| > Man, this thread really bringing out the worst of Hackernews and its so disappointing but unfortunately not surprising to see the complete lack of capacity for empathy from some of the other heavily downvoted commenters. That's an improvement over the usual HN COVID-19 threads, where 'it's just a hoax-flu, bro, stop spreading fear' usually gets upvoted and posts pointing out the dangers of SARS-CoV-2--and of SARS-CoV-2 disinformation--are downvoted, flagged, or removed. The most generous interpretation is that HN has a severe Dunning-Kruger problem. The more likely explanation is that HN is host to a lot of people who are completely incapable of empathy and are unable to protect themselves from disinformation in areas outside of their own expertise. This doesn't say much for HN or the tech sector in general. .
. A contagious biological virus is not conceptually different from the Morris Worm. If there was a neo-Morris Worm loose on the Internet, those of us on the sysadmin-side of the IT house would take all reasonable measures to protect our systems from it. Indeed, failing to do so would be negligent. Failing to take protective measures (social distancing, masks, WFH) against SARS-CoV-2 is no different from putting unpatched systems directly on the internet while a worm is active. It's so clearly negligent that no one whatsoever should advocate for it. |
Is this something that's happening within the last few weeks, or a few months ago when the pandemic was just starting? I find the former extremely hard to believe.