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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster.

I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution when it comes to things like viruses but I think our natural tendency is to believe things are more uniform.

Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.

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"Zero anything" in my experience is almost always a propaganda play.

I was under the impression that there was a animal reservoir of covid out in the wild. Is that not true?

Yes most mammal species can carry the virus. It has been detected in dogs, cats, deer, tigers, mink, hamsters, gorillas, etc. This is one of several reasons why the virus can never be eradicated.

One of the possible origins of Omicron (not confirmed AFAIK) was a jump back to humans from rats, that had been infected with an early 2020 variant.

> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.

I'd argue it worked well for the initial phase of the pandemic. Even if you don't trust chinese data, China had little restrictions for most of 2020-2022, and by the sheer transmissibility of covid, this suggests they were very successful in keeping infections at bay. The problem is the lack of exit strategy. For a good example on how to deal with covid we can look at Singapore, which also had harsh lockdowns, rules and travel restrictions, and is now opening up again after vaccinating the vast majority of the population. Australia and NZ are also good examples of how to deal with the virus.

China can't do that though, because the elderly and vulnerable aren't vaccinated, and the chinese healthcare system is already strained without a pandemic. There's really not much they can do at the moment unless they find a way to massively increase vaccinations with effective vaccines, which proves hard when the population most vulnerable tends to have doubts and reservations on the vaccines.

I'd also like to mention that the way Europe and the US dealt with the initial two years of the pandemic was absolute shit. Healthcare workers were worked to death, sometimes literally, and we lost hundreds of thousands of people, while still restricting ourselves in some futile, some sensible ways.

> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible.

It worked for original SARS, no?

2 big differences SARS didn't explode all over the globe and if you got SARS your fate was decided very quickly. Covid can be very mild or even asymptomatic making it easy to miss.

SARS spread across the globe. It was effectively contained by public health authorities in various countries.

It is possible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 in countries with competent public health systems. However, most countries did not attempt elimination. Instead, they followed their standard pandemic response plans, which are based on influenza, and which only aim to slow the spread of the virus.

Notably, a number of countries did not follow the standard response plans for an influenza pandemic, and instead went for (and rapidly achieved) complete elimination: mainland China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and others.

Not to mention spread!

Not really. There's also a lot of differences, like SARS didn't escape to be a global pandemic. I'd say that's a big difference. At this point zero covid is like trying to create a zero flu policy. That's very different from a zero measles policy.

Why? It's worked for them for a few years now and they have successfully mitigated what would have been millions of deaths.

Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.

I don’t think it matters at all if it works or not. It shouldn’t be done. It’s basically a violation of basic human rights. I’d like to think even in our worst of times, we’d respect basic human rights…

But it isn't a violation of basic human rights. It is a community working together to protect itself from an 'invader' - much as we would see in places under attack by less invisible threats.

you have to get all of society to agree to your restrictions. By forcing people via mandates you are violating their human rights. Maybe their risk assessment is different? Maybe they value other things than you? Doesn’t matter, the fact they don’t agree with the restrictions should be respected. We have no right to do it.

See also: this article. What is happening in china right now is just slightly more advanced than what many countries and states did for themselves.

No that's incorrect. You appear to have made a category error. Protecting against a virus isn't a valid reason for violating the fundamental human right of free assembly.

And no, there is no human right to be protected against the risk of disease.

> Human rights include the right to life and liberty

Literally the first one is to life.

https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights#:~:text=Hum....

But is it ok to take away others' rights?

The UDHR you linked to mentioned freedom from detention, freedom of movement, the right to peacefully assemble, to work, leisure, and education, and to participate in cultural life. All of these rights were negatively impacted by lockdowns which many people did not agree with.

In the example of the pandemic: Would it have been better to offer support for the vulnerable (people with a 1 in 10 chance of dying if they caught it), rather than punish those who were not vulnerable (people with a 1 in 100,000 or greater chance of dying).

When is it ok for one person's rights to come at the expense of others? Is it ok for a few politicians to decide to impose on a bunch of unwilling people to do something they don't want to do? Should we lockdown every year for the flu, because some people will die? Should we allow the majority to force their views on the minority becuase they believe it is for the greater good?

I don't believe so. Not when there are other options.

Sorry is the "freedom of movement" clause the one that is immediately followed by:

> 3. The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.

Or is there some other clause you are referring to that this is actually violating?

The intention behind my reply was to say that the right to life is not the only right that people have, they have many others, and it is not a simple matter of saying one right some people want automatically gets priority at the expense of many other rights for many other people.

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment. Are you saying that restricting rights to protect public health is more important than the right of freedom of movement and other rights?

This is why I mentioned the flu as an example of how difficult it can be to draw a line. Why don't we lock down everyone for the flu every year? Is it because the numbers are different? People still die. Even when people agree on the numbers they don't interpret the risk the same. Some people don't think covid was that big a deal, certainly not worth the impact lockdowns had on everyone. And I also mentioned the idea of helping protect the vulnerable without punishing those who don't feel they are vulnerable. I think a lot more could have been done in this regard.

I just don't get why some people feel justified imposing on the rights of others when there are other approaches. Different values, I suppose.

Everyone dies. No one has the right to live forever. We could probably prevent a lot of deaths from influenza if we imposed permanent lockdowns on everyone forever. But there's more to life than avoiding death.

And besides, the UN is a joke. It's a nice little debating society, but otherwise in the real world no one takes it seriously.

I don't think it has worked until they have zero covid. Maybe a silver lining from this will be people resisting anything happening they perceive as mistreatment from their government.

If people weren't so resistant to government policy we might have seen something close to zero covid rolled out in the US and, instead of the US being the locus of disease for a number of years, we might have actually ended this pandemic with a decisive but painful quarantine - instead we'll continue in this state of psuedo quarantine for who knows how many years... how we comport ourselves today might just be the new social standard.

China's decision to continue on the zero-covid route seems extremely unwise once it was clear that breakouts were happening across the globe and containment was no longer an option - but initially pursuing containment was an extremely wise policy.

That's just nonsense completely divorced from scientific reality. Even a strict quarantine wouldn't have sufficed to stop a highly contagious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs.

It's now clear that the best strategy would have been to focus on protecting the most vulnerable, as recommended by leading experts back in 2020.

https://gbdeclaration.org/

WWe have successfully eradicated SARS, a respiratory virus, in the past. If we had actually responded faster we could have done the same.

China has averted 3 million deaths and most of the country has been free of lockdown for the last 2 years once they got the virus under control. That is "scientific reality". Claims that China's numbers are problematic, while probably true, are not the same as saying that China has hidden millions of covid deaths, which basically nobody who studies this believes.

We didn't eradicate SARS-CoV. It died out on its own. Due to the high R0 and animal reservoirs there is no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, or even keep it permanently under control. It will be around forever, just like the other 4 endemic human coronaviruses.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

The only human virus we have eradicated is smallpox. And that only worked because there were no animal reservoirs, and the vaccines were fairly effective at preventing infection and transmission. That situation does not obtain with SARS-CoV-2.

Several countries, including the world's most populous country, did, in fact, succeed in completely eliminating the virus.

The countries that pursued an elimination strategy (a.k.a. zero-CoVID) have had orders of magnitude fewer deaths, and were able to enjoy long periods of time with virtually no restrictions on everyday life. Life in the vast majority of China has been basically normal for most of the last 2 years. People have been going to restaurants, holding parties, going to concerts, etc. without having to worry about the virus, because it hasn't been spreading in the country.

> recommended by leading experts

The Great Barrington Declaration isn't some sort of consensus of "leading experts." It's a document drawn up by a libertarian think tank, that a small number of academics signed. For political reasons, most Western countries have ended up following something close to this strategy since fairly early on in the pandemic, and the results (both in terms of deaths and economic impact) have been abysmal, particularly in comparison with the zero-CoVID countries.

Your priors have expired.

It’s impossible to have zero Covid unless you vaccinate all mammals in the world.

Okay, I think that avoiding 3 million deaths might be worthy of some level of praise but agree to disagree :)

You are assuming their reported death numbers are accurate. You are also assuming the deaths caused by these policies won’t end up exceeding that number.

Neither assumptions are backed by evidence.

> Neither assumptions are backed by evidence.

To the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that China has had the spread necessary to kill 3 million people nor any evidence suggesting that they have covered up 3 million deaths.

You might naively think we have no way of checking, but this level of spread would be trivial to infer from antibody tests of people traveling to China. We have seen no indication of a deception anywhere near the scale you are suggesting.

Given how China repeatedly covered up COVID from early on...I think the starting point is assuming that the numbers coming out of there are not accurate.

> this level of spread would be trivial to infer from antibody tests of people traveling to China.

Who is doing that testing?

That's exactly my concern too - right now China's response looks great on the world stage... but the pandemic isn't over yet and China rolled out an extremely ineffective vaccine that leaves their population quite vulnerable.

If this disaster spreads to other Chinese metropolitan areas it would be devastating.

China's response actually looks terrible on the world stage. I didn't see any other countries welding people into their apartments as a drastic overreaction.

Exactly this, the Chinese developed vaccine Sinovac is the primary cause of the poor COVID results.

It simply doesn't do the job well enough, but good luck trying to make the Chinese leader choose an American product.

So the stubbornness of the regime is at fault, but with no limits on terms anymore, i see only bad things for the future of China.

Or a German product ;) Although it seems they have recently gotten round to some extensive testing for an mRNA vaccine. Makes you realise how advanced the Biontech and Moderna vaccines were.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/china-walvax-says-has-m...

Didn't know this, that is great news for all Chinese citizens.

Better late than never must be the motto China is going for.

Gosh for all sorts of reasons, direct and indirect, I hope this walvax turns out good.

I'm not sure why this is downvoted. This is literally what the CCP is saying, except maybe the part about the efficiency of their vaccine. But other than that, yeah, it is in line. The "0.5% of a billion people is still a lot of people, we can't take that risk" is exactly what they are saying.

Exactly. CCP stats doesn't pass Benford's law.

Source? First hit on DDG, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7487520/, says:

  We find Chinese confirmed infections match the distribution expected in Benford’s Law and are similar to that seen in the U.S. and Italy.

That's infections, not deaths, and so doesn't necessarily disagree with what you said. But I still need your source.

I based it on this.

https://kevinbasset.medium.com/i-used-benfords-law-to-analyz...

Tough both are reporting on old data which tells nothing (good or bad) about the current situation.

> Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.

Well either viruses typically are very good at killing you (SARS style) and so you can curb it fast or they aren't and stick around awhile until you can vaccinate a ton of the population and build immunity (measles). If they adapt too rapidly that they escape the effectiveness of a vaccine faster than you can develop and deploy them, you have the flu. Covid seems to be in the third camp rather than the other two.

I think if the world had been on board with a zero covid policy we probably would've weathered the pandemic much better - but convincing western nations to adopt that approach and their populace to actually accept the approach would have been a job and a half. My feeling through most of COVID (as someone in BC, Canada) is that the government is trying their best to minimize the amount people leave their homes while avoiding significant open protests. People marching in the streets is the last thing you want during a pandemic, it will cause an absolutely explosive number of cases - especially if those marches are done by people refusing vaccination and not using masks. And, to be honest, what's a government going to do - if Bonnie Henry declared a full lock down and tried to patrol the streets the number of law enforcement officers would be stretched to a breaking point - if people in a Condo building decided to storm the street they'd easily overwhelm the police...

So I think the zero covid policy is a decent idea if you can contain the disease before it spreads overseas but that a lot of western democracies are no where near well positioned enough to follow suit and, if you are the only country with a zero covid policy then there's going to be a really big tidalwave if the virus stays alive long enough to mutate and spread back into your country.

It sucks but this thing was global before lock downs were taken seriously so focusing bureaucracy on containment instead of preparing for the eventual return wave seems unwise.

Whether or not global lockdowns would have worked, I prefer a world in which you can get covid to one in which the government can confine you to your house. You're welcome to move to China if you prefer the latter approach - or just confine yourself to your house yourself...

You have lived in a world in which the government can confine you to your house your entire life.

Why is it only recently you have noticed?

It’s a matter of degree of truth in this case, and it is an order of magnitude or more true for China.

In fact I have mostly confined myself to my house. I can work remotely and we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food. We go out for walks in the neighborhood but we avoid going in stores or restaurants except on rare occasions. We've taken one vacation (during the lull before omicron became a thing) and we'll try and take another vacation this summer but, otherwise, we're trying our best to contribute to keeping everyone around us, our friends and relatives, safe. That doesn't mean I don't want it to end though.

I don't think your comments about moving to China are at all productive to the dialog though.

> I don't think your comments about moving to China are at all productive to the dialog though.

I want to address this. Why is it not productive? One great thing about the world is that we have different jurisdictions that value different things, so they can compete and like minded people can potentially get together somewhere and live as they want. Many people are moving to Florida e.g. because of its approach to covid. If you want the opposite, and your initial comment I understood to basically be support for China's approach, there are jurisdictions you can go to that provide that. It's better for you because your priorities are supported, and it's better for people in other places with different priorities. What's not productive is trying to lobby the government to force everyone around you to behave the way you want them to.

Seriously, if you support China's approach, and value it more than what you're getting in Canada, move to China, don't try and make Canada any more authoritarian

Oh, mostly because I'm a Canadian and the Canadian response to everything is dictated by its citizens determining what the government does in reaction to various stimuli. I'm not going to execute a violent coup to overthrow the Canadian government to force my personal ideals on everyone else but me expressing my ideals and trying, within the system, to tilt the responses to what works for me is, in fact, the Canadian government working as designed.

Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida - it isn't authoritarian or freedom loving as an inherent property, it is responding to the will of its populace. I personally think my ideals would help Canada be a safer and more prosperous country, so why should I say "screw all these guys" and jump ship... I'd prefer to stay and try and make my neighbors safer. That said, I'm actually a US-Canadian dualie so it is an adopted home.

Fair enough, I'm canadian and the same reason I haven't moved to Florida is because I'd rather stay and try to fight people like you than just give up and move somewhere else. I think the difference is that all I want is to be left alone, while a you want is for the government to force people to do what you want (because anything else would somehow harm you and your fellow citizens), but that's a pretty classic struggle between libertarian and authoritarian.

And I guess I should add that our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country. Which is why I think it's better if you leave if you don't like it.

"our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country"

I usually see Canada being described the other way around, and to be honest if someone asked me for the most free countries Canada would not be the first in my list.

I think there's a problem with assuming that basic libretarian thinking is about freedom though. I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people. There are an awful lot of unjust laws that can color people's view on acting as a society - but there are also quite necessary forces in there to make sure that people have the ability to live good lives.

My central philosophy in life is basically to strive to have a positive net impact on those around me - and it's why I find that old Franklin quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." so problematic - it comes from a good place (basically it can, IMO be read as a scathing indictment of America's response to 9/11) but it gets taken so far overboard so often. Everyone just wants to live, when we're threatened with an existential (for some of us) threat like a pandemic, we need to coordinate an appropriate group response to sanely respond to it. When the threat is minor we can delegate that to the individual and let folks do as they will - but when we're talking about a pandemic group action is required to overcome the issue.

I'm fine seeing wide ranging debates on the political stage over national drug care and the like - but this pandemic is a very serious threat that has killed a lot of Canadians. I don't think it's fair to paint pretty reasonable quarantine restrictions as authoritarian when that word, to so many people, draws up the image of Stalin or Hitler.

> I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people.

I personally think that the rule should be "don't impose on others".

The murder example you used is an imposition on another person. Telling someone that they can't impose on someone else is not an imposition, it is preventing an imposition.

There can be problems if we allow the majority to impose whatever they want on the minority. It seems that many people seem are ok with that, as long as they are in the majority.

I mostly agree with that take. I just think the discussion is more complex when we're talking about a pandemic - acting personally in a reckless manner is imposing your risks on others. Base jumping off a bridge with no expectation of medical care is a personal risk - taking the subway without a mask on when you're feeling ill in the middle of a pandemic is a shared risk.

I agree that the discussion about pandemic lockdowns is more complex. Good and honest people can look at the same data and disagree on how to handle something like this, even individuals who share the same age and health related covid risks. Some mitigation measures work better than others. Lockdowns have a negative impact, and this needs to be taken into account also.

I think a lot has to do with quantifying the risk. We don't mandate masks during flu season. Covid has killed 10 times as many people per year in the U.S. than a bad flu season. Somewhere in between is where we as a society have drawn the line, at least on short notice for a scary new virus. And that line is in a state of flux, given better treatments, vaccines, less deadly variants, and lockdown fatigue, etc. It seems that the numbers matter when it comes to these issues, which is why we don't lock down or mandate masks every year for the flu and other diseases.

If the numbers matter then it is a shame that the media didn't do a better job of informing people. It seems that the headlines were focused on worst case scenarios, anecdotes, and controversy at the expense of probabilities, perspective, and measurements.

Personally I wish that we could have given N95 masks, which effectively protect the wearer, to everyone who felt vulnerable and was unable to isolate.

>Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida

Ah, the same mindset that caused Justin Trudeau to say

>There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada ... the first postnational state.

in a New York Times interview (<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/trudeaus-canada-...>). If he hadn't been explicitly quoted, his supporters would say that attributing such words to Trudeau is actually an alt-right white-nationalist Trumptard conspiracy theory to make him look bad.

Nah, I'd just say it was historically ignorant, because lots of superstates without a strong uniting identity have been formed, especially as part of decolonialization, but most of them have at some point (not always immediately after independence) viewed the lack of uniting identity as a problem to solve.

> I think if the world had been on board with a zero covid policy

and

> I can work remotely and we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food.

Quite obviously only a minority of the population shares your personal situation. And yet you are calling for global lockdowns, which would include lesser developed countries where a vanishingly small percentage of the population is in this situation.

I shouldn't even be having to point this out. It's been a continuous theme that office-workers and IT workers have been self-indulgently calling for economies to lockdown because "Hey, why not just work from home?". And people have made the response I have above many times, which kills this dumb argument. So why is it still being made?

This is an incredibly privileged and self indulgent take. As a fellow BC resident, I am actually surprised how many people feel like their view on life is the only one and are happy to steamroll over the lives of others globally, consequences be damned.

This line of thinking is short sighted. It stops right at "See, this works for me, everyone should do this" and never carries the thought through to its conclusion. Mainly, how will these enforced measures affect everyone involved (and you) now, and in the long term, contexts being taken into account.

Frankly, as Canadians, we are thought of as respectful and considerate of other people. This thinking is the opposite and it's abhorrent.

It requires a lot of privilege to live the kind of Covid lifestyle you describe.

Absolutely, I'm not saying it's something everyone should go through - I'm just saying that because we can afford to do it we're trying to keep from adding more problems to the pandemic.

>we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food.

Aside from all the other self righteous defenses of authoritarian measures due to your personal, in my view health paranoid views on COVID, this section above was particularly self indulgent. Who delivers your food? Your lockdown notions don't apply to them because, "oh, but I need to have my meals"?

Also, very basic thing: a vanishingly small percentage of the world's population can afford to totally lock down at home for more than a few days. They literally need to be on the streets and among crowds nearly every single day just to barely scrape by. I live in a developing country and few things about privileged, middle class WFH-capable people's lockdown arguments gall more than this absurd accidental or willful ignorance of how 80% of the planet lives.

Finally, most of Canada's population is vaccinated. Those that aren't had every opportunity to be and simply chose not to. What credible reason is there for any continuing lockdown nonsense given this? Simple reflex? Emotional paranoia? Please explain.

You already live in a world where the government can confine you to your house. They likely already did.

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