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Comment by fineIllregister | Hacker News Reader

This sentiment is a curiosity to me. I don't remember any public advisories claiming that a 15 day lockdown would be sufficient to stop the spread.

When I think about it, such a claim doesn't even make sense, because for it to be true, all transmission would have to be stopped, instantaneously and completely. But that would be impossible, as there would still be transmission within bubbles, and transmission through all the essential work that continued where social distancing was not an option. That would reset the clock, and since the infectious period was thought to be about 15 days, such a statement could not possibly have been true.

Does anyone have any examples of public health advisories claiming that the lockdown would only last 15 days?

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Every single announcement by my county at the first lockdown was about a short sacrifice to ‘flatten the curve’. Once we were past that, it became clear that the government officials would say whatever they thought would be most palatable to the public to get their policies enacted.

Dr Fauci even admitted to selectively lying about a number of things (masks, herd immunity) because he felt the public couldn’t handle the truth.

He’s not wrong about the average public, who even when faced with the truth will act irrationally and emotionally.

Irrationally doesn’t mean “in a way I don’t like” and it’s kinda rude to paint huge swaths of people with that brush.

Irrational is “I’m not wearing a mask” or “I’m not getting vaccinated”, and I don’t believe there is a need to enumerate the evidence of this at nation state scale in this thread, which can be observed with five minutes of search engine usage. Facts are non-negotiable.

You're still acting like you think your personal concept of rationality is some objective truth.

You're gaslighting into "The sky is blue is just your personal opinion" terrority.

That seems to be the favorite word of people who believe their subjective reality should be objective reality, yeah.

I always understood 'flatten the curve' to mean 'don't overwhelm hospitals'. I don't remember any public advisories suggesting it would be short, and definitely nothing that anticipated how politicized the pandemic became.

Do you have any examples of public health advisories claiming 'flattening the curve' would be short, and not based on the hospitalization numbers?

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