A case for ending lockdown

I've read the whole thing and I have these comments:

- I think the part about the freedoms is unnecessary because I feel the vast majority of the pro-lockdown people do not share your enthusiasm for freedom and public discourse. While your main argument may shift their opinion, the part about liberty may cause them to stop reading and discard your other arguments.

- I think some claims would sound more persuasive if there were more links to research. For example, the claim about 0.1-0.7% mortality. There's a study about China (0.66% mortality) and a bunch of others that could support your point. You could also add mortality stats for influenza in the US from the CDC website (I think it's 0.13% on average).

- The TLDR sounds bitter and childish, in my opinion.

Overall a great summary and I'll share that with others.

"I’m a software / site reliability engineer based out of Santa Barbara, California."

From someone living in NYC: fuck off. You have no business telling anyone anything regarding health and safety.

Going back to the basics on this one.

Has any government presented a cost benefit analysis of all the available options to address this situation?

Like most things in life this isn't black and white, so where is the analysis of the pros and cons, worst case projections, etc of not doing anything / going into lockdown / other alternatives.

I for one have not seen it.

Shouldn't such an analysis be the basis of any decisions we make? It follows therefore that it needs to be first of all DONE, then publicly presented and argued from all angles before a decision is made.

But, no. A decision has been made and presented to us. We can rest assured, they say, the science CLEARLY shows that this is the right decision. Then - at least in the UK - later they admitted that the economic impact and the following consequences have not yet been looked into.

The arguments should not be about lockdown or not. It is fair and everyone duty to scrutinise government decisions, not because they should have done the exact opposite, but simply because they haven't presented a robust case for what they're doing.

Let's not forget, it is their ONLY job to represent us - a job all of us are paying for -, and do things that are in our best interest, yet they fail to properly justify decisions.

Anyone who without question agrees to locking down the economy might want to consider that bailouts, stimulus packages, unemployment benefits, and anything else the government does is paid for with our money.

Add to this the borderline misleading way covid deaths are classified and a dozen other similar issues and you have yourself a very interesting situation which should be raising questions in everyone.

You are right! And it also doesn't follow that one should discard a piece of information just because it comes from some dude's blog.

I'm also very frustrated about people sharing horrible lies and fakes from blogs or Facebook posts.

But I think we should judge the article by its content rather than by whether it's by a programmer or a doctor.

This is why I like anonymous or nearly-anonymous forums like this one: it forces you to think about the content without being influenced by the author's attractive photo, their fame or credentials, or the letters "MD" next to their name.

I am unaware of a "massive excess of capacity" in NY; quite the opposite. Where do you make that conclusion from? NY, to my knowledge, has been well over capacity and has had to take severe measures. Hospitals have had more patients than they can deal with and the staff is overworked. Elective procedures have been cancelled, no visitors are allowed, doctors and nurses who ordinarily work elsewhere are working in Covid-19 units. Chicago is not doing well either. To put my chip down: yes, I do think we succeeded in flattening the curve in NY. We started the lockdown late, so we could not prevent it from getting very bad, but had we not done a lockdown, it probably would have been worse for longer.