Funny how HN is so willing to agree with the absurdity of security theater at airports, yet so resistant to calling out the pandemic theater we're living every day.
NYC is the most strict, but they are also the most densely populated. Beyond that, I just don't feel like I've given up any rights.
Can't say the same about a shoeless, invasive patdown where a stranger runs their hand down your butt crack after having waited in line for an hour and gone through a nude scanner.
Fortunately, those restrictions were cancelled after 3 weeks, because you know, voting day is coming and we don't need angry citizens to vote against ruling party. But the infrastructure is there and it may be used again any time now.
It's very difficult to falsify death stats on a mass-scale especially in a country like the US.
Terrorism kills something like 28k/year whereas Covid has killed 5 million.
Same with comparing covid deaths to WWI deaths. On the one hand you have thousands of healthy 18-year-olds dying, and on the other you have thousands of elderly, obese, and sickly people dying. Not quite a fair comparison.
Even in the 25-44yr age range, we see a pretty significant increase in deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm#F2_down
How a person can deny the existence of something that can test it personally?
No, they cratered the middle class while making the rich richer.
Now they know not to lock down to destroy the economy but instead push to destroy personal freedoms.
Isn’t this economic policy, not lockdown policy? Any government could decide to pay laborers 100% of their salary to stay out of work. They could decide “essential workers” would be paid on top of their salary as compensation for the risk and danger. They could deice that corporate profit during a shutdown would go to support laborers. Lockdowns only hurt the middle class and help the rich because the government chooses to force the middle class to stay home while not forcing the rich to stop profiteering off it.
This happens all the time in politics and it's infuriating.
You can't judge the effectiveness of a plan if the plan is modified as a shitty compromise or just plain ignored. But people do judge them, which makes those compromises an effective form of sabotage.
The economy is not destroyed. Assets are appreciating, GDP is growing faster than it has in a decade and employers are desperate to find workers. The unemployment rate is near 5%.
If there is a weak spot in the economy, it is that rising case numbers of the Delta variant are causing people to voluntarily limit their in-person activities. When you ask business leaders what can help the economy, they say “more people getting vaccinated” because it’s the fastest way to reduce new COVID cases.
I said middle class. Small business was destroyed. The corporations got richer.
How does your neighborhood look? All businesses still intact?
Not talking about the stock market.
Done properly, of course a lockdown would be effective. Why? Because of the Germ theory. The viruses exist and they don't teleport.
If anything, I would have much preferred if we had a month of global lockdown instead of years of slow burn battle. We wouldn't have had to convince people for vaccination too. It worked for Wuhan.
Vitamin D and open air works, not lock downs.
Allowing and encouraging people to go outside is the happy medium.
When you approach airport security (theater) you wonder what their capabilities are _today_. Are they sniffing the air at large with their GCMS? Is there going to be a dog today? Its intimidating to think of it as a theoretical attacker because of its large and multifaceted apparatus, which is part of its deterrent power.
Masks are somewhat similar, they have a vanishingly small chance of actually intercepting a virus particle/droplet that was going to infect you on a case by case basis BUT they make people approach you differently. They say "stand back".
It was done by picking a population of 350K, then separating them to test and control groups, encourage mask for the test group.
The results are that at 39% mask use in the test group the covid cases were %12 lower than the control group.
There was also a difference between surgical mask(%12) and cloth mask(%9) use.
[0] https://twitter.com/Jabaluck/status/1433036933400305673/phot...
When you wear a mask (as I do) in addition to blocking some particles you signal to others "lets play the not kill eachother game by limiting virus vectors!"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2013_Volgograd_bomb...
Take a peek at a hospital if you have some time.
And vaccines and etc are backed by science?
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/26/960872502/2020-firearm-catch-...