Thank you. I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible. Some may like working remotely, others may like the wider acceptance of meal and grocery delivery, others may prefer the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is the only way I can rationalize the insistence of lockdowns here on HN and elsewhere.

Either that or COVID is another social issue that is being exploited by nefarious actors to divide western nations.

Or both.

> I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible.

I believe two factors at play can be identified:

1) Among ordinary internet users, the “stay home and save lives” recommendation in spring of last year became highly memetic, and although the median age of death is now there for anyone to learn, the blanket admonishment continues to be rather unthinkingly repeated across society even though in many countries the lockdown is really starting to bite the economy. It is not that people consciously like the COVID world, they are simply perpetuating the social pressures that formed at the outbreak of the epidemic a year ago. (It doesn’t help that often one cannot public take an anti-lockdown stance and participate in street protests, because then one risks being lumped in with the anti-vaxxers and 5G crazies that tend to be so visible at those protests.)

2) Elected officials cannot ease off the restrictions, because the opposition will immediately accuse them of killing grandma or whatever. In this case, the opposition may in fact be acting much like a “concern troll”; they might not really care about the elderly (and deep down, they themselves might be thirsting for an end to lockdown), but they cannot ignore the political point-scoring that they could do with such a position.

I don’t think “wanting to live and not spread around a deadly disease” is some overly-woke activist cause or concern-trolling.

It’s ok to admonish people for drunk driving, which is a lot like “horsing around during a global pandemic”: optional, careless risk-taking behavior, that is risky for both you and everyone else. Why is it fine to shame people for drunk driving but not for spreading COVID?

I agree. I think it's a combination of factors-

The people who are currently on a good WFH salary are seeing their savings grow thinking they are doing well for themselves because soon they will buy a house but what they don't realise is that eventually they will have to pay for the 400k people on the pandemic unemployment payment, the 5 billion that was lost this year in tourism, the 10 million we are spending weekly on PCR testing. This all adds up and with only 2.3 million wage earners in Ireland they are going to be stung for a lot of tax to pay for this.

There are people with short term or part time jobs who are happier to be paid 350 per week for staying at home. Why would you want to work a menial job if you didnt need to?

Like Prof. Johan Giesecke from Sweden said, the western countries got themselves into a lockdown without thinking of a plan on how to get out of it and no one wants to be seen as the person who made the decision to kill loads of people.

There's also the vaccine angle which is sure to make those companies lots of money this year.

They may not be stung for the tax. Zero interest loans with an infinite term are effectively being granted by the ECB.

Yeah I agree, but on that topic I think we're heading into completely unchartered territory with an event horizon beyond which I cannot see, the only wisdom I have that might prepare us for what might unfold is- "there's no such thing as a free lunch" and "there's a time when you have to pay the Piper".

It’s pretty simple to me: I like being alive and want to continue living. I’m old, but not “will probably die next year” old, and I’m out of shape. I have a family and a kid who wants to keep her daddy around. The economy will recover. People will get back to working and shopping later. What we can’t do yet is come back from the dead.

> People will get back to working and shopping later.

Yes, but...

We all have a small finite number of years on this earth, and even fewer when we're young. I'll never get 2020 back, and who knows how much of how many people's lives will be lived in poverty and other forms of misery because of the economic destruction we've opted into to slow the spread of the virus.

Would you tell someone condemned to a prison term that it's not a big deal because they will eventually get out and go back to living normally?

> And who knows how much of how many people’s lives will be lived in poverty and other forms of misery because of the economic destruction we’ve opted into to slow the spread of the virus.

Plenty of less-rich countries took much stronger steps to prevent economic destruction even with stronger control measures than the US took.

We didn’t opt into poverty/misery to slow the spread of the virus, we opted into it because the federal administration wanted to use the pain to generate opposition to slowing the spread of the virus.

We could have 1. Done a real lockdown, with strict, nationwide enforcement, trashing the economy for a few months but beating the disease. Or 2. Done nothing and saved the economy, shouldering massive loss of life as the virus ran unopposed through the population.

But, no, we somehow managed to do the worst of both worlds: 3. we implemented uncoordinated, half-assed business closures and widely-ignored “stay-at-home” schemes which both trashed the economy and resulted in widespread death. Great job!

It's unclear whether "1" was actually possible, given the political/legal structure of the United States. Who, exactly, would be promulgating and enforcing such an order?

With competent federal coordination and incentives, all 50 states could have used their emergency powers or even legislation to implement stricter lockdowns with real enforcement.

State and local police would enforce it, again, with the proper incentives. Fire the few local yokel sheriffs refusing to enforce. They have the ability, need the willingness. If they can catch me going 70 in a 45 or avoiding my income taxes, they can catch me going to Olive Garden.

We have the political ability but not the political will.

So, it would have been possible under the hypothesis that all 50 states can agree on an incredibly controversial policy? I doubt all 50 states can agree on whether the earth is more than 10,000 years old, so this sounds like a fantasy.

I think it's selfish that you'd prefer to remain unfit and see a generation of children your daughter's age lose a year of socialising and education than to choose to isolate yourself and let them live their lives if you really were so worried about a disease with a average IFR of .05%. It's a crab in a bucket mentality.

Part of the benefit of living in a civilized society is that civilized people don’t throw entire demographics to their death for the convenience of others. We are supposed to have the decency to make sacrifices for the benefit of the greater good, but our ability to do this seems to be quickly disappearing.

I’m really sorry my kid can’t go on play dates for a year, because it helps save other people’s lives. I also feel sorry that some people don’t have the empathy to understand why we need to make that trade-off. We have really lost our way as a culture if we really think grandma should die so the rest of us can live our normal lives.

Imagine we had your attitude during world war 2. “I’m not gonna go rivet airplanes or ration food because I have freedom and I want to live my life!!”

Nobody's throwing anybody to death. You seem to be advocating forcing everyone hostage in their homes, all over a virus that's not particularly dangerous (eg. 0.05% death rate for thus under 40, median age of death = 82). That's outrageous, and of course people don't want that because it's torture, and completely pointless and unnecessary. What a position of privilege to be able to advocate this garbage while being able to work remotely when many have lost their jobs and businesses.

We never had any government mandated home hostage orders during WWII.

I would liken it to missing a day at the gym. Even if you regularly work out if you start missing 1, 2, 3 days eventually you stop going altogether. The same thing has happened with WFH. People have already gotten used to working at home 100% of the time. Even if COVID was wiped off the face of the Earth there will be a large number of people who have simply gotten into a new routine and will never go back willingly unless if they are forced to.

Totally agree. Weird stuff.

> The WHO warns that lockdown should only be treated as a last resort, to truly flatten the curve and no more. We ignored that.

Countries that have eliminated the virus have ignored this for good results. Some like us here in Melbourne have used lockdowns to eliminate the virus, others like New Zealand have used them as a first resort to contain outbreaks. Because we eliminated it we're now back to (mostly) normal, we don't have young people sacrificing anything, we have kids in school, we have large sporting events and it's not coming at the cost of everyone's lives. Despite WHO advice most countries that eliminated it have also kept borders mostly shut.

Ireland is a tragedy because the were so close to elimination but never took those final steps to eliminate it and keep it out. The worlds tragedy is that they gave up on elimination, it would have been much cheaper and less impactful than rolling lockdowns.

I'm in general agreement with what you've said, but note that border closures are a far more difficult proposition for Ireland.

The Good Friday Accords make closing the border with NI a political impossibility, and failing that you'd be relying on the UK instituting border/quarantine arrangements between Great Britain and NI.

I thought that border did close briefly? I understand it's a touchy issue, but here we had some rather soft closures between states as well, borders don't have to be binary opened or closed. In some instances people could work permits to cross the border, for others we made virtual borders so people that live near the border could cross but no one else could. At various times we've thrown up some new borders, people couldn't travel from Melbourne to regional Victoria for instance.

Would options like that be viable with NI?

Remember this is somewhere that border checkpoints have in living memory been the target of violent attacks, where the idea of "partition" is at the core of the disagreements.

It's summer in the southern hemisphere and don't say you got rid of sars2 in your winter, you didn't, and there's still cases recently.

Let my comment be a warning that you might be in for a world of hurt in the next few months as you go into winter. You have to remain globally isolated until the virus is completely eradicated.

> It's summer in the southern hemisphere and don't say you got rid of sars2 in your winter, you didn't

Victoria had a large outbreak in winter, a (way too late) lockdown bought it under control. New Zealand had an outbreak in winter and a brief lockdown bought it back under control. I agree winter is hard mode, but we were 6 months ahead of the world in that regard, we were the warning that was ignored, we found it the hard way that soft lockdowns don't work in winter.

> and there's still cases recently.

Bought back from overseas, unfortunately flight crew are looking like a major vector. Current cases are low enough that good contact tracing is probably enough to keep on top of it, it's already stamped out a minor outbreak in Victoria and NSW just hit zero cases and will hopefully stay there.

> You have to remain globally isolated until the virus is completely eradicated.

We'll be globally isolated until enough people are vaccinated that exponential spread isn't possible. This is preferable to being personally isolated while a pandemic rages.

The lasting psychological damage from these lockdowns is going to take years just to understand. Especially on kids.

Just imagine if they had used all the propaganda to promote exercise and healthy eating to the population while handing out free bottles of vitamin d3 instead of the opposite (stay inside, don't sunbathe, don't exercise, eat poorly due to depression and economic hardship)

1) this is Sweden 2020 death rate compared to other Scandinavian countries (no lockdown, no masks) https://preview.redd.it/jujfoejeqwa61.png?width=1024&auto=we...

2) these are some of the effects caused by lockdowns worldwide https://outline.com/JKgfuv

Do you have opinions about

1. holding the damn until the vaccine gets deployed 2. What are your concerns if any about the long term illnesses and organ damage in younger covid afflicted patients.

I agree with your points except for those two key considerations.

Because of this, I am for continuing lockdowns and distancing until the vaccine and refuse to potentially subject myself to life long debilitation when waiting 3 more months would offer significantly more protection.

Not the OP, but 1) officials in several EU countries have recently said that restrictions will probably exist until very late 2021, because even in a best-case scenario not enough of the public will be vaccinated until then. I personally would not accept borders being closed for so long among fraternal European countries. Even more seriously, the mass events and ordinary courtship opportunities that are so important for young people coming of age, should not be put off so long. (I am most opposed to lockdowns because I think it is the biggest betrayal of young people since ’68.)

As for claims of “long COVID”, these are largely unverified and a media creation. (Clinical studies do exist, but the definition of “long-term symptoms” used among specialists is often not as dramatic as the one found in sensational newspaper coverage.) Many of the people claiming to have the condition have never even tested positive for COVID, and it can be seen as broadly the same demographic that, before this epidemic, claimed to have “chronic Lyme” in the complete absence of any evidence.

I can definitely empathize with your first point, late 2021 is a rediculous time tax on the youth, who have yet again paid far more for this crisis in terms of missed opportunities and asset inflation. Closed state borders would be untenable over here in the US.

For the second point, this article has shaken me a bit, and I've limited my exposure(stoped going to the store, eating out(outside), etc. I love my heart and my ability to do strenuous excersizes(skier, climber, and raver) and have decide to wait out these next few months for the vaccine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/well/move/is-coronavirus-...

Obviously its not a full study, but in light of lacking information, ill play a risk adverse hand.

Sure, wait for a vaccine but I certainly won't be taking it as I can run a 5km in 23 minutes, in the gym five days a week when it's not shut down, I eat well and I take vitamin D. I would only recommend a vaccine to those aged between 65 and 80. Below that age and you don't need it, above that age and it's very risky. There were only 800 people above 70 on the pfizer trials, when that cohort is the high risk for this.

2. You are referring to post covid syndrome, it's well known and not remarkable for Sars2. Weird things happen from viral respiratory infections all the time, covid is no different. Up to the age of 38 or so the seasonal flu has a higher mortality rate. You have a higher chance of dying in a car crash up to the age of 30. I don't have the sources here but they are easily found. After reading the literature extensively on this subject the portrayal of the risk is blown far out of proportion in the media.