Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by aww_dang 1752 days ago
Thanks for your response.

>It was not controversial 50, 100, or 150+ years ago to quarantine people

However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.

There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

>At the end of the day, the harm caused by vaccination is next to 0 for almost all the population. The small percentage with adverse reactions is a small price to pay for society...

And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.

> The alternative is a lot more harm that we are currently seeing from the covid deaths.

I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.

2 comments

However there are unprecedented measures taken today. We're nearly 2 years into lockdowns. Moratoriums on rent, unemployment subsidies, massive increases in gov spending and a host of other unprecedented economic interventions.

These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate. These methods work best if we work together. Because some people chose to ignore measures, it means we're prolonging the misery.

There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly. If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

Because the least vulnerable and healthy population can spread diseases to the obese and the elderly.

Exercise is a useful health intervention. It's also not very effective for losing weight. It's also the government's fault that we are obese to begin with, because the governments are responsible for urban design, dietary and market regulation.

I'm not convinced a voluntary quarantine of high risk groups would be more harmful medically or economically. The response has caused incalculable economic damage and disruption of individual's lives.

It is unclear to me why only partial quarantine would be useful. It just means that the virus are spreading among the healthy. The moment we stop the quarantine, the moment people starts dying.

> These are ineffective because of people's refusal to cooperate.

In what sense is this not an unfalsifiable hypothesis? Are cases exploding in Japan because of the 1% of people who don't wear masks in public there? Are Australia and New Zealand trapped in dystopian house arrest because there are just boatloads of degenerates who won't follow the rules?

What the hell good is a public health intervention if it requires an impossibly perfect 100% level of compliance to even work? And crumbles to pieces the second you relax the restriction?

If 10% or 20% weren't following the rules, it'd probably be fine.

However, because COVID in the US is a political thing, it's easily 30%+ of americans that aren't "following the rules". In my state of Idaho, there were rallies to get together and burn masks. [1]

Have you ever heard of mask burning rallies in either Japan or Australia?

It's not political in most nations. This is primarily a US problem.

Anecdotally, at the height of COVID compliance in Idaho I never saw > 50% masking participation.

[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/08/mask-burning-idaho-or...

> There are debates over why the least vulnerable, healthy populations are subject to the same restrictions as the obese and elderly.

The studies are still out, but early reports are showing that delta is hitting more than just the old and the fat [1].

In particular, pregnant woman seem to be at particularly high risk of death. [2]

The problem with these communicable disease is they can mutate. Delta appears to be breaking a lot of the older assumptions about who is at risk. Perhaps that's because the older population is better vaccinated than the younger population and delta is just more deadly for all.

> If obesity is a risk factor and we have a "collective responsibility", then why hasn't the gov mandated exercise?

Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.

Further, it will take months/years to lose enough weight to eventually move out of the risk category for COVID. A vaccine takes minutes.

> And if this were untrue, where would we see this information? Are there no other incentives we should be considering, such as the great reset, vaccine passports, digital ID, CBDCs or even vanilla economic interventions? We're dealing with a trust deficit in public figures and media institutions. It is hard to blame the cynic for previous incidents of propaganda.

The trust problem is precisely from propaganda. It's because, frankly, Trump kept saying "fake news" and casting doubt on experts without a shred of evidence backing his assertions. Pushing untested and unproven medications which ultimately spawned the "ivermectin" crowd which is now taking horse dewormer to try and combat covid.

The deficit because an autocrat got power and pulled the typical move of an autocrat.

The experts have been straight through covid. It's the yellow journalists and russian interference [3] that have been spitting out mistrust where none existed previously.

[1] https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/younger-people-in...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-icus-doctor...

[3] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

>Because whether or not you exercise does not change your ability to spread COVID. It may improve your chances of survival but it does not change the burden one way or another on how you are affecting society around.

Yes, but under your theory of collectivism, we all have a responsibility to protect these obese individuals via authoritarian measures. Therefore, if they were not obese, we would not be burdened by the collective responsibility they impose upon us.

I'm disappointed that you've brought Trump into the discussion. I'm not a fan of the political classes as a rule, so it pains me to defend him here. He was recently panned for recommending the vaccine to his followers at a rally in Alabama.

As for autocracy, it seems a bit ironic to level this accusation in a discussion defending authoritarian lockdowns and medical interventions.

If you can't see any other problems with the mainstream political landscape outside of your focus on Mr. Trump, then there's really nothing more to say here. I could cite Iraqi WMD, Snowden's revelations, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the lab leak controversy or a number of other incidents, but it seems futile at this point.

When you play the Trump card you reveal your hand as a partisan.