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In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

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231–240 of 312 posts

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. I don't know about society, but this was the straw the broke the camels back for me. I have not been the same since, I don't think I ever will be. The first lockdown in my province was when things really started to go wrong for me mental health wise in a major way and it only got worse as they continued. What's really been maddening is that people get angry…

Am I looking in the mirror now? Can relate exactly to the T.

You're not alone. Today, every decision that I make is done with the objective of insulating myself non-violently from future coercive actions by the state similar to those during the coronacrisis. For example: expenses, domicile, career, voting.

I know many similar people, formerly of all different political, philosophical and religious persuasions. My rough estimation is that this voting bloc is between 20 and 35% of western society.

To those who disagree: although we are products of the same society, we have simply a fundamentally different view of liberty, happiness and risk tolerance.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#232
post #111

> Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread- that was obviously not happening. It was to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals. It allowed us to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 by having more resources per sick person.

>The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread...

That claim is pretty inconsistent with the marketing slogans and messaging about the purpose of the lockdowns.

Similarly, the vaccines turned out to be ineffective for inducing sterilizing immunity, but good for diminishing the severity of symptoms, which would also result in fewer sick people in hospitals. But again, the marketing and messaging around the purpose and intent was completely incongruent with the reality, seemingly intentionally deceptive at times. If you didn't take the vaccine, you were literally killing and holding everyone else back because the vaccine would ostensibly make you immune and prevent the spread.

The biggest failure of Covid was the disingenuous communication.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

half my friends lost their jobs because of the not-a-lockdown. The fact that we could still buy FOOD doesn't mean we weren't locked down. What a terrible take. Well guys, we weren't physically barred in our homes and starved so we weren't locked down. Brilliant.

No replies with the downvotes, as impressive as usual. Looking back at this thread it seems every post disagreeing with the ridiculous statement that there were no lockdowns has been downvoted. Amazing.

I upvoted you because I agree with the essence of what you write. The problem is admittedly the enormous geographic variability of the measures that were adopted. None of us is quite sure if the debate is focusing on measures of Elbonia or rather those of Santa Banana.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#234
post #111

> Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread- that was obviously not happening. It was to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals. It allowed us to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 by having more resources per sick person.

At least in the American context, it’s far from clear the lockdowns reduced mortality [1]. Adjusting for age/health Florida had similar mortality to California’s. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/02/why-major-study-argue...

Florida also massively doctored their stats so I’m not sure how you can trust them.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, case in point is the abundance of mask wearing in Asian countries. They seem to go about their lives just fine.

They were doing it even before covid, although not to the same extent. I don't know why people have such a problem if someone wants to protect themselves from airborne illness.

If someone harassed you or a loved one for wearing a mask, that person is an asshole. If someone harassed you or a loved one for not wearing a mask, that person is also an asshole (caveat outside hospitals or care homes for vulnerable people).

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#236
post #111

> Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread- that was obviously not happening. It was to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals. It allowed us to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 by having more resources per sick person.

It also was to increase the number of people who got covid after being vaccinated, instead of before. Edit - to elaborate, I just mean that it made sense to try to keep infections down and give companies time to develop a vaccine. Not sure why this struck a nerve.

I think you got downvotes because it sounded like a conspiracy theory, when actually I think you were just trying to say that the idea was to get people vaccinated before they came in contact with the real disease to ease the symptoms, or even give immunity.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a witness test of people's moral philosophy. Rights are fundamentally philosophical position, not a law of physics. Those that favor preserving negative rights over positive rights generally objected to the lockdown. In general, people who favor negative rights do so because they don't come into conflict with each other. Positive rights come into conflict with other positive rights and negative rights,…

I agree. My personal perspective is that I fundamentally don't agree that negative rights don't conflict with each other, or that there is a meaningful difference between positive and negative rights (which is of course a philosophical position that not everybody will agree with).

Negative rights not conflicting with each other is the main and perhaps only factor that distinguishes them from positive rights, so if you don't think that is true, of course you won't find a difference.

When it comes to practical implementation, the tools used to maintain negative rights are the same as the tools used to maintain positive rights, so they appear very similar.

If you're familiar with the concept, you probably already know that negative rights prohibit other people from actions, while positive rights require other people to take actions.

I'm curious why you think this distinction is not valid.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#238
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the American context, it’s far from clear the lockdowns reduced mortality [1]. Adjusting for age/health Florida had similar mortality to California’s. [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/04/02/why-major-study-argue...

Florida also massively doctored their stats so I’m not sure how you can trust them.

I was in my wonderful homeland of Bulgaria. Every time a person died, the hospital always wrote down Covid, so they can get extra money from EU and the state. Car crash? Covid! Old age? Covid! AIDS? Covid! Drank bleach? Covid! F***ing Bulgarians living in year 3020.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#239

China did actual lockdowns. The US? Not so much. Herd immunity? Never happened because infection isn't preventing reinfection with a different strain. If there had been actual, effective lockdowns early enough they might have worked but by March 2020 the cat was out of the bag. Japan's model of universal masking, testing, and outdoor interaction without lockdowns is the best model for the future.

I understood the justification and necessity for lockdowns but not only were they too late but they were also infested with political exemptions and even if they had helped they were only ever a temporary solution.

Full lockdowns certainly wouldn't have been allowed to last long enough for the vaccine to be produced, especially if that research, development and production had taken as long as it was initially expected to take.

The western covid public health response was a bit of a disorganized mess, but even there it ended up being remarkably effective. I was amazed that we had almost two years with virtually zero flu infections, which showed the vast difference between the infectiousness of normal influenza and covid. Unfortunately, covid was such a stubbornly infectious little bugger that it only slowed the progression.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#240
post #111

> Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity The point of the lockdown was not to entirely stop the spread- that was obviously not happening. It was to slow the spread to avoid overwhelming hospitals. It allowed us to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 by having more resources per sick person.

My general opinion of it is that lock downs at the beginning were essential for slowing the spread of the disease and allow the hospitals to prepare for it, but there was a point where the virus was endemic anyway that all the masking and isolation protocols were doing more harm than good.

Because of Covid science has proven masking is a waste of effort and resources. If you disagree you should really research the latest studies.

Here is a great starting point from 2021. https://brownstone.org/articles/studies-and-articles-on-mask...

They are a failure. Globally. https://www.amazon.com/Unmasked-Global-Failure-COVID-Mandate...

One of the largest peer-reviewed European studies says... "These findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage." https://www.cureus.com/articles/93826-correlation-between-ma...

Why? Because they are ineffective and were only introduced as a way to busy or "pacify" the masses.

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