Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

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I think it is Covid and the handling of it set many people in the libertarian sphere off on a very troubling tangent - after all what had to be done to prevent it from repeating the 1918 flu ran completely antithetical to most core beliefs of libertarianism. That's why the essay starts off right with Covid IMHO. Add on top of that his daughter coming out as trans, that's when he went so far off the rails that it was impossible to prevent the derailment - unfortunately the rest of the article is paywalled without a bypass I don't have but it would not surprise me at all if that episode also gets mentioned.

And it's not just the libertarians / the (far) right, by the way - they just get more public attention. I have seen cases of similar escalations into conspiracy theories also among the far-left during Covid - from both anarchists as well as, curiously, tankies. Anarchists no surprise, for similar reasons as the libertarians, but the amount of tankies who went off the rocker is what I don't get given that they are among the strongest proponents of an authoritarian state doing whatever it deems to be best for the people.

I'm not going to comment on the covid handling situation. That goes beyond partisan politics and I believe that people's rights were violated on both sides by both groups of people.

The reason that people have been exposed to dangerous thinking is because the authorities that are supposed to protect us didn't do a good job with their messaging. The constant back and forth schizophrenic nature of many broadcasts and the condescension they carried pushed people into that.

It's a good reason why trying to lock down people was not a great idea in the first place. The bigger deal that they made out of things the more they polarized people.

> The constant back and forth schizophrenic nature of many broadcasts and the condescension they carried pushed people into that.

Well... that's because "science" or "being nerds" has been demonized by society for a very long time. The coolest guys in school were never the "nerds" (or those who looked like a "nerd"), and that attitude is strewn across culture and media ('member the Simpsons episode with the brain pencil?), so it feeds back into schools again.

When wide parts of society as a result have zero idea about how science works - constantly learning and reevaluating based on new data - of course the messaging will look "back and forth". When one looks even at the most controversial opinions they were, with the knowledge available back then, correct.

The one and only exception was "selfmade cloth masks are effective", and that ruined a lot of trust. Of course the politicians knew it wasn't true, but on the other hand they weren't completely wrong either as even a cloth mask is much better than no mask, and they had to deal with scalpers and even looters while hospitals didn't have PPE left.

If you can't understand why people don't trust science, normal people, then I would suggest putting yourself in their shoes and walking for a mile. I've worked both in tech and now blue collar. These people aren't stupid. Sometimes ignorant and insular, but they're not stupid. They have very good reasons to not trust elites. Especially when they condescend them.

Yes a construction worker has no idea about aspects of science, but he also is never trusted when it comes to construction itself unfortunately because everyone assumes he's just there to put the framing together according to the plans.

They should have worked on their messaging. As soon as you start condescending people you lose them.

To me its the opposite, the so called libertarians who got scared of the flu went fully anti liberty and their true faces were revealed.

Well Sam is ignoring the factual basics of COVID. It had a very low IFR, comparable to seasonal flus. And yet it was treated more like Ebola in terms of the government response. It would have been fine to let young and healthy people go about their lives, visit businesses, go to schools, and all that. Instead, we subjected everyone to authoritarian measures that were not grounded in reality, and even the slightest objection was given all kinds of labels - misinformation, conspiracy theory, anti science, etc.

And let’s not forget the glaring saga of the lab leak theory, which was attacked and suppressed in news media and social media. It showed the extent of societal control that was being practiced under the guise of COVID. That violation of free speech principles is the troubling tangent, not the people who were asking for more transparency and accountability for China. In the end the CCP got away with a WHO visit only a year late, and with the only US rep having a conflict of interest since he was involved in the coronavirus work at Wuhan Institute of Virology (Peter Daszak of EcoHealth).

> And yet it was treated more like Ebola in terms of the government response.

Uh... when have you ever seen refrigerator trucks being used as morgues because there were too many people dying [1]? I have never seen that ever before outside of areas struck by devastating floods, earthquakes or similar natural disasters.

> That violation of free speech principles is the troubling tangent, not the people who were asking for more transparency and accountability for China.

Blame that on the 45th - for purportedly being "anti China", he didn't do shit against China when it came to Covid other than mocking it as "the China virus" to stoke xenophobia.

Besides, it's still a fringe theory. Warnings over human settlements encroaching on bat caves and setting off epidemics from bats (who are a perfect breeding ground) have been sound years before Covid [2]. It is completely and utterly unsurprising that it eventually happened. Hell, the first coronavirus of 2005 was already linked to bats [3].

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/new-york-coronavirus-v...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7152049/

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

Incorrect - the fatality rate of covid pre vaccines was 1 to 3% worldwide, and about 15% in older more vulnerable people. Flu fatality rates are around 0.1%.

No, it was always around 0.1%. The earlier figures were known from the start to be wrong by people in public health because early attempts to estimate IFR are always wrong (always high). They don't get reports about mild cases until they start looking for them.

Even people like Neil Ferguson gave up claiming it was 1% early. No idea where you're getting 3%-15% from.

The IFR fell "post vaccine" because of a mix of how vaccination status was defined and because Delta soon mutated into Omicron, which was just a normal cold virus and not deadly at all.

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