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While I agree with the points you are making and think they are important, they could have been made just as effectively without resorting to an Ad hominem format. Though the quality of civil discourse on HN has degraded over the years, HN is still the one of the places I expect to live upto a higher standard.

(I'm sorry to any readers that this comment is not adding anything materially useful to the wider discussion)

ben_w 1251 days ago

Noted. I'm not sure how to make the same points without saying that some of the statements were weasel words, but if you could suggest a different way to make the same points, I'd appreciate it.

(Apart from anything else, I know that raising the other party's heart rate is a terrible way to change their minds).

I think you were half way there taking charitable view on one of the arguments, I think taking a charitable view on the commenter's perspective/intent would have gotten you all the way.

With that adjustment, I think you can go from "weasel words" to "Your perspective might be flawed..."

Apologies, if this comes off as patronising.

ben_w 1251 days ago

> Apologies, if this comes off as patronising.

Thanks for checking; don't worry, it wasn't.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

>> natural immunity would provide far greater protection

> false

True: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965

> vaccines wouldn't prevent transmission,

The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2022/10/12/pfizer-vaccine-not-tes...

-- and indeed they do not prevent transmission, or infection for that matter. Many many people, from Joe Biden to my own mother have been injected and boosted 5-times over, and still got a COVID infection. The vaccines simply don't work very well.

> And the risks of side effects are much, much lower than the risks of those effects from the actual illness.

You can't make a blanket statement about risk, especially when so little was know about the risk of side effects across the population.

For people like us, and the large number of people who have had COVID, we know what the risk of a COVID infection is, and in our case - as with most other people who are in good health, and not extremely elderly, it's a very mild condition.

On the other hand, health officials continue to deliberately downplay the significance of side effects, which we now know includes non-negligable risk of life threatening heart dissease and Bell's Palsey.

> Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity.

That was the claim, certainly. But as we predicted, this never actually happened anywhere in the world - not even in places where people live in poverty, and healthcare is virtually non-existant.

> Several places ran out of capacity to handle the dead, let alone the living. I still don't understand how we were able to get short of medical oxygen, but that happened in some places too.

A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks.

Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe:

> Masks likewise, reduce the transmission rate. Not eliminate, reduce. That's not pointless.

They don't though. Scarecly anyone wore the kind of mask that could possibly make any difference. It was security theatre to calm the masses. All a cloth mask does is redirect your breathe out the sides. It doesn't filter anything.

> Sure, lots of kids and young adults won't die, they'll only get sick for a few weeks, with unknown long term damage.

My kids have never had any COVID symptoms at all since we were first infected March 2020. So in our case (and millions like us), it's actually not unknown. I wouldn't even know if they had had the disease a dozen times over already - I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

Over and over the claims of the expert class have been proven wrong. They claimed to know things that they couldn't possibly have known, and continue to lie and deflect to this day.

Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.

-> personal experience: I survived only because I was able to get an ICU bed at the right time as did millions more in my country. Millions more didn't because the health systems were overwhelmed.

It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."

Look at the hell china is going through right now and the hell we went through(India). The wounds are still deep and fresh, loved ones dying because they can't get a bed, or oxygen. Bodies rotting because crematoriums couldn't handle load and cities ran out of firewood.

I think there is room for discussion about the merits and demerits of various public/social policies around the pandemic without reducing it to a binary point of view and making it evidence based instead of offhandedly invalidating the pain and suffering of millions over the last few years as "fabricated".

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/cor...

> Lockdowns did help flatten the curve, many countries health systems were overwhelmed regardless, but without lockdowns the fatalities and outcomes for severe cases would have been an order of magnitude worse.

There's no evidence to support this assertion, and plenty of evidence to the contrary e.g. Sweden.

> It's hard to take your argument in good faith when you offhandedly say stuff like this -> "A lot of that stuff turneded out to be fabricated, but it spooked a lot of folks."

But a lot of what spread around was fake:

https://www.opindia.com/2021/04/nypost-fake-news-people-dyin...

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Burning-bodies-Mass-graves-Ec...

https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-b...

https://reason.com/2020/04/10/no-nyc-is-not-running-out-of-b...

> Look at the hell china is going through right now

The hell is of the chinese governments own making. A Zero COVID policy cannot possibly work.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02823-4

>There's no evidence to support this assertion

Like all your other assertions this one feels self serving for your point of view when a rudimentary google search provides references to the alternative.

Consensus on efficacy of lockdowns flattening the curve with relevant bibliography.

N of 1 as in what worked in Sweden (ranked 3rd in the global healthcare index and has a population lower than some cities in india) does not in any way shape or form meaningfully imply what would be good for the rest of the world (though it might certainly inform it)

I wasn't referring to the presence of fake/false/sensational/agenda driven narratives or your allusion to them, I was referring to your following offhanded assertions.

" Lockdowns were there to reduce the secondary consequences from running out of capacity.

That was the claim, certainly. But as we predicted, this never actually happened anywhere in the world - not even in places where people live in poverty, and healthcare is virtually non-existant."

fidgewidge 1251 days ago

It's arguments like this one in Nature that destroy confidence in public health. You claimed the article reflected a consensus, but it starts by saying that lots of papers show no lockdown effect and there's no agreement!

Also read the citations. They make a lot of uncited assertions (worthless), and then their primary evidence is Flaxman et al, it's a joke paper. Read it, they made a model that predicted 3 million deaths and when it didn't happen said lockdowns were the reason. Their methodology is wack. They had to hide Sweden from some of their graphs because it broke their model, they had to claim that shutting major sport/music events was magically effective in Sweden but nowhere else because their model just assigned all the reduction to whatever the last government decision happened to be. Google for it to find more criticism of their methods. Nature do admit the paper was criticized but don't tell you the type of problems.

Avamander 1251 days ago

> The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission

Because it's an inevitable thing when people are less ill. It's dishonest to demand testing something like "people coughing less spread less" and then use that to pad the rest of your weak arguments with that - like the last sentence about efficacy (straight after the anecdotal).

> Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe

Emphasis on the "were".

> Scarecly anyone wore the kind of mask that could possibly make any difference. It was security theatre to calm the masses. All a cloth mask does is redirect your breathe out the sides. It doesn't filter anything.

Whose fault is that when the good practices could have been followed but were not? Should have beaten them with a baton? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

Yikes. The old adage about "what doesn't kill you" should end with "leaves scars" as it's definitely not so cut and dry to only "make you stronger".

> Over and over the claims of the expert class have been proven wrong. They claimed to know things that they couldn't possibly have known, and continue to lie and deflect to this day.

They have been far less wrong than the rest. That is how the process is supposed to work - new evidence comes to light, opinion changes. It's not an ancient belief system based on a book. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of science to expect random sentences (where most nuance has been filtered out from) to be irrevocably true.

There are going to be improvements, better ways to apply the same principles, changes in the underlying assessments, things change. Framing it as the reason why some opposing stance is correct is extremely dishonest and grossly wrong.

> Because it's an inevitable thing when people are less ill. It's dishonest to demand testing something like "people coughing less spread less" and then use that to pad the rest of your weak arguments with that - like the last sentence about efficacy (straight after the anecdotal).

The context of this is that there were voices calling for coercing vaccination. My mother-in-law lost her job because she refused to have it. The sole justification offered was that the experts claimed to know that it would protect other people. Except they never knew that - it was guesswork, and we now know that the vaccines don't prevent transmission.

For example this linke @grjdiofgeriov shared:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116597 "Although vaccination still lowers the risk of infection, similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated persons who are infected with the delta variant call into question the degree to which vaccination prevents transmission."

>> Sweden never locked down, and their outcomes were better than most of the rest of Europe

> Emphasis on the "were".

Not just were - they continue to be now. Their all-cause mortality has been far lower from start to finish, and they never had any kind of COVID-related crisis.

Equally, if you look across the world, there is simply no correlation between COVID policy and outcomes. None of the intereventions made any significant differentce.

> Whose fault is that when the good practices could have been followed but were not? Should have beaten them with a baton? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Even with perfect practices, it wouldn't have made much difference. The virus was airbourne, endemic, and highly transmissible. In the same way, I can still smell a bonfire half a mile away mask or no mask.

It was purely security theatre. "Something must be done. This is something"

>> I hope they have, because it help further fortify their natural immunity.

> Yikes. The old adage about "what doesn't kill you" should end with "leaves scars" as it's definitely not so cut and dry to only "make you stronger".

No - not yikes. Their symptoms from COVID were zero. No scars. Nada. Nothing at all.

> It's a fundamental misunderstanding of science to expect random sentences (where most nuance has been filtered out from) to be irrevocably true.

I agree entirely, and this wouldn't have been a problem if governments hadn't used these half-baked ideas as a reason to coerce people to lock down, wear masks, or receive experimental medical treatments.

> They have been far less wrong than the rest.

Not at all. Again and again, the @realjhol model was far more accurate than the Imperial College model. Many such cases. Sad to see my alma mater fail so badly.

Avamander 1251 days ago

> Not at all. Again and again, the @realjhol model was far more accurate than the Imperial College model. Many such cases. Sad to see my alma mater fail so badly.

Did you forget to switch to a sockpuppet account?

I'm referring to myself in the third person.