Oh, the intense discussions just pointing out the Norwegian health authorities’ rationale for abandoning the AstraZeneca vaccine. The loud and certain statements that it was all based on selection bias.

It was a very interesting time to practice independent-mindedness, and get vivid demonstrations on how rare it is.

That's not true in my experience, I have been able to discuss those things many times they came up and usually received upvotes (or at least more upvotes than downvotes).

Yes, that's anecdata, so make of it what you will.

I was downvoted several times on HN for pointing out that reputable scientists were being censored on YouTube and other platforms for their dissident views on COVID.

It happened here fairly often. Though less frequently here than most other places online during that time.

Unfortunately, there is a strong element of groupthink present on HN that downvotes according to party line.

The irony of this comment being downvoted is palpable. Way to prove them right y'all.

Except that it's not downvoted now. Jumping to conclusions about early voting behavior on HN causes (mild) embarrasment to many, and so it is once again.

"Things change over time" is hardly a profound observation.

It wasn't meant to be profound. It was meant to be correct. And it wasn't "things change over time".

Oh my! You were labelled as a selfish grandma killer! Heavens to Betsy! The sheer force of censorship! The utter horror of government-mandated labelling on social media!

Seriously. What do you think is going to happen when there's a worldwide pandemic and people with (in some cases) utterly opposing views on what is safe and advisable as public health policy?

Censorship of dissident medical views - many of which were later proven correct - during this period doesn't concern you?

I pointed out the existence of differing viewpoints being silenced, was shouted down, and you follow this up with mockery?

1. I don't believe there was "censorship of dissident views" - this is a framing I reject

2. I followed up the mockery with a serious point that you have not responded to.

You reject the framing that there were major differences of opinion in the appropriate public health policy to adopt in the presence of COVID-19?

Censorship? What the OP means by censorship is not what I mean by censorship. Were heterodox ideas etc. surrounding COVID-19 severely criticized? Yes. Were they even limited or deleted from social media? Yes. Were they still published in blogs? In various traditional media? Yes. Could you encounter them on cable news? Yes. Was anyone tried or even arrested for promoting or distributing such ideas? No.

That's not the way we treat the announcement of a lemonade stand, but it's also not what I consider censorship in any meaningful way.

What do you suppose this thread is, other than groupthink in a slightly different direction?

I’ve arrived at my conclusions all on my own. I’d love to be part of the “take this serious” crowd because it would have made my life a lot easier (but also wasted). Unfortunately the facts and data combined with my values just don’t align with the idea that Covid was ever something we should have shut it all down for.

There is an alternate universe where they didn’t test everybody that breathed and don’t publish daily death counts. The only way you’d know there was a pandemic was an uptick in “wash your hands” signs in the restroom. Otherwise it would have been “just that thing going around”.

The last time we had an equivalent pandemic they held Woodstock. No shutdowns. No masks. No hysterical blowhards tweeting about the end of the world on twitter. People just got on with life.

Does this make me a selfish asshole? Perhaps. But I personally think the people screaming to mask up and shut it all down are the true selfish ones. The expect everybody to massively disrupt their lives in order to appease their fear and anxiety. Especially when those mitigations had no prior evidence they’d work and not even a whiff of a stated off-ramp or end goal.

> The last time we had an equivalent pandemic they held Woodstock.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...

> The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States.

Uh, "equivalent pandemic". I don't think so.

[ EDIT: Oh, and also: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-woodstock-pande... ]

Try adjusting for population instead of using raw numbers. Then account for the fact they test for everybody and anybody for Covid. Not so for the earlier pandemics. Totally different measurements. Imagine if they did the same test protocol back then like they did today. Only then can you compare.

The use and abuse of raw data has been a hallmark of the last 2.5 years. Whatever number makes Covid sound worse is the number that gets published and spread. Anything suggesting it isn’t as bad as predicted is buried as a conspiracy or “not peer reviewed”.

> Try adjusting for population instead of using raw numbers.

World population has grown by a factor of 2.3 since 1968. That would suggest a "population adjusted" death count of 230,000 for the 1968 "equivalent pandemic", a number less than 1/4 of COVID-19's US numbers.

US population has grown by a factor of 1.65 since 1968.That would suggest a "population adjusted" death count of 165,000 for the 1968 "equivalent pandemic", a number less than 17% of COVID-19's US numbers

Exactly, in reality we don’t know much about these diseases, the way they spread, the effects. But there has been some mass hysteria that made them appear much more serious than they are. It could just have made few lines in the media and everyone would have continued their lives peacefully. Instead we had borderline totalitarian policies, cops arresting people taking a walk alone in forest, ridiculous absurd policies (in France) banning non-essential goods to be sold in markets. I’ve never seen such a collective nightmare but now I perfectly understand past nightmare I learned in history books…