[_uwiz]

Different countries, and different situations.

Living in a big old house in the country with your family? Your life is probably basically the same as it always was. Potentially better, depending on the work situation. Okay, sure, you're not going on as many holidays, and depending on how strict the rules are where you are, dinner parties are off the cards.

Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

I have no issue with how people choose to live their lives. I'm sure one day when I settle down I'll be in that group too. It sounds lovely.

But we have to be very, very clear about this - a month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group. There are limits, you can't just delete my lifestyle for a year and counting as a risk-aversion play and expect me to roll over and take it. Nah.

[pjc50]

Yes, it's terrible. Even those of us who are "coping" aren't coping terribly well. But ironically the disconnection has made the costs of the disease invisible as well. The zoom funerals. I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.

The death toll dwarfs every single "disaster" in UK modern cultural history. Aberfan, Lockerbie, Dunblane, Piper Alpha, Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, Herald of Free Enterprise, Marchioness, Titanic, Lusitania, Harold Shipman: COVID exceeds all of those put together. Invisibly. Any given one of those is dwarfed by the daily COVID death toll.

A rate that starts to rival wartime deaths. At the recent peak the death toll for 19 January was almost one HMS Hood per day.

[Clewza313]

But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich too, and the decision-makers behind them fall into the high-risk categories.

Sobering thought: if you think COVID-19 is bad now, wait until there's a pandemic of something like the Spanish Flu that does target and kill the young and healthy too.

[robocat]

> while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway.

The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail]

I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the parent comment: “I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back.”

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=years+lost+covid

[ravenstine]

That's not how anyone should assess risk. You can't take an average and assume that it applies to everyone. The elderly hare far more likely of losing 10 years off their lives than young people who are very unlikely to lose 40+ years off their lives. For instance, the chance that I will die from COVID at my age and health are, for all intents and purposes, 0%, according to the CDC. It would be ridiculous for me to take a statistic that is more apt for the sick and the elderly and use that to determine the course of my life.

By the way, the truth can be very callous. I don't think it's particularly useful for you to point out how callous someone sounds on the internet unless the other person has some demonstrable intent of cruelty. We all know that we have the potential to sound like bad people through text online.

[rcpt]

The metric you're looking for is QALY "quality adjusted life year". It's studied a lot in health economics but generally disregarded wrt covid because we don't have 2060's actuarial tables yet.

Yes there is evidence that 10-30% of covid infections have not resolved at 6 months

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

which is roughly what SARS 1 looks like (and those people are still sick). But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

[robocat]

“A study published in the Journal of Public Health finds that for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost.” - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.h...

> But we still can't definitely say that 35 year olds who catch covid will lose 10 years off the end of their life so it's disregarded in our decision making.

That isn’t relevant to the 10 year statistic although it is an interesting point - you are saying the final result for years of life lost due to Covid could be a higher number than 10 years (after we get to finally tally the numbers in the decades to come as people die). Depends on how you paint your statistics I guess. [para edited to add clarity]

[robocat]

The point I made is that an average of 10+ years lost is strikingly different from the canonical “nearly dead elderly don’t matter” argument that I see far too many people use (and which my comment replied to). Obviously averages are very poor indicators when a distribution is wonky, and it is preferably to deep dive into the data.

Note I am all for people doing whatever they want with their own lives - if you want to go to a Covid party I would love to support that. I love taking certain risks myself.

However, when the choices of one age group can kill my mum, dad or friends, I would hope we agree to serious restrictions to help prevent that. With engineering balance to the compromises, given that prevention techniques cause significant human costs.

I am from New Zealand, so I can resoundingly support everyone acting together in concert to protect everyone else (as most kiwis did, with a good outcome for us).

[Clewza313]

I'm sorry if it comes off as callous, but we're comparing incidents of mass death here and disability-adjusted life years is how insurance companies and demographers do it. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a good thing that 500k people have died from COVID in the US, but simply that having same number of young, healthy people getting gunned down in the Battle of the Somme is almost any measure objectively worse.

[solosoyokaze]

Do you really not know any young people who have been permanently damaged by COVID? I know multiple people in their 20s and 30s that spent weeks in the ER and will never be the same. I'm always surprised to find people who think the lockdown is excessive. COVID is absolutely no joke even if you're young, it's not the flu. Not even close, you don't want it.

[AndrewUnmuted]

My anecdotal experience is the opposite of yours - everyone I know in their 20s and 30s who had a positive COVID-19 test got through it within a week and it was about the same as the flu.

If my anecdata is irrelevant, then so is yours.

The only people I know who have had permanent damage from COVID-19 in this age range, have all had their trauma caused by excessive lockdown policies.

You know what's even less of a joke than COVID-19? Our histrionic, insane, and completely violent overreaction to it.

[kelnos]

Not the parent poster, but I still think a bunch of people getting killed in a war is worse than dying from COVID, even if they are literally the same people dying in both cases.

The latter is just nature being nature, and while we can respond in some ways to reduce deaths, it will never be perfect. I get that in some ways that feels worse, because there's a feeling of powerlessness. But the former is humans being shitty and murdering each other in the name of nationalism, land, resources, religion, whatever.

[selectodude]

I know zero people that have been permanently damaged by COVID. I don't think my social circle is all that small, either.

[graeme]

> If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

I think you missed this part of their comment. They were arguing the deaths weren’t the same kind of deaths as in past catastrophes, but the long term ailments are bad and real.

Though I agree the years lost is bigger than people think.

[Kluny]

> the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different.

It's a hell of a thing for someone who only had a few short and precious years left, to have those ripped away from them as well.

I'm hard of hearing - people joke that there's no point in wearing ear protection since I'm already deaf. No, the opposite. Because I have only a little hearing left, it's so much more precious to me than normal hearing is for most people. I protect it jealously.

I get your point, but I can't forget the human part of that equation.

[gregmac]

> COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway

What a disgusting attitude.

How is this different from "Why bother treating cancer patients? Most are going to die early anyway"? Do you think old and sick people simply provide no value to society?

I think you're trying to argue that it's worse if a young, otherwise healthy person dies, but it's really not necessary to rank lives against each other in this way.

This attitude seems to be what's largely made this pandemic so bad: it was viewed as "just the flu" and "only affects people with pre-existing conditions" and so rather than fast, decisive action (reducing burden on healthcare system, preventing deaths, reducing the need for lockdowns and shortening the time they take), many countries instead delayed and did half-measures, causing an exponential increase in cases, which causes everything to be worse. The completely obvious outcome of willing to let old and sick people die to "save the economy" was an economy that's in turmoil as well as a massive death toll.

[Mediterraneo10]

At some point the exuberance of the young and their ability to determine their own lives has to take priority over the comfort of the old. I am nearing middle age myself and I might be in a risk group, but I want restrictions lifted. People in their teens and twenties need to have their big social coming-of-age and courtship rituals. I see restrictions as an approach to COVID, as the greatest betrayal of young people since May ’68.

> rather than fast, decisive action

It is worth noting that even if there had been the "fast, decisive action" that epidemologist advisers wanted, that would have still imposed border closures in perpetuity. Life might have gone on "like normal" within a country, but people could not interact with their neighbors.

We see already some Australians advocating for hotel quarantine to be obligatory even after COVID, because a year of closed borders has made them regard outsiders as dirty. How long before border closures awaken old nationalist conflicts that freedom of movement and actually getting to know the other side had largely put to rest?

[rcpt]

But that's real far off from how the US does things. 30% of Medicare is spent on people who die within a year for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_rationing_in_the_Un...

And global warming might as well not exist as far as lawmakers are concerned. The comfort of the old is our nation's top priority.

[kelnos]

Treating elderly cancer patients does not negatively affect the lives of other people.

Locking down the near-entirety of life has long-term physical and mental health implications that we probably don't fully understand. There have already been suicides directly attributable to COVID-imposed isolation.

It's possible -- and even likely -- that the lockdowns are the right move overall, but the lockdowns themselves have destroyed lives too. Taking measures to protect against something that overwhelmingly affects one segment of the population has a big negative effect on everyone else as well.

[jdminhbg]

> How is this different from "Why bother treating cancer patients? Most are going to die early anyway"?

You do realize that every day we decline to treat cancer patients because they are close to dying anyway, right?

[derefr]

> I think you're trying to argue that it's worse if a young, otherwise healthy person dies, but it's really not necessary to rank lives against each other in this way.

No, the GP is pointing out the well-established social-psychology theory that people already implicitly rank things this way, and that this is why the death toll doesn’t have more of a mental impact on people in changing their decisions, even when they hear about it.

It’s the same reason that news like “baby of suburban WASP nuclear family gets kidnapped” turns into a whole-community man-hunt with special ribbons that gets remembered for years, while news like “baby of urban black single mother gets kidnapped” never even gets acknowledged by the community.

When people who are high-status to society go away, the whole of society mourns. When people who are low-status to society go away, only those directly affected mourn.

Any death-toll number, in the mind of most human beings (or rather, of any human being who’s only engaging with the problem using System 1 thinking), isn’t interpreted as “raw numbers” of lives lost, or even QALYs lost — instead, it’s felt as an aggregate of social-status lost, subjective to the listener’s personal social-status ranking function.

For the same reason that people don’t tend to worry much about disasters half-way across the world (the aggregate social-status weight computed through their status ranking function still sums low), people won’t tend to worry much about the impact of a local disaster if it’s only directly hurting local low-status people. Even if it’s indirectly impacting high-status people by taking away people they care directly about, that still doesn’t generate the sort of performative shame for not having acted that comes when high-status individuals are taken†.

And since that very performative shame is what policy-makers rely on as a group impetus to for getting changes pushed through on a society-wide level, a lack of it means that nothing can really change, even when there are clear rational reasons to implement change.

——————

† Evo-psych just-so hypothesis (i.e. take this with 50 grains of salt): people are expected to sacrifice to protect high-status people; people who do so are rewarded by the high-status people; and so, over generations, it became a eusocial instinct to feel an urge toward performative shame when you “fail to protect” a high-status person in your community—even one you never personally knew.

But people aren’t expected to sacrifice for low-status affiliations of high-status people (since it’d “only” be the high-status person, and not the rest of the community, enforcing the norm on you), so a similar eusocial instinct toward performative shame for failing to protect those people never arose.

[Damogran6]

More to the point, I think these statement show a lack of empathy on the part of the person making them.

'at least they're old'

This has wiped out FAMILES. 2.4M worldwide and nearly 500k in the US. And it flies past people due to fatigue and habituation.

[pb7]

2.4M people is 0.03% of the global population. Heart disease alone kills 0.23% of the global population per year.

[Uberphallus]

> 2.4M people is 0.03% of the global population. Heart disease alone kills 0.23% of the global population per year.

One would have thought that by now we wouldn't be comparing fatality rates of a disease that propagates exponentially when left unchecked, with a more or less stable family of diseases that isn't contagious, but here we are, apple pies to orange sorbets.

[pb7]

Masks and social distancing alone would have sufficed. South Korea is proof of that.

[iancmceachern]

Boo! Life is life, who are we to judge who's is more or less valuable?

[rebuilder]

We are doing so now, by choosing to take the suicides and mental health problems lockdowns will result in over the deaths the pandemic would cause without lockdown. I mean, I'm not opposed to the lockdowns generally, but you can't pretend we aren't making choices about who suffers.

Mostly we're choosing to take our chances on the unknown long-term consequences over the fairly well-understood risks we face now. The people who pay the cost will be different.

[kelnos]

Yup, and I wish more people would recognize/admit this. The lockdown decisions may be the best decisions, but let's not pretend we're not trading some deaths for others.

[iancmceachern]

That's fair, I agree.

[_uwiz]

The problem of course being that after extreme isolation and/or social breakdown, even those of us that know full well how large those numbers are start to snap.

Approximately 0.2-0.3% of the UK population has died due to coronavirus.

But my personal risk of psychosis as a result of lockdown is far higher than that, it's starting to approach 1, and when it happens, it doesn't matter if those figures are 10%.

Maybe it's just me, but I really doubt it is. Social unrest is coming if we do this for much longer, I can't see any other way.

I can't live in a world that doesn't allow me to have a friend over for a cup of tea indefinitely; compromise really needs to happen soon.

[willyt]

The death toll in Britain so far is about 3 times the number of British civilians killed in WW2.

[skocznymroczny]

The death toll is greatly exaggerated. Remember the "shocking" scenes from China? People dying on the streets, running out of coffins. Now we are in theory in multiplies of those infection rates and we don't see that anymore. What happened?

[pjc50]

The media chose to stop covering it?

Or maybe not even that. The 6pm BBC radio news just read out the latest 500+ dead and apparent R number. It's just ... not important to the discourse somehow?

[Nursie]

I'm in between the two groups. I live with my partner in a mid-sized house in the centre of a small city.

Financially I'm doing great, I've worked throughout and there's literally nothing to spend the money on. My mental health is starting to deteriorate though. I'm not sleeping well most nights, I've turned very much inwards, I feel angry and despairing a lot.

Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable. There is no plan. There isn't even a set of criteria around which a plan could be built.

I don't agree that this is "a risk aversion play" here in the UK though - we have well over 100k people dead from this disease, hospitals beyond capacity and all sorts. Cancer treatments being pushed out, causing more death down the line. I don't think you can say that trying to control the spread is unwarranted.

Poorly communicated, yes. Mishandled, screwed up, too little, too late every time, yes. But unfortunately necessary to stop it just getting worse.

[nicbou]

One thing that helped for me was to treat this period as also life, rather than something I must sit through.

I still highlight dumb holidays (next week is International I Hate Cilantro Day), read by the candlelight, explore abandoned buildings, ride my bicycle around etc.

I had to delay the plans for which I have strived for many years, but I don't consider that time lost. I got to try things I wouldn't have tried otherwise, and to invest my time in different places.

When I get hit by a wave of despair (usually after they push the dates further), I do something that reaffirms this.

[Nursie]

I'm trying to treat it as a good time to get things done.

I can't go anywhere so I have time to finish painting the hallway, fixing the garden etc etc. It helps I also have a home-based hobby (brewing) so I can carry on with that.

I should cycle more, and I'm sure I will when the weather picks up a bit. It really helps my state of mind.

[michaelt]

> Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable.

I can understand why people want things to look forward to - and why businesses and people whose jobs will reopen would want dates in advance so they can plan.

But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

That's what they did with the second lockdown - announced upfront that it was from to 31st October to 2nd December. Then they kept to their timetable and reopened things even though every metric on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ made it clear we hadn't stopped the second wave - and now we have a third lockdown.

[Nursie]

> But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.

Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

This is also why I mentioned criteria - even if not a fixed timetable, we could at least know what sort of criteria would trigger a rule change. I.E. when we get down to X cases per day, X deaths etc etc, the schools will open. If it keeps falling then the rule of six reapplies in outdoor public spaces ...

At least something rather than just being locked down indefinitely.

I agree the lifting of Lockdown 2 was a really poor choice.

[kelnos]

> Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. After the second timeline turns out to be completely made up, people will stop trusting them and add "more distrust of government" to their despair.

[_uwiz]

So come up with a timeline that's not made up, then.

In the absence of Government leadership, I've had to do it for myself - I have a set date beyond which I will no longer follow social distancing. If I didn't have that, I'd have snapped long ago, which is strictly a worse outcome.

People individually snapping and choosing to do whatever they want is more dangerous than the alternative of the Government explicitly announcing that lockdown is a time-limited policy (and as such providing more support to the hardest-hit individuals).

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Well, if that's even a good analogy, since lockdown is clearly nowhere near perfect, it's trading life for life.

[Nursie]

Again, I think that's why criteria need to be set out, rather than a strict timetable.

[brailsafe]

I'm so confused as to how excess money can be enough fuel for so many people's positive feedback loops that it keeps them working. That already wasn't working for me, but as soon as there was almost nothing to do, I crashed and lost my job.

[Nursie]

In my case there's a goal. I'm putting together enough money for a house deposit in another country when we emigrate later in the year.

When I'm tired as all hell and wishing I could just go back to bed, that's what keeps me going. When I'm not tired as all hell I actually still enjoy the work, so that helps.

[Nextgrid]

Out of curiosity, where are you planning to go? I am planning to leave the UK too and would like to know some options. So far my plan is to end up somewhere in Eastern Europe. Cost of living is low enough that I can actually afford a property instead of burning piles of cash for a shitty London flat.

[Nursie]

Western Australia. I lived there for a couple of years about 10 years ago as a skilled migrant, then came back to the UK. I was (really, really unexpectedly) lucky enough that when I applied to reinstate my long-expired visa they said "sure, you have a one-year window to get back over here".

Cost of living is pretty high, salaries are pretty OK (better than a lot of UK perm, not as good as UK fintech contracting AFAICT), houses are big if you live out of the city centres, the sun shines and the beaches go on forever :)

[ghaff]

I guess I don't know what the alternative would be. I miss travel/events and getting together with people socially. But it's not like those would exist if I weren't working either. I almost certainly have more personal contact than if I weren't working. Plus I'm fairly close to retirement so I might as well put some more money away.

[saalweachter]

The part of me that isn't horrified by the death toll or frustrated by the inconveniences in my own life has thought about a million times, "man, I bet we're getting so much interesting data out of this pandemic."

Beyond the bucket of cash dumped onto new vaccine technologies, the international DiRT for all of our emergency preparedness, the data on pandemic spread and transmission reduction strategies, we're also getting all sorts of psych and social data on how people respond to a crisis, to government orders and to isolation. A thousand dissertations and new departments of study will spring from this.

[nicoburns]

There is actually a provisional timetable now: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9267563/Roadmap-loc...

[Nursie]

Heh, the old "leak it to the press and if there's no immediate outpouring of rage, announce it properly next week" trick.

Been very popular over the last year or so. Yeah I've heard a few of the trickles of info. I'm hoping for the official reveal on Monday. Guess we'll see.

(and thanks for the link)

[AltruisticGap2]

I understand your sentiment but for me the realization is different.

For me seeing the streets of my capital city completely empty at beginning of lockdown, as well as the trams and buses (even though you could ride them), made me realize that I was living in an environment that is fundamentally not pleasant. That it was people that made it alive.

Without people, I saw that this city which I always thought of as "the place where I can do anything, almost any time of the day" is really just a conglomerate of gray buildings, commerce, lots and lots of roads and noisy traffic, and very little green.

The spell was good while it lasted. That said I am also past 45 now... if I was younger I might still want to come back to a big city when I can in order to have access to more activities.

[lmm]

Wasn't that something we all knew already? People are what make cities worth living in, the point of living in a city is to be close to more people, and that naturally involves some compromises (though I'm all for non-grey buildings and minimising the space devoted to cars - something my city is fairly good at).

[michaelt]

To an extent - but city-dwellers also often deal with the high density by ignoring one another, to a much greater extent than they would in a smaller community.

I've heard city-dwellers claim (perhaps partly in jest) to have spent decades standing with the same people at the commuter rail station every day without giving them so much as a nod or smile, let alone learning their names.

[wayoutthere]

I was living in the center of a major city on the east coast when the pandemic hit. I was renting a 400 sq ft apartment, but that was ok because I really only slept there — the coffee shop nearby was my living room, the park was my backyard, the restaurants my kitchen. That’s city life.

With all of that gone, the 400 sq ft apartment stopped being livable. That apartment wasn’t cheap, but I was able to afford to buy a house in another part of town. So I did — as did every other person in that downtown area that I knew.

Those areas are now severely depopulated to the point it’s not safe to walk around in after dark, despite being one of the nicest areas of town a year ago. Businesses are continuing to fail because their customers keep moving away. City centers will be absolutely dead for a decade or more. People are underestimating the long term impact to cities because office workers aren’t coming back en masse any time soon either — if ever. People are what makes a city great, and they’re not coming back for a long time.

[LandR]

Also my city feels much more dangerous now. PReviously with loads of people always milling around I would feel safe walking around alone at 2-4am going home from bars.

Now it can feel pretty dodgy as soon as its dark in the city centre. No one has any reason to be there so the junkies, homeless and others have seemingly gotten more brave.

I was in the city centre around 9-10pm a little while ago and it was almost 100% drunk / high / homeless looking at me really weirdly and got approached by a couple in a semi-aggresive way.

That had never happened to me in the five years I've lived here previously.

[dashundchen]

Anecdotally my experience has been the opposite in my mid-sized US city. Previously the only people out during the weeks at night would be drunks from bars.

Now even in the dead of winter, on my nightly walks I see people strolling around at night. Many times the same people, assuming they're just looking to get out of the house.

Summer was even more drastic, I don't think I have ever seen more people take to cycling and walking for enjoyments sake in my area before.

[SyzygistSix]

>Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

I've more had the mindset that everything I normally do can put other people in danger and potentially kill them or someone close to them. Or leave them with lingering side effects from illness for who knows how long.

But yeah, also kind of going crazy.

[Layke1123]

I feel better now that we have competent leadership enforcing rules and rushing to get us vaccines. It has made all the world a difference for my mental health knowing that others are now doing what I am doing and we are all pulling our weight. It makes me feel connected again even without going to bars, theaters, vacations, etc. I don't know why that makes all the difference for me but it does.

[CydeWeys]

> Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now.

And unsafe, too. I'm not not going to restaurants because I'm not allowed to (they're actually opening back up a little bit here now), but because under the present circumstances it's not safe to do so.

[toby]

Open-air dining with six feet of separation is almost certainly safe. There's literally no evidence to the contrary despite multiple court orders to produce any.

[CydeWeys]

It's below freezing here right now, currently snowing, and with high winds. No one's eating outdoors. I did it a bit before winter started but this entire season has been a wash.

[Uberphallus]

Unfortunately when restaurants around here could open, they didn't have the required distancing between tables because that'd mean they'd make half the money. Your country culture may vary.

[Wintamute]

Have you quantified that? How unsafe it is to your personally?

I don't know anything about your personal situation, but if you're healthy and relatively young the risk from Covid (first catching it, then having a bad time with it) in resuming these aspects of normal life may be extremely low, even compared to activities you wouldn't think twice about doing pre-pandemic - like taking a short car ride for example.

I think there are probably a lot of people struggling with this sort of thing. Cognitive behaviour therapy incorporating aspects of exposure therapy could be useful here.

[CydeWeys]

> How unsafe it is to your personally?

That's a very selfish way of looking at things. The problem with being a communicable disease is that even if I'm fine, others I give it too might not be. I'm trying to be a team player here.

Also, I'm not in a low-risk group personally anyway.

[Wintamute]

No, not selfish. See answer below

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26194718

[CydeWeys]

There's currently around 80 people dying from COVID-19 per day here in NYC, and the highest death rates have been from food service workers. 80 is way too high (it's over 10X what it was late summer), and I'm not going to do anything to potentially contribute to that. And Cuomo the nursing home reaper doesn't exactly have the moral high ground here in saying what is and isn't safe.

I'm going to go back to my normal life once I've been vaccinated. At this rate there's only a couple more months to go. I've already made it 11 months, I can do a couple more.

[Damogran6]

Are the young as at big a risk as older folks? No. CAN THEY COMMUNICATE IT TO OLDER FOLKS? Yes. Yes they can.

This kinda falls into the 'social obligation' column. Just because it doesn't affect you personally, doesn't mean you shouldn't be part of the solution. Sooner or later something WILL happen to you and you'll benefit from being a member.

[Wintamute]

I understand that aspect. Vaccinations, social distancing, mask wearing, mass testing, self isolating with symptoms or while vulnerable - these are all tools designed to get society running again, while minimising risk. The OP said they felt unsafe about going into restaurants which were open in their region. My opinion is that is incumbent on all of us to get back to normality as swiftly as possible within the guidelines set out by our local governments. That is my idea of social obligation, thanks.

[criddell]

> within the guidelines set out by our local governments

Your local government may not care about you. I'd look to respected civilian experts or at least government agencies staffed by respected experts.

I'm basing this on Texas' Lt. Governor Dan Patrick being willing to tolerate a lot of death for the sake of the economy:

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/21/texas-dan-patrick-ec...

[Wintamute]

I understand that aspect too.

I mention local guidelines since I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble with the state.

The economy is not an abstract thing, it represents living people and their lives. People who feel its important to prioritise the economy and a return to relative normality generally don't think that way because they're callous about Covid deaths, they're simply more concerned about the death, ill health and strife that result from a long term economic downturn. We can discuss the degree to which those views represent reality without impugning people's characters.

[zo1]

That argument means nothing unless you're also able to decide for yourself what to do about something "unsafe". Consent is key, and we're watching in real time as we are turned into human livestock under the care of the "state".

It boils down to: "Shut up, stay in your pen". I'm not a crazy person and I agree with herd immunity and generally think we should strive for it and not fight it for the sake of the unhealthy, but excuse the language, holy-shit people... it's been a year of "flatten the curve", "lockdowns" and "stay at home orders"!! I stand by this fully: This disaster could have been solved in a month with closed borders, tracking and a dedicated, absolute and draconian effort. But, we didn't get that and instead treated the potentially "misbehaving" people like cattle because they threatened the wider herd.

It all rests on what happens after a wide rollout of the vaccine.

[kelnos]

> I'm not a crazy person and I agree with herd immunity

You're not crazy, but you are incorrect. Herd immunity only works for COVID if a) you can get 60-70% of people infected, and b) getting the disease confers immunity, and for a meaningful amount of time.

Getting to that 60-70% in the time frame that most people would tolerate would absolutely destroy our health care system, resulting in many more deaths (due to people being unable to get the treatment they need). Consider that hospitals in many areas were overwhelmed without most people going out and trying to get the disease.

And the immunity bit is still an open question. Many people have suffered re-infection, and it's not clear that post-infection immunity lasts more than a few months, which might not be good enough for herd immunity to stick.

The second bit is a bit of a gamble, so I'm totally open to argument there as to whether it's a gamble worth taking, but the first bit includes unacceptable outcomes. I'm not saying our current outcome is acceptable, but trading one bad thing for another isn't clearly better here.

[JohnCohorn]

< Many people have suffered re-infection

Citation needed. Every source I’ve heard has said reinfection is rare in both percent and absolute terms. And resistance to the disease is proven to last at least ~9months and estimated by the medically knowledgeable to last much much longer.

[_uwiz]

Nah, me staying inside for years on end with no or very limited social contact is less safe for me.

It guarantees a horrible outcome (psychosis), versus a slight risk of a bad outcome.

I'm not going to put myself into a coma for multiple years on the off chance that someone else gets ill. Best of luck.

[schwartzworld]

What a weird comment. You think people with families don't miss their social lives? You think it has been easy? People aren't meant to spend so much time together. Not to mention work and full-time child care don't really go together.

I'd say if anything, I considered maintaining a social life to be a form of self-care, one I was already struggling to get enough of.

> A month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'pitchforks and torches' group

Why wait a month or two? I'm not saying I agree with you, but nothing's going to change in 2 months. I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.

[jm__87]

I think it may be tough to imagine what being alone and isolated for a year does to a person if you are someone who is stuck inside with the same people all day. I would imagine the situation for those with family is very difficult and exhausting... but not suicidal ideation level of difficult, which has been my experience with this extreme social isolation. This is in spite of devoting a lot of time and energy to self care: exercising daily, eating healthy, not drinking alcohol, and many other things. Maybe my assumption here is wrong and there are plenty of people out there living with their families who are in as precarious a situation as I currently find myself. Either way, everyone is suffering right now, but my experience has been that long term social isolation is a unique form of torture that can really push a person to the edge.

[schwartzworld]

> Maybe my assumption here is wrong and there are plenty of people out there living with their families who are in as precarious a situation as I currently find myself.

Yes, you are wrong. Everybody I know with little kids is suffering the same social isolation as you. 4 year olds do not count as socializing, especially when all of our kids are also feeling the negative effects of isolation as well.

Besides that, you specifically mentioned doing self-care. It's amazing you have the time and energy to do it. My day starts at 530am (if I'm lucky) and the only time I could work out is after the girls go to bed.

I could think of plenty of ways to get some form of social interaction if I wasn't so stretched. All my single coworkers are playing video games together and doing zoom hangouts. My friends do a poker night and I can't stay up late enough because I'm so worn out by the time it starts. I've barely spoken to anyone besides my wife, who is also being slowly ground into dust, unless you count my weekly one on one with my manager.

I'm not trying to one up anybody. If anything I think that most of us are going through some comparable form of mental anguish. The irony is that Covid keeps us from seeing how other people go through it too

[jm__87]

Sorry to hear all that. It wasn't my intent to imply that those with families aren't struggling - I know plenty who are.

[_uwiz]

> Why wait a month or two?

Because I have just about enough left in me, and by then, in the UK we will have vaccinated the groups which make up ~99% of preventable mortality.

At that point, the moral argument of "go outside and you're putting people at risk" completely falls apart in my view.

If there are variants which escape the vaccines, then at that point it's game over since I know I definitely won't be able to make it through another year.

[schwartzworld]

Honestly, unless we vaccinate everybody in the entire world, it seems that vaccine resistant variants are inevitable.

I don't know what the lockdowns are like in the UK. Are you guys not even allowed to go outside?

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

The parent comment was wrong to assume that people with families aren't also struggling due to dampened social lives - we're all struggling.

The people who are isolated by themselves are struggling much more.

In prison, the worst punishment you can receive is to be taken away from the all rapists and murderers, and put in solitary confinement. Being stuck in a prison cell with a partner and family probably sounds like a dream to the person stuck in a prison cell alone.

[watwut]

Depends on how abusive that family is. Because in reality, being alone with internet in appartment is not comparable to prison solitary lock down.

They are massively different.

[schwartzworld]

People in solitary confinement aren't allowed to go anywhere or speak to anybody. What country has restrictions that keep you from socializing online or calling people on the phone? In most places you have never not been able to interact outdoors or go food shopping.

[standardUser]

The idea that nothing will change in the next two months is absurd because things are already changing. There's already been an easing of restrictions over the last few weeks as the rate of new cases declines. And this is before the vaccine has had a chance to make much of an impact. Because of the vaccines, we have very reason to believe the rate of hospitalizations and deaths will only go down, which will inevitably lead to a further easing of restrictions.

[CaptainZapp]

> I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years.

Given the speed in which effective vaccines were developed I think this is a rather bleak outlook.

Sure, a lot is still unknown with the new virus variants and as has been expected vaccination drives had their teething problems. But in a few month time (almost) everybody who wants their jabs can get it (in rich countries, that is).

I for one, see myself on a 3 week vacation in Asia later this year. Optimistic? Maybe, and certainly dependent on a number of factors beyond my control. But I think it's a much better perspective than wallowing in misery and not seeing a way out.

[Mediterraneo10]

It is worth reading what the epidemologists advising Western governments actually think. Many of them are arguing for social distancing and border closures to continue until the entire world is vaccinated, regardless of how many people are vaccinated within your own country. That is expected to take probably until 2026, so the OP's worries about five years are founded. Some outliers among those advisors are even arguing for social distancing for the rest of the 2020s, or (because they want to take the opportunity to end flu transmission as well) in perpetuity.

[spdionis]

That would be pretty dystopian.

[birktj]

Are you sure this is the case? From the Norwegian news it seems very much like the epidemiologists that are advising the government in many cases are advising lesser restrictions than what is actually implemented.

[ghaff]

There is zero chance that democracies will conform to those kind of restrictions. Once most people are vaccinated, people are going to shift back to business (mostly) as usual subject to changes like more remote work. Governments can't enforce policies if people won't follow them.

[packetlost]

Do you have a source for that?

[Mediterraneo10]

Many of these advisors are speaking directly to media. Devi Sridhar, one of the advisors to the UK government, for example, has been doing interviews recently about maintaining long-term border closures and requiring expensive hotel quarantines.

Right after I posted my comment above, at 15:12 comments regarding Canadian forecasts appeared in The Guardian's COVID live blog, in which epidemologists say that restrictions must be preserved within the country because the vaccine rollout is a global problem, not a local one.

[packetlost]

The only article that seems to be quoting Devi Sridhar is behind a paywall, but doesn't seem to be supporting your argument.

I can't find anything on The Guradian's COVID live blog talking about what you're referring to, can you provide a link?

[standardUser]

Thank god the epidemiologists are not the ones making policy. Most state and local governments in the US have not shown a willingness to follow such a hardline approach, and we're already seeing reopenings as numbers drop, long before the vaccine has even had a major impact.

[leesalminen]

Pretty sure one of Biden’s main talking points of his election campaign was that America would start listening to the scientists more closely.

[Notorious_BLT]

So far no meaningful action has been taken that indicates he's particularly concerned. He's focused on trying to reopen schools, last I heard.

Some people have argued that the vaccinations are evidence of his success regarding Covid-19 but I don't see any part of that that wouldn't have been proceeding with or without him. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Trump and Biden's handling of covid has been "Biden knows to keep his mouth shut about specifics and predictions, because he might be wrong" which is exactly the kind of playing-both-sides I've seen from many state and city governments for the last year (talking a lot about how we need to follow the science and keep locking down to keep the spread low, but also taking no steps to enforce the rules or financially support people/businesses.)

[standardUser]

Nothing Biden has said or done has implied he wants to take a hardline approach to COVID restrictions, aside from briefly floating the idea of limited domestic travel. And he made no effort to tie the massive relief package to restrictive state polices. Beyond that, he has limited authority over state and local restrictions.

[watwut]

> Living in a big old house in the country with your family?

This might be exactly situation where you might desperately need to go out to keep sanity, to escape the family.