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benjaminwootton

A few recent themes in the news and here on HN:

The economy is ricocheting from giant boom to bust.

Inflation is causing a cost of living crisis all over the world.

We are risking a large banking crisis.

We are experiencing massive layoffs in our own industry.

Cities are being hollowed out.

We have an epidemic of loneliness.

Is anyone who supported the Covid response now willing to put their hand up yet and agree that the cure was worse than the disease now that the costs predictably become clearer?

Considering Covid wasn’t a risk to most of us, I haven’t wavered in my belief that it was never worth shutting down the economy and terrifying everyone into compliance.

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You're blaming this all on the shutdowns, but really, much of what we're dealing with right now is due to a response by the federal reserve that lasted a lot longer than it should have.

I don't think 'the economy' is worth millions of deaths. The fact that over 1m people died in the US is an absolute disgrace, but had we done nothing, we would have had another 3-4M dead. You really think it's possible to have a functioning economy with that sort of death toll? The actual 'shutdowns' were very short lived. Much of what you're discribing is down to natural human behavior in the face of risk. Even if covid only has a 1% death rate, the rates of long term side effects of infection are what? 10%? That's huge, and 'long covid' is something we're still grappling with today, and will do so in the future.

China is an excellent example of what not to do. After years of zero-covid policies they've effectively given up, let the chips fall where they may, and their economy is getting ravaged as covid burns through their population.

How would we have had another 3-4 million dead? All any restriction did was delay exposure. Yes, a vaccine arrived but one which has questionable efficacy and which wanes in effectiveness (hence the booster programme). All we did was spread out any Covid related deaths at huge costs.

"Questionable efficacy" in what sense? You can argue that possibly for transmission, but certainly not for endpoints like death. See the recent Lancet study, for example.

I assume those excess deaths would've come because of the failure of health system and its inability to aid curable cases of Covid

I don't know if it would have been that high, but the whole (initial) idea of "flatten the curve" was exactly that. Saturated systems stop working as expected. When hospitals reach capacity then neither covid nor non-covid patients will get adequate treatment.

the earlier strains were probably more deadly than the ones we have now, no? just due to the nature of how viruses work that's my hypothesis.

I think you're conflating a whole lot of nuanced causes and effects, some that started well before covid hit, all in the name of score keeping (which only helps people put up nuance-blinders and just go for the 'win')

The covid response in the US was varied. I live in Arizona, we had minimal lock downs and a high death rate. I don't know anyone who's died of the flu in all my years, I know 3 people dead from covid (not elderly sick people either) - at least one of those purely because he felt he had to spite the libs. Statistically that likely means nothing, but neither does your hunting around for everything negative you read with a post-pandemic timestamp to try to get the win over a group of people who were just trying to do what was best to save their friends and family and neighbors from a very real threat that was still being understood.

Japan did not have forced lock downs. And they already had plenty of recluses before. The rest of what you say is only very loosely connected to covid, if at all.

Perhaps you should put your hand up and say you are wrong?

It was an odd comment.

"When will we admit that these social trends that started years before covid prove that the reaction to covid was all wrong?"

HEALTH IS CONNECTED TO THE ECONOMY. ] - when people die, the economy tends to suffer - if people suffer from serious long-term post-viral fatigue, the economy suffers - if the health service implodes because it is completely saturated and cannot service demand, (you guessed it) the economy suffers

People, don't pretend that "the economy" and "health" are separate factors.

Oh also

> Considering Covid wasn’t a risk to most of us

Even if this is true (i.e. even assuming that though you're unlikely to die from it you're unlikely to suffer any adverse effects) then there's still a problem: if all the hospital capacity is taken up because there are suddenly twice as many patients owing to COVID if you have a non-COVID problem (e.g. fall down an escalator and need surgery) then you're in trouble because there's nobody there to treat you!!!

> The economy is ricocheting from giant boom to bust.

2000, 2008, earlier crises that were less global. Certainly not a new concept from 2020.

> Inflation is causing a cost of living crisis all over the world.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

I wonder what may have caused that large spike in energy prices in the beginning of 2022 and what other non-covid events might have caused that.

> We are risking a large banking crisis.

True, but if banks are only sustainable at 0% interest rates, is that not an issue already?

> We are experiencing massive layoffs in our own industry.

IT employment is dramatically up since 2020, even after layoffs.

> Cities are being hollowed out.

If housing policy hadn't been mismanaged so much in the west over the last 30 years, I'm sure there'd be much less pent up demand to leave now that people have the option.

> We have an epidemic of loneliness.

You think this started in 2020? Never heard anyone discuss NEETs, the frankly dismal prospects of anyone graduating without a qualification in one of the few popular fields these days, the negative effects of social media, etc, before 2020? Must be a nice bubble.

Everything you listed has more to do with inequitable economic policy than covid response. Blaming public health for bad policy driven by shareholders and the financial system seems short-sighted.

I mean older people that might have been holding families together also died during the pandemic. Things would have been easier if pandemic measures would have been done on a pro-active basis - and I'm writing this from Europe where measures where a bit stricter. Maybe the pandemic could even have ended sooner.

That said, the general problem of the "loneliness epidemic" was already there before Covid.

You forgot to add a generation of children who will be a little stunted - socially, intellectually, even physically - because of 2.5 years of isolation.

A 10 year old in 2023 has already spent nearly 25% of his life without regular social contact or proper in-person schooling.

The younger generation are screwed regardless. Parented by screens and educated by activists.

The end game of a self-absorbed culture.

Where are you that kids have had 2.5 years of isolation? In my state in person classes were closed for about a year, then kids went back to class.

I still estimate that the result of not taking action would be tens of millions more deaths (at least) and nightmarish scenarios in any sizeable city.

You say it was not a risk for many of us, but that is only the case if you don't even include immediate family.

Although some of this might be accurate I think it is important to look at this being our first internet-based pandemic. We aren’t ever going to do things 100% right the first time as humans, but we can try harder and better next time using all this valuable information we’ve learned about ourselves and how we can cope with virulent outbreak, for better or worse.

This issue at hand with Japan having folks who “evaporate” seems to have been around much longer than this particular pandemic, though the recent lock downs seem to have exacerbated the problems.

>This issue at hand with Japan having folks who “evaporate” seems to have been around much longer than this particular pandemic, though the recent lock downs seem to have exacerbated the problems.

Japan didn't have lock-downs.

risk dying or deal w being sad. what would you choose?

Depression is very real, and can be fatal.

Agreed. Anybody asking this has probably never been in a really dark place for a really long time, unable to pull themselves out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HF5x_24kKOM

Interview with some of these people is really tough. The main person they follow through this talks about that choice between life or sadness through shame and even says he “…doesn’t have the courage to honorably kill oneself” during that interview. I can’t imagine having to contend with that belief structure. I would choose life and sadness, and I do daily. I can’t fault someone for not wanting that but especially so when I cannot understand the approach or belief.

This is retconning. Covid was a huge risk to all of us before vaccines were common. Even with vaccines, covid infection remains a serious (non-deadly) health risk, causing many neurological sequelae in millions of people.

You also can't attribute the majority of the other problems directly to the covid response.

It also wasn't a "cure", many many many people were infected that didn't need to be because of mismanagement.

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