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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

But why? Why would any government want to justify longer than needed lockdowns?

Rather then some government conspiracy , I think it's easily explained by media pushing fear to get clicks, leading to people supporting unnecessary measures. I still talk to people who are afraid to even do outdoor dining after they have gotten their second dose (plus 2 weeks incubation). People like that vote, post, and message their representatives, leading to where we are now.

Media is funded by advertisers, the same advertiser that would greatly benefit from the pandemic ending. Zoom and Slack are probably the only stocks that directly benefit in the current situation and I don’t see any ads for them anywhere. Cruise lines are on the other hand huge advertisers and are suffering severely right now. Why would they want the media to keep causing mass hysteria? And if the government is opposed to the media on this, why would they issue health guidelines that say we should isolate?

I can likewise draft a theory that media is pushing a narrative of 'the lockdowns are unnecessary, your government is cheating you' in order to stir up controversy and get clicks.

Both your, and my theories hav little predictive or explanatory power.

And if we're dealing with anecdotes, I can also cite that I know people who were not afraid to be going to crowded bars (Check out central California, if you want to see people flouting lockdown, and spending their stimulus checks on partying in, say, Modesto) over the past ~year, despite not being vaccinated. Do you think those people may have been influenced by the media pushing a narrative that lockdowns are unnecessary?

Here's the actual answer to this dilemma. 'The media' is pushing both narratives. You are just paying more attention to one of them, because that's the one you happen to disagree with. There are very few issues where 'the media' boogieman presents a unified front, and COVID-19 has not been one of them.

Depends on how far you want to assume nefariousness/conspiracy on the part of "TPTB" or the government.

Could just be that it was to help swing a election, or allowed them to paint certain parties as "anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists". Maybe it's to cover-up nighttime movements by a secretive alien invasion force. Maybe they just love what it's doing to the stock market. Perhaps it's a bold move by online retailers to kill off small businesses or just brick and mortar ones. Maybe they're desensitizing us for something bigger. Maybe they're just incompetent AF and following along with what the media makes them think is what the people want. Maybe it's all ad-click and media-consumption driven as one of the other posters put it.

My personal take is that they have no clue, and most of those in power are just doing things that have been done before and doing them only in ways that have been done previously.

> Why would any government want to justify longer than needed lockdowns?

To avoid protests that annoy it and could challenge it in the next elections. All Europe locked down last spring, but there is an accusation that France’s lockdown was unusually strict because that way Macron's government could, at the stroke of a pen, get rid of the Yellow Vests movement that had been so obnoxious over the preceding months. Meanwhile, in Russia it is clear that social-distancing laws are being used as one more tool against gatherings that the regime doesn’t like (while pro-regime gatherings might go ahead unhindered with zero masks or distancing).

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — John Dalberg-Acton

But don't lockdowns cause a "loss of power" (economic, trade, prestige)? This just doesn't make sense to me.

They do, but people complaining about this tend to convenient focus on the powerful people making money because of lockdowns while absolutely ignoring the powerful people <<losing>> money because of them.

That's a nice quote, but still doesn't answer the question. No government in their right mind wants to continue lockdowns unnecessarily. Lockdowns cost a lot of money and make a lot of voters angry

Lockdowns were just meant to be for two weeks to “flatten the curve”, remember?

Unfortunately pesky reality got in the way.

Who ever said 2 weeks?

They serve the exact same role they did at the start. If we'd open stadiums now the exact same thing will happen, that happened 1 year ago.

Lockdowns will continue until we either reach herd immunity naturally or through vaccines or we have a treatment/mitigation for the disease.

Every offical that was selling the initial lockdown. Just have to get the R0 below 1, remember? You really think the masses would have been OK with a year of lockdowns and the despair that entails up front?

Your conclusions don't match reality. States like Florida have open stadiums and are fairing the same as states like California that insist on totalitarian overreach.

California has done somewhat better than Florida overall — and the vast, vast majority of cases in California came from Southern California, where the lockdown and mask rules were largely not followed. California is 40+ million people; it's basically two Floridas. The northern one followed the rules, the southern didn't, and you can see very clearly which way resulted in fewer cases and deaths. Northern California had one of the lowest case rates in the country. Southern California had one of the highest.

post hoc distinction

> States like Florida have open stadiums

With the exact same density as before ?

No western nation, except perhaps italy briefly, had a lockdown like the initial suggestions were.

I won't say with confidence that a short, hard, lockdown would have solved things in the us, but such approaches did work in many other nations.

Well, in Germany three politicians who had to resign because of corruption where they had made deals with companies manufacturing masks and made hundreds of thousands of euros. And this is just facts and no conspiracy theories, and I bet this goes on at every level. If you find a way to (legitimately) control people and peoples behaviours, of course it's lucrative.

You can't just say it's "lucrative." You have to say how. Are you saying that a controlling number of powerful politicians or their backers are heavily invested in mask manufacture, but not in any of the parts of the economy that are affected negatively by the lockdowns?

And "hundreds of thousands of Euros?" That's a pittance. There has to be more to be made (than maybe enough to buy a studio apartment in Berlin) in order to justify the shutdown of a large part of world industry.

Have you never heard of corruption before? This is not something that I'm saying, it's out in the news in plain sight

That might happen, but when you think about conspiracies, always think who would be against them.

Ok, they make money from selling masks. But do you really think no shareholders in hotel chains, airlines, airports, etc. are trying to push back against that?

Covid is hurting a ton of businesses. A lot of powerful people are behind those businesses that feel that pain.

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