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Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care

by eric_b 6y ago

Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die, etc. What staggers me is that huge groups of people are clamoring for more lockdowns and reduced freedoms. It's like Stockholm syndrome writ large. There is so much fear being peddled by the media and others that people have lost all perspective.

msla 6y ago
> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. "I'm right and you can't convince me otherwise" is the cause of a lot of suffering in the world.
- qubex 6y ago
  Since we can’t change their mind why are we even listening to this unilateral broadcasting of unsubstantiated and disproven-by-data comments?
devalgo 6y ago
You must be American. Becuase there's little push back in the rest of the Sane world. Governments are taking care of people's salaries who have lost their job so the only major downside is the mental health piece. The US has lost it's collective mind and meanwhile in places like New Zealand(up until a few days ago) have essentially beaten the virus and life is back to almost normal. The reality in the US is that we need a robust and strictly enforced lockdown for 6 weeks or frankly we aren't going to get back to normal until a major portion of the population has been vaccinated probably sometime in mid to late 2021.
aantix 6y ago
Agree. "People are dying". "People" isn't a useful cohort. Age/sex/location/lifestyle/environment/pre-existing conditions all contribute to our individual risk. Health/financial obligations/location/social patterns contribute to our individual risk tolerance. The CDC recommendations are not granular enough.
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
>Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. It's pretty good for my mental health. Being on crowded public is bad for my mental health.
bluntfang 6y ago
>We're not meant to live that way. I mean, to abstract this a little bit...were we meant to spend 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, making money for other people simply because they already had money? Were we meant to live in densely populated cities in apartment buildings that house 10s to 100s of families on a city block? Were we meant to spend most of our time with our young children and teach them about the world instead of handing them off for 8+ hours of childcare a day starting at age 5 or 6? this begs the question: what way were we meant to live?
- qubex 6y ago
  > this begs the question: how were we meant to live? In the savanna in social groups of about fifty or less related individuals leading a hunger-gatherer lifestyle. I doubt the OP is going to argue that we all head back to that state, though, so I’m going politely disregard their absolutist and ex cattedra remarks.
  - Johnjonjoan 6y ago
    Why not also tropical rainforest? (I'm assuming you're saying we are meant to live how we did at our inception) IMO using the word meant implies a purpose and I don't think there is one here.
    - qubex 6y ago
      I was just giving a quick & dirty reply, and my knowledge of anthropology is quite limited. As I understand it we evolved out of the African savanna. If there are other niches we evolved in (rather than expanded to), those would also be a valid response.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Yeah, it was more like eric_b saying he wasn't meant to live that way. Many of the rest of us enjoyed the slower pace, the chance to connect with family, the chance to enjoy simple pleasures like baking bread and planting a garden. I looked at the "lockdown" (which wasn't really a lockdown - see Wuhan for a real lockdown) period as a sort of sabbath for the world. I suppose a lot of the difference in how you view that period of "lockdown" could have to do with your living situation. If you're single living in an apartment without a yard then, yes, I could see that it could be pretty awful. If you live with family and pets in a house with a yard it was pretty nice and I suspect a lot of us in that situation will look back on that period positively as time goes by - as in we'll actually become nostalgic about it.
qubex 6y ago
> lockdowns are terrible for human mental health That’s exactly what this study is disproving. At the very least, this data is showing something that is well-known in behavioural circles: that once the threshold of a radical change is overcome, people begin to habituate to it and regress towards the mean. > we put people in prison as punishment Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison. Imprisonments is about much more than a loss of mobility.
- refurb 6y ago
  The data looks like crap? They used search terms (!) and then had to estimate some data because they didn’t start collecting until after Covid hit. Unfortunately, overall life satisfaction questions were only introduced into the mood tracker in April 2020. So, to consider how the pandemic and lockdown affected people’s general wellbeing, we had to attribute scores to respondents for the period prior to April based on their mood data (we calculated the scores using a statistical technique called regression).
  - qubex 6y ago
    The data may look like crap (to you) but it’s better than absolutist remarks and anecdotal allusions... and as this thread so aptly shows, there’s been a range of reactions, some even favourable.
    - isoskeles 6y ago
      There are absolutist remarks because people know whether or not their own well-being has improved, much better than a study that attempts to declare what their reality is. More than ever, I’m suspicious that social scientists might have an agenda. And their methods are, as usual, not even close to physical sciences.
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  > Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison There's literally a punishment called "house arrest".
UncleOxidant 6y ago
Calling what we did in most of the US a "lockdown" seems like a misnomer. Wuhan did an actual lockdown where people sometimes had their apartment door welded shut and police were arresting people who went outside - that's a lockdown. In the US it was more of a shelter-in-place order. Now that we know more about how the virus spreads we can make those more targeted - forbidding people from going outside at all, for example, just doesn't make any sense with what we know about transmission. Mask-wearing also has helped. Outside seating (with proper distancing) at restaurants seems pretty safe - though come winter this will be less of an option. As for the "lockdown" and mental health, I have to agree with the article's findings. Myself and a lot of folks I've talked to have liked certain aspects of it - more sleep, less frenetic activity for activity sake, a slower pace. It seemed like the world was getting a long-deserved rest.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  > though come winter this will be less of an option Or we'll see a lot of investment in patio propane heaters.
- zaroth 6y ago
  This is No true Scotsman applied to “lockdowns”. Semantics aside, there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment, while it’s also inarguably true that other personality types find it highly detrimental. I doubt the answer can be found in anecdotes, nor will the true impact be fully felt or known for some time. However claiming that wellbeing levels improved seems to me to be extremely misleading. The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true. The secondary (non-COVID) public health impacts will ultimately be measured in millions of lives lost, due to mis-prioritizing COVID above all else.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    > The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true However, a lot of those unemployed service workers were making more money on unemployment than they did in their previous jobs. Add in the $1200 check and that certainly helped in that April-July period. > there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment Yes, for sure. Introvert here. Loved it. I guess that means I could have had a successful career in lighthouse keeping in a former age.
chaostheory 6y ago
Yeah, let's throw out all the data just because it disagrees with our personal beliefs
- partyboat1586 6y ago
  If I do a sum and it comes out as something I don't expect I let my intuition guide me to check the sum to ensure no mistakes were made, I don't just accept the answer.
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is when data is disregarded without any analysis just because it doesn't match arbitrary expectations.
    - partyboat1586 6y ago
      Fair enough
mc32 6y ago
I agree that lockdowns & SIPs are terrible. It’s why people dislike being grounded at home or like you said serving a sentence at home, etc. Of course there are things we have to weigh, physical health threat vs mental health pressures and national security, etc. But you are absolutely right that the media want to paint narratives. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not so much collusion but rather it’s their nature to do that. So both on the left or right we get narratives. They feel obliged to herd people one way or another. It’s like they’re on a mission to getting people to not think for themselves. That’s the main objective.
- fragmede 6y ago
  With the rise of Craigslist and the Internet, mainstream media is more reliant than ever on advertising. If there's a cute story about someone being nice, well, that's cute but boring. But if there's someone being horrible, gosh, I'm going to rush to go over and stare at the car crash, judge them for being horrible, be angry that they're horrible, feel smug about the fact that I'm not horrible. Possibly go on some sort of screed about "those people". All the meanwhile, I'm watching the advertisement because I really have to see whatever the thing is right after that. "The media", in so far as it's a monolithic group (it's not), needs to get us riled up, divided, and angry. Not for some nefarious shadow government pulling the strings reasons, but because they need to pay the bills. What's fascinating is how well the media as a whole manages to do it. Some portion of the masses can accept a mainstream point of view (eg wearing masks), but it seems a certain percentage of people just really have to not. And to those people (who are all the same), "alternative outlets" sell them on being special and that they are the only thinkers out there. Not like the rest of the sheep wearing muzzles. It would be funnier if it weren't literally life-threatening right now. Step back, consider your principles, and draw your own conclusions. But it has to be okay if those conclusions simply accept what the mainstream narrative is telling you. Which is wear a mask, especially when indoors with groups of people.
cirgue 6y ago
I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.
- tdfx 6y ago
  I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate to decline (3) inoculation: we find a vaccine with high effectiveness and somehow deliver that widely enough to create the herd immunity situation It seems lockdown can only help with #1 and I'd say the horses have already left the barn on that one. The only things lockdowns can do at this point are to prevent number of acute cases from overwhelming the hospital system. I'm not against lockdowns in extraordinary public health emergencies, but let's not pretend they are getting us any closer to a finish line.
  - the_gastropod 6y ago
    Option 1 is the ideal case, yes. And New Zealand pulled it off (unfortunately, it was undone when a covid patient re-entered the country). But it's not the only benefit. Reducing the number of cases obviously reduces the risk of the disease spreading. The idea is to seriously lock down / wear masks, etc. for ~6 weeks to get to a point where the case-load is so small that it's manageable with little effort (not back to 100% normal). Instead, the U.S. strategy has been to put in medium effort / inconvenience indefinitely.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      New Zealand officials don't currently believe that their new outbreak was caused by a patient re-entering the country - they haven't found any link between the detected cases and overseas returnees. No country I'm aware of believes that even the smallest outbreaks can be handled with little effort. Health officials across the globe have been consistently saying that the coronavirus will spread unless people stay very far from normal.
Implicated 6y ago
> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. Ahem, "everyone"? I, and the people I went into 'lockdown' with quite enjoyed ourselves. I'd argue that this period has been the most productive for my mental health in decades. You aren't everyone.
- captainbland 6y ago
  It's almost as though traveling to work, going out and seeing loads of people is great for some and horrible for others. Like humans aren't a homogenous blob that all prefer to live one way or the other. But even though under 'business as usual' we act like people have a lot of choice, in reality because of fiscal and social constraints we really, really don't. So the question should be: how do we enable people to choose? To really choose, not to be given some false choice where one has obvious horrible social and economic consequences and risks attached to it; and the other is the good 'preferred' way to live - but to really choose freely.
the_gastropod 6y ago
> We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die I find this sentiment as funny as I do frustrating. This thing has been around ~8 months. We know some about this virus. We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects. And we're continuously finding troubling signs about it. It's looking like even mild cases can result in long-term brain, heart, and lung damage [1]. The US has handled this absolutely horribly. Our "lock down" was so mild, even in NYC, so as to be the tiniest of inconveniences, hardly the prison sentence you imply. And yet, our "freedom"-loving compatriots bitch and complain nonstop about it, and ultimately just extend the time we have to live this way. If we'd taken it seriously earlier like virtually every other modern civilization, we'd be living in much more normal circumstances today. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-dama...
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  > If we'd taken it seriously earlier like virtually every other modern civilization, we'd be living in much more normal circumstances today. That's a line I hear repeated but it doesn't seem to align to reality. Even places that have taken this deadly seriously have seen reoccurent outbreaks including Hong Kong[^1] and Tokyo[^2]. Likewise some areas that had very loose restrictions initially.. never had it that bad. The reality is that the lockdowns and shelter in place orders did very little, and factors such as airports and borders are much stronger indicators of whether we'll see more virus spread. Masks, including homemade masks, do seem to be very effective and pushing people to use them seems to make meaningful differences - but it's not by itself sufficient (at least not homemade masks). > And yet, our "freedom"-loving compatriots bitch and complain nonstop about it, Part of freedom means the freedom to disagree. Sure, you can disagree with them as well and they may be entirely wrong - and that's still OK. That isn't a failure of freedom, it's a success story and I'd much rather have some idiots shouting loudly than black bag them by secret police or have "Winnie the Pooh" start getting censored in private messages. [^1]: They're past the worst of their resurgence from the current looks, but https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/hong-kong-sees-fewest-virus-cases-since-start-of-latest-outbreak/ar-BB17P9Uo https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/hong-kong-sees-fewest-... has a nice graph showing their second spike [^2]: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/04/national/japan-tuesday-coronavirus-cases/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/04/national/japan-...
uallth00 6y ago
One of my favorite ideas comes from the Dali Llama who suggests considering how ones own application of agency has created the scenario they are in. The limbic system floods the brain with chemicals and we react with the most accessible form of motor agency given the context. Turn the media off. Avoid the emotional hive mind which is built on making you feel exactly as you’re reacting. Impulsive, anxious, the slippery slope that ends it all is around the corner. Because if it ends up being the case it will be a self fulfilling prophecy thanks to anxious, paranoid idiots pushing buttons they shouldn’t. I live outside the burbs and work remote. My daily habit hasn’t changed much. Your bubble isn’t everyone’s I’m pretty convinced the anxiety is from the reality of the virus itself and the anxiety is misattributed to “lockdown” thanks to propaganda. Propaganda 101: use emotional moment to insert talking point. Pandemic is a nice organic anxiety to use to nudge people towards fear of economic collapse. You’re doing this to yourself.
grensley 6y ago
> I don't care what these people read in to the data I really didn't expect this to be the top take on HackerNews. This reads like anti-masker rhetoric.
- andybak 6y ago
  It doesn't mesh with my personal experience at all so at the very least that user is massively generalising (or maybe I'm a bizarre outlier)
SubiculumCode 6y ago
Working from home with my family around and no commute; I was meant to live this way. But if they were not here? Being alone all the time sucks
ouid 6y ago
>We're not meant to live that way I'm not sure what you think this means. Are you arguing that we're "meant to live" by commuting to work and gathering in cafes and restaurants? Humans are extraordinarily adaptive. We live anywhere that food can be grown, and oxygen is readily available. We aren't "meant" to do anything. All you are announcing is that you, personally, don't like to adapt.
jariel 6y ago
There was nothing remotely close to 'lock-down' in the US. We just stopped going to the office, restaurants, close quarters public spaces.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yibg 6y ago
Speak for yourself, I've been happier during our "lockdown", which wasn't actually a lockdown. My mental health certainly isn't hurt because of it. What staggers me is that huge groups of people see countries that didn't take this seriously vs countries that did, and the difference in deaths, and yet still don't want to take this seriously.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
msla 6y ago
> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. This sounds like partisan pseudoscience.

by eric_b 6y ago

msla 6y ago

> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. "I'm right and you can't convince me otherwise" is the cause of a lot of suffering in the world.

qubex 6y ago
Since we can’t change their mind why are we even listening to this unilateral broadcasting of unsubstantiated and disproven-by-data comments?

devalgo 6y ago

You must be American. Becuase there's little push back in the rest of the Sane world. Governments are taking care of people's salaries who have lost their job so the only major downside is the mental health piece. The US has lost it's collective mind and meanwhile in places like New Zealand(up until a few days ago) have essentially beaten the virus and life is back to almost normal. The reality in the US is that we need a robust and strictly enforced lockdown for 6 weeks or frankly we aren't going to get back to normal until a major portion of the population has been vaccinated probably sometime in mid to late 2021.

aantix 6y ago

Agree. "People are dying". "People" isn't a useful cohort. Age/sex/location/lifestyle/environment/pre-existing conditions all contribute to our individual risk. Health/financial obligations/location/social patterns contribute to our individual risk tolerance. The CDC recommendations are not granular enough.

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

>Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. It's pretty good for my mental health. Being on crowded public is bad for my mental health.

bluntfang 6y ago

>We're not meant to live that way. I mean, to abstract this a little bit...were we meant to spend 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, making money for other people simply because they already had money? Were we meant to live in densely populated cities in apartment buildings that house 10s to 100s of families on a city block? Were we meant to spend most of our time with our young children and teach them about the world instead of handing them off for 8+ hours of childcare a day starting at age 5 or 6? this begs the question: what way were we meant to live?

qubex 6y ago
> this begs the question: how were we meant to live? In the savanna in social groups of about fifty or less related individuals leading a hunger-gatherer lifestyle. I doubt the OP is going to argue that we all head back to that state, though, so I’m going politely disregard their absolutist and ex cattedra remarks.
- Johnjonjoan 6y ago
  Why not also tropical rainforest? (I'm assuming you're saying we are meant to live how we did at our inception) IMO using the word meant implies a purpose and I don't think there is one here.
  - qubex 6y ago
    I was just giving a quick & dirty reply, and my knowledge of anthropology is quite limited. As I understand it we evolved out of the African savanna. If there are other niches we evolved in (rather than expanded to), those would also be a valid response.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
Yeah, it was more like eric_b saying he wasn't meant to live that way. Many of the rest of us enjoyed the slower pace, the chance to connect with family, the chance to enjoy simple pleasures like baking bread and planting a garden. I looked at the "lockdown" (which wasn't really a lockdown - see Wuhan for a real lockdown) period as a sort of sabbath for the world. I suppose a lot of the difference in how you view that period of "lockdown" could have to do with your living situation. If you're single living in an apartment without a yard then, yes, I could see that it could be pretty awful. If you live with family and pets in a house with a yard it was pretty nice and I suspect a lot of us in that situation will look back on that period positively as time goes by - as in we'll actually become nostalgic about it.

qubex 6y ago

> lockdowns are terrible for human mental health That’s exactly what this study is disproving. At the very least, this data is showing something that is well-known in behavioural circles: that once the threshold of a radical change is overcome, people begin to habituate to it and regress towards the mean. > we put people in prison as punishment Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison. Imprisonments is about much more than a loss of mobility.

refurb 6y ago
The data looks like crap? They used search terms (!) and then had to estimate some data because they didn’t start collecting until after Covid hit. Unfortunately, overall life satisfaction questions were only introduced into the mood tracker in April 2020. So, to consider how the pandemic and lockdown affected people’s general wellbeing, we had to attribute scores to respondents for the period prior to April based on their mood data (we calculated the scores using a statistical technique called regression).
- qubex 6y ago
  The data may look like crap (to you) but it’s better than absolutist remarks and anecdotal allusions... and as this thread so aptly shows, there’s been a range of reactions, some even favourable.
  - isoskeles 6y ago
    There are absolutist remarks because people know whether or not their own well-being has improved, much better than a study that attempts to declare what their reality is. More than ever, I’m suspicious that social scientists might have an agenda. And their methods are, as usual, not even close to physical sciences.
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
> Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison There's literally a punishment called "house arrest".

UncleOxidant 6y ago

Calling what we did in most of the US a "lockdown" seems like a misnomer. Wuhan did an actual lockdown where people sometimes had their apartment door welded shut and police were arresting people who went outside - that's a lockdown. In the US it was more of a shelter-in-place order. Now that we know more about how the virus spreads we can make those more targeted - forbidding people from going outside at all, for example, just doesn't make any sense with what we know about transmission. Mask-wearing also has helped. Outside seating (with proper distancing) at restaurants seems pretty safe - though come winter this will be less of an option. As for the "lockdown" and mental health, I have to agree with the article's findings. Myself and a lot of folks I've talked to have liked certain aspects of it - more sleep, less frenetic activity for activity sake, a slower pace. It seemed like the world was getting a long-deserved rest.

vorpalhex 6y ago
> though come winter this will be less of an option Or we'll see a lot of investment in patio propane heaters.
zaroth 6y ago
This is No true Scotsman applied to “lockdowns”. Semantics aside, there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment, while it’s also inarguably true that other personality types find it highly detrimental. I doubt the answer can be found in anecdotes, nor will the true impact be fully felt or known for some time. However claiming that wellbeing levels improved seems to me to be extremely misleading. The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true. The secondary (non-COVID) public health impacts will ultimately be measured in millions of lives lost, due to mis-prioritizing COVID above all else.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  > The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true However, a lot of those unemployed service workers were making more money on unemployment than they did in their previous jobs. Add in the $1200 check and that certainly helped in that April-July period. > there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment Yes, for sure. Introvert here. Loved it. I guess that means I could have had a successful career in lighthouse keeping in a former age.

chaostheory 6y ago

Yeah, let's throw out all the data just because it disagrees with our personal beliefs

partyboat1586 6y ago
If I do a sum and it comes out as something I don't expect I let my intuition guide me to check the sum to ensure no mistakes were made, I don't just accept the answer.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is when data is disregarded without any analysis just because it doesn't match arbitrary expectations.
  - partyboat1586 6y ago
    Fair enough

mc32 6y ago

I agree that lockdowns & SIPs are terrible. It’s why people dislike being grounded at home or like you said serving a sentence at home, etc. Of course there are things we have to weigh, physical health threat vs mental health pressures and national security, etc. But you are absolutely right that the media want to paint narratives. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not so much collusion but rather it’s their nature to do that. So both on the left or right we get narratives. They feel obliged to herd people one way or another. It’s like they’re on a mission to getting people to not think for themselves. That’s the main objective.

fragmede 6y ago
With the rise of Craigslist and the Internet, mainstream media is more reliant than ever on advertising. If there's a cute story about someone being nice, well, that's cute but boring. But if there's someone being horrible, gosh, I'm going to rush to go over and stare at the car crash, judge them for being horrible, be angry that they're horrible, feel smug about the fact that I'm not horrible. Possibly go on some sort of screed about "those people". All the meanwhile, I'm watching the advertisement because I really have to see whatever the thing is right after that. "The media", in so far as it's a monolithic group (it's not), needs to get us riled up, divided, and angry. Not for some nefarious shadow government pulling the strings reasons, but because they need to pay the bills. What's fascinating is how well the media as a whole manages to do it. Some portion of the masses can accept a mainstream point of view (eg wearing masks), but it seems a certain percentage of people just really have to not. And to those people (who are all the same), "alternative outlets" sell them on being special and that they are the only thinkers out there. Not like the rest of the sheep wearing muzzles. It would be funnier if it weren't literally life-threatening right now. Step back, consider your principles, and draw your own conclusions. But it has to be okay if those conclusions simply accept what the mainstream narrative is telling you. Which is wear a mask, especially when indoors with groups of people.

cirgue 6y ago

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

tdfx 6y ago
I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate to decline (3) inoculation: we find a vaccine with high effectiveness and somehow deliver that widely enough to create the herd immunity situation It seems lockdown can only help with #1 and I'd say the horses have already left the barn on that one. The only things lockdowns can do at this point are to prevent number of acute cases from overwhelming the hospital system. I'm not against lockdowns in extraordinary public health emergencies, but let's not pretend they are getting us any closer to a finish line.
- the_gastropod 6y ago
  Option 1 is the ideal case, yes. And New Zealand pulled it off (unfortunately, it was undone when a covid patient re-entered the country). But it's not the only benefit. Reducing the number of cases obviously reduces the risk of the disease spreading. The idea is to seriously lock down / wear masks, etc. for ~6 weeks to get to a point where the case-load is so small that it's manageable with little effort (not back to 100% normal). Instead, the U.S. strategy has been to put in medium effort / inconvenience indefinitely.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    New Zealand officials don't currently believe that their new outbreak was caused by a patient re-entering the country - they haven't found any link between the detected cases and overseas returnees. No country I'm aware of believes that even the smallest outbreaks can be handled with little effort. Health officials across the globe have been consistently saying that the coronavirus will spread unless people stay very far from normal.

Implicated 6y ago

> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. Ahem, "everyone"? I, and the people I went into 'lockdown' with quite enjoyed ourselves. I'd argue that this period has been the most productive for my mental health in decades. You aren't everyone.

captainbland 6y ago
It's almost as though traveling to work, going out and seeing loads of people is great for some and horrible for others. Like humans aren't a homogenous blob that all prefer to live one way or the other. But even though under 'business as usual' we act like people have a lot of choice, in reality because of fiscal and social constraints we really, really don't. So the question should be: how do we enable people to choose? To really choose, not to be given some false choice where one has obvious horrible social and economic consequences and risks attached to it; and the other is the good 'preferred' way to live - but to really choose freely.

the_gastropod 6y ago

> We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die I find this sentiment as funny as I do frustrating. This thing has been around ~8 months. We know some about this virus. We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects. And we're continuously finding troubling signs about it. It's looking like even mild cases can result in long-term brain, heart, and lung damage [1]. The US has handled this absolutely horribly. Our "lock down" was so mild, even in NYC, so as to be the tiniest of inconveniences, hardly the prison sentence you imply. And yet, our "freedom"-loving compatriots bitch and complain nonstop about it, and ultimately just extend the time we have to live this way. If we'd taken it seriously earlier like virtually every other modern civilization, we'd be living in much more normal circumstances today. [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-dama...

vorpalhex 6y ago
> If we'd taken it seriously earlier like virtually every other modern civilization, we'd be living in much more normal circumstances today. That's a line I hear repeated but it doesn't seem to align to reality. Even places that have taken this deadly seriously have seen reoccurent outbreaks including Hong Kong[^1] and Tokyo[^2]. Likewise some areas that had very loose restrictions initially.. never had it that bad. The reality is that the lockdowns and shelter in place orders did very little, and factors such as airports and borders are much stronger indicators of whether we'll see more virus spread. Masks, including homemade masks, do seem to be very effective and pushing people to use them seems to make meaningful differences - but it's not by itself sufficient (at least not homemade masks). > And yet, our "freedom"-loving compatriots bitch and complain nonstop about it, Part of freedom means the freedom to disagree. Sure, you can disagree with them as well and they may be entirely wrong - and that's still OK. That isn't a failure of freedom, it's a success story and I'd much rather have some idiots shouting loudly than black bag them by secret police or have "Winnie the Pooh" start getting censored in private messages. [^1]: They're past the worst of their resurgence from the current looks, but https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/hong-kong-sees-fewest-virus-cases-since-start-of-latest-outbreak/ar-BB17P9Uo https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/hong-kong-sees-fewest-... has a nice graph showing their second spike [^2]: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/04/national/japan-tuesday-coronavirus-cases/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/04/national/japan-...

uallth00 6y ago

One of my favorite ideas comes from the Dali Llama who suggests considering how ones own application of agency has created the scenario they are in. The limbic system floods the brain with chemicals and we react with the most accessible form of motor agency given the context. Turn the media off. Avoid the emotional hive mind which is built on making you feel exactly as you’re reacting. Impulsive, anxious, the slippery slope that ends it all is around the corner. Because if it ends up being the case it will be a self fulfilling prophecy thanks to anxious, paranoid idiots pushing buttons they shouldn’t. I live outside the burbs and work remote. My daily habit hasn’t changed much. Your bubble isn’t everyone’s I’m pretty convinced the anxiety is from the reality of the virus itself and the anxiety is misattributed to “lockdown” thanks to propaganda. Propaganda 101: use emotional moment to insert talking point. Pandemic is a nice organic anxiety to use to nudge people towards fear of economic collapse. You’re doing this to yourself.

grensley 6y ago

> I don't care what these people read in to the data I really didn't expect this to be the top take on HackerNews. This reads like anti-masker rhetoric.

andybak 6y ago
It doesn't mesh with my personal experience at all so at the very least that user is massively generalising (or maybe I'm a bizarre outlier)

SubiculumCode 6y ago

Working from home with my family around and no commute; I was meant to live this way. But if they were not here? Being alone all the time sucks

ouid 6y ago

>We're not meant to live that way I'm not sure what you think this means. Are you arguing that we're "meant to live" by commuting to work and gathering in cafes and restaurants? Humans are extraordinarily adaptive. We live anywhere that food can be grown, and oxygen is readily available. We aren't "meant" to do anything. All you are announcing is that you, personally, don't like to adapt.

jariel 6y ago

There was nothing remotely close to 'lock-down' in the US. We just stopped going to the office, restaurants, close quarters public spaces.

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yibg 6y ago

Speak for yourself, I've been happier during our "lockdown", which wasn't actually a lockdown. My mental health certainly isn't hurt because of it. What staggers me is that huge groups of people see countries that didn't take this seriously vs countries that did, and the difference in deaths, and yet still don't want to take this seriously.

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msla 6y ago

> I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. This sounds like partisan pseudoscience.