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I disagree with you on most of this. Looking at the all cause mortality graphs for the US is pretty sobering, and comparing to the relatively much more flat all cause mortality graph for australia is all the reason i need to be pro lockdown. It seems pretty clear that lockdowns work, and also that governments dont want to be locked down any longer than necessary- because it is bad for the economy. But hospitals being over capacity like in the UK or india is also pretty bad, and i see healthcare as being one of the pillars of civilisation.

I do see some 'cleanliness theatre', but the thing about r values is that little things help a lot. Washing hands regularly, wearing a mask. I havnt a cold in 18 months, which is pretty unheard of for me, because everyone is taking a bit more care. If only covid were 'only' as contagious as the cold, we probably would have beaten it already.

> If only covid were 'only' as contagious as the cold, we probably would have beaten it already

Nope. When numbers go down, we relax. When hospitals fill up, we lock down. It doesn't matter how contagious COVID is. It will remain at endemic levels forever, on the path we're on.

We've turned a billion dollar problem into a multi-trillion dollar one in February 2020. Now, we're turning it into a tens-of-trillions-of-dollars problem.

100% N95-equivalent masks. 100% vaccination. 6 foot distancing whenever possible. Outdoors whenever possible. That would still get COVID today, but it might not in a year. Delta and Gamma are concerning, and we'll only see more mutations, and ones better able to jump our mitigation measures.

We beat sars-1 just fine, and mers, mainly by quarantining infected. Sars-1 literally no longer exists. This is very strong proof that we would have beat covid too, if it were less contagious.

I think it's a better example of random chance. We had a series of diseases. We didn't heed that as a warning. One eventually (and predictably) slipped out.

I never understood why the right decided to be against logical public health measures and decided to tie their ideaology to it. It never use to be like this. Care to explain?

Lockdowns are massive restrictions of individual freedom, which is something the right claims to care about and sometimes actually does.

Actually, the aligned with "US democrats" (not the left, necessarily) made the whole thing political by going against anything Trump did (like banning travel From China being racist or the ties with the lab leak theory).

It used to be the left would stand against authoritarianism. Skepticism. Now it's seen as a duty to support corporate interestes, gov excuses, not question anything (or you'll help the right).

There's nothing logical about Lockdowns. It was never done before and has done nothing in terms of excess deaths while There's ample examples of the damage and inequality

But again, HN types from the laptop class are fine at home, advancing in life, not caring that much about others but pretending they do with the approved virtue signalling. It's disgusting.

Banning travel from China was a nonsense response because US got exposed via Europe. Similarly, prioritizing investigating the lab leak theory without real evidence at the same time as tons of people were dying seemed messed up.

>Compare the hailed Australia/Israel/New Zealand dystopian futures with many states in the US (like Florida/Texas) that didn't succumb to the dystopia through fearmongering.

Texas (29M) and Florida (21M) have a somewhat comparable population to Oz (25M). I think I'll take our (Oz) numbers over theirs in a heartbeat. Whatever we're doing it's clearly not theater.

> There's never concern about consequences from lockdowns, virtually mandatory vaccines on trial until 2023 (through coercion and segregation), delays in any other health ailment, etc.

Is this some kind of a "who can build the biggest straw man" competition?

No. It's a "enough is enough" comment.

I know that hackernews types who have largely not been affected that much, specially US based, will be fine downvoting and promoting more propaganda, segregation and fearmongering but those that do are morally corrupt to the core and I'm tired at pretending otherwise.