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I was a good US citizen and used what little influence I had among my social circle to encourage others to follow the COVID protection measures. And I adore Na

I was a good US citizen and used what little influence I had among my social circle to encourage others to follow the COVID protection measures. And I adore Nate Silver. So, pardon me if I confess that all I read in this article was: Blah blah blah 'I mostly agree with ... an October 2020 anti-lockdown statement signed by a large number of scientists and medical professionals. “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal”' blah blah. I don't have any regrets about the position I took, since it seemed to be based on all the verified information we had at the time. YET, I hope our society will embrace the fact that we were largely wrong to prolong the lockdown measures. Humility doesn't hurt the Left either.

pwarner 3y ago
Almost everyone was pretty wrong about COVID, at least at some points in time. But it's very rare for anyone to admit it. I'll admit I was wrong, between sanitizing my hands when it was really in the air, to assuming the vaccines would end it. Lots of mistakes on my end!
- lethoso 3y ago
  Sanitizing your hands, that must really haunt you.
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    Pouring alcohol on your hands every day isn’t really a good habit in the long term.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  This "everybody was wrong" and "whoopsie!" self-absolution is some of the ugliest and most hypocritical parts of the entire Covid phenomenon. No -- plenty of people were ardently against lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school shutdowns, but all kinds of pundits and self-selected rule enforcers loudly lambasted and insulted them endlessly. Many, many lives were permanently affected in multiple, very negative ways, with no chance of returning to pre-covid "normal." The resentment and frustration from individual lives being crushed while the entire ordeal seemingly aligned and advanced corporate interests, is only triggered further by the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ attitude.
  - orblivion 3y ago
    Simultaneously I wish some of the people on your side (or the side you're advocating for here, anyway) didn't spend so much energy insulting those of us who wanted to put in a good faith effort not to exacerbate a community-level problem, and actively tried to provoke our anxiety and anger. Granted, that's probably difficult when you feel you're on the defensive. But I think that defensiveness goes both ways, which may partially explain how your side was mistreated. In principle I wanted your arguments to get a fair hearing, particularly on considering the costs of the measures. What made me most defensive is when there was a valid counterpoint to my own ideas, coming from some of the most vile, sadistic people.
    - listenallyall 3y ago
      Isn't this more of the same? Now, after the fact, claiming you wish all voices had gotten equal attention? It seems quite apparent that the government + media + corporations collaborated for 2+ years to push one singular narrative and to do as much as possible to reduce or silence anyone who questioned it or attempted to demonstrate that it wasn't entirely true.
      - orblivion 3y ago
        To be clear I agree with your previous comment that anybody who now proclaims that they were wrong should either have been opposed to marginalizing your view in the moment, or they owe you a mea culpa. They should recognize that somebody's been out there who had the same conclusion this whole time. Depending on the specific point, I might stop short of saying they were "correct" this whole time because you can get to the same conclusion with different reasoning, and some of the reasoning I heard from your side still seems quite off to me. As for myself though, you can see from an April 2020 comment that I'm a bit of an anomaly. Even though I felt more aligned with "the other side" I was maybe closer to the middle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929971 I'm pretty sure I've always, for instance, opposed tech censorship on the subject. Especially during the mid-year riots the way they demonized the anti-lockdown protests by comparison was insane and I recognized it as such then. I could pull up some old tweets if you want.
- Kelkolo 3y ago
  I was not wrong. I was at home and isolating while looking at the hospital stats. I waited for a vaccine and didn't get alpha. When I did get COVID I already had a shot. I was wearing an easy to wear mask and washing my hands (as I did before and still do). The most frustrating thing to me is and was that we still live in a society were we can afford a lockdown but can't make it work. It's the capitalism who can't handle a pandemic reasonable.
refulgentis 3y ago
There's some people who are still manage to be newly wrong even today. For example, asserting that the government was enforcing strict lockdown measures in October 2020, if ever. This is despite obvious evidence that people preferred staying home, such as the still historically low rate of people working from offices. I wasn't wrong once, from the first videos from China in January 2020. it's been amusing to watch people overthink and moralize and become very rabid over side alley of side alleys of 3 simple facts a high schooler knows: "very contagious respiratory disease bad, vaxx's don't prevent infection or transmission, people like working from home"
- dataangel 3y ago
  vax does prevent both, in the sense it dramatically lowers the rate. they're just not 100% effective.
jonahhorowitz 3y ago
The measures that seem like they should have worked, but people claim they didn't are: - masks: clearly they worked for the medical professionals that were treating patients during the first waves, as they were directly exposed and didn't get sick, why didn't they work for the population at large? Did we not wear them correctly, consistently? - schools: It seems obvious that schools could be a huge vector of transmission, kids largely were asymptomatic and when they got sick, they would still spread it, both inside the school and to their vulnerable relatives. Were the school shutdowns a mistake? Should they have been done differently?
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  “People” didn’t have any consensus on whether masks work. And let’s not forget the way media and governments flip-flopped on the issue.
- todd8 3y ago
  I personally don't know how best to interpret lots of research from the medical community. However, I do believe that the meta-analysis based Cochrane reviews[1] are the most reliable reviews of medical intervention for non-experts (and I consider even the vast majority of doctors as non-experts outside of their particular specialization). The Cochrane Collaboration isn't all knowing, but I don't know of a better alternative source of such information. In a large meta-analysis[2] the Cochrane Collaboration did not find convincing evidence that masks work. Here is a single sentence taken from the author's conclusions: "The pooled results of RCTs [Randomly Controlled Trials] did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks." This gives me pause; I was one of the dedicated mask wearers during the pandemic, but now I realize that we don't know that they did any good. Please note that I am saying we don't know if the masks worked; I'm not saying that the masks didn't work, just that we don't know that they did. I've included above just a single sentence from the the Cochrane review titled Do physical measures such as hand-washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?, the review is available online and is easy to read. I encourage those that think they know that masks either work or don't work to read the entire review for themselves. [1] https://www.cochrane.org https://www.cochrane.org [2] https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-s...

pwarner 3y ago

Almost everyone was pretty wrong about COVID, at least at some points in time. But it's very rare for anyone to admit it. I'll admit I was wrong, between sanitizing my hands when it was really in the air, to assuming the vaccines would end it. Lots of mistakes on my end!

lethoso 3y ago
Sanitizing your hands, that must really haunt you.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  Pouring alcohol on your hands every day isn’t really a good habit in the long term.
listenallyall 3y ago
This "everybody was wrong" and "whoopsie!" self-absolution is some of the ugliest and most hypocritical parts of the entire Covid phenomenon. No -- plenty of people were ardently against lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school shutdowns, but all kinds of pundits and self-selected rule enforcers loudly lambasted and insulted them endlessly. Many, many lives were permanently affected in multiple, very negative ways, with no chance of returning to pre-covid "normal." The resentment and frustration from individual lives being crushed while the entire ordeal seemingly aligned and advanced corporate interests, is only triggered further by the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ attitude.
- orblivion 3y ago
  Simultaneously I wish some of the people on your side (or the side you're advocating for here, anyway) didn't spend so much energy insulting those of us who wanted to put in a good faith effort not to exacerbate a community-level problem, and actively tried to provoke our anxiety and anger. Granted, that's probably difficult when you feel you're on the defensive. But I think that defensiveness goes both ways, which may partially explain how your side was mistreated. In principle I wanted your arguments to get a fair hearing, particularly on considering the costs of the measures. What made me most defensive is when there was a valid counterpoint to my own ideas, coming from some of the most vile, sadistic people.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    Isn't this more of the same? Now, after the fact, claiming you wish all voices had gotten equal attention? It seems quite apparent that the government + media + corporations collaborated for 2+ years to push one singular narrative and to do as much as possible to reduce or silence anyone who questioned it or attempted to demonstrate that it wasn't entirely true.
    - orblivion 3y ago
      To be clear I agree with your previous comment that anybody who now proclaims that they were wrong should either have been opposed to marginalizing your view in the moment, or they owe you a mea culpa. They should recognize that somebody's been out there who had the same conclusion this whole time. Depending on the specific point, I might stop short of saying they were "correct" this whole time because you can get to the same conclusion with different reasoning, and some of the reasoning I heard from your side still seems quite off to me. As for myself though, you can see from an April 2020 comment that I'm a bit of an anomaly. Even though I felt more aligned with "the other side" I was maybe closer to the middle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22929971 I'm pretty sure I've always, for instance, opposed tech censorship on the subject. Especially during the mid-year riots the way they demonized the anti-lockdown protests by comparison was insane and I recognized it as such then. I could pull up some old tweets if you want.
Kelkolo 3y ago
I was not wrong. I was at home and isolating while looking at the hospital stats. I waited for a vaccine and didn't get alpha. When I did get COVID I already had a shot. I was wearing an easy to wear mask and washing my hands (as I did before and still do). The most frustrating thing to me is and was that we still live in a society were we can afford a lockdown but can't make it work. It's the capitalism who can't handle a pandemic reasonable.

refulgentis 3y ago

There's some people who are still manage to be newly wrong even today. For example, asserting that the government was enforcing strict lockdown measures in October 2020, if ever. This is despite obvious evidence that people preferred staying home, such as the still historically low rate of people working from offices. I wasn't wrong once, from the first videos from China in January 2020. it's been amusing to watch people overthink and moralize and become very rabid over side alley of side alleys of 3 simple facts a high schooler knows: "very contagious respiratory disease bad, vaxx's don't prevent infection or transmission, people like working from home"

dataangel 3y ago
vax does prevent both, in the sense it dramatically lowers the rate. they're just not 100% effective.

jonahhorowitz 3y ago

The measures that seem like they should have worked, but people claim they didn't are: - masks: clearly they worked for the medical professionals that were treating patients during the first waves, as they were directly exposed and didn't get sick, why didn't they work for the population at large? Did we not wear them correctly, consistently? - schools: It seems obvious that schools could be a huge vector of transmission, kids largely were asymptomatic and when they got sick, they would still spread it, both inside the school and to their vulnerable relatives. Were the school shutdowns a mistake? Should they have been done differently?

LudwigNagasena 3y ago
“People” didn’t have any consensus on whether masks work. And let’s not forget the way media and governments flip-flopped on the issue.
todd8 3y ago
I personally don't know how best to interpret lots of research from the medical community. However, I do believe that the meta-analysis based Cochrane reviews[1] are the most reliable reviews of medical intervention for non-experts (and I consider even the vast majority of doctors as non-experts outside of their particular specialization). The Cochrane Collaboration isn't all knowing, but I don't know of a better alternative source of such information. In a large meta-analysis[2] the Cochrane Collaboration did not find convincing evidence that masks work. Here is a single sentence taken from the author's conclusions: "The pooled results of RCTs [Randomly Controlled Trials] did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks." This gives me pause; I was one of the dedicated mask wearers during the pandemic, but now I realize that we don't know that they did any good. Please note that I am saying we don't know if the masks worked; I'm not saying that the masks didn't work, just that we don't know that they did. I've included above just a single sentence from the the Cochrane review titled Do physical measures such as hand-washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?, the review is available online and is easy to read. I encourage those that think they know that masks either work or don't work to read the entire review for themselves. [1] https://www.cochrane.org https://www.cochrane.org [2] https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such-hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory-viruses https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-s...