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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

I recently had to spend 14 days locked in a hotel room alone as mandatory quarantine to enter Australia.

Shockingly (for me), after just 14 days I already felt more comfortable inside the room than out, and I got a real glimpse into what being "institutionalized" means. Life was so simple and not scary, it was enjoyable, in a sick kind of way. I couldn't imagine what coming out after an entire year would be like, let alone 29.

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I'm beginning to really dislike the downvote button. This seems like a perfectly reasonable comment so what purpose is served by fading it out?

Spending two weeks in a hotel room with all the amenities you can imagine (Contact to your beloved ones, television, internet access) is in no way comparable to solitary confinement, especially given the short time and the fact that you know when it will end. The gp comment is incredibly tone deaf.

I disagree that its tone deaf. Most of the comments here are talking about prisons. In prison inmates get television, board games, telephone access, recreational activities, visits, and more. It's on the same topic most everyone is discussing.

As for solitary confinement, no one gets assigned there directly. There would have to be a specific and documented reason, in this day and age particularly, why someone is placed there after ending up in a prison.

Some people are really against people trying to empathize with an incredibly bad situation after having gone through a slightly-bad situation that has some parallels. They insist that it's nothing like that and will scream down anyone who tries to care based on their own experience.

IMO, it's incredibly harmful for the the cause and instead of shouting them down, they should just turn away and ignore them.

OTOH, if they were trying to use that experience to downplay the problem, it's perfectly fine to talk to them about why they're wrong, but civilly.

This happens so often on here, these extreme downvotings of otherwise normal comments, that I'm convinced this is the product of bots or some other manipulation. I don't think the karma means anything on this board.

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