You might think this is strange, but the short answer is yes.

Now a slightly longer one. Guidelines on how infection risk can be minimised are very consistent. And they make perfect sense. So yes, that's the advice I give my two kids, my parents (both of which fall into the high risk age groups, luckily they are following that advice already without me), and the advice I follow myself.

WHO recommendations are based on the best available picture to them. I prefer to trust someone changing his opinion when data changes over someone who paints a worst case scenario from day one on.

And yes, if someone from my family ultimately dies, which I really don't hope, having done everything experts told us to do to prevent it would be the only consolation there is. The alternative being fear mongering, panic and paranoia. In which any infections happening toy loved ones (assuming I am the only factor behind there behaviour, which I am thankfully not as my family thinks pretty well for themselves) would be to a certain degree on me.

And the experts have assessed the risk. Hence the advice they give. But you do you, ok? As long as you stop spreading stories about mass extinction and stuff like that.

Nationalistic flamewar and personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN.

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

I understand why you blocked that comment however FWIW it's a fair criticism of the German national identity. I say this as a German national myself.

It's of course different when people are making statements about their own nation, or a place that they lived for a long time. But these distinctions are too subtle to matter on the internet. Others will react the same way they do to garden-variety flamebait, so the effects on the site are the same, so it's best to just not go there.

Also, while different, it's not necessarily benign—just more complicated.

Criticisms of national identity can't be topics of curious conversation on the public internet. A small, closed group could, but a large open group can't. 'Large' implies that someone is going to get activated, and 'open' implies that they can show up and comment—at which point game over.

That's fair. Well articulated.

Thank you for understanding the spirit of my comment. I will take this flag as a very good lesson in risk management: no matter how many times you are positive in the exchange, the one time that you strike out can be fatal.

Yes, and the effect is worse because there's a massive disconnect between how we perceive our own intent and how it comes across to readers on the internet--or at least to some segment of readers, but when the community is large enough, every segment is an entire audience.

I can see your point. But if we are going meta... the discussion was going for quite some time exclusively between me and hef and though it got "heated" at one point, I didn't get the feeling that it was derailing at just some senseless uncivil exchange of insults. It is the kind of thing that can happen between a group of people talking at the bar, not just the internet.

Also, precisely due to this disconnect between what we write and how it can be perceived, it does seem helpful to me to occasionally have some curved ball thrown into the mix to help calibrate my sense of (a) where the other party is coming from and (b) check if the other party is willing to listen to you or just participate in a screaming match.