the guidelines are politically-motivated (not evidence-based) and are set way too loose even while COVID-19 was in the midst of tearing through a community.

Many of these states couldn't even get on board with masks, let alone anything else more stringent (like reducing capacity).

I'm from the UK, we have national guidelines and laws, so the situation is a bit different.

But I wonder what claim to authority or special knowledge you are using to feel confident your own attitude is purely rational, and uninfluenced by your political beliefs and personal biases?

Moreover, whatever you think about the balance of scientific evidence, science should not be used to directly drive policy. Elected politicians create policy, and science is one sort of advice that feeds those decisions. Policy created purely from scientific advice would be a recipe for arbitrary decisions, and technocratic undemocratic rule. The politically motivated aspect is a feature not a bug!

> How unsafe it is to your personally?

That's a very selfish way of looking at things. The problem with being a communicable disease is that even if I'm fine, others I give it too might not be. I'm trying to be a team player here.

Also, I'm not in a low-risk group personally anyway.

No, not selfish. See answer below

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26194718

There's currently around 80 people dying from COVID-19 per day here in NYC, and the highest death rates have been from food service workers. 80 is way too high (it's over 10X what it was late summer), and I'm not going to do anything to potentially contribute to that. And Cuomo the nursing home reaper doesn't exactly have the moral high ground here in saying what is and isn't safe.

I'm going to go back to my normal life once I've been vaccinated. At this rate there's only a couple more months to go. I've already made it 11 months, I can do a couple more.

Nah, me staying inside for years on end with no or very limited social contact is less safe for me.

It guarantees a horrible outcome (psychosis), versus a slight risk of a bad outcome.

I'm not going to put myself into a coma for multiple years on the off chance that someone else gets ill. Best of luck.

That argument means nothing unless you're also able to decide for yourself what to do about something "unsafe". Consent is key, and we're watching in real time as we are turned into human livestock under the care of the "state".

It boils down to: "Shut up, stay in your pen". I'm not a crazy person and I agree with herd immunity and generally think we should strive for it and not fight it for the sake of the unhealthy, but excuse the language, holy-shit people... it's been a year of "flatten the curve", "lockdowns" and "stay at home orders"!! I stand by this fully: This disaster could have been solved in a month with closed borders, tracking and a dedicated, absolute and draconian effort. But, we didn't get that and instead treated the potentially "misbehaving" people like cattle because they threatened the wider herd.

It all rests on what happens after a wide rollout of the vaccine.

> I'm not a crazy person and I agree with herd immunity

You're not crazy, but you are incorrect. Herd immunity only works for COVID if a) you can get 60-70% of people infected, and b) getting the disease confers immunity, and for a meaningful amount of time.

Getting to that 60-70% in the time frame that most people would tolerate would absolutely destroy our health care system, resulting in many more deaths (due to people being unable to get the treatment they need). Consider that hospitals in many areas were overwhelmed without most people going out and trying to get the disease.

And the immunity bit is still an open question. Many people have suffered re-infection, and it's not clear that post-infection immunity lasts more than a few months, which might not be good enough for herd immunity to stick.

The second bit is a bit of a gamble, so I'm totally open to argument there as to whether it's a gamble worth taking, but the first bit includes unacceptable outcomes. I'm not saying our current outcome is acceptable, but trading one bad thing for another isn't clearly better here.

< Many people have suffered re-infection

Citation needed. Every source I’ve heard has said reinfection is rare in both percent and absolute terms. And resistance to the disease is proven to last at least ~9months and estimated by the medically knowledgeable to last much much longer.

"the mood is slowly turning into some sort of "Torches and Pitchforks" way..."

That mentality can actually be helpful, and provided it stays metaphorical, it is called for. We're coming up on the one year anniversary of authoritarian rules. We accepted them because we were (rightfully) scared. The facts are that it is now getting under control, and it would be healthy and cathartic to assert normalcy again. We're rightful in being optimistic now, and should reclaim our rights and freedom. The craziness comes from trying to contain it.

What do you think happens if we go back to normal behavior before we have a large fraction of people vaccinated?

The UK roadmap that will be rolled out Monday but was already leaked to the press, calls for social distancing to be maintained for essentially the rest of the year, even after most people are vaccinated. (Restaurants can reopen where you can meet people from another household or two, but no concerts, theatre, clubs, etc.) So, the connection that you mentioned between getting people vaccinated and going back to normal, is no longer what is guiding policymakers in some countries.

Seeing that disingenuous planning on the part of state authorities, I would simply prefer to go back to normal behavior right now, allow young people to have their big social coming-of-age and courtship rituals and open the borders so that Europeans aren’t separated from their fellow Europeans, and simply accept all the deaths that would result in the in-between time.

> We're coming up on the one year anniversary of authoritarian rules.

What exactly is "authoritarian" about them? These rules were imposed and enforced[0] under authority granted to the government through democratic processes. And if enough people don't like it, most states have recall/impeachment processes that can allow the citizenry to remove the elected officials and replace them with people who will take a different path.

The fact that none of that has happened shows that the people who truly believe the measures taken were incorrect are in the minority, likely a small vocal minority.

If you want to talk about authoritarianism, look to actual authoritarian states, where curfews, lockdowns, and quarantines were implemented, along with severe restrictions on people's movement... with no avenue for citizens to oppose these measures (and if they try, they get arrested). That is not at all what has been happening in the US, UK, and similar nations.

[0] Also consider that many of the rules imposed on individuals have essentially been voluntary and under the honor system. In most (but not all) places in the US you don't get ticketed or arrested for failing to wear a mask or socially distance, or for violating a quarantine or curfew.

> These rules were imposed and enforced under authority granted to the government through democratic processes.

Not in many countries. Courts have overturned some rules, finding that the government did not have authority to impose those rules. For example, in Poland the ruling party ordered that masks be worn in public spaces and that restaurants have to close, but courts have already found that this law was void because the government did not pass a formal state of emergency (which would have enraged the population and cost them the next election).

Similarly, in the Netherlands their curfew was overturned by courts. It was hastily reinstated through parliamentary vote, but this reinstatement is questionable when this curfew appears designed to prevent the ruling coalition’s position from being challenged before the upcoming election. In France, Macron has clearly resorted to harsh anti-COVID measures because they can help stamp out the Yellow Vests movement that was bothering him pre-COVID. Dishonest strategems like this – even if not the most blatant example of an authoritarian state – leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Lockdown has allowed me to properly realize how much I really do not care about going out. I may enjoy social outings, and for a while I used to have weekly scheduled social outings having much fun in them. In spite of that, I've always been "homey", and I've always been very affected by going out multiple times -- especially weekends. It just drains me and physically exhausts me. Weekends should be sacred. I absolutely hate going out in them. It screws my whole week.

Thus, lockdown has not impacted me negatively in the slightest. At least not directly (it has indirectly through the mental health of those around me). I really do not care about going out. Even more so than I thought.

I like it this way, and I think that while I knew I could stay "home" for long periods, and liked it, I was never aware just how much I really am not affected by "staying home". I have basically been living for almost a year in a "leave the house on average 0.75 times per week", and for at most 4 hours. In a week, I go out an average of 3 hours. I live just fine.

Some of my close friends who considered themselves to be just like me are slowly going a bit crazy. I guess it's not even their need to go out, but the fact that they _know_ they can't.

I understand other people function in other ways. I'm sorry if you're in this group (or your loved ones). Nevertheless, to me, I just really don't feel the impact at all. If anything, having other people "live more like me" has made my life somewhat better, because they can empathize with me more and because the whole world has become "easier to live in", more adapted to my ways of living.

Mind you, this doesn't mean I can live anywhere because I live "mostly remotely, and mostly in my head". I live 5 minutes from my parents (and for a while I was living 1h away from them). Even though I may not go there every day, not even every week or every two weeks, the fact that I'm here gives me immense happiness and calmness. Staying at home does not mean not caring about my immediate and even my "nearish" surroundings.

Glad to see I'm not the only one. I've seen so many posts across the internet along the lines of "I'm a total loner, but I can hardly take it anymore". Meanwhile, I'm definitely an introvert, but not even that much of a loner and I'm doing just fine.

I'm an introvert that's doing fine as well. As long as we're talking about positives (which we should!) I'd say no business travel is the #1 benefit for me. I've gone from being forced to take a dozen trips a year to zero. It's been wonderful. No more rushing around filthy airports, crammed next to strangers for hours in coach, disgusting hotel rooms... all in the name of my job.

I quite frankly hope business travel never returns. Better for the environment too.

I feel the same way. Not sure if it is completely due to my psyche or the fact that I have a partner and a child. That's a lot of social interaction. If I lived alone, I might feel differently. Hard to tell.

I did notice a bunch of people who got really anxious. They were pro lockdown then against, then again pro and they were noticeably nervous and unhappy.

I feel a fair amount of guilt about this. I live with my spouse and toddler, and not having a commute and spending lots of time with my daughter everyday has been great. Also, it’s now easy for me to fit in exercise every day, so I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in a while.

When relatives ask how I’m doing, I immediately say, “Great!” But then I realize - oops, I should probably give a less selfish response, and acknowledge that the grandma I’m speaking to is perpetually bummed because she can’t see her daughter (which I absolutely believe sucks).

On the original topic: I’ve always thought that Baldur’s Gate did a good job with their atmospheric music. That’s usually my go-to when I want to listen to “tavern sounds.” It basically sounds like the Prancing Pony from Fellowship. And there are lots of similar options on YouTube. It’s fun background music!

In my opinion - Don’t give a less selfish response, it’s good if you’re doing great. Don’t feel ashamed or selfish for being in a healthy state. But of course, don’t hold back your sympathy either. You’re in a good place to offer support to those around you. I think this is an important facet of how humans work together, personally.

Yeah, agreed. I think it's a sort of "read the room" type situation. If it feels like the person you're talking to really needs some commiseration, downplay your good mood. Otherwise, being in a good mood yourself could help boost the other person's spirits.

You have no idea how much I feel the same too. I sometimes journal my thoughts, and I have a bit of my journal here to share with you which reflects exactly what you mentioned about "feeling bad about feeling good":

---

For most people, (...) 2020 was a mostly terrible year. A dark spot in the book of life, filled with misery, missing loved ones, habit changes and an overall feeling of “this is too bad, too fast”. For some, it’s like we’re still in 2019, ending in a shitty way. For others, it’s like a pit of awfulness that’s been going on forever and doesn’t seem to end.

I can’t say I relate, though. I’m sorry if you’re reading this and you’re one of those people, but I just can’t relate.

(...)

2020 sucked for these people. Some lost their job. Some lost their routines — and to some people routine _really is important_.

But 2020 didn’t suck for me. Or, rather, it didn’t suck as much. Sure, 2020 still sucked in many ways, but they’re not really that related to the pandemic we’re living. Maybe they are indirectly (...), but I cannot personally say that I felt really negatively affected by the pandemic. Some things still hit me, but many didn’t.

It feels like I’m committing some kind of heresy by saying this, but it’s true. I _feel bad_ that 2020 didn’t _make me feel bad_. But, really, it didn’t.

(...)

This was 2020. COVID didn’t really mess with me directly. I already worked remotely most of the time. Here’s how COVID has impacted my life, in the most blunt honesty I can have: - It enabled me to be much more easily socially accepted when I wanted to do remote meetings. - It enabled me to multitask: I can do many tasks at home (dishes, clothes, etc) while having remote meetings without my camera on. - It made it so that instead of going every weekend to visit (...) family, we started doing it much more sporadically (...). - It reduced the amount of traffic on the street, noise around the house, etc.

(...)

Personally, COVID didn’t do much for my life. You could very fairly make the point that, in terms of my _direct personal life_, it bettered it. I didn’t really stop doing things I liked. Sure, we can’t really go out or go to concerts, but I don’t need that. I have never needed that. Similarly, I stopped hanging out with my friends, and while I’d like to do that, I’m at a stage of my life where I don’t need it. It’s not a part of my personality. I don’t need to go out. I don’t want to go out most of the time. (...) I don’t _need_ to go out. I can stay for months inside my home just fine.

---

> what i hear and see in my region let me believe the mood is slowly turning into some sort of "Torches and Pitchforks" way...

In several countries with lockdowns there is definitely collusion between ruling parties and mainstream media on which the ruling party has a close relationship or outright tight grip. In Poland, independent media across the ideological spectrum have been reporting that the majority of the population opposes lockdown, and support for business owners opening their restaurants regardless has risen. Yet you won't hear a word about this in state-controlled media. The ruling party is, however, aware of sentiment turning against them, because party functionaries have privately expressed to independent media that they fear that lockdown might cost them the next election.

The problem, however, is that when mainstream media refuses to report common sentiment, the average person feels that he or she is all alone in feeling that way. This prevents people from organizing and pushing together for change (which is just the way that many ruling parties like it).

Your region might be different, but I've heard others say the same thing about my area and, frankly, I see it as wishful thinking. People aren't happy in general, but they both have surrogate outlets for their frustration(Netflix, porn, junk food, weed) and have been conditioned to accept lower standards; being able to eat outdoors in someone's parking lot with plastic dividers is considered "exciting" now, depending on where you live. Even people who were against lockdowns behave like their masters are giving them an extra scoop of kibble every time that restrictions are loosened. As long as people tirelessly hang on to the hopium, I think there's no way we'll see "torches and pitchforks" manifest in any substantial way. To reiterate, I'm sure this is region-dependent, and I'm speaking primarily for America in general.

Those "torches and pitchforks" would quickly be followed by ventilators and graves. I absolutely despise authority and loss of individual liberty, but this isn't a fabricated crisis. Once you see multiple people you know devastated by COVID, you quickly realize it's not a hoax. I'm talking about younger people too (20-40), permanently damaged respiratory systems and near death experiences.

I have seen people getting shot, stabbed and blown apart, was shot at and was near an botched airstrike... perhaps this makes me a bit ehm... "unempathic", but the only thing i really, really fear is an perpetual lockdown with no real end in sight.

So... i myself side with freedom and (risk of) death.

> perhaps this makes me a bit ehm... "unempathic"

Yes, I believe that's the case. Most people have not witnessed these things first hand. Nor should they.

Even the term: lockdown

Free societies don’t have lockdowns. Prisons do. One would think that the government would come up with a better term, if only out of self interest.

But then perhaps that’s the point.

What happened last spring was more or less incarceration. We weren't free. We weren't allowed to leave our houses. The term "lockdown" works quite well.

Outside the US maybe. Nowhere in the US was locked down. In fact a good portion of states never enforced restrictions at all.

Thankfully, while there were a few places that attempted to restrict outings to "essential" trips, it never was enforceable. I am not a fan of many things police do, but I am proud that my local sheriff announced that he would not enforce any such order.

You very clearly have zero clue what life is like while incarcerated. You should be embarrassed by this comment.

A lot of places used "shelter-in-place", and officially over here it's still "stay-at-home". The colloquial term having switched so totally to "lockdown" is another symptom of people caring for it less and less.

I was endlessly annoyed by the misuse of the term "shetler-in-place" by so many state and local governments. At no point should anyone, anywhere have sheltered in place due to this pandemic, which is an established term in emergency management where people are instructed to shelter in whatever structure they happen to be located at the time of the emergency.

“Safer at home” was commonly used in my state.

WI? Nearly everyone I know still refers to it as 'lockdown' even if that's not what it's officially called.

The term is perfect, because it means the government stepping over your liberty during an emergency, so that there isn't a fundamental society crisis.

It should require a huge amount of justification, and people should have little patience with it. The euphemisms some places use are Orwellian.

I feel that. I'm a loner, in normal times. But the prolonged isolation had induced me to participate a lot more in online forums, more than I should. They had grown to be increasingly addicting, because how my life is now lacking inter-personal interactions.

This is an odd framing to me. The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic. I guess we could have made the choice to trade the toll of social restrictions for the toll of even more people getting seriously ill and dying, but whatever choices we made and are making, the fact of the matter is that pandemics majorly suck. I think railing against lockdowns is a coping mechanism -- as policies we've chosen, we have some measure of control, so complaining about social restrictions gives us a sense we can change something, whereas going on a rant about bits of protein that don't quite qualify as even being alive doesn't really grant much relief.

We're all tired. This is a crappy situation. And if complaining about lockdowns help people feel better, well we all do what we need to try and feel a bit better I guess. But, in our more calm and reflective and honest moments, we should remember that the psychological toll here is from the pandemic, and there's not some magical other option where the pandemic is anything other than a very difficult situation.

> The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic.

How do you know? I think this claim, if it is to be believed, deserves some solid and objective evidence.

How come the pandemic is the deadly one? Why not put some of the blame on the millions of people who died from this thing, who probably could have lived through it had they lived healthier lives? There has been ZERO discussion of how to improve the body's natural immunity to viruses, which is without a doubt the most efficacious way to prevent death from coronaviruses.

> I think railing against lockdowns is a coping mechanism

This is so condescending I have a hard time believing you're being honest. No business owner would choose to completely shutter their enterprise as so many have had to do under threat of government violence. The complete upending of normal life was not something anyone did because it was the right thing to do. We did it because we were all under threat of fines, violence, and losing our freedoms even further if we didn't.

> But, in our more calm and reflective and honest moments, we should remember that the psychological toll here is from the pandemic, and there's not some magical other option where the pandemic is anything other than a very difficult situation.

The "pandemic" has done absolutely nothing to me. All of my difficulties have been tied to the complete shutdown of my local, state, and federal government. I haven't gotten sick nor have any of my close friends and family. I have, however, been assaulted by random prisoners let out of prison too early, have been price-gouged by corporations, and have had my basic liberties stripped. Those were all lockdown policies causing those things - not the pandemic.

To me, it's overwhelmingly obvious that our infrastructure is failing and the government is using ridiculous histrionics regarding the virus and regarding "anti-racism," to cover it up.

The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic.

I agree that there's going to be an ambient level of anxiety from knowing that there's a nasty disease out there, but are you really saying that not being able to see your friends and family, or losing your job, or having to scramble to work from home while managing your children's remote "learning" has no additional impact?

there's not some magical other option where the pandemic is anything other than a very difficult situation

Lockdowns aren't binary. We're allowed to consider the costs and benefits of individual measures. Banning large indoor events: probably worth it. Forbidding people from leaving their homes: probably not. And then you get into the more controversial areas like shutting down schools and trying to forbid small gatherings, where different governments have made different choices and it is not at all clear that stronger measures lead to better Covid outcomes.

> I agree that there's going to be an ambient level of anxiety from knowing that there's a nasty disease out there, but are you really saying that not being able to see your friends and family, or losing your job, or having to scramble to work from home while managing your children's remote "learning" has no additional impact?

Of course it has an impact. If we didn't have social restrictions and consequently had much higher rates of infection, death, and long term disability, that also would have an impact. There's no world where, given a global pandemic, there are no severe impacts. Most arguments against social restriction that I've seen don't acknowledge this though. I mean, the other reply to my comment said "why not put some of the blame on the millions of people who died from this thing, who probably could have lived through it had they lived healthier lives", to which I can only reply "what?" For at least the most vocal opponents of social restrictions, they seem to have a radically different understanding of how respiratory infections work than I do.

>Lockdowns aren't binary. We're allowed to consider the costs and benefits of individual measures

Absolutely. It's not the people who are able to do nuance I'm taking issue with here.

> it is not at all clear that stronger measures lead to better Covid outcomes.

Well, I think the evidence is pretty clear that taking either none or very few measures has led to worse outcomes. Among places that have taken measures, I agree it gets hazier as you then have to go from the general "lockdown or freedom" argument into "which specific measures work best." The latter discussion is where we should be; the former one is, to my mind, based on an unrealistic set of assumptions.

I appreciate your reasonable response. I wish we could have more discussions like this rather than the shouting matches of "masks in grocery stores are tyranny" and "you're a selfish asshole for occasionally wanting to have human contact".

>The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic

My friends and I could not possibly care less about the virus even if we tried, and half of us were even infected with Corona. The only thing affecting anyone in my friendgroup mentally are these lockdowns that are keeping us from living our lives, because I can guarantee you that every single one of us would rather be sitting in a crowded, closed space without even wearing masks than being forced to deal with god-knows how long of not being able to do anything, so I really wouldn't say the pandemic has any effect on us other than the fact that it brings with it lockdowns that none of us want.

I live in a small and wonderful city-town in Western EU. Unsurprisingly, much of the atmosphere is in doldrums. As a long-time remotee, I'm often used to working from the library or a pleasant coffee shop. It's tough not to have this access to the gentle human buzz around me, or a stranger's smile, much as I'm used to long stretches of solitude. And this extended lockdown has aggravated the ability to deal with a recent personal setback.

It helps that I built a healthy lifestyle, and have no problems giving structure to my attention. Long walks in nature, hours of dedicated reading of offline books (the medicine of the mind) help immensely. And my studies in areas like ancient Greek philosophy, psychology, neuroscience all help, and continue to provide some relief. But it's strenuous to keep grinding through it, without access to much of humanity, in the normal sense. So far, it's been a potent stress-test of resilience.

Yeah I once spent 2 months not talking to anyone but I was doing things at the time. This is just

My wires are coming loose

Same, I mean we didn't really go out as a rule anyway, but we would go into town for a stroll, shop and a beer or two, or the cinema, little things like that.

We're all right, but it's slowly wearing us down. But there's people who are seriously worn down by it. I for one am glad I'm not alone, I'm not sure I would be in any good mental state right now if my girlfriend hadn't moved in two years ago.

I can really imagine the torches and pitchforks more and more. Because my country didn't do enough during the summer last year, cases spiked after people went back to work and school. The measures and carefulness of people failed because things kept going on for too long.

And now the government has set a curfew, which messes with the only time I actually go out during the day (taking the dog for a walk just before midnight). It feels like we're being punished for something other people did. They're still handing out thousands of tickets a week (although those will likely all be voided because a court decided the curfew was introduced on the wrong grounds), they're still breaking up a hundred parties a week, and there's still millions of people that go to work every day even though they can work from home.

At the current rate, it'll take the rest of the year before we get to an 80% vaccination rate. I mean I hope things will return to a semblance of normality by the summer (last year the number of cases went down sharply after flu season finished), but I'm afraid we'll be stuck for another year at least.

The slightly weird thing for me is that I'm bored but I'm also silently nonplussed about quite a few social venues being shut because I simultaneously don't really enjoy but also get FOMO over (say) nightclubs - I'm sort of doomed to be perpetually normal enough to talk to but odd enough to weird people out.

Basically one less thing to be neurotic about, although the fact that of my two real friends one is hard to talk to because of a subtle cultural difference and the other clearly only tolerates and has clearly reached the stage where a friendship bifurcates and people trying to hurt each other suddenly, has been cruelly exposed to me.

I feel you: my life is as good as it can get during this challenging time, I live with my SO in a somewhat large apartment, we both still work, I from home and she from office, we don't have any sick relative, nor kids, so we have our space, and we don't have to worry about money or anything at all.

I'm quite loner on my own, and the first lockdown was quite a breeze. But these days I'm becoming more and more tired, and I spend my time after work doing basic nothing. Also watching a movie is boring! I have no idea how people with kids, or without job stability, or with relatives to take care off haven't gone crazy yet!

I know others feel differently, but my toddler has actually been a reprieve. Each day has been some small step forward, some word or new idea discovered. There’s bad with the good, of course - but I don’t know that I would have had the time to see all this if I weren’t home.

As an introvert, I really enjoyed it. I do love bars and miss going there but not a big deal. We had tons of happy hours on Zoom. Yes Zoom is not perfect replacement for in-person socializing but it is not that bad.

On other hand, my wife really didn't like socializing on Zoom. So she didn't socialize as much. Also she really misses in-person gatherings. And my biggest issue been trying to cheer her up.

I find this very interesting as well. I definitely have felt way more anxious during the lockdowns we've had. There's definitely a pervasive atmosphere which is very draining even though objectively my family have had a very easy time of things.

The link posted is cute and all but such initiatives are so easy to dismiss - what, you guys can't live without going to a bar? What are you, some kind of alcoholics? You don't want to save some lives?

When in reality the lockdowns ask us to give up everything that makes us human - closeness and interaction with other people, hobbies, and many people can't even work or see their families any more. And we're making this effort without even being sure it's worth it - sure, there's a vaccine now and that's an amazing achievement but we still have the risk of vaccine resistance so long-term not sure how we can avoid the (mitigated) risks.

You can't avoid risk. Life is full of risk. If one thing doesn't get you, something else will, but we don't shut down society because of them.

I think we're turning the corner. I was firmly in the "doomer" camp before, but there are strong reasons for optimism now.

New cases, daily deaths, and hospitalizations have all been falling rapidly for weeks now.

The current estimate is for 50% of the US population to have received their first shot of vaccine by June 28:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine...

That's at the current pace. The pace will almost certainly continue to accelerate. You also need to add in the unvaccinated who have immunity from prior infection.

We're on track for a quasi-normal (as far as restrictions go) Summer, and there will be an enormous push to get kids back in school full time and people back in the office regularly right after Labor Day.

IMO Summer is a bit optimistic to be calling anything "normal," but I broadly agree we're near the end. Maybe by Fall or Winter we can hang out in bars again without feeling like we're killing somebody. In either case, now is not the time to give up. A few more months and we'll start seeing things ease up, I think. But we won't get there if we make things worse now. It sucks. Stay strong. Do what you can.

> But we won't get there if we make things worse now.

I have seen this claimed a lot, but is it really true? In some countries the authorities ended restrictions (or ostensibly maintained restrictions but stopped enforcement of them) because the population simply wasn't observing them. In those cases just "giving up" really worked in terms of the majority of people being able to get back to normal socializing.

The studies that have been done have shown that whatever benefits that lockdowns may have had were far outweighed by the toll they've taken on mental health and the economy. Short of literally locking everyone in their houses for 2-3 weeks (including essential workers) lockdowns just feel like they're doing something.

In the US, it's probably going to be more like late summer/early fall for truly widespread vaccination at which point, I have trouble believing things don't open back up because at that point, people are going to be "We've done what we can. F' it. We're not continuing like this indefinitely."

But, truth be told, come late spring especially younger people are going to be out and about and restrictions are going to start to be widely ignored even if they're still officially in place.

> I think the psychological toll of the lockdowns in different countries is highly underestimated.

indeed it is:

The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I bet it is.

Sadly, this is a self-inflicted problem. Instead of trying to understand the purpose of the imposed measures and trying to maximize their impact to get us through this as fast as possible, lots of people saw them as pure nuisance instead. They tried to bend the rules to work around them and so we are still stuck with these measures for far longer than would have been necessary otherwise.

Now we all reap what they sowed.

This is true, BUT, loss of loved ones is surely worse than loneliness, when talking about depression.

And it's still an indication of early/strict lockdowns. People in China, Vietnam, Taiwan and New Zealand are enjoying social contact, punctuated by periodic lockdown. Some countries are basically placing the burden of reducing R0 on volunteers.

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