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People may rationalize these things because the alternative is to admit that one may have been wrong and/or caused harm to others in the process. People would r

People may rationalize these things because the alternative is to admit that one may have been wrong and/or caused harm to others in the process. People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt.

rjh29 5y ago
I've used that argument and the counter is: depression due to lockdown can heal once lockdown is over. People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.
- henrikschroder 5y ago
  Suicidal ideation among kids in the US is up 100%, suicide attempts are up 50%, actual suicides are up 20%. Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent. And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. Hell, we haven't even acknowledged that every single pandemic rule and restriction and measure has a cost in human life. Instead, we've been getting shitty platitudes about how "kids are resilient", or "it's just two weeks", or "your surgery is non-essential and therefore postponed".
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >> [Column A] People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent. > [Column B] Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent. > And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. So, which is higher: Column A or Column B? I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd be astounded if there wasn't at least and order of magnitude more COVID deaths during this pandemic than total number of teen suicides (i.e. all of them, not just the increase due to the pandemic).
- incrudible 5y ago
  These children will never fully recover their formative years. Also, what impact, if any, did the treatment of young people have on the ultimate death toll from this virus? We will never know, but I am afraid if we could, we would not like the answer.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    Closig schools has been the core of the US pandemic influenza control strategy since the second Bush administration. There were detailed simulations showing that shutting schools is the only single intervention that can significantly affect R: schools are the best place for spreading influenza due to the very small spacing between seats in classrooms, the number of students who pack into schoolbusses daily, etc. (However, the studies were done before masking everyone was a possibility.)
    - nradov 5y ago
      Sweden mostly kept primary schools open, and didn't even impose mask mandates on students, and they came through fine.
    - earleybird 5y ago
      Most parents with k-8 children should know this first-hand. Memory is fading but as I recall, two weeks after school year started we could pretty much expect a bug to come home. (continuing through out the winter months of the school year)
giraffe_lady 5y ago
Acknowledging the damage done by isolation doesn't mean you have to believe it was the wrong choice. In my country a million people have died of covid even with the isolations. Was it "worth it"? I don't fucking know and I don't believe anyone else does either. Would it have been better to just let it rip and hope for the best? How many more would have died that way, and would our mental health be better for it? If it was, could we even live with that? If there was a button that would cure my depression and kill a stranger, I wouldn't push it. EDIT: ok yeah I get it consensus is we should have pushed the button you can stop telling me now.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Would they have died anyway, or did they die with Covid? It’s the repeated question, together with “Didn’t the flu cause as many deaths”, and even if it was actual death, it’s a transfer of years of life from the young to the elderly.
  - lumost 5y ago
    Curiously the elderly seem to feel the most robbed. In my family, the young locked down while the elderly went about as normal. Discussing this today, the predominant feeling amongst the over 70 cohort was that they had at best a few more years of health with everyone and didn’t want to spend that in lockdown.
- incrudible 5y ago
  In the beginning, it was widely accepted that the virus would spread and ultimately infect most people. Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures. 1) Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation. 2) A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt. The pandemic had nothing to do with keeping kids out of school for more than a year. That was all humans doing. The virus didn't wake up some morning and tell us to shut down down schools. Lockdowns and government caused virtually all of the lasting side-effects from the last two years. It is my strong opinion that history will not look kindly to almost every single thing humanity did the last two years. They were humans at their absolute worst... Making knee jerk decisions based on fear and panic never end up well...
- Gigachad 5y ago
  My state in Australia had a lockdown where for a while it was not permitted to go outside for fitness by yourself. I can't imagine the physical and mental health damage this caused.
  - earleybird 5y ago
    Had those in Canada too. There seemed to be the medical based rules (distancing, limited occupancy, washing hands) which made sense. And then there were the "me too, more must be better" types. For example, closing down provincial parks seemed odd. These parks are not rabbit warrens; but no, you can't. Going for a walk down a trail in an urban woodland park where distancing is not an issue - nope. What is/was sorely lacking was a common (medical) sense approach to the rules and I think that's what tipped the scale for some (many?) folks that there was overreach with the lockdown rules.
  - oulu2006 5y ago
    What state was that? I don't think we had that in NSW, or at least I never took notice of it and always just went out by myself for a walk even during the hard lock down days.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      South Australia. It was actually only for a few days but they had planned to do it for much longer before they worked out the whole lockdown was based on a lie from one of the cases.
onphonenow 5y ago
What a load of crock. My elderly father, terminal illness, was hit by the lockdown days before coming to visit us. He DOES NOT CARE about covid. He is dying anyways. Then they wouldn't let our young son go play with friends or play on beach. This is lifetime impact stuff at 2-3. When I wore an N95 mask I was told over and over it didn't help. Hello, it's an airborne disease, why wouldn't my mask help? So we can't wear an N95, we CAN go to crowded grocery stores, we CAN'T go outside to the beach (huge volume of onshore fresh air and sunshine) and school is remote only (for a 2 year old this is TERRIBLE). Worst of all, despite the talk of being "science driven" they have not been releasing age banded fatality rates by variant and a timely basis so folks can make informed decisions. We got fed so much BS that the hit is going to be very long lasting in terms of credibility of the "establishment". My father has a phd in a hard science. My wife has a phd in a hard science. If you are losing these folks, you are losing LOTS of folks. That makes me wonder, what IS the fatality rate for 5 year olds. Seriously give me a table. Is it lower than just random accidents per 100? Finally, why can't I wear a mask (N95 with ventilator) that is comfortable so easier to wear and protects me. ANd others can make their own decisions. Instead we spent huge amounts of effort trying to force people who may not have believed in mask wearing to wear masks, but these masks (cloth / surgical) were I suspect largely ineffective.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  How do masks work on the flu virus but not on COVID https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4 It sounds like you have been dealing with a lot of ineffective health theater. That is unfortunate. But that's a very different thing from "cloth/surgical masks are largely ineffective".
  - onphonenow 5y ago
    Sure. We are told that an N95 with a vent is "ineffective" and prohibited, but someone wearing a bandana is OK. That at least was the guidance for a long time. So based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective. Of course, it turns out that an N95 with an exhalation valve is VERY good at protecting the wearer, and AS GOOD as all these others at protecting others. "The findings in this report are based on tests of 13 FFR models from 10 different manufacturers. These findings show that FFRs with an exhalation valve provide respiratory protection to the wearer and can also reduce particle emissions to levels similar to or better than those provided by surgical masks, procedure masks, or cloth face coverings." https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/default.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/default.html "An N95 filtering facepiece respirator will protect you and provide source control to protect others. A NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator with an exhalation valve offers the same protection to the wearer as one that does not have a valve. As source control, findings from NIOSH research suggest that, even without covering the valve, N95 respirators with exhalation valves provide the same or better source control than surgical masks, procedure masks, cloth masks, or fabric coverings." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use-faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use... So, my elderly parents trying to fly United Airlines are BANNED from wearing a comfortable N95 with an exhalation valve that would do a GREAT job protecting them. Instead they are told to wear a surgical mask (which does relatively little by comparison to a well fit N95) especially on INHALATION, where a surgical mask often passes air long the sides. And they sit next to folks barely wearing a light cloth mask that may no almost nothing. Again, why not let folks make their own decisions? Concerned? At high risk? Let my elderly parents wear an N95 with exhalation valve, they can wear that comfortably for 3-4 hours if needed. Instead it is this theatre just as you describe, but based on so little actual research (and so unwilling to change with new research) that it is crazy.

rjh29 5y ago

I've used that argument and the counter is: depression due to lockdown can heal once lockdown is over. People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent.

henrikschroder 5y ago
Suicidal ideation among kids in the US is up 100%, suicide attempts are up 50%, actual suicides are up 20%. Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent. And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. Hell, we haven't even acknowledged that every single pandemic rule and restriction and measure has a cost in human life. Instead, we've been getting shitty platitudes about how "kids are resilient", or "it's just two weeks", or "your surgery is non-essential and therefore postponed".
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> [Column A] People dying because hospitals filled up and cases climbed is permanent. > [Column B] Dead kids are also pretty &¤#&%#!" permanent. > And this is the thing that's been missing for the past two years: A sensible cost/benefit discussion. So, which is higher: Column A or Column B? I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd be astounded if there wasn't at least and order of magnitude more COVID deaths during this pandemic than total number of teen suicides (i.e. all of them, not just the increase due to the pandemic).
incrudible 5y ago
These children will never fully recover their formative years. Also, what impact, if any, did the treatment of young people have on the ultimate death toll from this virus? We will never know, but I am afraid if we could, we would not like the answer.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  Closig schools has been the core of the US pandemic influenza control strategy since the second Bush administration. There were detailed simulations showing that shutting schools is the only single intervention that can significantly affect R: schools are the best place for spreading influenza due to the very small spacing between seats in classrooms, the number of students who pack into schoolbusses daily, etc. (However, the studies were done before masking everyone was a possibility.)
  - nradov 5y ago
    Sweden mostly kept primary schools open, and didn't even impose mask mandates on students, and they came through fine.
  - earleybird 5y ago
    Most parents with k-8 children should know this first-hand. Memory is fading but as I recall, two weeks after school year started we could pretty much expect a bug to come home. (continuing through out the winter months of the school year)

giraffe_lady 5y ago

Acknowledging the damage done by isolation doesn't mean you have to believe it was the wrong choice. In my country a million people have died of covid even with the isolations. Was it "worth it"? I don't fucking know and I don't believe anyone else does either. Would it have been better to just let it rip and hope for the best? How many more would have died that way, and would our mental health be better for it? If it was, could we even live with that? If there was a button that would cure my depression and kill a stranger, I wouldn't push it. EDIT: ok yeah I get it consensus is we should have pushed the button you can stop telling me now.

laurent92 5y ago
Would they have died anyway, or did they die with Covid? It’s the repeated question, together with “Didn’t the flu cause as many deaths”, and even if it was actual death, it’s a transfer of years of life from the young to the elderly.
- lumost 5y ago
  Curiously the elderly seem to feel the most robbed. In my family, the young locked down while the elderly went about as normal. Discussing this today, the predominant feeling amongst the over 70 cohort was that they had at best a few more years of health with everyone and didn’t want to spend that in lockdown.
incrudible 5y ago
In the beginning, it was widely accepted that the virus would spread and ultimately infect most people. Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Yet, two weeks to flatten the curve somehow turned into two years of flailing about aimlessly with ineffective measures. 1) Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation. 2) A big reason those measures were as not as effective as they could have been was that people were actively undermining them pretty much from day one.

spookthesunset 5y ago

> People would rather downplay the harms caused by the pandemic to avoid guilt. The pandemic had nothing to do with keeping kids out of school for more than a year. That was all humans doing. The virus didn't wake up some morning and tell us to shut down down schools. Lockdowns and government caused virtually all of the lasting side-effects from the last two years. It is my strong opinion that history will not look kindly to almost every single thing humanity did the last two years. They were humans at their absolute worst... Making knee jerk decisions based on fear and panic never end up well...

Gigachad 5y ago
My state in Australia had a lockdown where for a while it was not permitted to go outside for fitness by yourself. I can't imagine the physical and mental health damage this caused.
- earleybird 5y ago
  Had those in Canada too. There seemed to be the medical based rules (distancing, limited occupancy, washing hands) which made sense. And then there were the "me too, more must be better" types. For example, closing down provincial parks seemed odd. These parks are not rabbit warrens; but no, you can't. Going for a walk down a trail in an urban woodland park where distancing is not an issue - nope. What is/was sorely lacking was a common (medical) sense approach to the rules and I think that's what tipped the scale for some (many?) folks that there was overreach with the lockdown rules.
- oulu2006 5y ago
  What state was that? I don't think we had that in NSW, or at least I never took notice of it and always just went out by myself for a walk even during the hard lock down days.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    South Australia. It was actually only for a few days but they had planned to do it for much longer before they worked out the whole lockdown was based on a lie from one of the cases.

onphonenow 5y ago

What a load of crock. My elderly father, terminal illness, was hit by the lockdown days before coming to visit us. He DOES NOT CARE about covid. He is dying anyways. Then they wouldn't let our young son go play with friends or play on beach. This is lifetime impact stuff at 2-3. When I wore an N95 mask I was told over and over it didn't help. Hello, it's an airborne disease, why wouldn't my mask help? So we can't wear an N95, we CAN go to crowded grocery stores, we CAN'T go outside to the beach (huge volume of onshore fresh air and sunshine) and school is remote only (for a 2 year old this is TERRIBLE). Worst of all, despite the talk of being "science driven" they have not been releasing age banded fatality rates by variant and a timely basis so folks can make informed decisions. We got fed so much BS that the hit is going to be very long lasting in terms of credibility of the "establishment". My father has a phd in a hard science. My wife has a phd in a hard science. If you are losing these folks, you are losing LOTS of folks. That makes me wonder, what IS the fatality rate for 5 year olds. Seriously give me a table. Is it lower than just random accidents per 100? Finally, why can't I wear a mask (N95 with ventilator) that is comfortable so easier to wear and protects me. ANd others can make their own decisions. Instead we spent huge amounts of effort trying to force people who may not have believed in mask wearing to wear masks, but these masks (cloth / surgical) were I suspect largely ineffective.

Apocryphon 5y ago
How do masks work on the flu virus but not on COVID https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00642-4 It sounds like you have been dealing with a lot of ineffective health theater. That is unfortunate. But that's a very different thing from "cloth/surgical masks are largely ineffective".
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Sure. We are told that an N95 with a vent is "ineffective" and prohibited, but someone wearing a bandana is OK. That at least was the guidance for a long time. So based on this, the cloth masks, bandana's, gators etc need to BEAT an N95 with an exhalation valve to be considered effective. Of course, it turns out that an N95 with an exhalation valve is VERY good at protecting the wearer, and AS GOOD as all these others at protecting others. "The findings in this report are based on tests of 13 FFR models from 10 different manufacturers. These findings show that FFRs with an exhalation valve provide respiratory protection to the wearer and can also reduce particle emissions to levels similar to or better than those provided by surgical masks, procedure masks, or cloth face coverings." https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/default.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/default.html "An N95 filtering facepiece respirator will protect you and provide source control to protect others. A NIOSH-approved N95 filtering facepiece respirator with an exhalation valve offers the same protection to the wearer as one that does not have a valve. As source control, findings from NIOSH research suggest that, even without covering the valve, N95 respirators with exhalation valves provide the same or better source control than surgical masks, procedure masks, cloth masks, or fabric coverings." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use-faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use... So, my elderly parents trying to fly United Airlines are BANNED from wearing a comfortable N95 with an exhalation valve that would do a GREAT job protecting them. Instead they are told to wear a surgical mask (which does relatively little by comparison to a well fit N95) especially on INHALATION, where a surgical mask often passes air long the sides. And they sit next to folks barely wearing a light cloth mask that may no almost nothing. Again, why not let folks make their own decisions? Concerned? At high risk? Let my elderly parents wear an N95 with exhalation valve, they can wear that comfortably for 3-4 hours if needed. Instead it is this theatre just as you describe, but based on so little actual research (and so unwilling to change with new research) that it is crazy.