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Some of us would argue that the year-long (and counting) lockdowns are the result of neurotics imposing on the rest of us. Some of us have been arguing since th

Some of us would argue that the year-long (and counting) lockdowns are the result of neurotics imposing on the rest of us. Some of us have been arguing since the beginning of all this that the old and infirm should have been the ones to isolate themselves — with accommodations and support from the rest of society — while the rest of us took sensible precautions and continued on with the business of life. Some of us trusted that "two weeks to slow the spread" was the sensible policy and what our governments would follow. Instead, what happened was an extended and irrational panic by some forced on the rest of us. So, I think it's terrific if people would accept their neuroses and not bother the rest of us. But there is no evidence that that's how things work.

everdrive 5y ago
>Some of us would argue This is a tenuous link at best. China does not have the same cultural makeup of the United States, and they shut down more aggressively than any western nation. (bear in mind this is not a compliment, I would not like to see US officials literally weld people into their apartment complexes.)
- phone8675309 5y ago
  You'll get a fine or a short jail stay in the US if you defy the mask orders/social distancing orders. You might just get a bullet in China for defying those orders.
starlust2 5y ago
This might be true if American society as a whole embraced safety measures to keep the rest of society safe. That didn't happen. A significant portion of the country believe the pandemic was a hoax and took no precautions whatsoever.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Is this your explanation for the recent COVID waves in Taiwan, Vietnam, and Guangzhou as well? I thought they were strictly adhering to protocol?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Google tells me that Taiwan has had a grand total of 124 deaths for a country of 23 million people. That's 0.00053913% of the population, while the US has had 594k deaths for 328 million people - 0.18109756%. Taiwan's "wave" looks like a slow day for the US.
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      You're talking about total cases while I'm talking about recent cases. Shouldn't the continued use of masks prevent recent cases in Taiwan? What changed? On top of that, it's pretty clear by now that East Asian populations have some level of preexisting resistance to this family of respiratory viruses, given their proximity to past outbreaks of genealogically similar viruses. It would make sense that their totals will eventually be lower than those in parts of the world that haven't been exposed to SARS like viruses.
chitowneats 5y ago
At this point, 15 months later, I'll take what I can get. You can certainly count me among the "some of us".
tyrrvk 5y ago
I find this viewpoint exceedingly arrogant. That you somehow know what's best in the case of a novel global pandemic?
- mariodiana 5y ago
  Let me make myself clear. I am suggesting that from the beginning we should have encouraged the statistically vulnerable to isolate themselves: meaning, isolate themselves voluntarily. I'm suggesting that the rest of us should have supported such people who reached out for support through private and government action. I'm suggesting that other individuals should have been encouraged to take what precautions they deemed sensible. I think that, by and large, mask mandates should have been effected privately: meaning, business owners should have been free to institute mask policies the same way the do shirts and shoes policies. Government should have publicly given such policies support. Lockdowns should have been periodic and local: meaning, focused on time and place. The aim of lockdowns would not be to "save even a single life," but to try to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, so that people who could pull through with supportive care would have an available bed to recover in. In the meantime, government should have endeavored to setup emergency hospitals to make more beds available, relocating them as necessary. Every point I'm making stresses free choice and personal liberty; and every point I'm making stresses the idea that there are no easy answers and no one has the "master plan." Instead, what I saw — what we all saw — was federal bureaucrats and state governors dictating what hundreds of millions of people should do, based on conjecture and even whim, and dare I say, even at times personal vanity. But I'm the arrogant one?
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    Is there an example where individuals taking personal responsibility of a widespread problem has led to a favorable results? What I've seen is that this line of thinking disconnects the values from the result ie: "We did the right thing, so we have to accept the results." This re-frames the debate from results-orients to values-oriented. The same reasoning is being used in the climate change debate. Corporations are gearing up PR teams to promote individual responsibility campaigns so that corporate action can be minimized. Again, it disconnects the values from the results so that at the very end when nothing changes a group can be happy that even though it fails, we did the right thing. The end result is cynicism and skepticism to these tactics.
throwawaygh 5y ago
> Some of us have been arguing since the beginning of all this that the old and infirm should have been the ones to isolate themselves — with accommodations and support from the rest of society — while the rest of us took sensible precautions and continued on with the business of life. That is what happened. > Some of us trusted that "two weeks to slow the spread" was the sensible policy and what our governments would follow. Western governments largely did follow that policy, but the US was never able to get out of free-fall. So COVID policy became a bang-bang controller of lockdowns, then slight reopenings, then more lockdowns, because there was never a two week period where spread slowed enough to materially change the risk landscape. Even when there were lulls in the second derivative, limited re-openings resulted in enormous case spikes. If our numbers ever reached DE or NZ levels, we would've been back in offices and schools. And, in fact, I had plenty of conference calls with Germans who were sitting in their offices last summer. The re-opening criterion didn't change (except to become more liberal over time, the exact opposite of your characterization). What happened is that the lockdowns -- for whatever reason -- never got spread under control in the USA. That wasn't true everywhere. > irrational panic On April 1, 2020 there 26K new cases in the USA. One year later, on April 1, 2021, there were 77K new cases. Vaccination rates among at-risk populations were starting to pick up, but nowhere near where thy are today. What is the rational policy that would call for lock downs in March 2020 but not in March 2021? > some would argue... And others would argue that the expectation that a pandemic should last exactly and only two weeks is its own rather extraordinary neurosis.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  There's your problem. There is no such thing as rational lockdown policy for an airborne virus. Pray tell: where exactly did lockdowns work? Surely not in East Asia where multiple countries are experiencing exponential growth in covid cases right now due to seasonality. Despite widespread adoption of masking, contact tracing, etc. Certainly not in Sweden, where they never implemented them, yet they continue to have either middling or above average results in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Also: no one ever expected the pandemic to be over in two weeks. We did expect our public health officials to stick to the second part, "to slow the spread". Clearly, that was a line to manipulate the public, as things quickly shifted to "until we have a vaccine". People on my side of this issue will never forget or forgive the bait and switch.
naurupatel 5y ago
I've mostly lost faith in the ability of my country to have an orderly, happy society together at this point. As a recovering agoraphobic I can easily see the same disordered thinking that was once the core of my own mind not only present in other people, but lauded on the news and in mainstream culture. Here's to hoping things get better, but knowing that the nuts run the nuthouse now.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Very interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing. Edit: May I ask which country you are from?
geofft 5y ago
Some of us would argue that the year-long and counting failure to ever once have an actual lockdown - just vague restrictions within the realm of what was politically popular - was the result of people-who-can-be-referred-to-with-a-pejorative imposing on the rest of us. Some of us have been arguing that the old and infirm are no less worthwhile members than the rest, and that a true lockdown, without carriers wandering everywhere, would have resolved the situation within a bounded amount of time. Instead, what happened was an extended and irrational panic ('the economy will collapse!!! suicide rates are up!!! my oxygen levels are too low!!!") by some forced on the rest of us.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  You realize that what you are proposing is not just illegal in the U.S., but unconstitutional? Thankfully we have something called the Bill of Rights. The absolute zealotry of the "Zero Covid" movement, displayed for us in the comment above, is truly terrifying.
  - geofft 5y ago
    No, I don't realize that - can you explain?
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      Forbidding citizens to leave their homes quite clearly violates the right to free expression and free assembly in the First Amendment. I assume you're familiar with it. Thankfully, we haven't had to test these yet in a court of law over covid. That's the beauty of having these rights enumerated explicitly. Would-be tyrants are afraid to challenge them.
      - geofft 5y ago
        I'm familiar with it, but I think I'm familiar with a different version than you are, because I don't see "expression" in it. I see "speech". I also see that the right to assembly is "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." In any case, quarantines have in fact been implemented in the US repeatedly over the years. So either the Constitution has changed recently (which might explain why your copy is different from mine), or they were so obviously not a violation of the First Amendment that nobody bothered to test it in a court of law. For instance, here's a 1902 Supreme Court case confirming the ability of a state government to prevent passengers on a ship (some of whom were US citizens attempting to return to their homes) from leaving the ship: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/186/380 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/186/380 No mention is made of the First Amendment. > That from an early day the power of the states to enact and enforce quarantine laws for the safety and the protection of the health of their inhabitants has been recognized by Congress, is beyond question. That until Congress has exercised its power on the subject, such state quarantine laws and state laws for the purpose of preventing, eradicating, or controlling the spread of contagious or infectious diseases, are not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, although their operation affects interstate or foreign commerce, is not an open question. (And the implication is that the only thing that would prevent a state from passing laws about quarantines is the federal government passing laws about quarantines and preempting the states - i.e., that Congress could certainly enact a nationwide quarantine if it wanted.) Anyway, this is all beside the point - plenty of places other than the US, with no First Amendment or equivalent, have also failed to ever implement a real lockdown, because a real lockdown would have been politically unpopular. So it's not a matter of constitutionality.

everdrive 5y ago

>Some of us would argue This is a tenuous link at best. China does not have the same cultural makeup of the United States, and they shut down more aggressively than any western nation. (bear in mind this is not a compliment, I would not like to see US officials literally weld people into their apartment complexes.)

phone8675309 5y ago
You'll get a fine or a short jail stay in the US if you defy the mask orders/social distancing orders. You might just get a bullet in China for defying those orders.

starlust2 5y ago

This might be true if American society as a whole embraced safety measures to keep the rest of society safe. That didn't happen. A significant portion of the country believe the pandemic was a hoax and took no precautions whatsoever.

chitowneats 5y ago
Is this your explanation for the recent COVID waves in Taiwan, Vietnam, and Guangzhou as well? I thought they were strictly adhering to protocol?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tdeck 5y ago
  Google tells me that Taiwan has had a grand total of 124 deaths for a country of 23 million people. That's 0.00053913% of the population, while the US has had 594k deaths for 328 million people - 0.18109756%. Taiwan's "wave" looks like a slow day for the US.
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    You're talking about total cases while I'm talking about recent cases. Shouldn't the continued use of masks prevent recent cases in Taiwan? What changed? On top of that, it's pretty clear by now that East Asian populations have some level of preexisting resistance to this family of respiratory viruses, given their proximity to past outbreaks of genealogically similar viruses. It would make sense that their totals will eventually be lower than those in parts of the world that haven't been exposed to SARS like viruses.

chitowneats 5y ago

At this point, 15 months later, I'll take what I can get. You can certainly count me among the "some of us".

tyrrvk 5y ago

I find this viewpoint exceedingly arrogant. That you somehow know what's best in the case of a novel global pandemic?

mariodiana 5y ago
Let me make myself clear. I am suggesting that from the beginning we should have encouraged the statistically vulnerable to isolate themselves: meaning, isolate themselves voluntarily. I'm suggesting that the rest of us should have supported such people who reached out for support through private and government action. I'm suggesting that other individuals should have been encouraged to take what precautions they deemed sensible. I think that, by and large, mask mandates should have been effected privately: meaning, business owners should have been free to institute mask policies the same way the do shirts and shoes policies. Government should have publicly given such policies support. Lockdowns should have been periodic and local: meaning, focused on time and place. The aim of lockdowns would not be to "save even a single life," but to try to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, so that people who could pull through with supportive care would have an available bed to recover in. In the meantime, government should have endeavored to setup emergency hospitals to make more beds available, relocating them as necessary. Every point I'm making stresses free choice and personal liberty; and every point I'm making stresses the idea that there are no easy answers and no one has the "master plan." Instead, what I saw — what we all saw — was federal bureaucrats and state governors dictating what hundreds of millions of people should do, based on conjecture and even whim, and dare I say, even at times personal vanity. But I'm the arrogant one?
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  Is there an example where individuals taking personal responsibility of a widespread problem has led to a favorable results? What I've seen is that this line of thinking disconnects the values from the result ie: "We did the right thing, so we have to accept the results." This re-frames the debate from results-orients to values-oriented. The same reasoning is being used in the climate change debate. Corporations are gearing up PR teams to promote individual responsibility campaigns so that corporate action can be minimized. Again, it disconnects the values from the results so that at the very end when nothing changes a group can be happy that even though it fails, we did the right thing. The end result is cynicism and skepticism to these tactics.

throwawaygh 5y ago

> Some of us have been arguing since the beginning of all this that the old and infirm should have been the ones to isolate themselves — with accommodations and support from the rest of society — while the rest of us took sensible precautions and continued on with the business of life. That is what happened. > Some of us trusted that "two weeks to slow the spread" was the sensible policy and what our governments would follow. Western governments largely did follow that policy, but the US was never able to get out of free-fall. So COVID policy became a bang-bang controller of lockdowns, then slight reopenings, then more lockdowns, because there was never a two week period where spread slowed enough to materially change the risk landscape. Even when there were lulls in the second derivative, limited re-openings resulted in enormous case spikes. If our numbers ever reached DE or NZ levels, we would've been back in offices and schools. And, in fact, I had plenty of conference calls with Germans who were sitting in their offices last summer. The re-opening criterion didn't change (except to become more liberal over time, the exact opposite of your characterization). What happened is that the lockdowns -- for whatever reason -- never got spread under control in the USA. That wasn't true everywhere. > irrational panic On April 1, 2020 there 26K new cases in the USA. One year later, on April 1, 2021, there were 77K new cases. Vaccination rates among at-risk populations were starting to pick up, but nowhere near where thy are today. What is the rational policy that would call for lock downs in March 2020 but not in March 2021? > some would argue... And others would argue that the expectation that a pandemic should last exactly and only two weeks is its own rather extraordinary neurosis.

chitowneats 5y ago
There's your problem. There is no such thing as rational lockdown policy for an airborne virus. Pray tell: where exactly did lockdowns work? Surely not in East Asia where multiple countries are experiencing exponential growth in covid cases right now due to seasonality. Despite widespread adoption of masking, contact tracing, etc. Certainly not in Sweden, where they never implemented them, yet they continue to have either middling or above average results in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Also: no one ever expected the pandemic to be over in two weeks. We did expect our public health officials to stick to the second part, "to slow the spread". Clearly, that was a line to manipulate the public, as things quickly shifted to "until we have a vaccine". People on my side of this issue will never forget or forgive the bait and switch.

naurupatel 5y ago

I've mostly lost faith in the ability of my country to have an orderly, happy society together at this point. As a recovering agoraphobic I can easily see the same disordered thinking that was once the core of my own mind not only present in other people, but lauded on the news and in mainstream culture. Here's to hoping things get better, but knowing that the nuts run the nuthouse now.

chitowneats 5y ago
Very interesting perspective. Thank you for sharing. Edit: May I ask which country you are from?

geofft 5y ago

Some of us would argue that the year-long and counting failure to ever once have an actual lockdown - just vague restrictions within the realm of what was politically popular - was the result of people-who-can-be-referred-to-with-a-pejorative imposing on the rest of us. Some of us have been arguing that the old and infirm are no less worthwhile members than the rest, and that a true lockdown, without carriers wandering everywhere, would have resolved the situation within a bounded amount of time. Instead, what happened was an extended and irrational panic ('the economy will collapse!!! suicide rates are up!!! my oxygen levels are too low!!!") by some forced on the rest of us.

chitowneats 5y ago
You realize that what you are proposing is not just illegal in the U.S., but unconstitutional? Thankfully we have something called the Bill of Rights. The absolute zealotry of the "Zero Covid" movement, displayed for us in the comment above, is truly terrifying.
- geofft 5y ago
  No, I don't realize that - can you explain?
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    Forbidding citizens to leave their homes quite clearly violates the right to free expression and free assembly in the First Amendment. I assume you're familiar with it. Thankfully, we haven't had to test these yet in a court of law over covid. That's the beauty of having these rights enumerated explicitly. Would-be tyrants are afraid to challenge them.
    - geofft 5y ago
      I'm familiar with it, but I think I'm familiar with a different version than you are, because I don't see "expression" in it. I see "speech". I also see that the right to assembly is "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." In any case, quarantines have in fact been implemented in the US repeatedly over the years. So either the Constitution has changed recently (which might explain why your copy is different from mine), or they were so obviously not a violation of the First Amendment that nobody bothered to test it in a court of law. For instance, here's a 1902 Supreme Court case confirming the ability of a state government to prevent passengers on a ship (some of whom were US citizens attempting to return to their homes) from leaving the ship: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/186/380 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/186/380 No mention is made of the First Amendment. > That from an early day the power of the states to enact and enforce quarantine laws for the safety and the protection of the health of their inhabitants has been recognized by Congress, is beyond question. That until Congress has exercised its power on the subject, such state quarantine laws and state laws for the purpose of preventing, eradicating, or controlling the spread of contagious or infectious diseases, are not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, although their operation affects interstate or foreign commerce, is not an open question. (And the implication is that the only thing that would prevent a state from passing laws about quarantines is the federal government passing laws about quarantines and preempting the states - i.e., that Congress could certainly enact a nationwide quarantine if it wanted.) Anyway, this is all beside the point - plenty of places other than the US, with no First Amendment or equivalent, have also failed to ever implement a real lockdown, because a real lockdown would have been politically unpopular. So it's not a matter of constitutionality.