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I'm not sure what the end game is here. The original plan was "flatten the curve", which meant keep hospitals from getting inundated. Then it became wait for th

I'm not sure what the end game is here. The original plan was "flatten the curve", which meant keep hospitals from getting inundated. Then it became wait for the vaccine. COVID is not going to go away. The vaccine has dramatically decreased the amount of people dying from it. Cases going up without dramatic increases in death or hospitalization might not be a bad thing. The alternative is lockdowns that will never completely end the virus, and have a significant impact on our lives. It will just slow the spread over a very long time. There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying, but we decide that these risks are low enough that we carry on normal life.

joosters 5y ago
'There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying' Have you not noticed how we have put a lot of time, effort and money into increasing the safety of road travel? Do you just 'live with' the chance of dying in a car crash, or do you have technology like seat belts and air bags?
- specialp 5y ago
  Yes and we put a lot of time into making a vaccine. What if I said too many people are dying of car accidents, and they can almost all be completely prevented by lowering speed limits to walking speed. We live with the risk because it is low enough and making everyone travel at extremely low speeds would have a very adverse effect on the economy and quality of life. Safety improvements have been implemented that have not had a very onerous impact on life like having an airbag and seatbelt. And they allow us to drive at reasonable speeds with a reasonable level of safety. But still 40k people a year die in the USA. So if technology produces ways to make living with COVID less onerous and safer then why not? It is easy for us as mostly tech people to be like yeah lock that down forever. I am still getting paid full pay working from home, and my packages still come to the door. But for a lot of people it is a very large cost to pay. And eventually we will not be able to keep printing money out of it. People need to work and live.
  - specialp 5y ago
    And not like it should matter but I live in NY where we saw one of the worst spikes of death, am fully vaccinated, had a relative die of COVID, and know others that have. I also posted this early on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406702 So it isn't like I am nonchalant about the virus. It is just that there is a balance.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cloverich 5y ago
> There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying, but we decide that these risks are low enough that we carry on normal life. Because there are no other (tenable) options for car accidents. If there was a vaccine you could take that would prevent you from being harmed in a car accident, and it was cheap (free even) and available, the expectations around car accidents would be quite a bit different.
- specialp 5y ago
  I don't believe I advocated for people not getting vaccinated. I am saying should we keep having "lockdowns"? I do think having lockdowns perpetually is not a tenable option when there is no end in sight. Vaccines when compared to cars are the seatbelt equivalent. They do not cause economic and social harm, and save a lot of lives. People should indeed get vaccinated and most are. Lockdowns are equivalent to restricting automobile travel or lowering speed to a extremely low limit. Sure they would be fine if there were a blizzard and lots of people were crashing. All one can do is wait for the snow to melt and then it would only be a temporary disruption. But in the case of lockdowns there's no chance they are going to end the spread of COVID, they just slow it at best. And they have a very large cost, and it has been a long time. It would be as if the temporary restrictions to save lives during the blizzard were persisted when an ice age occurred.
  - cloverich 5y ago
    Lockdowns aren't meant to end the spread of COVID, only to limit it until people can get vaccinated. Vaccine's are the end game. As discussed in the article, if people aren't willing to get vaccinated and gov't unwilling to force, then letting it spread (not lockdowns) is the other option. Assuming people want to get vaccinated in places where the vaccine is not yet abundant (most countries), then lockdown's until supply rises could make sense. Nobody is advocating for permanent lockdowns with no end game. The more general concern of Delta (or any variant) is that the existing vaccine won't work against it, and / or the continued spread will lead to _more_ variants. Its unfortunately an artifical problem in the US, since there's plenty of vaccine supply.
- 5y ago

joosters 5y ago

'There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying' Have you not noticed how we have put a lot of time, effort and money into increasing the safety of road travel? Do you just 'live with' the chance of dying in a car crash, or do you have technology like seat belts and air bags?

specialp 5y ago
Yes and we put a lot of time into making a vaccine. What if I said too many people are dying of car accidents, and they can almost all be completely prevented by lowering speed limits to walking speed. We live with the risk because it is low enough and making everyone travel at extremely low speeds would have a very adverse effect on the economy and quality of life. Safety improvements have been implemented that have not had a very onerous impact on life like having an airbag and seatbelt. And they allow us to drive at reasonable speeds with a reasonable level of safety. But still 40k people a year die in the USA. So if technology produces ways to make living with COVID less onerous and safer then why not? It is easy for us as mostly tech people to be like yeah lock that down forever. I am still getting paid full pay working from home, and my packages still come to the door. But for a lot of people it is a very large cost to pay. And eventually we will not be able to keep printing money out of it. People need to work and live.
- specialp 5y ago
  And not like it should matter but I live in NY where we saw one of the worst spikes of death, am fully vaccinated, had a relative die of COVID, and know others that have. I also posted this early on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406702 So it isn't like I am nonchalant about the virus. It is just that there is a balance.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cloverich 5y ago

> There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying, but we decide that these risks are low enough that we carry on normal life. Because there are no other (tenable) options for car accidents. If there was a vaccine you could take that would prevent you from being harmed in a car accident, and it was cheap (free even) and available, the expectations around car accidents would be quite a bit different.

specialp 5y ago
I don't believe I advocated for people not getting vaccinated. I am saying should we keep having "lockdowns"? I do think having lockdowns perpetually is not a tenable option when there is no end in sight. Vaccines when compared to cars are the seatbelt equivalent. They do not cause economic and social harm, and save a lot of lives. People should indeed get vaccinated and most are. Lockdowns are equivalent to restricting automobile travel or lowering speed to a extremely low limit. Sure they would be fine if there were a blizzard and lots of people were crashing. All one can do is wait for the snow to melt and then it would only be a temporary disruption. But in the case of lockdowns there's no chance they are going to end the spread of COVID, they just slow it at best. And they have a very large cost, and it has been a long time. It would be as if the temporary restrictions to save lives during the blizzard were persisted when an ice age occurred.
- cloverich 5y ago
  Lockdowns aren't meant to end the spread of COVID, only to limit it until people can get vaccinated. Vaccine's are the end game. As discussed in the article, if people aren't willing to get vaccinated and gov't unwilling to force, then letting it spread (not lockdowns) is the other option. Assuming people want to get vaccinated in places where the vaccine is not yet abundant (most countries), then lockdown's until supply rises could make sense. Nobody is advocating for permanent lockdowns with no end game. The more general concern of Delta (or any variant) is that the existing vaccine won't work against it, and / or the continued spread will lead to _more_ variants. Its unfortunately an artifical problem in the US, since there's plenty of vaccine supply.
5y ago