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Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sens

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

ridaj 5y ago
Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.
  - bedhead 5y ago
    You're wasting your time. COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc. You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to 11" conversation. It turns out that shocking people with a million volts of raw terror does in fact blow a fuse in many people's brains (go figure) causing them to lose all cognitive abilities.
    - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
      I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation. I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you invented this group to distance the vulnerable population from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no empathy for other humans.
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        There are people with severe immune deficiencies that any disease they catch could kill them. Why aren't you wearing a full body haz mat suit to protect them? Do you think people with immune deficiencies lives are worth less and its okay to kill them? Where do you draw the line where it's okay to kill some people with your bodily diseases but not others?
        bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
        I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think wearing a mask is a reasonable accommodation and barely an inconvenience. Same goes for FDA-approved vaccines. Reductio ad absurdum doesn't always work in the real world, so your hazmat scenario just sounds silly.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Let me summarize your argument. "Your haz mat argument is silly because I say it is. My argument is not silly because I say it's not." This absolute state of critical thinking in America... I can't wait till the media stops covering covid and everyone forgets that covid exists because they're on to the next thing the medium easily manipulates them over.
        bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
        My point is that your attempt at a logical argument misses a number of externalities. My refusal to engage is because you're acting like a jerk, not because I can't construct a proof. While you marvel at the "state of critical thinking" I am astounded by your lack of empathy.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        I literally pointed out externalities you were missing. Its hopeless conversation.
        5y ago
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    Isn't the same true of 9/11? The FAA oversees 45,000 flights per year and very rarely does anyone die.
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      Too late to edit, but that should be 45,000 per DAY
  - anthony_romeo 5y ago
    In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged 65 and older? Also, for death rates being higher in the elderly... isn't that going to be true for most diseases? Pointing this out seems tautological to me. And what does "very few" actually mean here? Is death the only negative outcome of COVID-19?
    - nradov 5y ago
      You can find CDC estimates of deaths by age group here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Here's a much more clear data set. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... To put this into perspective... 36,000 people died of car accidents in 2019. In the under 50 group around 20,000 people died of Covid. The under 50 age group makes up around 80% of the population. Interpret that however you want.
    - sleavey 5y ago
      > In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged 65 and older? I think you intended that as a rhetorical question but I want to point out that in the UK the NHS has calculated the "worth" of a single quality-adjusted life year. If a treatment gives less quality-adjusted extra life years than it costs, it isn't administered. In 2014 it was £20-60k [1]. This shows the NHS definitely does consider older peoples' lives worth less than younger peoples', on average. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924
      - anthony_romeo 5y ago
        Understood, though I'd point out that other insurance schemes will have similar sorts of calculations (either directly or indirectly in the form of premiums/annual limits in the US), so the specificity of the NHS isn't particularly helpful here, as it's one model among many. Also, based on my casual skimming of this article: https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-effectiveness https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-..., this particular model evaluates other factors beyond age (such as health history) and is in the context of providing specific treatments for specific conditions rather than broader actions for disease prevention. But yes, my question was rhetorical, in the sense that I've read far too much casual acceptance of the deaths of older people on HN, as if this ~15% of the population [in the US at least] are freely expendable.
  - heleninboodler 5y ago
    In the 18-39 age group, COVID-19 has caused 4x as many US deaths as deaths in all age groups on 9/11.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Yet not as many as car accidents in 2019. What is sensational comparison you present.
- JoshTko 5y ago
  4.5 million deaths from Covid so far.
  - switch007 5y ago
    From Covid or with covid (edit: I’m merely asking which stat you’re citing. Source?)? Ie the disease killed them or they tested positive while dying from something else?
    - ridaj 5y ago
      There have been clear excess deaths (mortality rate increases) from all causes combined during waves. Most evaluations of excess deaths that I've seen conclude that Covid deaths are undercounted not over counted.
      - switch007 5y ago
        They didn’t cite excess deaths however. Hence my question Again, you say “covid deaths”. That is not precise.
        rootusrootus 5y ago
        We count flu deaths as 'with flu' instead of 'from flu', so counting covid this way keeps it as close to apples-to-apples as possible.
        ridaj 5y ago
        Do we say "death from car accidents" or "death with car accident"? Do we discount terminal cancer patients, diabetics and asthmatics from car accident stats because they had a preexisting condition? In the case of covid as with car accidents, it's a distinction without a difference. Yes people are more predisposed to die from covid because of them, but analyses of all-causes excess mortality do not support the hypothesis that there is a large difference between deaths with covid and deaths from covid. EDIT: except when there isn't enough testing, which underreported deaths with covid towards the beginning of the pandemic.
dmarcos 5y ago
It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)
- dopamean 5y ago
  I agree fully re: expiration dates. IIRC the patriot act had an expiration date and it took nearly two decades for it to actually expire because it kept being reauthorized. It finally did expire last year and was not reauthorized and I suspect that is because we've actually already slipped far enough down the slope to no longer need that particular set of rules. So I support the expiration date idea. I just wish there was a way to implement it such that it actually had the desired effect.
- q1w2 5y ago
  That and the fact that one terrorist actually packed his sneakers with explosives and tried to detonate them on a plane.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  >That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the course of their everyday life should have an expiry date, forcing a debate every x decades as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism would be fantastic for forcibly clearing out a lot of society's "technical debt". This mechanism in my opinion would have stopped the lingering damage from moronic wars on abstract concepts. There would have to be some exceptions of course, things like fundamental liberties and human rights for example can't ever be negotiable in a civilised society. There's also an awful lot of very sector-specific legislation which probably doesn't need to be directly re-written every couple of decades too, although society at large won't be coming into contact with it much either so it's not really in the scope of the goal which is to stop yesterday's issues leaving nasty remants for today's societies.
aww_dang 5y ago
I agree the parallels are clear. Both narratives rely on fear and mass hysteria. Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less inflammatory way. The mainstream presses never had a reckoning for their role in issuing false rationales for the war in Iraq. Those who believed the propaganda shouted down dissent as "conspiracy nuttery" and anti-Americanism. After the fact, many of those I know simply switched their positions. They denied they ever unfairly dismissed concerns or experts (Hans Blix) which ran counter to prevailing propaganda. Which brings us back to the present rationales for expanded state power, where dissent is dismissed as conspiracy nuttery and anti-science. Once again, the incentives are ignored.
- bedhead 5y ago
  One of the more interesting parallels I see is how injecting morality into the matter poisoned everything and ensured terrible policy decisions. How many people and politicians got effectively bullied into going along with the idiotic Iraq war because people on the right accused them of not caring about 9/11 victims? 9/11 victims, granny-killer, same side of a different coin. Hysteria, paranoia, morality, a plan to keep people "safe" - beware of this dangerous pattern.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Absolutely. Above all if everyone is acting in good faith, there should be no taboos about inquiring about ulterior motives. Instead of ridiculing or censoring dissent, coherent and consistent explanations should be provided. If the rationales for hysteria and emergency measures cannot withstand an open debate, that should be illustrative.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Part of the problem in the current situation is that there is a ton of anti-science conspiracy nuttery. If you are going to dissent, you need to do so in a way that doesn't get pattern-matched with people who are clearly being irrational.
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
titzer 5y ago
> The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. I don't see the same parallels. After 9/11 the US was extraordinarily united and committed to vengeance. Thousands joined the military. After COVID we're more divided than ever and people are not even willing put a piece of cloth on their faces. Widespread denial and resistance to anything inconveniencing them. Whereas after 9/11 people were willing to put up with 3+ hour wait times and tons of other restrictions.
- bedhead 5y ago
  Mass loss of life. Novel way in which people died. People dying randomly (hard to avoid). General hysteria. Paranoia over a minority group. Moral outrage against anyone not falling inline politically. Overreaching government plans to keep people safe. Petty symbolism (freedom fries/masks) to sort the moral from the immoral. Should I go on?
  - titzer 5y ago
    You think masks are petty symbolism? I think that kind of trolling just raises the temperature here, which I'd like to avoid, so no, please, do not go on.
    - throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
      Do we think security theater is symbolism? It has had some positives over the years just as masks have a huge positive health impact during COVID but on both sides of the issue, people treat it as a signal as well, no?
      - chitowneats 5y ago
        Someone arguing in favor of security theater on HN. Brave.
    - tylersmith 5y ago
      It's not trolling just because you disagree with it.
newswasboring 5y ago
There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting lockdowns/mandates. I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some hard target.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I don't know how you don't see that. edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital utilization and mortality rate from the disease are good KPIs for that. Almost all responsible countries are at least trying to follow those KPIs.
    - nradov 5y ago
      The threat will never go away, but fortunately vaccination cuts the risk of death to virtually zero. SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus several animal species, so unlike smallpox or polio it can never be eradicated. Obviously we can't keep the safety measures in place forever, so what are the quantitative exit criteria?
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      >The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. Ok your argument just fell apart. Do we not always have the "need" to save lives? The "threat" is never going away. That's ambigous and completely subjective. What is is not is an objective measure of any sort. Which means it continues indefinitely until our leaders decide otherwise. The fact you cannot give me a set time when it will end, or what status we need to meet for all of the safety measures to end is pretty telling. >I don't know how you don't see that. Because you have no data or facts to back up your claim. You can't even explain it yourself.
dustintrex 5y ago
The intersection of COVID and air travel is particularly bad. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-travel-restrictions-should-be-scrapped https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-t...
aeoleonn 5y ago
The Hegelian dialectic inherent in both. A dialectic method of historical and philosophical progress that postulates (1) a beginning proposition called a thesis, (2) a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and (3) a synthesis whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.
- Pius_IX 5y ago
  Wow, I got to hand it to you! 'communist-aligned socio-economic elites' is the most creative code for 'the Jews' I have heard in quite a while. Oh, and you confused 'ironic' and 'coincidence' but I guess that hardly matters. Edit: Oh, the usual. Editing out all the antisemitic stuff once somebody calls you out for it. At least don't run away once someone questions your shitty beliefs.
  - aeoleonn 5y ago
    Actually you must have started writing that right after I deleted that part about "communist-aligned socio-economic elites". I deleted it because it was imprecise-- The dialectic switches between communism and capitalism depending on A/B testing of political revolution messaging. They're both.
    - Pius_IX 5y ago
      You don't need to be modest! I thought it was pretty precise. I especially like the part where the white man is the only one able to stand against (((them))) and fight against the pseudo-communist world government.
wesleywt 5y ago
What about 650000 American dead makes you cynical about COVID?
- abstractbarista 5y ago
  It just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ubermonkey 5y ago
>The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. Are they? Complaints about post-9/11 "security" have mostly been about the ineffectiveness of steps that are clearly security theater, or the boondoggles of things like the x-ray scanners. Input from security experts was widely ignored in favor of, well, dumb ideas. The COVID remediation steps we've been asked to take -- masks in public, social distancing, taking the vaccine once it's available -- are exactly what epidemiologists would've said were the right steps if asked about a hypothetical pandemic 25, 50, 75, or 100 years ago. They're directly in line with expert advice, and provably effective.
tootie 5y ago
I was thinking the opposite. If taking off my shoes results in a 0.0001% decrease in the chance of a plane blowing up, then why not? It's not really inconvenient. Same with masking. It's not inconvenient so why not? Even if it's all theater, theater has some value.
- chrismcb 5y ago
  Theater didn't have any value, in fact it has negative vale. How much time, energy, and money is spent waiting in TSA line, and for what? Taking your shoes off does not decrease the chance of the plane blowing up by 0.0001%. it decreases it by 0%. I am willing to bet that more people have been injured, removing their shoes in the airport than from a shoe bomb. Injuries from falling over while driving shoes to picking up a fungal disease from the dirty floor. An airport is a sieve, yet we treat it like a secure fortress, due to theater
betterunix2 5y ago
The only parallels are between COVID conspiracy theorists and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Nearly all federal COVID guidance from the CDC has been well-reasoned and carefully balances public health goals with the reality of life in America. State and local measures have been questionable, but all that says is that state and local governments are not really up to the task and should have universally deferred to the CDC.

ridaj 5y ago

Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...

nickthemagicman 5y ago
Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.
- bedhead 5y ago
  You're wasting your time. COVID deaths could be entirely amongst 97 year old obese smokers with stage 4 cancer and half the country would still give the same obtuse responses, call you granny-killer, tell you you're selfish for not wanting to wear a mask, say "pandemic" like it's a mic drop, etc etc etc. You'll be stuck in a COVID version of the "This amp goes to 11" conversation. It turns out that shocking people with a million volts of raw terror does in fact blow a fuse in many people's brains (go figure) causing them to lose all cognitive abilities.
  - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
    I disagree with you, even in your hypothetical situation. I'd gladly wear a mask to protect 97-year-old obese smokers, if they were a vulnerable group. I feel like you invented this group to distance the vulnerable population from "us", but it just makes it sound like you have no empathy for other humans.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      There are people with severe immune deficiencies that any disease they catch could kill them. Why aren't you wearing a full body haz mat suit to protect them? Do you think people with immune deficiencies lives are worth less and its okay to kill them? Where do you draw the line where it's okay to kill some people with your bodily diseases but not others?
      - bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
        I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think wearing a mask is a reasonable accommodation and barely an inconvenience. Same goes for FDA-approved vaccines. Reductio ad absurdum doesn't always work in the real world, so your hazmat scenario just sounds silly.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        Let me summarize your argument. "Your haz mat argument is silly because I say it is. My argument is not silly because I say it's not." This absolute state of critical thinking in America... I can't wait till the media stops covering covid and everyone forgets that covid exists because they're on to the next thing the medium easily manipulates them over.
        bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
        My point is that your attempt at a logical argument misses a number of externalities. My refusal to engage is because you're acting like a jerk, not because I can't construct a proof. While you marvel at the "state of critical thinking" I am astounded by your lack of empathy.
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        I literally pointed out externalities you were missing. Its hopeless conversation.
        5y ago
- bdcravens 5y ago
  Isn't the same true of 9/11? The FAA oversees 45,000 flights per year and very rarely does anyone die.
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    Too late to edit, but that should be 45,000 per DAY
- anthony_romeo 5y ago
  In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged 65 and older? Also, for death rates being higher in the elderly... isn't that going to be true for most diseases? Pointing this out seems tautological to me. And what does "very few" actually mean here? Is death the only negative outcome of COVID-19?
  - nradov 5y ago
    You can find CDC estimates of deaths by age group here. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Here's a much more clear data set. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... To put this into perspective... 36,000 people died of car accidents in 2019. In the under 50 group around 20,000 people died of Covid. The under 50 age group makes up around 80% of the population. Interpret that however you want.
  - sleavey 5y ago
    > In your opinion, how important are the lives of people aged 65 and older? I think you intended that as a rhetorical question but I want to point out that in the UK the NHS has calculated the "worth" of a single quality-adjusted life year. If a treatment gives less quality-adjusted extra life years than it costs, it isn't administered. In 2014 it was £20-60k [1]. This shows the NHS definitely does consider older peoples' lives worth less than younger peoples', on average. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924
    - anthony_romeo 5y ago
      Understood, though I'd point out that other insurance schemes will have similar sorts of calculations (either directly or indirectly in the form of premiums/annual limits in the US), so the specificity of the NHS isn't particularly helpful here, as it's one model among many. Also, based on my casual skimming of this article: https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-effectiveness https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg6/chapter/assessing-cost-..., this particular model evaluates other factors beyond age (such as health history) and is in the context of providing specific treatments for specific conditions rather than broader actions for disease prevention. But yes, my question was rhetorical, in the sense that I've read far too much casual acceptance of the deaths of older people on HN, as if this ~15% of the population [in the US at least] are freely expendable.
- heleninboodler 5y ago
  In the 18-39 age group, COVID-19 has caused 4x as many US deaths as deaths in all age groups on 9/11.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Yet not as many as car accidents in 2019. What is sensational comparison you present.
JoshTko 5y ago
4.5 million deaths from Covid so far.
- switch007 5y ago
  From Covid or with covid (edit: I’m merely asking which stat you’re citing. Source?)? Ie the disease killed them or they tested positive while dying from something else?
  - ridaj 5y ago
    There have been clear excess deaths (mortality rate increases) from all causes combined during waves. Most evaluations of excess deaths that I've seen conclude that Covid deaths are undercounted not over counted.
    - switch007 5y ago
      They didn’t cite excess deaths however. Hence my question Again, you say “covid deaths”. That is not precise.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        We count flu deaths as 'with flu' instead of 'from flu', so counting covid this way keeps it as close to apples-to-apples as possible.
      - ridaj 5y ago
        Do we say "death from car accidents" or "death with car accident"? Do we discount terminal cancer patients, diabetics and asthmatics from car accident stats because they had a preexisting condition? In the case of covid as with car accidents, it's a distinction without a difference. Yes people are more predisposed to die from covid because of them, but analyses of all-causes excess mortality do not support the hypothesis that there is a large difference between deaths with covid and deaths from covid. EDIT: except when there isn't enough testing, which underreported deaths with covid towards the beginning of the pandemic.

dmarcos 5y ago

It’s not cynical when looking at the incentives. Once a rule is in place for “safety” reasons the political cost to remove is really high (what if something bad happens?). Politicians won’t touch it. That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically (on a date or when a hard condition is met)

dopamean 5y ago
I agree fully re: expiration dates. IIRC the patriot act had an expiration date and it took nearly two decades for it to actually expire because it kept being reauthorized. It finally did expire last year and was not reauthorized and I suspect that is because we've actually already slipped far enough down the slope to no longer need that particular set of rules. So I support the expiration date idea. I just wish there was a way to implement it such that it actually had the desired effect.
q1w2 5y ago
That and the fact that one terrorist actually packed his sneakers with explosives and tried to detonate them on a plane.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>That’s why I think exceptional measures should expire automatically I'd go even further than this, I'd argue that all laws that ordinary people are likely to come into contact with in the course of their everyday life should have an expiry date, forcing a debate every x decades as to whether or not they're still fit for purpose. The date could be variable based on the nature of the legislation, but this mechanism would be fantastic for forcibly clearing out a lot of society's "technical debt". This mechanism in my opinion would have stopped the lingering damage from moronic wars on abstract concepts. There would have to be some exceptions of course, things like fundamental liberties and human rights for example can't ever be negotiable in a civilised society. There's also an awful lot of very sector-specific legislation which probably doesn't need to be directly re-written every couple of decades too, although society at large won't be coming into contact with it much either so it's not really in the scope of the goal which is to stop yesterday's issues leaving nasty remants for today's societies.

aww_dang 5y ago

I agree the parallels are clear. Both narratives rely on fear and mass hysteria. Putting aside the hot potato of 9/11, we can hopefully discuss the issue of Iraqi WMDs in a less inflammatory way. The mainstream presses never had a reckoning for their role in issuing false rationales for the war in Iraq. Those who believed the propaganda shouted down dissent as "conspiracy nuttery" and anti-Americanism. After the fact, many of those I know simply switched their positions. They denied they ever unfairly dismissed concerns or experts (Hans Blix) which ran counter to prevailing propaganda. Which brings us back to the present rationales for expanded state power, where dissent is dismissed as conspiracy nuttery and anti-science. Once again, the incentives are ignored.

bedhead 5y ago
One of the more interesting parallels I see is how injecting morality into the matter poisoned everything and ensured terrible policy decisions. How many people and politicians got effectively bullied into going along with the idiotic Iraq war because people on the right accused them of not caring about 9/11 victims? 9/11 victims, granny-killer, same side of a different coin. Hysteria, paranoia, morality, a plan to keep people "safe" - beware of this dangerous pattern.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Absolutely. Above all if everyone is acting in good faith, there should be no taboos about inquiring about ulterior motives. Instead of ridiculing or censoring dissent, coherent and consistent explanations should be provided. If the rationales for hysteria and emergency measures cannot withstand an open debate, that should be illustrative.
Godel_unicode 5y ago
Part of the problem in the current situation is that there is a ton of anti-science conspiracy nuttery. If you are going to dissent, you need to do so in a way that doesn't get pattern-matched with people who are clearly being irrational.
- 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

titzer 5y ago

> The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. I don't see the same parallels. After 9/11 the US was extraordinarily united and committed to vengeance. Thousands joined the military. After COVID we're more divided than ever and people are not even willing put a piece of cloth on their faces. Widespread denial and resistance to anything inconveniencing them. Whereas after 9/11 people were willing to put up with 3+ hour wait times and tons of other restrictions.

bedhead 5y ago
Mass loss of life. Novel way in which people died. People dying randomly (hard to avoid). General hysteria. Paranoia over a minority group. Moral outrage against anyone not falling inline politically. Overreaching government plans to keep people safe. Petty symbolism (freedom fries/masks) to sort the moral from the immoral. Should I go on?
- titzer 5y ago
  You think masks are petty symbolism? I think that kind of trolling just raises the temperature here, which I'd like to avoid, so no, please, do not go on.
  - throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
    Do we think security theater is symbolism? It has had some positives over the years just as masks have a huge positive health impact during COVID but on both sides of the issue, people treat it as a signal as well, no?
    - chitowneats 5y ago
      Someone arguing in favor of security theater on HN. Brave.
  - tylersmith 5y ago
    It's not trolling just because you disagree with it.

newswasboring 5y ago

There is a mountain worth of difference. The policies enacted for COVID have a very specific target, has been shown to work repeatedly, and deviating from them caused decline in the KPI its trying to maintain. Its nothing like TSA.

CountDrewku 5y ago
Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting lockdowns/mandates. I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some hard target.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I don't know how you don't see that. edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital utilization and mortality rate from the disease are good KPIs for that. Almost all responsible countries are at least trying to follow those KPIs.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The threat will never go away, but fortunately vaccination cuts the risk of death to virtually zero. SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus several animal species, so unlike smallpox or polio it can never be eradicated. Obviously we can't keep the safety measures in place forever, so what are the quantitative exit criteria?
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    >The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. Ok your argument just fell apart. Do we not always have the "need" to save lives? The "threat" is never going away. That's ambigous and completely subjective. What is is not is an objective measure of any sort. Which means it continues indefinitely until our leaders decide otherwise. The fact you cannot give me a set time when it will end, or what status we need to meet for all of the safety measures to end is pretty telling. >I don't know how you don't see that. Because you have no data or facts to back up your claim. You can't even explain it yourself.

dustintrex 5y ago

The intersection of COVID and air travel is particularly bad. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-travel-restrictions-should-be-scrapped https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-t...

aeoleonn 5y ago

The Hegelian dialectic inherent in both. A dialectic method of historical and philosophical progress that postulates (1) a beginning proposition called a thesis, (2) a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and (3) a synthesis whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.

Pius_IX 5y ago
Wow, I got to hand it to you! 'communist-aligned socio-economic elites' is the most creative code for 'the Jews' I have heard in quite a while. Oh, and you confused 'ironic' and 'coincidence' but I guess that hardly matters. Edit: Oh, the usual. Editing out all the antisemitic stuff once somebody calls you out for it. At least don't run away once someone questions your shitty beliefs.
- aeoleonn 5y ago
  Actually you must have started writing that right after I deleted that part about "communist-aligned socio-economic elites". I deleted it because it was imprecise-- The dialectic switches between communism and capitalism depending on A/B testing of political revolution messaging. They're both.
  - Pius_IX 5y ago
    You don't need to be modest! I thought it was pretty precise. I especially like the part where the white man is the only one able to stand against (((them))) and fight against the pseudo-communist world government.

wesleywt 5y ago

What about 650000 American dead makes you cynical about COVID?

abstractbarista 5y ago
It just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
- deleted 5y ago
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ubermonkey 5y ago

>The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie. Are they? Complaints about post-9/11 "security" have mostly been about the ineffectiveness of steps that are clearly security theater, or the boondoggles of things like the x-ray scanners. Input from security experts was widely ignored in favor of, well, dumb ideas. The COVID remediation steps we've been asked to take -- masks in public, social distancing, taking the vaccine once it's available -- are exactly what epidemiologists would've said were the right steps if asked about a hypothetical pandemic 25, 50, 75, or 100 years ago. They're directly in line with expert advice, and provably effective.

tootie 5y ago

I was thinking the opposite. If taking off my shoes results in a 0.0001% decrease in the chance of a plane blowing up, then why not? It's not really inconvenient. Same with masking. It's not inconvenient so why not? Even if it's all theater, theater has some value.

chrismcb 5y ago
Theater didn't have any value, in fact it has negative vale. How much time, energy, and money is spent waiting in TSA line, and for what? Taking your shoes off does not decrease the chance of the plane blowing up by 0.0001%. it decreases it by 0%. I am willing to bet that more people have been injured, removing their shoes in the airport than from a shoe bomb. Injuries from falling over while driving shoes to picking up a fungal disease from the dirty floor. An airport is a sieve, yet we treat it like a secure fortress, due to theater

betterunix2 5y ago

The only parallels are between COVID conspiracy theorists and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Nearly all federal COVID guidance from the CDC has been well-reasoned and carefully balances public health goals with the reality of life in America. State and local measures have been questionable, but all that says is that state and local governments are not really up to the task and should have universally deferred to the CDC.