8 ms·

The thing to takeaway from COVID-19 policy responses is that there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever. The virus has confounded and mutated and spre

The thing to takeaway from COVID-19 policy responses is that there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever. The virus has confounded and mutated and spread in the face of masking, social distancing, triple vaxxing, lockdowns, and medical apartheid. We are two years into this. It's clear that Covid is endemic and here to stay. That its rate of mutation and spread is too high to contain. Antiviral treatments and therapeutics should be given more heavy support and research. People also need to move on, and live freely, because life is too short to live in a bubble of fear and dreariness. How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses? How much life and joy has been sucked out of the world to stave off the inevitable?

beebmam 5y ago
Seems like China's policy and Taiwan's policy are the only nations that have clear success. And it's the zero tolerance of COVID policy. One that many of us have been calling for near 2 years now.
TylerE 5y ago
I think part of the problem is that things that work get discontinued... "Oh, we're 70% vaxxed and positive rate is under X%..we don't need to mask anymore.."
- majou 5y ago
  Where I live dropped mask mandate only to bring it back in a few months with a strict vaccine mandate.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    ...while where I live there never was any mask mandate, nor is there a vaccination mandate. Still most people in vulnerable groups have been vaccinated and every now and then you see someone with a mask although they are the exception rather than the rule. We also currently have the lowest SARS2 infection and mortality rate in Europe with no upward trend - it is actually still going down [1]. Meanwhile in Germany questions have been asked in the Thüringer Landtag (parliament of the state Thüringen) [2] about an oddity in the relationship between excess mortality and vaccination status of states (Bundesländer) - the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality [3,4 (both in German)]. This should of course be the other way around, it is after all against severe disease and death that the vaccines are meant to protect. [1] https://c19.se/en https://c19.se/en [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVOqYUAHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVOqYUAHTo [3] https://www.utebergner.de/der-wert-eines-menschen-haengt-nicht-von-seinem-impfstatus-ab/ https://www.utebergner.de/der-wert-eines-menschen-haengt-nic... (in German) [4] https://www.utebergner.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/%C3%9Cbersterblichkeit-KW-36-bis-40-in-2021-003.pdf https://www.utebergner.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/%C3... (in German)
mistrial9 5y ago
there you go, thinking as an individual -- a voice like a poet. Decisions on governance are made from the point of view of administration .. that is, what are the financial costs, how much attention is on the subject, things like that. The monetary costs to insurers combined with Doctor's Orders (literally) are at stake. Individual people, their work places, social lives, their free will, their own affairs, are counted for naught it seems.
- mft_ 5y ago
  How would you balance harm caused to other individuals? If someone was walking around a mall with Ebola, I'd assume you'd be comfortable with them being restrained and placed in quarantine? Everyone that contracts COVID and is seriously harmed (or dies) contracted it from someone else - and through different measures, that transmission and death was preventable. And yet, because in the majority of cases, COVID isn't seriously harmful or fatal, it's okay to be part of its transmission to others?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Yes. You've answered your own question, unwittingly, by comparing covid with Ebola and pointing out that in the (vast) majority of cases it is not harmful. The answer is yes. People breathe air. People spend time around each other. These mostly mild yet sometimes deadly illnesses will be transmitted.
mft_ 5y ago
With COVID rife, and too few people vaccinated, the outcome of "people also need to move on, and live freely" is spread, mutation, infection, and many many deaths - both from COVID directly, and also from people with other conditions who can't get optimal treatment due to hospitals and especially ICUs being (literally) full of COVID sufferers. That's what restrictions and lockdowns are largely driven by: preventing disasters within the hospital system. So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?
- bserge 5y ago
  Got Covid, got the vaccine, will get the fucking "boosters", will wear mask and be careful. Now fuck off with any other restrictions, that's where I think the line is.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    That’s great for you, now get the other 40% of the country on board and we can “fuck off with any other restrictions”. Your anger should be directed at the unvaxxed because that’s what’s driving policy right now.
    - version_five 5y ago
      Honestly it would be much more productive to reject people who want to tell others how to live, than try and whip ourselves into a frenzy over some external enemy like you are advocating. This is not only sociopathic - basically dehumanizing others, it never ends well, even for those who think they're on the "right" side now, and to the point of the discussion, doesn't actually solve anything except fulfill people's worse base desires to project their fear onto an enemy.
      - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
        In modern society there are implicit and explicit ways by which we force each other to live, whether that’s through laws or social norms. This isn’t any different.
callmeal 5y ago
>How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses? I would think that not having a high school graduation / prom /recital /wedding etc to be a lot less ruinous than having a close relative die from one of these? I agree with you: life is too short. Personally I would hate for it to be cut even shorter because all the hospital beds are taken up by people who contracted an avoidable, extremely infectious disease. https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-after-mom-encouraged-threatened-and-nagged-him-to-get-vaccinated/ https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-af... https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedding-after-unvaccinated-groom-dies-covid-1638189 https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedd...
- version_five 5y ago
  Your argument is an old and tired one. Maybe we should all be on mandatory medically supervised diet and exercise regimens, not allowed to drive, not allowed any alcohol or caffeine or other drugs. If your dream is to optimize for longevity over all else, you can do that, at home. For many people, living life is actually important, not just living long. You have no right to tell them how to behave, or to rob them of life moments because of your personal criteria you're trying to optimize for.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    You argue diametrically and it isn’t any better. There is room for civic duty and living life, which should be a stark and valuable lesson to all ages. My parents raised me with the mantra “life isn’t fair” and while trite, it’s even truer today than it was all those years ago.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
pangolinplayer 5y ago
This is and was always about power. The idea they care about the health of the less than 1% of people who die is laughable. They unleashed a disease on the world, seized further power and mocked you the whole time and everyone let it happen. We slaves deserve our condition.
version_five 5y ago
> there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever. No clear success from a covid mitigation perspective, but lots of huge wins in gaining power and growing bureaucracy. From the perspective of an advocate that wants a way to push their agenda forward, or a director that wants to get more budget and headcount for their group, covid had been a huge boon. There have been massive losers as well, in politics, business, and personal freedom, but if you look at how some have benefitted it's clear why there are lots of entrenched interests that don't want us to move on.
belltaco 5y ago
"Accidents still happen and people die despite traffic lights, stop signs, some wearing seatbelts and having airbags installed, everyone needs to move on and ignore all road safety rules and laws"
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  So… you think mask mandates should be permanent?
- chrismcb 5y ago
  If we discovered that the safety rules add laws don't help, we usually abolish them. But they do help. Mask and vaccine mandates don't really help.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    They definitely help.
woodruffw 5y ago
Given that the US is sitting at a vaccination rate of around 60% (i.e., around 10% lower than the lowest estimate for "some degree of herd immunity"), I don't think you can fairly blame this on strategy (other than a general failure of public education, but that's a doozy of a failure.) One way or another, the restrictions are going to eventually end. But they could have ended sooner, with fewer deaths and fewer severely ill, had more people decided to act affirmatively and with their civic duty in mind.
- graeme 5y ago
  Unclear this is true. There’s no herd immunity for any other coronavirus. Antibodies wane quicker than for other diseases. We have a SARS virus that we hope is actually just a common cold. That’s the plan. Hope and see. Even highly vaccinated European societies are seeing a sharp rise in cases now that winter is here. Even Portugal, which vaccinated basically 100% of adults, has seem cases triple in a month. They seem to be doing alright, but antibodies are currently fresh from recent vaccines. We’ll see how this goes long run. But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season. You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Last year it was 15. So about a 33% improvement. Good, but what happens if/when cases go higher? Portugal already vaccinated everyone.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season. Certainly. I'm not claiming victory yet, and I don't think we should. But all current evidence points to vaccines being both short-term effective against infection and long-term effective against severe illness, which are the two metrics we (should) all care about. > You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Do you have a link for that? I'm curious whether Portugal breaks it down by vaccination status; the numbers I've seen from Singapore show mortality rates around tenfold for the unvaccinated. It's not inconceivable that deaths there are disproportionately spread among pockets of unvaccinated individuals, as we've seen elsewhere.
mmazing 5y ago
I disagree that there was no clear success. Look at New Zealand. They took it seriously and took it seriously early. Their cases dropped to near nothing and held that way until September of 2021. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan... I would argue that most of these countries and US counties being talked about in this article were deeply divided from the start, and never had great adoption of mitigation efforts due to politicization of the issue. Had we all acted like New Zealand, actually having unified messaging and adoption of efforts, maybe we could have cleared this up early on and wouldn't be fighting all these variants now.
newacct583 5y ago
South Korea certainly seems like a success, with a per capita death rate about 3% of what the US saw. In fact contrary to your point, there is a very wide spread in covid impact from nation to nation. Here's a graph of all nations with 10M+ populations (scaled to eliminate Peru, which is a significant outlier that makes the graph hard to read): https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=Czechia&show=pop10m&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr... And while there's lots of confounding issues here, like developing nations or autocracies with underreported or suspect data, it's pretty clear that some countries are doing a ton better than others. And it certainly looks to my eyes that among developed democracies, the nations with stronger popular adherence to mitigation strategies (in particular vaccination rates, but distancing and mask-wearing too) are the ones who are winning. (And needless to say, the US is pretty much at the bottom of the list of industrial democracies.)
User23 5y ago
We should figure out what Sub-Saharan Africa is doing right and then emulate that, because they've been by far the least affected, despite a 6% vaccination rate. More on that here[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278184
- occamrazor 5y ago
  They are young and spend a lot of time outside.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > and then emulate that What they're doing 'right', in general, is not having a lot of old people. It would be rather difficult for most developed countries to emulate _that_.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Not for long with the rate things are going with covid. Morbid jokes aside, what I see here is an indicator that vulnerable people need to be protected (if they want), and the rest of the young healthy population needs to go on with life, and probably spend a little more time outside.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Keeping all unvaccinated elderly people under house arrest forever probably wouldn't fly. And the "if they want" thing doesn't work; they, obviously, do _not_ want, and would go out, get infected, and overload the ICUs. Ultimately it all comes back to the hospitals; if they're overloaded then suddenly things get a _lot_ worse, and people start dying of preventable non-covid things.
      - betwixthewires 5y ago
        Well, it wouldn't be forever. Yes, I enjoy morbid jokes. Preventing the young who probably won't wind up in hospitals from doing whatever they want doesn't solve the problem of vulnerable people not obeying lockdowns and winding up in an ICU. And it doesn't seem to affect the transmission rate if 2 years of data are telling us anything useful. The vulnerable who choose not to protect themselves are going to wind up in an ICU whether the young healthy people are living their lives or not. So what's the solution then?
lezojeda 5y ago
I seriously can't fathom at all how anyone could be in favor of lockdowns still.
- beebmam 5y ago
  It's working in China, one of the only countries that has actual success with their COVID policy.
  - WhisperingShiba 5y ago
    You still trust what the Chinese Government says?
    - Leary 5y ago
      Name one person who died from Covid in China in 2021. You can't.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        I can't name one person who died from Covid in Azerbaijan, either, but that doesn't mean there weren't any.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Do they not do their job ( temporarily limiting the spread of the virus)? There are tradeoffs, sure, but they are very effective and sometimes necessary (e.g. you have exponential growth in cases and hospitalisations, and predict that soon ICUs will be full - do you do nothing or do you lockdown?)
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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burntbridge 5y ago
>no clear success in any strategy whatsoever What is your measure of success? I think for most governments it is preventing hospitals from being overrun and depleted of nurses and doctors through infection. Also allowing time to get the population vaccinated and hence protected. Can't speak for the USA but in Australia we are nearing 95% double vaccinated, the measures to control the virus are broadly supported by just about everyone in spite of what you might hear.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  And is it working?
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    It doesn't matter. People have convinced themselves these measures must work or "the experts" wouldn't have recommended doing them. The reality is they are participating in a giant uncontrolled experiment. There is probably a reason no society ever attempted to do this in the past (and probably will never do it again in the future). It doesn't work, and if it did, the benefits are so minute that they don't outweigh the immense societal costs. The very fact that people can legitimately question the efficiency of lockdowns means they aren't worth it. For lockdowns to be worth the cost their effect should be so apparent and dramatic that any reasonable person looking at the data would see it was worth it. If you need PhD level math to discern the difference between your control and test groups.... it means even if lockdowns work they aren't worth the cost.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      My question was a response to "what's your measure of success?" My measure of success is not how many people are vaccinated, how hard it is to travel, or any of the stuff I was responding to. I want to know if it works.

beebmam 5y ago

Seems like China's policy and Taiwan's policy are the only nations that have clear success. And it's the zero tolerance of COVID policy. One that many of us have been calling for near 2 years now.

TylerE 5y ago

I think part of the problem is that things that work get discontinued... "Oh, we're 70% vaxxed and positive rate is under X%..we don't need to mask anymore.."

majou 5y ago
Where I live dropped mask mandate only to bring it back in a few months with a strict vaccine mandate.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  ...while where I live there never was any mask mandate, nor is there a vaccination mandate. Still most people in vulnerable groups have been vaccinated and every now and then you see someone with a mask although they are the exception rather than the rule. We also currently have the lowest SARS2 infection and mortality rate in Europe with no upward trend - it is actually still going down [1]. Meanwhile in Germany questions have been asked in the Thüringer Landtag (parliament of the state Thüringen) [2] about an oddity in the relationship between excess mortality and vaccination status of states (Bundesländer) - the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality [3,4 (both in German)]. This should of course be the other way around, it is after all against severe disease and death that the vaccines are meant to protect. [1] https://c19.se/en https://c19.se/en [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVOqYUAHTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVOqYUAHTo [3] https://www.utebergner.de/der-wert-eines-menschen-haengt-nicht-von-seinem-impfstatus-ab/ https://www.utebergner.de/der-wert-eines-menschen-haengt-nic... (in German) [4] https://www.utebergner.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/%C3%9Cbersterblichkeit-KW-36-bis-40-in-2021-003.pdf https://www.utebergner.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/%C3... (in German)

mistrial9 5y ago

there you go, thinking as an individual -- a voice like a poet. Decisions on governance are made from the point of view of administration .. that is, what are the financial costs, how much attention is on the subject, things like that. The monetary costs to insurers combined with Doctor's Orders (literally) are at stake. Individual people, their work places, social lives, their free will, their own affairs, are counted for naught it seems.

mft_ 5y ago
How would you balance harm caused to other individuals? If someone was walking around a mall with Ebola, I'd assume you'd be comfortable with them being restrained and placed in quarantine? Everyone that contracts COVID and is seriously harmed (or dies) contracted it from someone else - and through different measures, that transmission and death was preventable. And yet, because in the majority of cases, COVID isn't seriously harmful or fatal, it's okay to be part of its transmission to others?
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Yes. You've answered your own question, unwittingly, by comparing covid with Ebola and pointing out that in the (vast) majority of cases it is not harmful. The answer is yes. People breathe air. People spend time around each other. These mostly mild yet sometimes deadly illnesses will be transmitted.

mft_ 5y ago

With COVID rife, and too few people vaccinated, the outcome of "people also need to move on, and live freely" is spread, mutation, infection, and many many deaths - both from COVID directly, and also from people with other conditions who can't get optimal treatment due to hospitals and especially ICUs being (literally) full of COVID sufferers. That's what restrictions and lockdowns are largely driven by: preventing disasters within the hospital system. So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?

bserge 5y ago
Got Covid, got the vaccine, will get the fucking "boosters", will wear mask and be careful. Now fuck off with any other restrictions, that's where I think the line is.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  That’s great for you, now get the other 40% of the country on board and we can “fuck off with any other restrictions”. Your anger should be directed at the unvaxxed because that’s what’s driving policy right now.
  - version_five 5y ago
    Honestly it would be much more productive to reject people who want to tell others how to live, than try and whip ourselves into a frenzy over some external enemy like you are advocating. This is not only sociopathic - basically dehumanizing others, it never ends well, even for those who think they're on the "right" side now, and to the point of the discussion, doesn't actually solve anything except fulfill people's worse base desires to project their fear onto an enemy.
    - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
      In modern society there are implicit and explicit ways by which we force each other to live, whether that’s through laws or social norms. This isn’t any different.

callmeal 5y ago

>How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses? I would think that not having a high school graduation / prom /recital /wedding etc to be a lot less ruinous than having a close relative die from one of these? I agree with you: life is too short. Personally I would hate for it to be cut even shorter because all the hospital beds are taken up by people who contracted an avoidable, extremely infectious disease. https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-after-mom-encouraged-threatened-and-nagged-him-to-get-vaccinated/ https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-af... https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedding-after-unvaccinated-groom-dies-covid-1638189 https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedd...

version_five 5y ago
Your argument is an old and tired one. Maybe we should all be on mandatory medically supervised diet and exercise regimens, not allowed to drive, not allowed any alcohol or caffeine or other drugs. If your dream is to optimize for longevity over all else, you can do that, at home. For many people, living life is actually important, not just living long. You have no right to tell them how to behave, or to rob them of life moments because of your personal criteria you're trying to optimize for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  You argue diametrically and it isn’t any better. There is room for civic duty and living life, which should be a stark and valuable lesson to all ages. My parents raised me with the mantra “life isn’t fair” and while trite, it’s even truer today than it was all those years ago.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

pangolinplayer 5y ago

This is and was always about power. The idea they care about the health of the less than 1% of people who die is laughable. They unleashed a disease on the world, seized further power and mocked you the whole time and everyone let it happen. We slaves deserve our condition.

version_five 5y ago

> there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever. No clear success from a covid mitigation perspective, but lots of huge wins in gaining power and growing bureaucracy. From the perspective of an advocate that wants a way to push their agenda forward, or a director that wants to get more budget and headcount for their group, covid had been a huge boon. There have been massive losers as well, in politics, business, and personal freedom, but if you look at how some have benefitted it's clear why there are lots of entrenched interests that don't want us to move on.

belltaco 5y ago

"Accidents still happen and people die despite traffic lights, stop signs, some wearing seatbelts and having airbags installed, everyone needs to move on and ignore all road safety rules and laws"

commandlinefan 5y ago
So… you think mask mandates should be permanent?
chrismcb 5y ago
If we discovered that the safety rules add laws don't help, we usually abolish them. But they do help. Mask and vaccine mandates don't really help.
- belltaco 5y ago
  They definitely help.

woodruffw 5y ago

Given that the US is sitting at a vaccination rate of around 60% (i.e., around 10% lower than the lowest estimate for "some degree of herd immunity"), I don't think you can fairly blame this on strategy (other than a general failure of public education, but that's a doozy of a failure.) One way or another, the restrictions are going to eventually end. But they could have ended sooner, with fewer deaths and fewer severely ill, had more people decided to act affirmatively and with their civic duty in mind.

graeme 5y ago
Unclear this is true. There’s no herd immunity for any other coronavirus. Antibodies wane quicker than for other diseases. We have a SARS virus that we hope is actually just a common cold. That’s the plan. Hope and see. Even highly vaccinated European societies are seeing a sharp rise in cases now that winter is here. Even Portugal, which vaccinated basically 100% of adults, has seem cases triple in a month. They seem to be doing alright, but antibodies are currently fresh from recent vaccines. We’ll see how this goes long run. But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season. You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Last year it was 15. So about a 33% improvement. Good, but what happens if/when cases go higher? Portugal already vaccinated everyone.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season. Certainly. I'm not claiming victory yet, and I don't think we should. But all current evidence points to vaccines being both short-term effective against infection and long-term effective against severe illness, which are the two metrics we (should) all care about. > You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Do you have a link for that? I'm curious whether Portugal breaks it down by vaccination status; the numbers I've seen from Singapore show mortality rates around tenfold for the unvaccinated. It's not inconceivable that deaths there are disproportionately spread among pockets of unvaccinated individuals, as we've seen elsewhere.

mmazing 5y ago

I disagree that there was no clear success. Look at New Zealand. They took it seriously and took it seriously early. Their cases dropped to near nothing and held that way until September of 2021. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan... I would argue that most of these countries and US counties being talked about in this article were deeply divided from the start, and never had great adoption of mitigation efforts due to politicization of the issue. Had we all acted like New Zealand, actually having unified messaging and adoption of efforts, maybe we could have cleared this up early on and wouldn't be fighting all these variants now.

newacct583 5y ago

South Korea certainly seems like a success, with a per capita death rate about 3% of what the US saw. In fact contrary to your point, there is a very wide spread in covid impact from nation to nation. Here's a graph of all nations with 10M+ populations (scaled to eliminate Peru, which is a significant outlier that makes the graph hard to read): https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=Czechia&show=pop10m&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right#countries-normalized https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr... And while there's lots of confounding issues here, like developing nations or autocracies with underreported or suspect data, it's pretty clear that some countries are doing a ton better than others. And it certainly looks to my eyes that among developed democracies, the nations with stronger popular adherence to mitigation strategies (in particular vaccination rates, but distancing and mask-wearing too) are the ones who are winning. (And needless to say, the US is pretty much at the bottom of the list of industrial democracies.)

User23 5y ago

We should figure out what Sub-Saharan Africa is doing right and then emulate that, because they've been by far the least affected, despite a 6% vaccination rate. More on that here[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278184

occamrazor 5y ago
They are young and spend a lot of time outside.
rsynnott 5y ago
> and then emulate that What they're doing 'right', in general, is not having a lot of old people. It would be rather difficult for most developed countries to emulate _that_.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Not for long with the rate things are going with covid. Morbid jokes aside, what I see here is an indicator that vulnerable people need to be protected (if they want), and the rest of the young healthy population needs to go on with life, and probably spend a little more time outside.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    Keeping all unvaccinated elderly people under house arrest forever probably wouldn't fly. And the "if they want" thing doesn't work; they, obviously, do _not_ want, and would go out, get infected, and overload the ICUs. Ultimately it all comes back to the hospitals; if they're overloaded then suddenly things get a _lot_ worse, and people start dying of preventable non-covid things.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Well, it wouldn't be forever. Yes, I enjoy morbid jokes. Preventing the young who probably won't wind up in hospitals from doing whatever they want doesn't solve the problem of vulnerable people not obeying lockdowns and winding up in an ICU. And it doesn't seem to affect the transmission rate if 2 years of data are telling us anything useful. The vulnerable who choose not to protect themselves are going to wind up in an ICU whether the young healthy people are living their lives or not. So what's the solution then?

lezojeda 5y ago

I seriously can't fathom at all how anyone could be in favor of lockdowns still.

beebmam 5y ago
It's working in China, one of the only countries that has actual success with their COVID policy.
- WhisperingShiba 5y ago
  You still trust what the Chinese Government says?
  - Leary 5y ago
    Name one person who died from Covid in China in 2021. You can't.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      I can't name one person who died from Covid in Azerbaijan, either, but that doesn't mean there weren't any.
sofixa 5y ago
Do they not do their job ( temporarily limiting the spread of the virus)? There are tradeoffs, sure, but they are very effective and sometimes necessary (e.g. you have exponential growth in cases and hospitalisations, and predict that soon ICUs will be full - do you do nothing or do you lockdown?)

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burntbridge 5y ago

>no clear success in any strategy whatsoever What is your measure of success? I think for most governments it is preventing hospitals from being overrun and depleted of nurses and doctors through infection. Also allowing time to get the population vaccinated and hence protected. Can't speak for the USA but in Australia we are nearing 95% double vaccinated, the measures to control the virus are broadly supported by just about everyone in spite of what you might hear.

betwixthewires 5y ago
And is it working?
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  It doesn't matter. People have convinced themselves these measures must work or "the experts" wouldn't have recommended doing them. The reality is they are participating in a giant uncontrolled experiment. There is probably a reason no society ever attempted to do this in the past (and probably will never do it again in the future). It doesn't work, and if it did, the benefits are so minute that they don't outweigh the immense societal costs. The very fact that people can legitimately question the efficiency of lockdowns means they aren't worth it. For lockdowns to be worth the cost their effect should be so apparent and dramatic that any reasonable person looking at the data would see it was worth it. If you need PhD level math to discern the difference between your control and test groups.... it means even if lockdowns work they aren't worth the cost.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    My question was a response to "what's your measure of success?" My measure of success is not how many people are vaccinated, how hard it is to travel, or any of the stuff I was responding to. I want to know if it works.