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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

This is a very complete and compreshensive undertaking – journalism done right. I think it is important to keep current zeitgeist in check and perhaps even challenge it, i.e. the EU/privacy. I've witnessed a fair bit of EU exceptionalism in 2021 here on HN as well as elsewhere in the media sphere. While, we could all benefit from pre-tested policies that work, being blind to it just gives an enormous leverage to those in power to expand surveillance. In the US, we allowed it willingly or unwillingly post-9/11; the governments of the world couldn't have imagined a better excuse to violate privacy and personal freedom with COVID-19. Keep your eyes open, Australia is a warning flare.

Edit: Smarter Everyday did a great job examining the history of privacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMtrY6lbjcY

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> ... the governments of the world couldn't have imagined a better excuse to violate privacy and personal freedom with COVID-19

On a daily basis in the EU you do really feel how politicians have used Covid-19 to impose a crazy amount of surveillance. If moreover you travel just a bit, the amount of bullshit you have to fill / comply-with and whatnots is just insane.

You drive from, say, France to Belgium: you are supposed to fill online "locator" forms saying where you go from, where you go to, what's the license plate(s) of the car(s) you're using, you have to give the names/address of any intermediate address you're saying at. You can decide to not fill these, but you're taking the risk of serious fines, especially if you happen to contaminate someone.

Non-tecchie people are noticing the increased surveillance too: my wife and kid are flying tomorrow and my wife was telling me earlier today: "The amount of new information you have to give to confirm you plane ticket is becoming crazy".

People do feel they're being watched. Not mentioning the "vaccination pass" you now need to show at many places to be able to enter (as, for example, the restaurants).

I don't personally think the pandemic warranted such a totalitarian crackdown on citizens.

We did obey and suffer the lockdowns. We did get the vaccine. But it certainly doesn't look like we're getting our liberties back.

It is beyond insanity.

When you have to give information, it doesn't really mean you're subject to a great deal of surveillance. You can tell you're subject to surveillance by the fact everything's really convenient and they already have all your info.

I guess my feeling is the amount of information collected about me by governments since the pandemic started is probably measured in bytes, whereas the amount of information that's been stored and shared by one or another private company is in gigabytes. I'm got a scam text the other day about a DHL package that was arriving, because some asshole has been selling my purchase history somewhere along the line. Every time you have any kind of commercial interaction with anybody you enter into this really promiscuous wash of bad security, over-eager logging, data-hoarding, and outright transfer that is how companies treat data today. That's the problem, not a couple of extra forms when you cross a boarder.

> We did obey and suffer the lockdowns. We did get the vaccine. But it certainly doesn't look like we're getting our liberties back.

I mean, is the COVID gone? Is 99 % vaccinated so we have herd imunity? Do we have updated vaccine for the delta? Have we beaten the pandemic in any other way?

Why would you expect the measures to end, when the situation is still underway? Would you complain "it's been two days why can't I return to my home" while the water from the flood is still there, new water is approaching and new dams to stop it are being build as we speak?

The situation? This is a disease with a mortality rate less than an order of magnitude greater than the flu.

If I told you a few years ago that we would be shutting down the economy, forcing people to wear masks and submit to biometric tracking and surveillance, all to (ineffectively) combat a disease that isn't even much worse than the flu, you would have rightly scoffed at me. The liberties that have been taken from us are not even remotely proportional to the danger of the "situation"

I'm afraid you have the numbers very wrong thus lmfgify, so we don't start spreading on HN false information: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid (or just any other link)

Mate, it's not going away. Ever.: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/coronavir...

> We did obey and suffer the lockdowns. We did get the vaccine. But it certainly doesn't look like we're getting our liberties back.

Security, whatever form you consider it, has not taken a step back since the end of the cold war. What reason or incentive could we possibly give already empowered people to be less powerful?

Two years of complete or near complete communication monitoring combined with the patriot act is going to influence our society going forward for decades. This enormous feat of surveillance was done with little trust in oversight.

> I don't personally think the pandemic warranted such a totalitarian crackdown on citizens.

This thought is way too vilified and used as justification for extensive monitoring. Though we survived the resulting fallout of the entirety of pandemic measures I'm not sure many will agree in what form we want to continue.

Unfortunately liberties are almost never given back without violence. It is a shame on the west for accepting this abject surrender of individual liberty with docility.

At least EU lets people vote away all these oppressive elements locally, unlike a certain other union. It is a lot easier to vote back your freedom in smaller countries.

> Keep your eyes open, Australia is a warning flare.

Speaking from Australia, the measures we've implemented have been very successful in the short term. But it is notable how useless the measures are in the big picture. Nothing that has been done appears to change the inevitability of catching the coronavirus sooner or later. We can't afford more lockdowns and the Israel experience seems to be that vaccines only do so much to slow community spread.

The options seem to be catching coronavirus vs. spending a huge amount of effort and sacrificing a bunch of basic rights avoiding the coronavirus ... then catching it eventually anyway.

It is unclear what we're buying for the expensive price tag.

> We can't afford more lockdowns and the Israel experience seems to be that vaccines only do so much to slow community spread.

- During the spike of infections in Israel (which is mostly due to the delta variant) only 58% of the population was fully vaccinated [0] and is still at just 62% currently. Portugal has vaccinated 86% of its population and #cases has only decreased/remained stable since September, despite most measures being relaxed.

- The rate of serious disease among unvaccinated over 60 year olds was nine times more than the rate among fully vaccinated.

- The number of deaths was significantly higher in earlier infection peaks (Sep 2020/Jan 2021) than in the Summer even though the number of cases was much larger

- For those who were vaccinated (Israel managed to do it very early), there is evidence that immunity waned after 6 months, which aided the latest spike. The 3rd shot has been extremely effective as shown by the rapidly declining number of cases [1]

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-covid-booster-sh...

Very good post. Without accusing the grandparent of anything, "Israel shows that vaccines don't work" is a common misinformation, that is getting people killed day by day. Let's not let it spread.

That, or that mortality was lower than flu. I could understand such lies being spread at the beginning, but today we have about a billion of data points so I can't excuse it anymore.

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