In this forum, right here on HN, people routinely espouse desire for more authoritarian restrictions. People gleefully discuss Sweden and almost openly hope that their lockdown-free plan fails. The article makes it sound as if the erosion of democracy is coming from the top. In the USA, it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from everyday citizens.
I agree with you completely. I get regularly downvoted here for promoting free speech and denouncing all forms of web censorship. Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment if operating in the United States, similar to how websites operating in the EU must comply with the GDPR. I forgot how the United States…
The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
231–240 of 363 posts
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Societies with largely rational, educated populace are weathering COVID just fine, wrt. democracy and respect for human rights.
A lot of them might just be better liars; E.g., here in Iran the gov has managed quite a good marketing, but the reality on the ground makes it clear that the hospitals have been severely out of capacity, and infection is very widespread. Still most people are so stupid that they trust official stats to be order-of-magnitude accurate (my guess is the official stat is logarithmic) and think our situation is better tha…
I think most of the countries claiming to have controlled the virus actually have controlled the virus.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that there's some set of coordinated post-lockdown measures that will prevent the need for further lockdowns strikes me as unrealistic. Every country I'm familiar with that attempted to control the pandemic with lockdowns has had to reimpose them at least once.
There are also varying degrees of lockdowns that can be effected depending on the situation. My point being that lockdown is a last-resort blunt tool used to prevent an explosion of cases overwhelming health care capacity, it's not something that people inherently support indefinitely. We don't cream our pants thinking about how great a world under lockdown is.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how Hitler winning 1932 German elections improved human rights in Germany and overall Europe. Instead it turned into dictatorship, tyranny and mass murder. And you can not say that Germany at the time was not rational and not educated populace. It was a Physics mecca of the world with people like Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein. My point is education does not equal to…
This is an epic side track, but the argument you could make is that Germany's choice at the time was between Nazi-ism and Stalin controlled communism. Liberal democracy was a distant third option that had no real chance. We know the Nazi option turned out very very bad. But it's possible a German/Soviet Stalinist block would have been even worse.
Say what you want about Soviet-caused famine, but they never shipped people in trains to gas chambers for the express purpose of exterminating them. Pretty contrived and callous to say that choosing the Nazis might have been the right choice.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding masks in the UK, the evidence for their effectiveness is still up in the air. I think the UK gov didn't want to confuse the messages that were already numerous. I think they gave up on that idea when all the other countries went with the masks.
It's "up in the air" in the same way that climate change is "up in the air". https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-08-oxford-covid-19-study-f... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7191274/ https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-abou... https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-0948_article
To breakdown each of your sources.
1. It specifically notes the cloths masks are less effective and the cloth masks they tested were double layered and made from a water resistant material. It also discusses the need to wash them daily and not to take them off in a given sitting.
Where ever I am I seeing people violating these guidelines. Whether its grocery store workers pulling them down to catch a breath or people at restaurants taking them off and on to eat. Also I see tons of people wearing single layered non-water resistant fabrics. And how often are we all washing them? Probably not a lot.
2 & 4: Both focus on looking at observational data comparing places where masks wearing is prevalent versus places where it is not. It even looks at the same places after switching policies. But these are obviously confounded by a whole bunch of other factors. Maybe places that wear masks are better about physical distancing and washing their hands. I find it difficult to take much from this kind of evidence, but I understand why someone else would.
3. Similar to (1), but even harsher on cloth masks. Specifically notes the effectiveness of respirators, says medical masks were not effective and cloths masks were less effective (I don't know how you can be less effective than not effective). Here is the actual line.
"Randomised controlled trials in health care workers showed that respirators, if worn continually during a shift, were effective but not if worn intermittently. Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective. When used by sick patients randomized controlled trials suggested protection of well contacts."
This is in no way equivalent to the arguments for climate change. And frankly thank god you aren't a public health expert because by comparing the two publicly you would be doing damage to the environmental movement.
Instead of just trying to make someone look dumb on internet why don't you actually engage in a good-faith argument that acknowledges the very real nuances.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you completely. I get regularly downvoted here for promoting free speech and denouncing all forms of web censorship. Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment if operating in the United States, similar to how websites operating in the EU must comply with the GDPR. I forgot how the United States…
> Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment This makes me think you misunderstand the first amendment. It concerns freedom of expression from government interference . Free amplification on private platforms is not covered.
If we need an amendment to extend that to all entities and forums, public and private, then I’m all for it.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#237In this forum, right here on HN, people routinely espouse desire for more authoritarian restrictions. People gleefully discuss Sweden and almost openly hope that their lockdown-free plan fails. The article makes it sound as if the erosion of democracy is coming from the top. In the USA, it’s coming from the bottom. It’s coming from everyday citizens.
People aren't asking for authoritarian restrictions. People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks). Instead we have ineffective politically driven responses marked by indecision and incompetence. People don't want lockdowns, but we recognise that because our containment measures have failed, we have no choice but to shut things. If you do…
It’s truly insane, disappointing and scary.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment This makes me think you misunderstand the first amendment. It concerns freedom of expression from government interference . Free amplification on private platforms is not covered.
Yeah, that’s the common interpretation. If we need an amendment to extend that to all entities and forums, public and private, then I’m all for it.
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Websites and their obscure “Terms of Service” and “Community Guidelines” are eroding those rights and should be fully compliant with the first amendment This makes me think you misunderstand the first amendment. It concerns freedom of expression from government interference . Free amplification on private platforms is not covered.
Yeah, that’s the common interpretation. If we need an amendment to extend that to all entities and forums, public and private, then I’m all for it.
Hardly an interpretation, it's stated in black and white :
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Re: The pandemic has eroded democracy and respect for human rights
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a take against all laws if you prop it up a bit more. It doesn‘t make sense. The people enacting these laws are democratically elected. „Common sense“ in this case is not arbitrary. It is the culmination of the „common senses“ if all politicians that were elected by their citizens. This is not undemocratic, it is democracy in its purest form. At some point in dire situations, as a government, you have to save…
That isn't direct democracy. That is a republican form of government. Whenever you have representatives instead of citizens governing themselves, you can have situations where the government saves the citizenry from themselves but also situations where the representatives exploit the government for themselves. Both cases have happened throughout history and are happening with the coronavirus. In the US, Fauci was ini…
Some current enemies: China, global warming, coronavirus, immigrants, racism.
The longer you live, the more you see these techniques repeated over and over. The situations are rarely as the political parties make them out to be. The political parties mostly lie since entities that don't are disadvantaged at obtaining political power. People as a whole are too easy to manipulate so it is to your advantage to lie.