> Really glad I moved out of my “pro lockdown” state.
I haven't.
This issue affected 1000 thousand people in 35 countries. Did anyone die from this?
Covid on the other hand has killed 6 MILLION. Covid could've been solved in 1 month if everyone would just stay home for 1 month. Unfortunately, because of people like you spread noise, we're still stuck with this for the foreseeable future.
In addition, let me just comment how mathematically stupid it is to take the 1st order effects just because you're worried about the 2nd order effects.
> Believe it or not, places outside the US did do a 'real lockdown' for a lot longer than a month, and it didn't 'solve' covid.
If other countries harbour the virus then that won't eradicate it (and the countries with lockdowns will re-import it at some point).
As I indicated to dfbsdfbwe2ef2e, I think at this point in history it's really more interesting to get precise data, modelling. Not just to understand what could or could not have been done in the case of COVID-19, but also for the future, the next pandemic (or OK, even still COVID-19, if you're worried about the renewed rise), so that people will have a better foundation to discuss what the best path forward is.
Bickering about some imprecisely passed-around details doesn't seem to have any benefit at this point.
This virus can also live in and be transmitted by animals.
You going to lock down all the wild animals in the environment too?
Lockdowns have zero chances of working and were dumb from day one. We got played by China - voluntarily kneecapped our economies after falling for the political theater they put on for us welding apartments shut and all that.
I find it fascinating that so few still seem to ignore that they shut down internal travel but still allowed travel outside their country. Nothing suspicious in that at all.
> Lockdowns have zero chances of working and were dumb from day one. We got played by China
"Bickering about some imprecisely passed-around details doesn't seem to have any benefit at this point."
I mean, maybe there was an effect as you say, and then just maybe that was done by them on purpose, but then the interesting bit would be to prove the hypothesis as well as you can. It would be better if even you at least said "I find this suspicious", over leaving it to the reader to feel like he has to agree or something. This kind of talking is heating up a discussion, for what benefit?
Even Deborah Birx admits in her book that two weeks to slow the spread was a ruse:
>Birx writes “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of the two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it.”
I do agree with you that the 1000 people are a drop compared to the millions (although those were young children, thus making for a longer duration of life potentially destroyed or disrupted individually).
> Covid could've been solved in 1 month if everyone would just stay home for 1 month.
Citation needed.
It will be interesting to see some proper knowledge (including numbers and mathematical modelling) around this. But this virus was very contagious, even at the beginning, and as soon as
> In addition, let me just comment how mathematically stupid it is
HN guidelines: "Be kind. Don't be snarky." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
(Also, your argument looks bogus since if there are multiple second-order effects with as much or higher (total) destruction then it would in fact be better to accept the first-order effects, no? Yes, that's probably not the case here, but your argument is that it's "mathematically" stupid, which does not appear to be the case.)
I would prefer if people stayed a little calmer and more rational on HN (not just you).
Did COVID really kill 6 million? At least in the US hospitals got extra funding for any patient identified with COVID so you routinely saw deaths (like gunshot wounds!) attributed to COVID when COVID clearly wasn't the primary cause.
Because of the ridiculous politicization of COVID and the response to it I take NOTHING at face value since every time the "experts" make an assertion, those assertions change months (if not weeks) later. Just look at the ridiculous evolution of masking guidance. How the vaccine story evolved from you won't get it it to you won't spread it to well, maybe your symptoms won't be quite as severe to the real truth after the FDA and Pfizer were forced to provide the background documentation after getting sued that the vaccines are less than 20% effective.
What a shock - big phrama that has already had to pay out billions in the past for lying was lying again?
They showed up for their civic rights. The youth did not. If the youth had listened to them, they would have voted, and that vote would have turned out different.
But, they aren't. The boomers I think are the first generation in historical memory to act this way. Everything is about them, it's always been about them. Look at Social Security funding/timing, look at the ages of our politicians. Look at the response to COVID (and for reference compare it to the response to AIDs). Literally every single thing they've gotten their hands on from infrastructure to politics to the economy and housing to the environment has been transformed into some kind of Ponzi scheme.
I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers. Politically, economically, culturally I definitely have more in common with a gen-z than boomers.
> The boomers I think are the first generation in historical memory to act this way
No, they aren't.
> Everything is about them, it's always been about them
No, it isn't.
> Look at Social Security funding/timing,
You mean the way that, as Boomers were in early-mid career, the Silent Generation-dominated political class vastly increased taxes on workers for social security while also for the first time adopting taxes on social security benefits for the first time?
> Look at the response to COVID (and for reference compare it to the response to AIDs).
They are remarkably similar at the federal level, actually. In both cases, Republican Administrations deliberately didn't take it seriously for political reasons until media coverage of deaths and other political pressure from below resulted in a partial reversal. Everything about COVID happened faster, but the faster policy shift was mostly a result of it being a faster spreading, more acutely impactful pandemic, killing about as many people in its first year in the US as AIDS has in the US in total to date.
EDIT TO ADD:
> I'm in my 40s now, but I still feel in some ways like a kid living in a world run by and for boomers.
This is relatively normal. Boomers in their own 40s experienced the same thing with regard to Silents. The big difference is because Gen X is a so much of bust generation compared to both Boomers and Millennials, they never became or will become dominant, and because not only are Millenials more liberal than Boomers but Gen X is more conservative than both, Gen X’s influence is basically to slightly extend and reinforce the feeling of Boomer domination for Millenials.
Regarding AIDS/COVID comparison...we just spent many trillions of dollars and basically shut down the global economy for two years. There is zero precedent for this kind of response to a disease in human history and definitely was not done for AIDS. Worldwide ~45 million people have died of AIDS, 6-7 of COVID.
Regarding Social Security, my reading of history is that this was something done by working age folks on behalf of destituite elderly. Boomers have let this ride their entire lives knowing full well it needed adjustments to be sustainable, intentionally dropping the burden on younger generations.
> Regarding AIDS/COVID comparison...we just spent many trillions of dollars and basically shut down the global economy for two years.
if we had shut down the economy for two years, the resulting US recession would have been longer than two months.
Instead, within two years of the pandemic being recognized, the prime issues I the US economy were associated with overheating rather than inactivity: tight labor market and high inflation.
It's incredibly unfair to blame Brexit on youth voter turn out...
It was incredibly stupid to pose that question as a simple majority leave/stay referendum, and then equally stupid to actually go through with it given such a narrow majority.
Certain capital owners were the ones who advocated for it, and ultimately the ones who benefited, and they manipulated the older and xenophobic.
This is a disrespectful oversimplification of a very complex issue. Older people remember that Charles de Gaulle did everything that he could to keep the UK out of European politics. They remember the first referendum on remain/leave, that happened in 1975. They remember all of the exceptions, negotiations, all of the crashes. The EU is great, and I personally consider a grave mistake to leave it, but this sort of unidimensional oversimplification of complex issues is a major factor in politics polarisation.
Ya, no reason to be apprehensive regarding an extra-national apparatus, barely representative or accountable to its constituents, entirely illiberal and increasingly exercising arbitrary authority, with a clear pattern of being the predominant tool for lawmaking well beyond its original purview. No reason to look at their American contemporaries' federal government, where virtually all issues are now to be addressed at the federal level or not at all, with consideration that the original responsibilities of the federal government were basically meant to be limited to few things beyond regulating interstate affairs.
If anything, our elders have failed to impart sufficient skepticism of state authority. The current generation of young people doesn't even understand the difference between "what I think is right" and "what I'd like imposed by the state onto others," let alone "what I'd like to be imposed onto others across the broadest scope manageable by the largest authority under my influence."
I will go so far to say that the primary obligation of elders in perpetuity will be to warn that any apparatus built in the name of imposing your will onto others is an apparatus whose objectives need not, and will not, mirror your own.
Let's say for argument's sake it does go to the guest. What does $1,000 whenever Airbnb decides to credit your account, help you when you're stranded. I can only assume Airbnb pockets the fee because nowhere in their documentation do they state the guest receives the money, otherwise they would outright state it.
I had this situation come up like twice over here in Europe. In both cases Airbnb offered to assist with an alternative place to stay (one time taken one time declined) and in both cases provided me with credit of about the worth of the original stay
Good to know I could rent on Airbnb and unknowingly 100% of my expense could go straight to the platform, due to a host's previous cancellation on an otherwise unrelated reservation.
I haven't.
This issue affected 1000 thousand people in 35 countries. Did anyone die from this?
Covid on the other hand has killed 6 MILLION. Covid could've been solved in 1 month if everyone would just stay home for 1 month. Unfortunately, because of people like you spread noise, we're still stuck with this for the foreseeable future.
In addition, let me just comment how mathematically stupid it is to take the 1st order effects just because you're worried about the 2nd order effects.