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Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

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Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#651

Post by chrismcb »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #447
chernevik wrote: post #415

The US policy response has been far more costly and destructive than it needed to be. The pandemic response completely ignored the costs of shutdowns. There has been little or no consideration of their impact on physical health, mental health, education, business, employment, worship. It has been as if COVID was the only risk and the only negative, and any other matter was necessarily secondary. To even mention these…

I’m gonna defend a bit here. Early on, nobody knew what covid was gonna look like. It had the potential for millions dead with a very high rate of spread. So we panicked. It seems forgotten that nobody remembers how awful, unknown, and strange the early pandemic was back in March 2020. What’s pathetic is how almost two years later, when we know oodles more about this disease, our solutions are identical. Where is the…

One thing that has annoyed me is that we have done very little research into things, like how it really spreads, how effective are masks, shutting down schools. Research into therapeutics. It seems, at least in USA, to be all about getting vaccinated. And ignoring anything that isn't about the vaccines.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#652

Post by dang »

pdimitar wrote: post #644
dang wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. You did a ton of that in this thread. That is seriously not cool. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've been having to ask you not to do this kind of thing for many years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29220499 (Nov 2021) https://news.…

It's really very shocking news to me that I perpetuate anything on HN except the occasional comment (with big gaps of inactivity, too). I got under attack, my comments have been misrepresented, and I'm defending myself. Admittedly not in a timid manner. But that tends to happen when you put people on the defensive by constantly almost copy-pasting the same criticisms. What would you do? You linked 6 instances of fair…

Everyone always feels like the others started it, and did worse, while they were only defending themselves. Basically we all underestimate our own destructive contributions by (let's call it) 10x and overestimate others' by another 10x, so "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" by a good 100x.

This is how threads end up in a downward spiral [1], with each person perpetuating the flamewar while feeling like they're in the right and it's the other ones behaving badly. But flamewar comments like these ones you posted are just not ok on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29863713

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29863283

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29863274

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861393

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861220

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861112

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861092

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861088

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861062

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861036

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860983

If you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, surely it isn't hard to see that such comments are the opposite of what we want on HN.

As for other users breaking the site guidelines, if you look elsewhere in the thread you'll see that I scolded a bunch of them just as much—for example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29868575

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29868531

It always feels like the mods are against you [2] and that you're being singled out while others are let off lightly or ignored. That's not so. It just feels that way, similar to how it always feel like you're the one the cops pull over for speeding tickets or the refs are always making calls against the home team.

What is true is that there are lots of comments breaking the site guidelines that don't get moderated, but that's not because we're treating them specially—it's because we don't see them all. We can't come close to reading everything that gets posted here [3]. There's far too much.

Btw, it's better from my perspective to have these discussions in public because then there's a chance that others can see and learn from them. A 1-to-1 email conversation has far less leverage and the number of demands for moderator attention vastly exceeds the limited supply, which is why my worst-case latency in replying to emails is unfortunately so terrible.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=downward%20spiral%20by:dang&da...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#653

Post by chrismcb »

afavour wrote: post #506
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had family members telling me that the news was spreading fear and panic back then, and that we should not lock down even for two weeks because, in their own words, “they won’t let us out.” I was skeptical and accepted the lockdown for two weeks. We only just started getting out more than three months later. Either my family was really unusually right… or there was a percentage of people saying it was a bad idea th…

That’s still applying hindsight logic, though. At the start of the pandemic we didn’t know enough about the virus to know what was and was not necessary. Your family applied their skepticism of government to speculate that the lockdown would be a long one. That speculation would turn out to be correct but unless you’re in a family of epidemiologists they weren’t correct because they understood the virus better than a…

I'm not sure I agree. Yes we didn't know much about it (why not, it had been going on in China for almost three months) But the original idea was 2 weeks to show the spread. It was too save the hospitals. But somehow that morphed into zero covid.

The reality is, a bunch of stuff was thrown at the wall, and the only thing that really worked was lockdowns, which won't work long term. But why didn't we do anything to figure out if any of the things were working We should have immediately spent resources into determining how effective some of the strategies were, and called of the ones that didn't work. Instead many of those strategies are still in place. Like six feet, sanitizing everything, cloth masks. Instead of putting money into research (other than the vaccine) a bunch of money was spent on things that didn't have much to do with covid.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#654

Post by chrismcb »

afavour wrote: post #573
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m can understand that, but here’s the thing that still grids my gears. There were people and even doctors back then saying they didn’t know it was a good idea. There were people back then worried about how it would affect education, suicide attempts (this article!), and businesses, and whether the cure was worse than the problem. These people were not allowed to speak, in policies or on television. If they spoke on…

> These people were not allowed to speak, in policies or on television. That’s just flat out untrue, though. These views were widely aired at the time. It’s revisionist history to say they were censored. The government made a choice they didn’t agree with but that doesn’t mean they were silenced.

A lot of them were silenced. A lot of scientists were also afraid to speak out against the status quo.

If you disagreed with the government you are called anti science (despite the policies having nothing to do with science) it belittled for wanting to kill grandma. Shoot people are still saying that.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#655

Post by chrismcb »

drekk wrote: post #542
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - like they literally wouldn’t let us out. They had to attend church for months watching only from their parked vehicles and with their windows shut. And somebody had their windows open once so the church got a threatening letter from the city from an informant neighbor across the street.

That's your anecdata, why should we treat it as representative? I was delivering food throughout the pandemic and not one person I handed the food to wore a mask (even when all deliveries were supposed to be no contact) We didn't have any vaccines or effective treatments during the 3 month soft lockdown, you think it would be better to have congregations every Sunday to increase that spread? Or is God going to send u…

I'm not exactly sure what your point is here. It wasn't possible to eat at Applebee's, because it was closed. People who tried to stay in business were drug of to jail.

The lockdowns we're effective. But lockdowns aren't really possible. The virus is/was going to spread almost no matter what we did. If you are worried about the disabled and elderly, the solution isn't to lockdown the entire society. And if you compare USA to other countries, including Sweden, other numbers are fairly similar.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#656

Post by chrismcb »

ryandrake wrote: post #587
_fat_santa wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I talk about "lockdowns", I want to split it up into a few separate instances. 1. The Initial Lockdown - The "14 days to slow the spread". Everyone was freaking out and pretty much the entire country locked down during that period, no one complained, we all understood the gravity of the situation. 2. Individual States Lockdowns - After those initial weeks, states started to open separately. Some opened immediatl…

I really wish it would be possible for us to stop using the word "lockdown" when talking about the USA. There was pretty much no meaningful lockdown in the USA. Maybe in NYC briefly, but that's about it. Throughout the pandemic, people were (and still are) going out, horsing around, shopping at the many "essential" businesses that never actually closed, eating at the restaurants that "bravely defied" orders, drinking…

In the USA there was a lockdown across the entire country for weeks. The only shopping people were doing were the grocery store, and even then most people weren't Restaurants were mostly closed, other stores were closed. Some essential stores started open but only had a few customers at a time. Yes it wasn't the lockdown China had where you couldn't leave your house for two weeks, but it was definitely a lockdown

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#657

Post by chrismcb »

Krasnol wrote: post #456
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone got it, destroying businesses and families for over a year in some states to postpone the inevitable was stupid.

How do/did you know it's "inevitable"? I didn't have Covid yet. At least as far as I know. I work in health IT and have been vaccinating and protecting myself according to the book. It works.

What "works?" Statistics? You can do everything wrong and still not get covid. About 10% of the population has gotten covid reach year (at least in USA) sure that probably goes up if you don't follow all those protocols. But even if you don't, there is still a good chance you didn't get it. Here, have my tiger repellant rock.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#658

Post by chrismcb »

drekk wrote: post #546
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, you are in a situation where you are not reliant on a small business and it’s easy to follow advisories. There’s far more to life and jobs than that. As for how it’s inevitable - maybe it wasn’t, but look around you. An awful lot of destruction we did for questionable benefits. And I know that with the next pandemic, far less people are going to listen. To them, the credibility of experts has been perma…

Maybe the government should have paid people so they could stay home? But that's communism and then no one will work and who will bring us our McDonald's order during the outbreak

They did.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#659

Post by chrismcb »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #492
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the small businesses that were destroyed because of “two weeks to slow the spread” and the families that relied on them. They passionately hate these leaders.

Nobody guarantees small businesses the right to exist. Sure nobody can plan for a pandemic but the government’s responsibility is to society at large, not the plight of small business owners.

You don't think society needs small businesses? Out big businesses for that matter, as many big businesses received bailouts. Personally I would say a healthy society requires a good number of businesses.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#660

Post by pdimitar »

dang wrote: post #652
pdimitar wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really very shocking news to me that I perpetuate anything on HN except the occasional comment (with big gaps of inactivity, too). I got under attack, my comments have been misrepresented, and I'm defending myself. Admittedly not in a timid manner. But that tends to happen when you put people on the defensive by constantly almost copy-pasting the same criticisms. What would you do? You linked 6 instances of fair…

Everyone always feels like the others started it, and did worse, while they were only defending themselves. Basically we all underestimate our own destructive contributions by (let's call it) 10x and overestimate others' by another 10x, so "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" by a good 100x. This is how threads end up in a downward spiral [1], with each person perpetuating the flamewar while feeling li…

Thanks for elaborating. And thank you for showing me that I'm not singled out. That was very important for me and it does make the ending of the whole thing better.

While I can't say with clear conscience that I agree 100%, I do agree with your general observations and would put my agreement percentage at, say, 80%.

This situation also gave me a good opportunity to reflect and understand that there's no point in stressing myself in HN so I will definitely stay away from such loaded topics for a long time.

I should have been here only for the technology news anyway so I'll stick to those. I will both protect my mental health and not dilute HN in one stroke.

Thank you for following up, it's much appreciated.

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