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Comment by aspyct | Hacker News Reader

Of course immunity holds up, why did we ever think otherwise? Our immune system let us survive for thousands of years, why would it suddenly fail on this Nth disease?

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When people have a good thing going, they tend to do whatever they can to keep it going.

I hope the COVID clingers will continue to be looked back on as a cringe embarrassment in the history books for all of eternity.

This makes so sense because even the most cautious want it to be over. Like what’s the evil plan anyway? Mruhahahaha people will be wearing masks indoors forever and … profit?

I think the concern may be that overly anxious folks could have difficulty adapting to new facts.

Also, a third of people in the US were happier with lockdown and have their own reservations about return to normal

I'm certainly happier with remote working, but lockdown? Feels like prison.

I think the status for the whole package, but a lot of people also like feeling free of social obligations.

When lockdowns bring non-servant class comfortable work from home privileges of course they praise the idea it's too dangerous to go back to work instead just rallying for better worker rights aka work from home. By any means.

To feel like prison you'd have to be made to "stand by your door" twice a day, eat crap every day, and practice invisibility to prevent being shanked. You'd have to be able to see behind you in the meds line to prevent a kidney stabbing. You'd be practicing being as ugly as possible so the gaol rapist doesn't take a shine to you.

How is lockdown anything like prison? I keep hearing about how lockdowns and mandates are like prison, and I just cannot see it at all.

People just love telling other people what they can’t do.

Wait, are "new facts" related to "new science"? How do "new facts" get generated?

I would say that new facts are facts that were not known or knowable before.

We learned a lot about covid over the past two years. Vaccines came along. Treatments have improved. The virus itself has changed. Populations have prior exposure. More study results are available. Etc. We continue to learn.

Apologies if my wording was confusing.

Some were known before, but authorities have changed their stance based on political factors without new underlying data.

I agree. I guess politics and news coverage come after the more objective stuff I was thinking of. I guess not everyone interprets the facts the same, which is why I mentioned anxious people, who might have a tough time at the end of the pandemic, whereas other people had a tough time at the beginning, etc.

Facts have a half-life.

Yes, really. https://www.google.com/search?q=half-life+of+facts

In fact, there have been studies that measured the half-life of facts in each branch of science (it's not the same in all of them). This is done by taking a large number of well-known once-thought-good papers spanning a large period of time and then asking current reputed experts which ones have been falsified or rejected since their publication.

Ok, to be fair this is really a half-life of what-we-think-are-facts rather than a half-life of actual facts. The problem is that facts that are so universally obvious that no one would disagree they are facts... such facts are hard to come by. So it's not hyperbole to say that facts have a half-life even though it may seem more correct to say that knowledge has a half-life.

I'm not sure if 'half-life' is the appropriate term, as it typically connotes random decay. But the decay of popular facts appears to be anything but random; rather, it appears to be strongly correlated with political expediency.

Half-life has been used in the literature.

I don't believe that's what they were saying at all ("keep a good thing going"?) but I appreciate your effort to steelman it into a reasonable point of view.

Ah, that's the way I read it. I was being charitable. I understand this is a contentious issue.

People who love telling other people what to do and how to live have had an absolute field day with the pandemic. The amount of admonishing and screeching about everyone needing to wear their masks and get vaccinated and how mandates are good and how people who are against mandates are Nazi's, has been absolutely insane. These people get a sick joy out of it, they revolve their lives around it, and I'm really not sure how they're going to cope now that the pandemic appears to be coming to an end for the time being - or at least, now that it's being accepted as a part of life, finally.

It's not so much monetary profit they're receiving, but rather the self satisfaction knowing that they totally schooled someone on the internet about proper COVID etiquette - while simultaneously ensuring a red wave this November (which is why the shaming has toned down within the past couple weeks now that the reality is setting in about the midterms).

Ask a Covidian...

You are 100% correct of course, and pretty much EVERYONE from the US government to MSM to Covidian fanatics were wrong because they were stupid or liars or power hungry or all three.

Well, in my personal experience with covid, yes, I am absolutely correct. I got it 3 times, so immunity is not complete, but it improves every time.

First time around, I thought I would die. Second time, it was pretty bad but okay-ish, and third time I was still working. It should also be noted that I was particularly tired and stressed out before catching it the second/third time.

Anecdotal evidence of course, but indeed 100% correct.

That doesn't mean I'm calling all of those people liars. You're jumping to conclusions.

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