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Comment by rwaxm | Hacker News Reader

'"We have understood that the situation is very serious and that we want to take further measures in addition to those already taken," Merkel told reporters at Thursday's news conference. "The fourth wave must be broken and this has not yet been achieved," she added.'

You do not need special measures. Florida and Sweden didn't have any and have the best graphs right now. Outbreaks stop by themselves.

Of course, if you lock down the unvaccinated right when the bell curve is at its natural top, you can take credit when the numbers go down. This is exactly what is happening right now.

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in the netherlands they just implemented measures to shut down non essential things at 5pm.. that lead to gyms/restaurants/swimming pools PACKED with people.. half the space, twice the density. in the very same day they implemented the measures the cases stopped growing..

the fact that a scientist can recommend "lets shut down gyms at 5pm" instead of "lets make gyms 24/7" makes me distrust the whole corona committee

when i look at the lockdown+cases graph, i dont think there is any causal link between them. e.g. https://www.uni-konstanz.de/polver/zuber/covid-19-student-wi...

It was myopic cargo-culting since day one. I used to think that over the years I'd gotten smarter and subtler from my initial libertarian leanings, but this has opened up my eyes on how bad authorities can mess up, and more worryingly convince their people they're doing the right thing.

As libertarian leaning and someone who wants the state at a good distance, I believe that in many cases people are doing what they can, sadly, it fails to be enough. However, what’s the alternative?

The alternative would be doing it with some honesty. The measures don't work, but they were a nice attempt.

You want honesty, but what is the cost of that? Would that make things better or worse? Is honesty for honesty’s sake valuable? To put it in another way, how many people would be saved or how many would die just because we want honesty?

To clarify what I’m saying, if you’re honest with the public and say, we’re doing this but we aren’t sure if it actually works. Will that help? Or just freak people out, making any later, hopefully more helpful, attempt at establishing policy less effective, hence more people dead.

Just some thoughts. I don’t want to be lied to, I want my rights respected, and I want authorities to be as transparent as possible, but these are some of the issues I can imagine exist when I put myself in their shoes.

Take a look at Russias covid situation to see how this pathos plays out in the long run.

Crisis or not, no truth, no trust.

It's not that hard to see why a scientist working for a Pharma company would recommend that, considering Pharma companies make money selling cures for ailments...

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