[FiReaNG3L]

No idea why you're getting downvoted - they have no control group and as you say there's 'depression' in their symptoms they count for. I'm pretty sure 'depression' (which I'm sure they don't count as clinically depressed, but 'im feeling more depressed') went up significantly in the whole population last year.

Also PLoS one is basically not peer reviewed - they accept every paper after a short review.

[emodendroket]

That part is fine but the part where he instead diagnoses everyone with having been driven crazy by the (by implication misguided) coronavirus response is not really thoughtful in my opinion.

[_ykl9]

No idea why you're getting downvoted

Speculation: conflation of his reasonable and factual statement with the ostensibly similar far-right talking point that the cure (social distancing) is worse than the disease.

[spookthesunset]

> far-right talking point

Expressing skepticism surrounding the efficiency of social distancing, masks, "non essential business" and all these lockdowns is not a "far right" talking point. None of our response was in any playbook for this level of threat. We threw out all our pandemic planning in a fit on hysteria and panic.

To this day we cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all, let alone enough to justify their social costs. Same with social distancing or even masks for that matter. The fact that all this can be considered an uncontrolled experiment on unwilling participants is not "far right" thinking.

[CarelessExpert]

> Expressing skepticism surrounding the efficiency of social distancing, masks, "non essential business" and all these lockdowns is not a "far right" talking point.

You're absolutely right. This kind of misinformation isn't limited to the far right.

> To this day we cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all,

LOL, what? This is a truly astonishingly statement.

Literally every place that instituted lockdowns saw a drop in COVID transmission, and every place that reduced or eliminated lockdowns saw an increase.

This isn't even controversial. It's an application of the basic germ theory of infectious transmission.

You can't seriously be making this claim in good faith, can you?

[spookthesunset]

I am absolutely making this claim in good faith.

Where is your studies showing these restrictions worked well enough to justify their immense costs to society? They don’t exist. To date I’ve yet to see a single cost benefit analysis done for any of this. It simply wasn’t allowed to be done… you’d get shouted down by the mob.

It worries me greatly how little critical thinking has been applied to the last 17+ months. It’s appeals to authority all the way down.

Show me the proof this stuff worked… and even then we didn’t know it would work going in, which makes it incredibly ethically (and morally) challenged. The last 17 months have shown me the depths of what humanity can do when gripped with fear and hysteria… it is pretty terrifying.

[CarelessExpert]

> Where is your studies showing these restrictions worked well enough to justify their immense costs to society?

And predictably the goalposts shift.

First it was that we "cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all".

Now it's that the results don't "justify their immense costs to society".

> and even then we didn’t know it would work going in,

Again: Lockdowns are a basic application of germ theory.

The only way they could not work is if infection didn't pass from human to human but was transmitted via miasma or aether.

You could absolutely make valid arguments for or against specific lockdown policy choices (i.e. capacity limits, sizes of gatherings, types of businesses affected, etc).

But lockdowns in general? There's piles of evidence that shows they're extremely effective. Heck, in my own city, we saw a massive spike brewing prior to Christmas, and once a lockdown was instituted, the numbers immediately began to fall. That pattern is repeated anywhere you care to look.

I honestly refuse to spend any time citing data for you, as I do not believe for a second that you're arguing in good faith. If you really wanted to find facts, you could easily dig them up. That you haven't done so tells me everything about your willingness to question your own beliefs.

[lixtra]

> Again: Lockdowns are a basic application of germ theory.

> The only way they could not work is if infection didn't pass from human to human but was transmitted via miasma or aether.

A public measure and overall behavior are two different things. Lockdown as a behavior is clearly effective in theory and practice. But as public measure, in many cases people stopped to comply sufficiently so that at best you see a flatting effect.

You wouldn’t try to fight HIV with monogamy (as measure). It’s just against human nature of a sufficiently large part of the population.

[spookthesunset]

> There's piles of evidence that shows they're extremely effective. Heck, in my own city, we saw a massive spike brewing prior to Christmas, and once a lockdown was instituted, the numbers immediately began to fall. That pattern is repeated anywhere you care to look.

That isn’t proof. I could very easily claim it was seasonality or things well beyond our control that caused cases to go down. And I am probably right. The charts and graphs all follow the same basic pattern everywhere in the world regardless of restrictions in place. Clearly if lockdowns worked so well you’d see orders of magnitude difference between a place like Florida or Sweden compared to California or New York.

The burden of proof is upon those forcing it upon us and so far, crickets from all around. It’s truly insane how nobody is allowed call out the mounds of public data suggesting the effects of lockdowns or any of our non pharmaceutical interventions are minimal at best… we pissed away well over a year of people’s lives for basically nothing.

Show me they work. And show me they worked well enough to justify the extreme damage they caused to society. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is the evidence?

[abystander]

I notice a lot of run-of-the-mill liberals automatically assume their opponents who aren't manifestly crazy are "devil's advocates" or not making the argument in good faith.

It seems intellectually lazy and the epitome of condescension to cast away all criticism in this way. As those opposing arguments are always beyond the pale and not worthy of thought.

The overwhelming feeling I get from this type of person: "there's no possibility I'm wrong."

[harpersealtako]

I would hope we're past the point now where we can write off legitimate complaints or concerns about the overall direction of COVID mitigation strategies implemented in most developed countries. Many well-intentioned anti-misinformation campaigns have been proven misguided and potentially harmful (for example, the debacle around the lab-leak theory, and the subsequent censorship and ostracization of anybody who dared suggest it), so we should be careful when we accuse others of arguing in bad faith, lest we repeat our past mistakes.

This isn't 2020 anymore, we should be able to take a sober look at what likely worked (universal mask-wearing, vaccines, border closures, quick contract tracing) and what may not have worked (closing otherwise safe outdoor spaces, obsessive surface cleaning, the "6-foot-rule") without judgement now.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

> we cannot say for certain that lockdowns did anything at all

This level of misinformation is no longer rational. You question that not meeting others in person can have an effect? It’s getting close to denying germ theory. Maybe it’s all bad vapors?

Sure, we can’t exactly specify the effect of different measures. But there’s plenty of evidence that they work, collectively. And the only method to come up for evidence regarding measures of this nature is to try them. You can’t do a lockdown study in a lab.

As to negative effects, we know that GDP recovers fast and suicide rates actually didn’t rise, despite constant assertions od the opposite.

[CarelessExpert]

Because the entire comment is clearly phrased to be antagonistic? "de facto criminalization of social activity"? Are they trying to troll people? Because that's how you troll people.

[msamwald]

> Also PLoS one is basically not peer reviewed - they accept every paper after a short review.

That is absolutely not true, PLOS ONE has proper peer-review, their review guidelines just focus on technical soundness and de-emphasize subjective noteworthiness.

(As a personal anecdote, I managed to get one of my papers rejected from PLOS ONE once...)