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I was in Grade 7 the first time they closed schools here in Ontario. I certainly didn't get enough sleep, usually around five or six, maybe seven hours at most.

I was in Grade 7 the first time they closed schools here in Ontario. I certainly didn't get enough sleep, usually around five or six, maybe seven hours at most. The second time around was even worse. I didn't do work, I didn't go outside, all I did was mess about on my computer. In general, it was- and is- a horribly unhealthy experience for me, both mentally and physically. Although, I still struggle with this "remote learning", I've matured enough to get by. Now I'm in Grade 9, and, sure enough, we're at it again.

laurent92 5y ago
Thinking that lockdowns are a solution to anything, including a pandemic, was a neat way to drive many people insane. I won’t tell my personal… happenings… but I double on your difficulty.
- schleck8 5y ago
  It was a good meassure when there weren't any alternatives. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSKBN2842WS https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSK...
- sofixa 5y ago
  Please elaborate how are lockdowns not a solution to stop the spread of a pandemic, because they most certainly are, and stopped every country's health system to get to the terrible state Italy's got at the beginning. It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
  - supperburg 5y ago
    https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Did you even read it? They're arguing that keeping a strict lockdown for long has too serious negative effects, not that it isn't effective in combating an airborne virus, which it is. Furthermore, it's from October 2020, more than a year ago. We have vaccines now and they're helping, but not stopping the virus fully. Hospitals are still filling up in some places, and for that various stages of restrictions up to lockdown are the main ways stop it.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    1. You’re overoptimizing for Covid, and not for health, 2. The adverse effects of mental and physical heath are irreversible, 3. The tanking of the economy and the debt (until 2048 for France) is irreversible, 4. You didn’t even solve Covid.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Those are valid and debatable issues, and a lot can be said about them ( like that the economic downturn isn't optional and is due to the pandemic, as countries like Sweden and states in the US which didn't do any sort of lockdown showed us). However, the question is do lockdowns help against a pandemic? I don't see how anyone can argue with that. The downsides are indeed significant and need to be taken into account, but it's just a fact that lockdowns severely limit the spread of an airborne virus like COVID-19.
      - laurent92 5y ago
        Just today: “Youth suicide attempts soared during the pandemic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859149 We don’t have the figures yet, that’s why we think lockdowns helped. But cholesterol doesn’t kill immediately. Alcohol doesn’t kill immediately. Loneliness doesn’t kill immediately, it slowly settles as friendships got destroyed in anger during the pandemic, and new meetups didn’t arrive, and the guy becomes homeless 5 years later. It may take years, but a lot of human misery will have been triggered by choosing lockdowns. We don’t even have the figures yet. > severely limits the spread of an airborne virus Yes, while we’re locked, and then it just takes weeks to recirculate as normal. It took >1 year to get the vaccines, only a 1 year lockdown would have solved us, therefore it is …not a solution to anything to lock people down. Not a secret that solitary confinement in prisons is used to destroy someone. Lockdowns made a lot of people completely crazy, particularly the people you don’t notice immediately. But who cares, we’ve solved Covid! Wait, we didn’t.
        sofixa 5y ago
        We solved the initial exponential growths that were threatening to or did overload the medical system. It was the only possible solution. Edited to add: furthermore, in most countries deaths not related to Covid fell drastically compared to previous years, including suicides. Yes, the fallout medium-long term is still to come, but you can't deny that it did stop the immediate very dangerous impact. In countries like Italy and France military hospitals had to be deployed, and many in intensive care were transferred to neighbouring countries. You can't just dismiss this and say people stuck alone at home had it worse than those on the ventilators.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Too little, too late. If only we have been much faster and stronger to react we could have avoided this WHOLE epidemic with a mere ~1 month hard lockdown... (instead we indeed seem to have picked one of the worst ways to deal with it, short of course of no measures at all)
JPKab 5y ago
https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ I'm terribly sorry for what happened to you. It shouldn't have happened. After the first few months the data was very clear that schools were safe to open. They absolutely shouldn't be closed right now. You are a victim of cowardly bureaucrats and powerful and wealthy elderly people who desperately want to cling to more years of their lives despite already being at the end. They don't care at all if they rob you of your future. They tell themselves little lies like "kids are resilient" to make themselves feel better. They were wrong to tell people they couldn't go to playgrounds and ignore the early science that showed that the virus didn't spread outdoors. They've never apologized for that mistake. When you see people walking around outside wearing masks, know that they have bought into a foolish lie completely removed from any form of science. Your teachers were all too happy to have the schools closed despite being in age groups where they were also not majorly at risk especially after being vaccinated. I live in Colorado, and we are now at a point in this state where omicron is the dominant strain. Everyone here is catching it and waking up to the fact that it's a cold and very little more. Your schools are being shut for no reason other than cowardice. Don't be afraid to call it what it is. You are surrounded by cowards. Cowards are always quick to call the brave foolish and reckless. It's how they make themselves feel better. Look around you and learn. You are witnessing a reality that I was naive to for far too long: Most people would rather do what is popular than what is right. Education is not inoculation to groupthink. Rather, it often is paired with brainwashing and a propensity to outsource critical thinking to central authority figures. If you add up all of the deaths from this virus under the age of 40, they make up less than 1% of the total. Your education was sacrificed to protect a population of people that are no longer working or paying taxes. In Japan when the nuclear accident at Fukushima happened, older plant workers stepped up to walk into the radiation to spare younger generations. In our society we did the opposite. I hope you have a good home life because that would make you one of the more fortunate victims of these foolish lockdowns. I grew up in an abusive home in the rural southern United States. There were weeks where I begged for Monday morning to come as soon as possible so I could escape. School was a refuge for me. And and there are many many children with far worse homes than I had who were forced to be shut into them with abusive parents who were put into an even worse mood then they were typically in before the pandemic. The statistics on child abuse show this as well. Like the fools in my nation who rushed us into the Iraq war on false pretenses, the people who are wrong now will never admit it. As the years go by and it becomes more clear that this was utter foolishness, many will pretend that they were opposed to the lockdowns and these other ridiculous policies. They will be lying. I have two children of my own. My wife works as a kindergarten teacher. The children she is seeing in her classroom now are incredibly stunted. Every day she comes home with new stories about how bad it is. They have been locked in their houses for 2 years, given iPads as babysitters by lazy or tired or emotionally exhausted parents. It's an utter horror what the cowards have done to our children. I know this comment will be downloaded to oblivion by the cowards. They are the majority of the people on this website. They're the majority in tech now. Most will never start companies. They just follow the path laid out for them, study algorithm interview books, and go get a desk at Google working on a widget in a product that nobody cares about it or will ever see. They all owe you an apology but they will never apologize or admit they were wrong. On behalf of them I am sorry. Many of us tried to stop them but we were censored, we were ridiculed, we were mocked, we were fired. There were many who would raise questions about the lockdowns in private, but in public they would go along with the crowd like the cowards they were. Never be one of those. They are the worst of us. The fact that you're on this website is a good sign so I'm sure you're going to be alright. But you're at a good age to recognize how foolish many of the adults around you are. I was in that place when I was your age.
refurb 5y ago
If I were to guess how all this will end is some side effective of restrictions will read its ugly head - mental health, economic recession, or just general civil disobedience. Then suddenly we’ll be told “trade offs need to be made” and “the vaccines provide enough protection to relax restrictions”. The fact that we’re 2 years into it and with a population that is mostly vaccine and at a much reduced risk yet the restriction seem to be the same or worse?
- maccard 5y ago
  The restrictions are definitely not the same as they were 2 years ago when this all started. Schools shut, everyone working from home, no bar/cafe/restaurants, no outdoor social activities qas what we had then. In the last two weeks I've been to a bar twice and the cinema. I don't know of anywhere in the world (but could be wrong) that is still in that form of lock down right now.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Depends where you are? Two years ago Canada didn’t have many restrictions at all. Masks weren’t even a requirement in all provinces. Ontario, Canada just cranked up restrictions. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures Quebec now has curfew, primary schools closed. All public events canceled. https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Problemes_de_sante/covid-19/mesures-en-vigueur-anglais.pdf?1640978711 https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Pr...
    - maccard 5y ago
      2 years ago exactly, yes but in the spirit of HN you should take the best possible reading. If you compare to March 2020 instead the restrictions are still less than they were then.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > Quebec now has curfew Wait, how does that work? Do people get arrested just because they are out past curfew? Random ID checks?

laurent92 5y ago

Thinking that lockdowns are a solution to anything, including a pandemic, was a neat way to drive many people insane. I won’t tell my personal… happenings… but I double on your difficulty.

schleck8 5y ago
It was a good meassure when there weren't any alternatives. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSKBN2842WS https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSK...
sofixa 5y ago
Please elaborate how are lockdowns not a solution to stop the spread of a pandemic, because they most certainly are, and stopped every country's health system to get to the terrible state Italy's got at the beginning. It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
- supperburg 5y ago
  https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Did you even read it? They're arguing that keeping a strict lockdown for long has too serious negative effects, not that it isn't effective in combating an airborne virus, which it is. Furthermore, it's from October 2020, more than a year ago. We have vaccines now and they're helping, but not stopping the virus fully. Hospitals are still filling up in some places, and for that various stages of restrictions up to lockdown are the main ways stop it.
- laurent92 5y ago
  1. You’re overoptimizing for Covid, and not for health, 2. The adverse effects of mental and physical heath are irreversible, 3. The tanking of the economy and the debt (until 2048 for France) is irreversible, 4. You didn’t even solve Covid.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Those are valid and debatable issues, and a lot can be said about them ( like that the economic downturn isn't optional and is due to the pandemic, as countries like Sweden and states in the US which didn't do any sort of lockdown showed us). However, the question is do lockdowns help against a pandemic? I don't see how anyone can argue with that. The downsides are indeed significant and need to be taken into account, but it's just a fact that lockdowns severely limit the spread of an airborne virus like COVID-19.
    - laurent92 5y ago
      Just today: “Youth suicide attempts soared during the pandemic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859149 We don’t have the figures yet, that’s why we think lockdowns helped. But cholesterol doesn’t kill immediately. Alcohol doesn’t kill immediately. Loneliness doesn’t kill immediately, it slowly settles as friendships got destroyed in anger during the pandemic, and new meetups didn’t arrive, and the guy becomes homeless 5 years later. It may take years, but a lot of human misery will have been triggered by choosing lockdowns. We don’t even have the figures yet. > severely limits the spread of an airborne virus Yes, while we’re locked, and then it just takes weeks to recirculate as normal. It took >1 year to get the vaccines, only a 1 year lockdown would have solved us, therefore it is …not a solution to anything to lock people down. Not a secret that solitary confinement in prisons is used to destroy someone. Lockdowns made a lot of people completely crazy, particularly the people you don’t notice immediately. But who cares, we’ve solved Covid! Wait, we didn’t.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        We solved the initial exponential growths that were threatening to or did overload the medical system. It was the only possible solution. Edited to add: furthermore, in most countries deaths not related to Covid fell drastically compared to previous years, including suicides. Yes, the fallout medium-long term is still to come, but you can't deny that it did stop the immediate very dangerous impact. In countries like Italy and France military hospitals had to be deployed, and many in intensive care were transferred to neighbouring countries. You can't just dismiss this and say people stuck alone at home had it worse than those on the ventilators.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Too little, too late. If only we have been much faster and stronger to react we could have avoided this WHOLE epidemic with a mere ~1 month hard lockdown... (instead we indeed seem to have picked one of the worst ways to deal with it, short of course of no measures at all)

JPKab 5y ago

https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ I'm terribly sorry for what happened to you. It shouldn't have happened. After the first few months the data was very clear that schools were safe to open. They absolutely shouldn't be closed right now. You are a victim of cowardly bureaucrats and powerful and wealthy elderly people who desperately want to cling to more years of their lives despite already being at the end. They don't care at all if they rob you of your future. They tell themselves little lies like "kids are resilient" to make themselves feel better. They were wrong to tell people they couldn't go to playgrounds and ignore the early science that showed that the virus didn't spread outdoors. They've never apologized for that mistake. When you see people walking around outside wearing masks, know that they have bought into a foolish lie completely removed from any form of science. Your teachers were all too happy to have the schools closed despite being in age groups where they were also not majorly at risk especially after being vaccinated. I live in Colorado, and we are now at a point in this state where omicron is the dominant strain. Everyone here is catching it and waking up to the fact that it's a cold and very little more. Your schools are being shut for no reason other than cowardice. Don't be afraid to call it what it is. You are surrounded by cowards. Cowards are always quick to call the brave foolish and reckless. It's how they make themselves feel better. Look around you and learn. You are witnessing a reality that I was naive to for far too long: Most people would rather do what is popular than what is right. Education is not inoculation to groupthink. Rather, it often is paired with brainwashing and a propensity to outsource critical thinking to central authority figures. If you add up all of the deaths from this virus under the age of 40, they make up less than 1% of the total. Your education was sacrificed to protect a population of people that are no longer working or paying taxes. In Japan when the nuclear accident at Fukushima happened, older plant workers stepped up to walk into the radiation to spare younger generations. In our society we did the opposite. I hope you have a good home life because that would make you one of the more fortunate victims of these foolish lockdowns. I grew up in an abusive home in the rural southern United States. There were weeks where I begged for Monday morning to come as soon as possible so I could escape. School was a refuge for me. And and there are many many children with far worse homes than I had who were forced to be shut into them with abusive parents who were put into an even worse mood then they were typically in before the pandemic. The statistics on child abuse show this as well. Like the fools in my nation who rushed us into the Iraq war on false pretenses, the people who are wrong now will never admit it. As the years go by and it becomes more clear that this was utter foolishness, many will pretend that they were opposed to the lockdowns and these other ridiculous policies. They will be lying. I have two children of my own. My wife works as a kindergarten teacher. The children she is seeing in her classroom now are incredibly stunted. Every day she comes home with new stories about how bad it is. They have been locked in their houses for 2 years, given iPads as babysitters by lazy or tired or emotionally exhausted parents. It's an utter horror what the cowards have done to our children. I know this comment will be downloaded to oblivion by the cowards. They are the majority of the people on this website. They're the majority in tech now. Most will never start companies. They just follow the path laid out for them, study algorithm interview books, and go get a desk at Google working on a widget in a product that nobody cares about it or will ever see. They all owe you an apology but they will never apologize or admit they were wrong. On behalf of them I am sorry. Many of us tried to stop them but we were censored, we were ridiculed, we were mocked, we were fired. There were many who would raise questions about the lockdowns in private, but in public they would go along with the crowd like the cowards they were. Never be one of those. They are the worst of us. The fact that you're on this website is a good sign so I'm sure you're going to be alright. But you're at a good age to recognize how foolish many of the adults around you are. I was in that place when I was your age.

refurb 5y ago

If I were to guess how all this will end is some side effective of restrictions will read its ugly head - mental health, economic recession, or just general civil disobedience. Then suddenly we’ll be told “trade offs need to be made” and “the vaccines provide enough protection to relax restrictions”. The fact that we’re 2 years into it and with a population that is mostly vaccine and at a much reduced risk yet the restriction seem to be the same or worse?

maccard 5y ago
The restrictions are definitely not the same as they were 2 years ago when this all started. Schools shut, everyone working from home, no bar/cafe/restaurants, no outdoor social activities qas what we had then. In the last two weeks I've been to a bar twice and the cinema. I don't know of anywhere in the world (but could be wrong) that is still in that form of lock down right now.
- refurb 5y ago
  Depends where you are? Two years ago Canada didn’t have many restrictions at all. Masks weren’t even a requirement in all provinces. Ontario, Canada just cranked up restrictions. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures Quebec now has curfew, primary schools closed. All public events canceled. https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Problemes_de_sante/covid-19/mesures-en-vigueur-anglais.pdf?1640978711 https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/sante/documents/Pr...
  - maccard 5y ago
    2 years ago exactly, yes but in the spirit of HN you should take the best possible reading. If you compare to March 2020 instead the restrictions are still less than they were then.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Quebec now has curfew Wait, how does that work? Do people get arrested just because they are out past curfew? Random ID checks?