Highways and fast food kill innocent people too, yet society weighs the benefits.

It’s more complicated than this. Covid is barely worse than the average flu for healthy young people, yet even those with no contact with at-risk groups must still disrupt their lives for seemingly no reason. IMO this is unfair to them and also prevents herd immunity from developing. Furthermore outbreaks are happening in places even with more strict protocols. Overall I think the damage from the reaction to the pandemic is worse than the disease itself.

> It’s more complicated than this.

No, it really isn't. You are just trying to pretend it is because the current solutions do not fit your particular worldview or cause you some temporary inconvenience.

> Covid is barely worse than the average flu for healthy young people,

Not true. We are really starting to understand the long-term consequences of even 'light' covid cases so I have absolutely no idea why you thought you were going to be able to float this particular lie past us.

> yet even those with no contact with at-risk groups must still disrupt their lives for seemingly no reason.

Because the people they interact with may have contact with at-risk groups. This is epidemiology 101, limit transmission paths to slow down a disease.

> IMO this is unfair to them and also prevents herd immunity from developing.

It is becoming pretty clear that 'herd immunity' is going to be hard to develop without some widespread vaccination.

> Furthermore outbreaks are happening in places even with more strict protocols.

But places with strict protocols are doing a lot better than those without.

> Overall I think the damage from the reaction to the pandemic is worse than the disease itself.

Demonstrably false. It is quite telling that you and all of the other anti-lockdown people are no longer trying to tell us that Sweden is the model to follow. Over the past month it has become obvious that Sweden really fucked up badly and their choice to not lockdown is leading to a huge second wave while their neighbors are cruising along at almost no cases/deaths.

There is no evidence of longterm damage in healthy people, just anecdotal reports. Millions of people have got this disease and recovered. We often hear with shrill panic reporting about mass groups getting infected, like the Ozarks around 4th of July, then no follow up reporting because everyone recovers.

Here is a graph of who is dying in Massachusetts from Covid https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/09/02/who-is-dy...

It’s overwhelmingly those above 80 years old. Completely disrupting the economy and lives for people under 40 makes no sense no matter how you want to warp logic.

Stop spreading misinformation, there is no such thing, we have only anecdotes and we have millions of people infected so we should know by now. HN mods should come down hard to people spreading misinformation and panic, straight from conservative radios playbook. Do better!