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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Here in Europe someone gave politicians the idea that they could control a virus. So now we have arbitrary sets of restrictions applied when case numbers of coronavirus go up. If case numbers go down again, they get relaxed. If they go up, add more restrictions are added until they go down. The restrictions are follow the case numbers, but we have convinced ourselves it is the other way around. It's a modern day witchcraft.

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Lucky you. Here in Germany, we add restrictions when the numbers go down and relax them when the numbers go up. And I'm not confusing cause and effect.

Measures to contain COVID-19 exist globally and if you have great cosmic insight into the fact that they don't work, perhaps you could share that instead of sarcasm without any basis.

They are saying they do work, but only when they are implemented. They are unimplemented when the numbers get low, which causes them to go back up, and has the effect of starting the cycle again.

No, they are saying that lockdowns do nothing and any appearance that they do is backwards causality: "restrictions are follow[sic] the case numbers, but we have convinced ourselves it is the other way around".

They're wrong, but that's what they're saying.

This is also what I read in it, which I found a little strange of a stance given what we know works for the flu.

I didn't say they do nothing, lockdowns clearly cause massive harm and suffering yet there is no obvious benefit when compared to places that didn't lock down.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84092-1

I've seen this claim bandied about, but if you look at Sweden and its neighbors the no-lockdown case has 1000s more deaths. There are perhaps subtle arguments, but "no obvious benefit" seems extremely tenuous.

Do you know what Finland and Norways lockdown involved?

They closed schools and public buildings. They didn't force people to stay at home. They didn't stop people travelling, or force them to wear masks. They treated their populations as humans. Their responses were a lot closer to Sweden than to most European countries "lockdown" responses.

And did you know that for whatever reason, Finland has 5 times more flu deaths per capita than Sweden on a normal year.

https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/influenza...

You will also notice the the two countries where masks are apparently the norm, South Korea and Japan have relatively high rates of flu death for developed countries. That implies that the masks don't help.

To use Sweden as an example of lockdown being effective is grasping at straws.

Where is the spike after Texas opened up a month ago? Why is Florida doing better than California, despite an older population?

Looking at the stats now, it seems like it's doing better than a number of European countries, many of which had lockdowns (France, Belgium, Italy, etc.). Then you have countries like Japan, which people have been complaining about being lax for a year but still has lower rates than almost all Western countries.

That's not to say lockdowns aren't effective, but the data doesn't seem to fit any neat narrative at the moment.

Well they don't exist globally. Various US states and countries didn't copy China in a blind panic. There seems no correlation between lockdown and the overall outcome, suggesting that they don't "work". Texas opening up a month ago showed no spike in cases.

Considering the massive amounts of suffering these policies are causing, there ought to be a bit of reflection on how effective they are. We have a years worth of data now, and as I pointed out, there seems to be no correlation. There seems to be no consideration of the side effects and harms caused.

Assuming the approach of locking people up works, without taking into account the new data as it comes in is not science. It is faith.

You're wrong.

There exist a direct correlation between not locking down (or waiting) and the number of infections and deaths: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81869-2

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