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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

Lockdowns achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve: they stop the spread of disease.

This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surges and collapse of the healthcare system and is effective for that.

However, indeed, this must be 'step 1' and combined with a broader strategy of vaccination and controlled exposure to the virus otherwise you only end up with an infinite cycle of lockdowns.

One issue in China is that although their vaccines do help they are much less effective at preventing infections than, say, Pfizer and Moderna, or AZ.

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> Lockdowns achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve: they stop the spread of disease. This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surge and collapse of the health care system

That may be true, but you can apparently stop the spread of disease [and] collapse of the health care system without lockdowns.

Look at Sweden. Anders Tegnell was relentlessly vilified by the mainstream media since 2020, yet the non-lockdown strategy appears to have led to an "average" outcome over the long term.

Lockdowns only achieve keeping people in their homes and that's the only meaningful result that can be discerned from them. The claim that they stop disease is 1) not proven 2)not the only way 3) not the best way

Well, it is proven. Look no further than all the lockdowns that occurred during this pandemic. Lockdowns do prevent transmission of disease.

The question is more whether it is a net benefit if infections surge again as soon as the lockdown is lifted. And the answer is of course that it's not black and white.

With such high vaccination rates in many places why didn’t we see a corresponding reduction in Covid infections? Why are vaccinated people getting infected?

You’re asking the wrong question, vaccinations don’t stop the infections themselves. Why China still needs lockdowns, compared to the west? Because sinovac is basically useless.

> Against the original virus BioNTech was 95% effective compared to 50.7% for Sinovac.

https://www.otandp.com/blog/covid-19-vaccine-comparison-whic...

The vaccines do not prevent infection but reduce the ultimate harm of the infection.

This position leads to inevitable follow up question: if vaccination reduces only personal risks, and does not prevent infection spread, why forcing it on anyone? If a person is unwilling to vaccinate and accepts the higher risk of a negative outcome, let him decide for himself, no?

The vaccines do reduce transmission, even if they don't prevent it.

You have to pretty much be willfully ignoring this fact to not understand it at this point.

The majority of western countries did this. Optional vaccines, restricted from public gatherings if you choose to not get it.

vaccines do not only reduce personal risks. Can you please form a better argument?

Before I form 'a better argument' for you, can you please make an argument yourself about the effects of the vaccines besides reducing personal risks?

To note: I'm personally vaccinated, but people who think it is OK to restrict personal freedoms of other people based on very fluid and agenda-driven narrative about the current state of the 'scientific consensus' do not get much respect from me. Maybe it is because I'm from a country where personal freedoms are routinely abused and I value them much more than people who take these freedoms for grated.

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