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Comment by tyrrvk | Hacker News Reader

I find this viewpoint exceedingly arrogant. That you somehow know what's best in the case of a novel global pandemic?

Let me make myself clear. I am suggesting that from the beginning we should have encouraged the statistically vulnerable to isolate themselves: meaning, isolate themselves voluntarily. I'm suggesting that the rest of us should have supported such people who reached out for support through private and government action. I'm suggesting that other individuals should have been encouraged to take what precautions they deemed sensible.

I think that, by and large, mask mandates should have been effected privately: meaning, business owners should have been free to institute mask policies the same way the do shirts and shoes policies. Government should have publicly given such policies support.

Lockdowns should have been periodic and local: meaning, focused on time and place. The aim of lockdowns would not be to "save even a single life," but to try to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, so that people who could pull through with supportive care would have an available bed to recover in. In the meantime, government should have endeavored to setup emergency hospitals to make more beds available, relocating them as necessary.

Every point I'm making stresses free choice and personal liberty; and every point I'm making stresses the idea that there are no easy answers and no one has the "master plan."

Instead, what I saw — what we all saw — was federal bureaucrats and state governors dictating what hundreds of millions of people should do, based on conjecture and even whim, and dare I say, even at times personal vanity.

But I'm the arrogant one?

Is there an example where individuals taking personal responsibility of a widespread problem has led to a favorable results? What I've seen is that this line of thinking disconnects the values from the result ie: "We did the right thing, so we have to accept the results." This re-frames the debate from results-orients to values-oriented.

The same reasoning is being used in the climate change debate. Corporations are gearing up PR teams to promote individual responsibility campaigns so that corporate action can be minimized. Again, it disconnects the values from the results so that at the very end when nothing changes a group can be happy that even though it fails, we did the right thing. The end result is cynicism and skepticism to these tactics.

Is there an example where centralized planning has led to favorable results? The centralized planning in the face of this pandemic has resulted in widespread economic destruction, not to mention rioting, looting, arson, and portions of American cities being taken over by "anti-fascist" warlords.

Okay, that's just my opinion, right? Fine. Call me crazy for believing that prolonged isolation, idleness, and political repression leads to egregious economic dislocation and social unrest, but I'm going with that until I hear a better explanation.

That's weird. It's almost like talking about the advocacy of individual responsibility come from a premise that centralized planning failed. What a strange foundation to base a response around. I'm open to a discussion about individual responsibility from first principles and systems-level thinking, but it's as if we're trying to avoid that discussion for some reason.

This sounds almost precisely like what was implemented. There was no widespread state or federal enforcement of mask mandates, even if they were installed. Basically all mask requirements were either implemented or ignored by local businesses. I know people who live in towns where almost zero businesses required masks. The number of businesses that qualified as "essential" meant that there weren't consistent "lockdowns" outside of a few areas (schools being the huge one) and a large portion of remote work arrangements were done on a largely voluntary basis by businesses.

> I find this viewpoint exceedingly arrogant. That you somehow know what's best in the case of a novel global pandemic?

Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20. I find the GP's argument very persuasive. Sitting here in June of 2021 and looking back it's so easy to agree with his plan.

But back in May of 2020? All options looked bad, and I think things were a lot less clear. The "full lock down" did only last a couple of weeks, while things things got incredibly muddled quickly as different organizations and regional governments put their own spin on things.

I don't think we really understood enough of the actual mechanics of the virus, nor enough of the social pressures, until it was far too late to course correct (for the reasons the GP describes).

Don't take @mariodiana's word for it. There's a large group of eminently qualified epidemiologists that have been arguing for this for many months:

https://gbdeclaration.org/

Thank you. I'm not even taking my own word for it. I didn't dream up any of what I've said on my own, nor by cobbling together either anything Sean Hannity or Chris Cuomo had to say on the subject. I read the paper from the Imperial College (where "social distancing" and "lockdowns" originated, as far as I know) shortly after it came out and have been trying to follow along with the best sources I have been able to find since then.

But, let me come clean about my prejudices. I live in New York. When Governor Cuomo was on television every day, I saw — every day — comments to his feeds on Facebook and Twitter from people saying things like, "Thank you, Governor. Whenever I listen to you I feel calm and safe. I listen to you every day for my sanity."

I wish I were making this up! But, as I said months ago, I am astounded by the people who I imagine have no qualms going on about "patriarchy" bestowing what I see as sycophantic praise on a governor whose entire affect reminds me of the stereotype of an immigrant family's "papa."

This is, in part, why I say "neurotic." We can't have a free country when we have so many people — voters! — like these. The SARS-CoV-2 virus isn't the scariest thing about this pandemic.

Interesting - I wasn't aware of this.

That might be because of social media censorship. GBD had their Facebook page deleted in February [1]. Martin Kulldorff has had his Twitter account suspended more than once, though it is now available [2].

[1] https://twitter.com/gbdeclaration/status/1358449223197466627...

[2] https://twitter.com/martinkulldorff

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