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Comment by hjhhvcxx | Hacker News Reader

Lockdowns haven't been shown to be effective in stopping the disease, only in delaying it while incurring economic damage.

This on top of the absolute destruction of liberty over 124 cases of a disease with a 2% hospitalization rate and less than 1% fatality rate across all ages and heavily slanted towards old, fat, and diabetic people, in a city with millions, is an absolute tragedy for freedom and it's frankly absurd

In March 2020 the "two weeks to flatten the curve" was perhaps acceptable because we didn't know much about COVID and it might have been an existential threat.

Now we know it's not one but power hungry governments won't let it go, and sites like this one censor you if you disagree..

Shit I'll only use throwaways on this site because I don't want to get blackballed for saying that the only thing lockdowns do is cause deaths of despair

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what are you talking about? covid is basically extinct in NZ and Australia due to...lockdowns.

if you are not very familiar with what has happened in those two countries specifically then it's best not to make foolish generlisations.

> what are you talking about?

This is a very strong narrative in the U.S. media to excuse the fact that we had a chance to do the right thing but didn't. When the political leadership realized that we were utterly unprepared and the Trump presidency would refuse to act in a meaningful way and Republicans would never accept blame for being in power without a solution, it had to turn into "it wasn't a solution and it just hurt economy." This is despite the in-your-face fact that many countries successfully used lockdowns to stop COVID in its tracks.

You have to realize that there is tremendous amount of censorship going on in the U.S. by a lack of reporting in general media. COVID is the ultimate in confirmation bias porn and is making the media companies lots of clicks. Many Americans are now addicted to various narratives on all sides; and, if they see something that contradicts their position they immediately throw the narrative out and/or straw man you that you're on the other side.

I can say that many of us Americans lament that freedom once meant "the ability to work together as we each see fit for the good ourselves and the common of good of the next generation" and now freedom equates to narcissistic goals at any justification and cost.

yea, nah. Western Australia has completely proven hard snap lockdowns work. We even had community spread of Delta from the NSW outbreak around a month ago. I'm typing this in the office without a mask because we quashed the outbreak. Our state government posted a budget surplus last FY as our economy is booming because we don't have community spread of Covid.

I'm sorry, but your take is just incorrect and worthy of downvoting.

>I'm typing this in the office without a mask because we quashed the outbreak.

I'm typing this in the office without a mask because I'm vaccinated. I'm also going to nightclubs, bowling, travelling internationally to most places I like.

> Shit I'll only use throwaways on this site because I don't want to get blackballed for saying that the only thing lockdowns do is cause deaths of despair

Lockdowns do slow the transmission of the virus. However some lockdowns are more effective than others.

I am an Australian, and I live in a country which has been in lockdown for somewhere around 500 days. While it is difficult to prove what would have happened if the country here did not go into lockdown, I can honestly say that the lockdown here hasn't been highly effective, as there are still 1000s of cases a day and high levels of community transfer. I would say things would have been worse.

I would rather be in lockdown in Australia than here, there are many safety nets in Australia which while life might be difficult in these times prevent what happens like people starving to death. These don't reflect on the effectiveness of the lockdown, but rather the effectiveness of the management of the lockdown.

There is also the mentality of the citizens, lockdowns are less effective when the citizens are less compliant or due to certain government stances. Take one of the areas here, you can travel there and you only have to go into quarantine for 7 days if you are vaccinated, no consideration to the fact that you can still get infected by the virus when you are vaccinated and can still transmit it.

To sum up, are lockdowns effective and the answer is yes if they are done effectively. Do lockdowns impact on personal freedoms, yes they do if they are done effectively or not. Do lockdowns have social and economic impacts, yes they do and so does not having a lockdown.

The data (cases, hospitalisation and deaths) would not support this claim.

Maybe I'm too dumb to follow your logic, but what interest do these governments have in locking down entire states again?

Voters approve of lockdowns, especially when they get WFH as part of the deal. It's the young people and poor who really get screwed. Governments don't have any other solutions even though we don't really know how effective they are long term or what the exit strategy is.

What country are you from? The Premier in the video has been anti-lockdown for the entire pandemic. And now you're claiming they are power hungry for more lockdowns? Sorry but you clearly have no context what is going on here.

Locking down the entire state ensures community spread doesn't occur across state lines. It's as simple as that.

I'm sorry, but naively, delaying is doing plenty. That much more people who get vaccinated before getting infected is that much less opportunity for the virus to mutate, or so it seems to me.

Whether on this case it is worth it is debatable, but I disagree with your opinion that it is absolutely not worth it.

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