Even when my partner is away for a few weeks I don't feel alone. I've spent months alone in Asia without feeling alone.
I feel really lucky today for being in this situation. Some people turned their life upside down and I just got more of the life that I always wanted.
Edit:// I forgot to mention that I indeed have friends and also did all the social things regularly 2 years ago. My point is that I often felt like I have to attend these social things and I actually don't miss them. Still chatting online from time to time.
Basically years of building more or less successful side projects.
But to be fair no 2 years ago I was delivering paper ads for a few months, because a bunch of random projects surely aren't a sustainable income , always :)
Edit:// also it is actually cheaper living as I do than it was living down in the city. My house is old, we heat with wood only. Farming markets here are generally cheaper than supermarkets for quality meat and Vegs. The $500 overhead we pay for our car leasing we would not need otherwise is way less than what we save per square meter living so remote. And we need some extra space for the mentioned e-commerce
Same. I was extremely fortunate that this disaster and my work, family, and financial setup meant things had little impact on me. It hit my kids harder socially, but educationally they ended up much better because they had a highly educated retired family member as a neighbor. They did and did their remote schooling there, with help available at all times to extent far beyond what 1 teacher with 25 kids can do in a classroom.
That was extremely fortunate, especially seeing other kids in the school whose families basically had no choice but to lose a year of school-- but the way things are functioning, they're still moving up a grade and schools all over the country are going to be having problems with a significant % of students who not only didn't learn anything, but are 1.5 years away from the last time they were even in the habit of having to learn.
"Not a loser" is indeed winning in this case.
But for neighbors etc that were in the same social bubble observing the same careful restrictions it seems too much. I think the government has been well within its rights in certain mandates that ensure careless people don't inflict their negligence on other people, but in some cases I think it went too far.
On the other hand, especially at the beginning, everyone was dealing with incomplete and imperfect information. It was not an easy time to be a decision maker on such issues especially when people's actions became expressions of political affiliation. Masks are a perfect example:
Resistance started as a rallying cry to allow people take personal responsibility, a mindset I can understand. But it then morphed into a refusal to take some precautions-- essentially a refusal to consider personal responsibility issue-- due to the politics involved instead of a reasoned & informed stance on the risks. (PLEASE note that I'm not making a statement about masks themselves one way or another-- just pointing out that choices influencing medical issues became driven by political affiliation. I saw extremes of this behavior on different ends of the political spectrum, substituting critical thinking with selectively listening only to experts that were aligned with a given political stance.)
Also, could you please not post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments generally? We're trying for something a bit different than internet default here, to the extent possible.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
You can and you ought to when damn fools put lives of others at stake. This not the time for niceties or political correctness. We're in a war, the next life could be mine—and I'm not suicidal.
Incidentally, many seem to forget the a priori reason for government is to keep the citizenry safe—safe from the threat of outsiders, and safe from insiders who wish to harm their fellow citizens, they're justification for the military and law enforcement respectfully.
I expect Government to keep my fellow citizens and me safe; if it doesn't then it has failed in its mission.
"<...> could you please not post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments generally? We're trying for something a bit different than internet default here,<...>"
If you took the time to read a few of my posts then you would realize that I'm probably too polite on most occasions, also I have never criticized a HN poster directly—and in this instance I was making a general comment with no particular name in mind. Moreover, I go to considerable lengths to ensure that I do not post hearsay or unsubstantiated fact.
_
Edit: "regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is" I made no criticism of other posts including the person to whom I was replying. Saying that his criticism perhaps wasn't strong enough given the dire circumstances isn't flaming, rather it's debate.
Sorry, but there's always a version of this argument to be made and people always make it to show that this time is different and their comment is justified. You can justify anything that way, and mostly what people use it to justify is just regular old internet flamewar, which is never very interesting. So I don't see any reason to change HN's rules; if anything, they become more important, not less, as the stakes get higher.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Thus, I'll graciously accept the fact that I'm a damn idiot for doing so.
Actually, it eventually made me Republican.
I can't tell whether this is sarcasm, but in the unlikely event that it's not, how do you explain every place that didn't lockdown having dramatically better numbers than NYC?
Surely there's no remaining possibility of regarding lockdowns as a success?
What data can possibly conclude this experiment if not the data which already exists?
Doctors didn't dare to go against the guidelines, even with their reservation (they could be held responsible if they did).
Some people I know wrote a book on the subject and are claiming we should held governments accountable for those dead in the first wave (and they've been promptly censored and facebook-banned out of existence). I tend to err on the side of incompetence more than malice.
That said, there is plenty of ignorant people claiming ventilators kill based on statistics - but it's usually the other way round: once you need a ventilator you're either dead 100% or you can get a 40% survival rate with a ventilator.
- are intended for use for a few days, not a few weeks. The artificial air pressure destroys lung cells and capillaries
- patients are sedated to avoid pulling out tubes. This weakens both their lung function and the rest of their body due to immobilization, including bed sores. Usually their trachea is damaged and they cannot talk after removing the tubes for a period of time, and must do physical rehabilitation afterwards.
- doctors and nurses consider patients on ventilators the sickest in the hospital, followed by recent ventilator patients
- being in a hospital for a month or more exposes patients to other infections, which are not immediately apparent in a sedated patient
- China warned about ventilator use being usually unproductive with corona very early in 2020, so it took a while for US doctors to understand that the low oxygen levels measured in corona patients was not a critical thing in most cases if they could still breathe on their own.
ER doctors are not researchers, so they follow previous recommendations until told otherwise.
It clearly has nothing to do with epidemics, so what's your link supposed to prove?
Same. My wife and I actually do live in one of the big cities hit hard by the pandemic (NYC), but ended up having some of the initial restrictions work to my advantage. For instance, having a limited selection of restaurants (order-in only) led to us cooking more and calorie counting again, and we've lost 30 pounds each. We also bought an apartment once the initial hard restrictions were lifted last summer, and I suspect the extreme lack of buyers made us look a lot more attractive to sellers than we would have in 2019 (NYC co-ops are infamous for requiring 2 years of mortgage+maintenance fees in liquid which we certainly didn't have after shelling out a 20% down payment). My wife spent the entire year looking for a job after being laid off in January and COVID made that significantly harder, but I think it did help her finally find a fully remote company a year later - her new employer embraced remote work in COVID by allowing employees to move away from their CA and NY office, now she's helping them expand hiring across the entire US and Canada (she's in HR and they don't use a PEO for payroll, its a surprisingly non-trivial effort). We both prefer working remotely so this was important for us.
Overall I feel good how things ended up for us but considering how terrible its been for huge portions of the world its feels uncomfortable to call it "winning lockdown".
It isn't a good way to live. But for some weird reason it isn't very lonely ... until I'm around people. Then the loneliness becomes unbearable and I retreat.
I don't understand how this goes. Could you describe your experience with more details ?
> I built a desk a couple of years ago and I'm still waiting to show it off to somebody.
Well, you could paste a picture here :).
That does sound like a pretty nice thing to say! That said, i can't exactly recall seeing many "Show HN" posts about making furniture, though awesome stuff like that does occasionally appear in the comments.
I do feel like reaching out to some of the online communities for those particular interest groups could be pretty beneficial, though! For example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/
https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/
I've found that working this way and being able to see the product of one's labors slowly forming and taking shape often brings rewards in and of itself that I seldom experience in my technical work. It's difficult for me to put into words but there's something inherent in the nature of the process and to the flow of this way of working that provides fulfillment and that one rarely seems to tire of doing it. I know a few technical/professional people who are disparaging of such pursuits and view such work as just an unskilled or menial activity—or that it's tedious and boring.
I feel sorry for them in that they've not grasped the idea or notion of doing creative work with one's hands is not the slightest bit in conflict with their professional work and in fact that both activities usually complement one another.
It also makes considerable sense to me that introverts would seek solace and comfort in such activities for the very reasons I've given.
Plus, it's a way to get some fresh air or have a reason to spend a bit more time outside, in addition to leisurely activities such as boating or hiking. I don't actually have any stats on this, but it seems like quite a few people who work in software also have such pursuits outside of work, some joke about retiring to a farm or a secluded place amidst nature. :)
When i have the time, i rather enjoy jogging, helping my parents with their greenhouse or vegetable garden, mowing the fieds with a tractor or even just doing some woodworking. That said, most of it is rather utilitarian and not all that pretty to look at.
Why do you choose to live like this. I am asking because wht you are describing here stuff of my dreams. I even bought a piece of land in rural colorado during the pandemic that I plan to start building in september.
There are things that only start to affect you after extended time in a lifestyle.
Maybe it would actually be great for you, but it could also be that the downsides only become apparent after a year or two, at which point it can be hard to find a way to get to a good place.
EDIT: Current situation doesn’t sound healthy, though. The sweet spot is probably somewhere between the two extremes.
Don't get me wrong, I've fallen into that trap of thinking.
My wife and I bought a small RV trailer that we tow to these kinds of "middle of nowhere places", we stay for a few weeks, or long enough to make us want to come back.
My point - so.many of these comments I read on HN focus on putting all eggs in one basket. Why does it have to be bumper to bumper traffic and open plan offices vs. Hermet life in the woods?
The reality is if one finds a good job I a semi-major urban center that often allows them to live both lives. Take a month or two off int he summer, live and work remotely in the boonies, then go back to "normal life". If you live full time in the boonies and align with that lifestyle that's all you get, it's hard to then go live for a few months in the city without blowing the budget.
Variety is the spice of life?
If those are the baseline options, then it's really easy to have the best of both: Have a nice comfy property 100 miles from a city, then make visits to the city outside of rush hour so it takes less than 2 hours.
(Though honestly 20 miles can usually get you quite rural.)
Frankly, I have very little difference in the amount of human contact I have now vs. what I did when I lived in a city before the pandemic.
Where you live can certainly influence how much contact there is in your life, but you can be surrounded by people in the country just as easily as you can be a hermit holed up in your apartment in the city.
On a year-to-year basis, there is usually one metal festival 2-3 concerts, 2-3 visits to the parents and every few months meeting with friends, those were pretty much the only things I lost during the pandemic.
I generally count myself as a winner of the pandemic, my job was not affected, private life barely, and I only know one person who got Covid (an American who studied in Germany a few years ago, he’s young and got over it with no lasting effects).
And it’s only a recent development. The older I get, the less extroverted I am. When I was in school and early in university, I tended to stay out till noon the next day. Then it changed to 5 in the morning. And nowadays, I go to bed at a time I used to start thinking about going out ;)
I was working remote before covid so daily life didn't change much.
But they also closed my gym, my kids' school, cafes and restaurant I used for fun and prevented me from travelling.
Sure, I'm lucky my job is safe, albeit I'm not as lucky as those who were furlough in the UK and got 80-90% of their paycheck without having to work for months. Incidentally, I'll have to pay for this massive spend with an upcoming massive increase in taxes and delays to when I'll be able to withdraw my private pension.
Overall, not having childcare available and no fun didn't make me very happy and caused to lapse again into depression.
I stopped training for 6 months (Even though I bought a home gym), got fat, miserable and angry, had problems sleeping and burn out at work.
And I still count myself to be one of the lucky ones.
It's interesting how all of this highlighted social divisions, even subtle ones that weren't much of an issue before, like well paid doctors and nurses and other medical staff that couldn't work from home, and had to take risks with their & their family's safety:
I know someone whose spouse is an EMT, and they basically has to quarantine him in the house to stay safe because they worked in an extreme outbreak hotspot. Even then, the EMT brought home COVID and the other spouse ended up in the hospital, all just before the vaccine became available. That person still hasn't fully recovered, even though they're otherwise a perfectly health non-risk-group person, still weakened enough that even a partial return to working in person is at least a few weeks away.
There's going to be research for decades just on all of the social impacts this has had on society.
The closest comparison I can think off-- though not perfect-- are the social and workforce changes that occured I'm the wake of WWII... Not to mention the failed attempt afterwards to put the genie back in the bottle of women in the workplace.
Strange, interesting, horrific times we're in.
Early in the lockdowns I made a trip to the closest big city for a dentist appointment and I was amazed by the transformation, the closed businesses, the long lines, the obvious ubiquitous fear. Several family members struggled after losing jobs. It's quite clear how this disaster has seriously affected so many other people.
So while I don't count myself as a winner in this, it does seem to be a substantial win to not be one of the losers.