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Comment by zarzavat | Hacker News Reader

That doesn’t really address their comment which was about the ethics of detaining people in lockdowns, not the effectiveness of lockdowns for preventing transmission of disease.

There are many things we could do in society that would be extremely effective from a medical standpoint but are nonetheless unethical and therefore not done (organ harvesting from deceased prisoners for instance).

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Well, there are countries, like Austria, where we harvest organs from everyone (as necessary) unless the person opts out. Quite sensible in my opinion.

it's a lot more concrete than just ethics in my view. A lock-down for isolation precludes a huge number of actions that are very positive for society. There was no consideration of the quality of the results as that would be political suicide.

Well, in the US, ethics was covered of course by faucci's wife!! Her position was to advise her husband!

No conflict of interest there. Move along....

the only real lockdown is in China, everywhere else it was just a temporary voluntary sheltering at home. but whoever coined it as lockdown won, and people "felt" restricted as result of the wording... and hell it was effective at least in New Zealand

Your statement is categorically false. No country is/was as strict as China, but plenty of countries had mandatory restrictions ('lockdowns' if you will), upto mandatory stay-at-home, or stay-near-home. Just look at the (very partial) wiki list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns_by_country

Was it justified? I believe quite a lot of it was, but it did happen.

mandatory yes, but if you resisted what would they do? a fine? slap on the wrist? not sure if you've seen the severity of lockdown in China, they literally stuck a bolt in concrete to prevent people opening their doors in apartments, and soldered people's doors

Yea, I wrote that no country was as anywhere strict as China. However, quite a few countries had curfews which elicited fines and possible jail time (fines happened, but I don't think jail was used in practice). One example:

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/11/20/ohio-curfew...

Worked in Singapore and Taiwan too. Only 3 places I ever want to be during another pandemic is New Zealand, Singapore, or Taiwan.

> everywhere else it was just a temporary voluntary sheltering at home

Except it wasn't voluntary.

Next week - how Tsunami warnings are "forced expulsions"

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