[kjakm]

>> I know a lot of you are married so let me put this out here: I (and most young people) will not put their romantic life on pause cause of a virus.

Most people I know have put their dating lives on hold. Not all of course, but most. It’s like any of the rules people have been asked to follow during the past year: most people have followed them, it’s only a selfish minority that have not.

Edit: My point is not to excuse shitty behaviour by pretending everyone else is doing it. Consider the world doesn't revolve around you and that occasionally people need to work together for the greater good, each making a variety of sacrifices.

[actuator]

Although I agree with the sentiment, it is harsh to say this.

I am in my 20s as well and can see where he is coming from. I have not gone out on dates this past year and it feels bad. 20s are the prime dating years, it feels like a year was taken out where I aged but my life hasn't moved.

To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.

Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.

[kjakm]

I understand - I'm also in my 20's. It sucks. A lot. But we're not the only people having to sacrifice and hopefully things get back to normal soon! It's tough but I don't think anyone will regret doing the right thing and hopefully we'll appreciate life a bit more afterwards.

[actuator]

Yeah, I agree. I think we are going to see changes in dating attitudes after this. At least in my circle of friends and extended circle, I have seen the desire for serious relationships go stronger in this period. Also, the appreciation for family for those who were able to live with them.

[philsnow]

> 20s are the prime dating years, it feels like a year was taken out where I aged but my life hasn't moved.

So yeah there are people who are choosing to go on dates, gather, party, etc. Those people are very visible. I get it, there can be FOMO. Why should you sacrifice when they're having fun?

Does it help to consider that there are lots of people (dare I say a majority) your age who are making the same sacrifice you are? If/when things return to the old normal, you'll have some sense of solidarity and shared maturity with them. Selflessness is a good quality in a potential spouse.

(Of course, unlike the "I voted" sticker, there's no "I stayed home" sticker, so in two years you're not going to be able to tell who did what now.)

> To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.

I get this. My wife passed away 9 months before the pandemic hit full swing and I'm lonely af. I don't get to see adult friends really at all anymore.

> Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.

Exactly this. Every time you choose not to go to a party or whatever, you could be averting the death of a family member (yours or a friend's, or friend-of-friend's, etc).

[scarmig]

The issue as I see it is that a kind of social contract has been broken. The government executing a real quarantine for two months would be totally reasonable: everyone would have been back to relative normality long ago. But few governments committed to that: moreover, the most vociferous opponents of real lockdowns weren't the young, but the relatively old.

And so we've pretty much burned a year of life for everyone. I know many, many people for whom 2020 has been the worst year of their life, in large part due to the lockdown. The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway; professionals established enough in their careers to thrive during WFH; the already coupled; and those with kids. Although inconvenienced, they can still progress with their lives. But for many singles in their 20s or 30s, this has been a lost year. And that's very costly: particularly if you want to raise a family, losing a year or more of dating and socialization from your late 20s or 30s is incredibly damaging to those chances.

[philsnow]

I'm right there with you: completely, impotently furious at the lost year my school-age children have had, at the hands of selfish extroverts who just can't stay away from each other and gutless, toothless politicians.

> The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway [...] and those with kids.

hol up. Not to downplay what you're saying (I personally know it can be tough wondering whether you're going to find somebody to spend the rest of your life with), but do you think raising kids is easy?

After this is all done, the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.

[scarmig]

> Not to downplay what you're saying (I personally know it can be tough wondering whether you're going to find somebody to spend the rest of your life with), but do you think raising kids is easy?

A year wasted versus a year spent raising a kid. For the latter, you'd be raising them anyhow regardless of quarantine. That's not to say juggling WFH and being around your kids 24/7 isn't difficult--I'm sure it is--but at the end of it, your year was spent on something meaningful. It's analogous to spending a year at a shitty intensive 80 hr/week job vs being a NEET living in your parents basement. Neither enviable, but at the end of the day most people would prefer to be the former.

> the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.

As opposed to people who spend months on end, devoid of any meaningful social contact at all? Neither situation is ideal, obviously, but at least with one you're accomplishing something.

[satyrnein]

Why would it be damaging to those chances, if everyone in the dating market is in the same boat? I would expect people in their 20s to be just fine. It's single women in their late 30s that could least afford to lose a year.

[shoguning]

It's not selfish to be out and about if you are young and healthy. The recovery rate for 20-30 YO is 99.99%+, and if you are healthy it's likely higher[1].

It's on the same order of risk as driving. Many young people die driving every year, yet we still do it plenty, with reasonable precautions. If you take reasonable precautions, are young and healthy, it is a risk worth taking to many.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2

[tedsanders]

We also outlaw speeding because speeding increases the odds that you kill someone else. Catching COVID, even if you recover, increases the odds that you kill someone else through a chain of infections. Remember that R is above 1 in most locations in the world right now. Tens of thousands of people are dying a day right now because not everyone is taking the precautions they have been asked to take. In countries with high compliance, death rates are very low. Mass death is not inevitable.

Note that the OP said it was selfish to be out and about, not against self interest. So your statistic is irrelevant to the point made. Selfish means you're benefiting yourself while harming others. That's exactly what happens if you catch COVID, pass it on, and then recover. You're fine. Others may not be.

[shoguning]

> We also outlaw speeding because speeding increases the odds that you kill someone else.

We could go further and outlaw cars that don't have speed governors. That would save lives. Lower speed limits would save more lives as well. Now we have a balance between freedom and safety.

> Tens of thousands of people are dying a day right now because not everyone is taking the precautions they have been asked to take.

That was true during the flu season of 2018 as well. The excess deaths from COVID are higher, but not orders of magnitude higher (more like 3x) [1]. The response is off the charts, economically and culturally devastating. Not the right balance.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

[tedsanders]

The reason excess deaths are only 3x higher is because of our precautions. If we let it burn through the US, millions would die and the ratio would be more like 100x (30,000 vs 3 million). Obviously depends on some hard-to-model assumptions. Your conclusion might be right, but your argument is terribly misleading.

(Plus, letting it burn through the whole population comes with downside risks of more mutations.)

[shoguning]

> The reason excess deaths are only 3x higher is because of our precautions.

It's a hard case to make. Sweden for example has had less excess death than harsher lockdown countries like Spain & UK.

Lockdowns have done little if anything in US states. New York and Florida have similar stats (worse in NY if anything).

[scarmig]

On the other hand, it has a very high number of excess deaths compared to Norway, Denmark, Finland, which are perhaps more comparable countries.

[MereInterest]

From your statistic, I would conclude that it is not self-destructive for young people to be out and about. Whether it is selfish is another matter entirely. Taking an action that is beneficial to oneself, but harmful to others, is typically described as selfish.

Edit: To be fair, the same argument can be made in reverse as well, that it is selfish for older people to insist on universal lockdowns, which primarily benefit themselves. To that, I would argue (1) that death is not the only negative result from covid-19, and (2) that the relative magnitudes of benefits and harms need to be compared.

[usize]

> it’s only a selfish minority that have not.

It's rather entitled and judgey to imply that people who still have some human contact are bad. Assuming the worst of people basically.

[closeparen]

I'm a nonessential worker with no dependents. It would be a slight boon to the receptionist and the Instacart delivery worker, and not much else, if I were to die in my sleep tonight. In the past I would have taken this very seriously. But now I'm feeling something like, "come here and kill me yourself." Selfish? Absolutely. But I don't think this is an entirely terrible development. At some point people have to care about their own well-being.

[semistrict]

From the levels of spread in southern CA it's clear most people are not abiding by the stay-at-home order.

[tomp]

> most people have followed them, it’s only a selfish minority that have not.

Most people who have followed the rules are people who believed fake propaganda. Now even the staunchest supporters of lockdowns, e.g. NYC and Chicago mayors, are coming out against them.

[jnwatson]

I've agreed with most of the societal restrictions so far, but, imposing celebacy on a large subset of the population is a step too far. It is completely and absolutely unrealistic.

Trying to suppress life's prime imperative is always a losing battle.

[timr]

> it’s only a selfish minority that have not.

If there's one ugly thing about the Covid situation that I hope our society reflects on with great remorse in the future, it is this justification for moralizing the private behavior of others. Covid seems to have unleashed the self-righteous scolds of the world in a way that I haven't seen in my lifetime.

If two consenting adults weigh their own personal risks and choose to go on a date, it isn't your business to judge their behavior. Catching a virus is not a moral act.

Obviously, people who interact with high-risk individuals should take special precautions. But if I am a healthy young person, live by myself and want to date someone else who is in the same situation, you can take your judgments and go pound sand.

[notJim]

Except that in doing this, you are increasing the likelihood of spreading the virus to other people you interact with. So you are evaluating risks for yourself, but the impact is on society as a whole. It's like that superspreader wedding in Maine, where the people who ended up dying were people who didn't attend the wedding. Instead, they spread the virus to each other, and then to others they interacted with.

It's more like drunk driving. I may evaluate that after 4 beers I'd still be comfortable with the risk of driving. It's my life to lose after all. Except I'm not the only one affected by it.

[jedberg]

> If two consenting adults weigh their own personal risks and choose to go on a date, it isn't your business to judge their behavior.

That's fine if it was just a risk to them. But it's not, unless they decide to live together and never leave the house after their first date, or quarantine for 14 days after every date.

[timr]

> That's fine if it was just a risk to them. But it's not, unless they decide to live together and never leave the house after their first date, or quarantine for 14 days after every date.

The "miniscule risk to others" argument can be extended to literally any intrusion on personal liberty, and is exactly why I hope society looks back on this trend with horror and regret.

How far do you take this logic? Do I have to quarantine myself for 14 days after going to the park? Home Depot? A restaurant? If not, why not? I can catch Covid every time I leave my home. Must I lock myself indoors forever, or is it just for things that other people don't approve of?

[jedberg]

Because the risk of catching it from spending more than 15 minutes indoors, unmasked, is much higher than all those other activities.

If your date is a walk in the park six feet apart, then great, you're probably fine.

If your date involves touching, hugging, kissing, or vigorous sex in a small bedroom for more than 15 minutes, then you have a much higher chance of spreading the virus.

[dQw4w9WgXcQ]

But of course, it's easy to sit on your married-with-kids throne and judge the single folk who are essentially forced into roughly the equivalent of solitary confinement via all this social isolation / shut-everything-down bullshit.

Here's a suggestion: Have some empathy and consider that it's highly likely that you have knowingly or unknowingly made plenty of mistakes over the year that have contributed to the spread of COVID.

[jedberg]

I have plenty of single friends and know what they are going through. They are also dating safely, or in a lot of cases, not at all.

Yeah I get it, it sucks, you can't have random hookups. I feel for you, I really do. There's lots of things I can't do either. But if we all sacrifice a bit, this will be over sooner. We've all had to change our lives during this pandemic. You're not unique in your suffering.

[closeparen]

If you both live alone, having each other as your only contact per 14-day period is actually pretty feasible.

[jedberg]

Sure, as long as you date each other exclusively for at least 14 days, then no big deal.

[dang]

Please make your points without flamewar rhetoric. Your comment would be just fine without that ending.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[tedsanders]

I sympathize with your argument, but I disagree. Here's why.

If you choose to raise your risk of catching COVID, a few things can happen:

(1) You don't catch COVID

(2) You catch COVID, and recover safely in the privacy of your own home

(3) You catch COVID, and accidentally spread it someone else while pre-symptomatic

(4) You catch COVID, get very unlucky and have to be hospitalized. The hospital's ICU beds are full, and they prioritize your young life over someone else's old life, and that old person dies.

If the only possible outcomes were (1) or (2), I would agree with you that it's a private decision that no one should scold you for.

But as the likelihood of (3) and (4) rise, your actions increasingly impact others. At a low likelihood, it's not a big deal and we can probably round down to zero in our moral calculus, just for convenience. But when R is above 1, and the average person is likely to pass on the disease, it's very possible that your infection on average leads to dozens or hundreds of infections over the next year. The expected value of quality adjusted life years lost at this point is not negligible. Tens of thousands of people are dying every day, and it's only going up[1]. ICUs are full in a non-negligible fraction of US hospitals [2].

I get that all of our actions impact other people, and it would be hassle to constrain your freedoms by that fact alone. But when it comes to COVID, your actions affect others by a much larger degree than other everyday choices.

Incidentally, this is why we as a society have made speeding a crime and not a 'personal choice.' Driving very fast is usually safe but occasionally hurts others, and we've decided that that risk is large enough to be worth restricting your freedoms over. Not all externalities meet that threshold, but some do.

So if one unnecessarily risks catching COVID and passing it along, then scolding seems ok to me. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying. Countries with much better adherence have much lower death tolls.

I personally have curtailed my dating life this year to try and save lives. I encourage others to do so as well.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=~USA

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...

[timr]

All four of those possibilities exist at any other time in human history. This is not the first year where I can catch and spread a disease that can kill someone else.

Likewise, how far do you extend this logic? I can catch and spread Covid literally any time I go outside. Do I have to avoid all other human contact, or is it just the things that a tribunal of strangers on the internet thinks is unnecessary?

> So if you take dumb risks and raise your odds of catching COVID and passing it along, then I am happy to scold you. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying.

I made a comment about two consenting adults, who live alone, taking a calculated personal risk. I am not sure who is being reckless here, but at the least this is an exaggeration.

[realityking]

> Likewise, how far do you extend this logic? I can catch and spread Covid literally any time I go outside.

I don’t know how things are where you live but here (Germany) it’s been severely restricted why (and how) you can do things. There’s actually a defined list of reasons under which you’re allowed to go outside. Now that list is pretty generous and include exercise, shopping, etc. but it exists. Any store that doesn’t serve a basic need is closed and at best can do “Click & Collect”

Likely this weekend things will go further here in Berlin. The airport will be shut down and you won’t be able to go further than 15km outside the city limits. Again there’s a defined list of reasons why you can go, just as en example visiting your spouse is ok. Visiting your parents or adult children is not unless you’re a care giver.

I say this in so many words not to say look at us, we got it so bad. But because what you said is true, _anytime_ you go outside you can catch and spread COVID. That’s why we have restrictions on when you can go outside.

[closeparen]

News out of Germany seems to indicate that there is some household mixing allowed. What's described here should be more than permissive enough to allay the concerns of those living alone in e.g. San Francisco, who were not officially permitted any contact whatsoever until December, and then only outdoors. (Of course no one really waited for that rule change to meet up outdoors).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55292614#:~:text=A%20m....

[closeparen]

With a monogamous relationship as your only close contact, you’re pretty unlikely to do (3).