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Comment by hwers | Hacker News Reader

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

That's true. But it is also true that, in some of those countries, people fail to follow those rules. For a worst-case example, the Delta variant in Argentina was traced down to a man [1] who ignored the self-isolation rules and visited shopping malls and a restaurant.

I can be probably persuaded that some specific regions can do well with voluntary quarantine. But I'd rather trust the local authorities to know what the best approach for their people is.

[1] https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/23/case-zero-of-delta-vari...

Even Norway had lots of cases tracked to people breaking quarantine, after which police started checking up on them. I’d say an argument for not enforcing the quarantine in the hottest phase of a pandemic is in effect allowing such events to compromize things. Maybe you can argue for that, but we need to at least be clear on this detail.

Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.

Japan, with a population of around 126 million, only had 16,471 deaths so far from covid, a death rate of 0.013%. As a point of reference, there are around 20k suicide deaths annually in Japan. Japan didn't use harsh/legally enforced lockdowns; almost all their measures have been voluntary: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-su....

High social cohesion will do that.

Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?

When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time.

Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.

> Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.

The West had massively draconian laws during the last similar protracted existential problem, WW2, and gave them up just fine when it finished.

Yeah we totlly gave up the New Deal and the military industrial complex...

I think you're possibly confused about what we're talking about here - those weren't restrictions on personal freedoms. A better analogy is blackout laws, which people railed against in the exactly the same way as lockdown laws. But obviously those powers went as soon as possible - literally the day Hitler died in fact.

a blackout law keeps an enemy bomber from dropping a bomb on my house. IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea." While in modern times, if you say "shut down the economy, increase alcoholism, suicides, mental health issues, homelessness, poverty, and inflation to defeat a virus with over a 99% recovery rate that really only effects old and unhealthy people" a rational person would raise their eye brow and say "that sounds suspicious and a great way to cover the fact that the last 12 years of money printing is about to implode"

> IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea."

Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.

> Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.

That's his point. He's drawing a contrast to blackout laws,by claiming that an individual sees direct benefit from compliance (not getting bombed) while breaking lockdown doesn't create a lot of risk for the vast majority of offenders.

Ie, if a hypothetical person was 100% optimizing for self-interest, they would not break blackout laws but would break lockdown laws. This is a dramatic difference in dynamics when seeking to understand differences in compliance.

> Ie, if a hypothetical person was 100% optimizing for self-interest, they would not break blackout laws but would break lockdown laws.

Yes… except that’s the other way around from what happened in reality. People did break blackout lockdown rules but they generally didn’t break COVID lockdown rules.

You said "breaking lockdown rules", not "breaking blackout rules", specifically when contrasting policies that heretofore in the conversation were described as "blackout" and "lockdown".

Though it sounds like you're saying you misspoke, and intended to say that people broke the blackout rules. That makes a lot more sense, thanks for clarifying

In the first six months of lockdown in the UK 6500 prosecutions were undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). These included non-lockdown flouting crimes which were simply flagged as 'Corona Virus related', such as threatening to cough on somebody whilst 'infected' and stealing items deemed essential for dealing with the pandemic.[1]

Your assertion that a million people were prosecuted seems far fetched.

1. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/6500-coronavirus-related-pro...

The blackout lockdown. A million people were prosecuted in WW2. It's a myth that everyone was cool with it and compliant back then.

This is a tangential interesting point, not a disagreement with your comment. But despite the mental health costs of the pandemic and associated policy, there's a growing body of evidence indicating that suicides do not appear to have risen, across many countries. Eg https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n834

In Canada, substance-abuse-related deaths resulting from the lockdowns killed more under-65s than covid: https://tnc.news/2021/07/18/lockdowns-killed-more-canadians-...

> Yeah we totlly gave up the New Deal

The New Deal occurred before WW2 as a way to simulate things out of the Great Depression. Turns out war is even a bigger economic stimulus package than social programs.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

> and the military industrial complex...

Actually, the US did:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demobilization_of_United_State...

Then the Korean War happened:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

It turns out the Communists were expansionist and needed a counter-weight in influence.

> 'll take 40% compliance every time

Which has lead to tens of thousands of deaths that have not occurred in Australia.

"There is more to living than not dying."

Honestly, that was mostly our government being incompetent. If our PM wasn't bumbling from one disaster to another, he probably would have tried to implement something similar to what Australia has proposed.

When it all started in February 2020 that's exactly what Australia was doing, but a minority could not be trusted and broke quarantine and consequently COVID started spreading. At that point the model changed to mandatory quarantine in a government facility. There was broad community support for that change. In an ideal world people would have liked to have stuck with the voluntary approach, but most were realistic enough to see that an untrustworthy minority were wrecking it for everyone.

This comment is revealing and truthful. It's almost been 2 years and most people have suffered. They blame and identify a minority for their suffering.

It's one way that if you look at history minorities have also been identified.

Scapegoat behaviour from the crowd is a response to senseless suffering and pain. It actually makes those who scapegoat others feel better and people want to feel better. Why would anyone volunteer to feel worse? Most people don't have empathy for those who scapegoat others but the pandemic is a great way to see this happening at various stages in real time across the world. Some countries don't have any, others more, some loads, some vary according to lockdown severity, others don't.

How can one blame an invisible virus or an abstract political decision when humans traditionally blame each other?

What's the end result if you buy into scapegoating as a personal psychological tactic? We will find out.

Your comment conflates two meanings of the word "minority". The first meaning relates to a group with a shared inherent property, such as race, and is irrelevant here. The second meaning, which I used, simply means a small number of people.

It's not an invisible virus. With the right tools we can see and track it. Up until the recent delta outbreak, COVID was being accurately tracked and contained in Australia, with the source of almost all transmissions known. Under these conditions, quarantine is pragmatic, not abstract.

These are probably good/important points in a totally different context, but in this discussion, talking about how the virus has been transmitted, and the effect of infected individuals to quarantine or not, it feels a little strange. problematic moral impulses notwithstanding, the virus does indeed transmit person to person

The important take away from these sorts of restrictions, though, are such state powers set to end when the pandemic is controlled or terminated? I'm not from Australia, so I can't speak to their power systems, but almost every time our federal institutions take a more broader domestic power towards spying, restricting speech, restricting movement, etc. etc. those powers don't come back at the end of the panic, whatever that panic may have been. Some of those expanded powers (PRIZM) we have to find out about through leaks, to the detriment of the people who leaked the information for the greater good.

I guess I don’t understand this concern, because it doesn’t seem historically accurate.

There have been many pandemics in the past. Governments have responded in the past with aggressive quarantines. Yet, before this current pandemic, no country had aggressive quarantines in place.

These kinds of restrictions imposed by governments have historically disappeared with high reliability when the situation calling for them has ended.

Maybe, but in the past no government has had access to the tracking data we are freely allowing them to have to us.

I sound like I'm an anti vax conspiracy theorist, and I don't want to put that across, but there is a strong precedent for abuse of power in every government across the globe. A lot of draconian measures ease when the panic is over, but shadows of them seem to remain in place, at least in the U.S. (again, I can't speak for Australia).

EDIT:

Here's an example of how anti Covid measures are being used to stop protests.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/states-are...

Now, hopefully this will be transparent and end when Covid is over, but that's the question. When is Covid officially over?

> A lot of draconian measures ease when the panic is over, but shadows of them seem to remain in place, at least in the U.S

I'm not sure I fully buy that. What authoritarian powers were left in place as a hangover from the Spanish Flu emergency powers that governors wielded at the time? Historically, the executive of governments have had _incredible_ emergency powers during infectious diseases crises, but I don't know that I've seen those powers extended indefinitely.

I'm absolutely wary of handling governments unlimited and unchecked power, even in emergencies. I generally agree with your concerns about governments being reluctant to return powers once they're granted. But I do think it's important not to overact and refuse to allow any government action on the other side of the equation.

In the given Australia example, the state is exercising quarantine powers to stop an infectious disease. That sounds...not that novel or expansive to me. Nor does it seem like something the government will have an interest in beyond the pandemic. Quarantines, I think, are a really strong example of an _extreme_ limitation on liberty and expansion of the state's powers that are tolerated during a pandemic but absolutely abhorrent outside of one. It's also an example of powers that almost never are extended indefinitely beyond the pandemic.

> Here's an example of how anti Covid measures are being used to stop protests.

Turning to the cited article, I don't think it supports the position you're stating. The author appears to be discussing legislatures using the COVID emergency as a _distraction_, but doesn't present any anti-COVID measures being used to stop protests.

I'll admit that each of the bills passed and signed are an abhorrent restriction on the right to protest and the right to free speech and assembly. Accepted and granted. But none of those bills appear to be anti-COVID measures in any way. As far as I can tell from reviewing the legislation and reviewing contemporaneous articles, the only connection to COVID was the fact that the public was distracted.

The South Dakota bill for example (https://mylrc.sdlegislature.gov/api/Documents/69887.pdf) doesn't mention "COVID", or "pandemic". The only mention of "disease" is in the definition of intoxication (to explicitly say it is not a mental disease).

The Kentucky bill is similar (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/20rs/hb44.html). It doesn't mention "COVID", "pandemic", or "disease", and doesn't appear in _any_ way to be designed as an anti-COVID measure.

The only anti-COVID measures discussed in the article by the author are praised as a measured and reasonable response. The only "use" of the pandemic by the legislatures was as a distraction.

I do agree that anti-COVID measures targeted at public protest should receive significantly more scrutiny than many other anti-COVID measures.

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