Not everyone cooperated with lockdowns, rendering them less effective.
> - Masks should have stopped covid.
Not everyone wore masks, rendering them less effective.
> - Vaccines should have stopped covid.
Not everyone is getting vaccinated, rendering it less effective.
I see a pattern here with an obvious solution, and it's not doubting the "true" science and declaring ourselves epidemiologists, virologists, and public health experts.
If your solution requires every person on earth to obey you it's not much of a solution, and "everyone didn't obey" is an excuse to why your non solution predictably did not work.
Each of these scenarios was predictable and in fact, predicted by many. Yet here we are, still pretending to be shocked at the intensity of human autonomy.
If your plan requires everyone on earth to cooperate, it’s not a good plan.
You realize that the way other diseases were eradicated required the cooperation of everyone on earth? Or at least in most countries. The reason we don't get polio in virtually any country on earth is because of global cooperation in the face of a disease with a known mitigation. Barely 500 known cases world-wide in 2019. Thanks to global cooperation. Too bad propaganda and social media probably ruined our chances of repeating such a feat...
> The reason we don't get polio in virtually any country on earth is because of global cooperation in the face of a disease with a known mitigation.
The polio vaccine being a sterilizing one is certainly a _major_ reason for its success. The Covid vaccine, by contrast, does not confer sterilizing immunity. Polio also spreads through contaminated food and water, not the exhaled breath of the infected. So other than those minor things, great comparison.
I'd say another major reason for the polio vaccine's success is the whole world took it. Substitute mumps, measles, rubella, smallpox, whatever you'd like. Anyway you totally missed the point about global cooperation. We know masks, social distancing, and vaccination with enough cooperation could end the pandemic, but no, people just won't cooperate.
And now that there are new variants in the wild because of people not doing all of those things, the vaccines, lockdowns, and masks still keep ICU beds from overflowing. But you have to actually do them.
- Has one of the least vaccinated population in Europe (around 40% afaik)
- Has had 0 covid deaths in the last couple weeks.
- Has not had it worse than countries with stricter mandates.
Are we also forgetting about Iceland / Israel which are among the most vaccinated countries in the world (on top of having stringent mandates) and are basically experiencing their largest spike in cases since the beginning of this pandemic?
At the end of the day, it's also good to realise so called experts do not seem to have all the answers even though it's "backed by science". Going back to common sense and taking a step back is what will get us all out of this.
Have you been actually following how things have gone? Sweden has 1708% more deaths to covid vs Norway, but only 84% higher population. That doesn't sound that great to me.
This comparison between two datapoints is not too useful.
The graphs at https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ provide a more nuanced picture, with the caveat that those are graphs of excess mortality and not necessarily covid-specific.
Useful or not, I think it's more representative within that region than you let on and matches basically the activity causing this moment in the timeline from your link: https://imgur.com/a/G3D7AZ2
> - Has had 0 covid deaths in the last couple weeks.
Deaths per week are a function of previous deaths and population distribution. If more people die at the beginning, then fewer are left to die later. That's how dying works. Sweden's weekly per capita deaths peaked much higher than in the US or EU overall, and they've lost more people per capita than their neighbors.
A person who cares about numbers should be looking cumulatively, not just within some specific narrow window.
> Are we also forgetting about Iceland / Israel which are among the most vaccinated countries in the world
Israel isn't even in the top 30 and their vaccinations flatlined back in February, they prematurely declared victory, and people went back to licking doorknobs. But let's ignore all of that for now.
Congratulations, people faffed around fighting against restrictions and vaccination for so long that now we have successfully developed a mutation that achieves viral escape. Go team! Yay! Mission accomplished!
Vaccines and lockdowns and mask mandates still appear to prevent deaths and hospital overflow. How do we know? Because deaths and ICU bed percentages go down during lockdowns and go up when lockdowns end and because a tiny fraction of the people dying are vaccinated.
Keep in mind also that Iceland still has one of the lowest total per capita COVID death rates of any place in the world. It's also a weird little volcanic island with everyone living in only a few places with a major international transit hub between Europe and North America. The few places in the world doing better than Iceland are places which also lock down quickly.
> Going back to common sense
Except that your "common sense" tells you that Sweden has done great and that Israel and Iceland are doing poorly when compared to other countries the opposite is true. How then should we assess the accuracy of your common sense?
My common sense says that people who refuse the vaccine should just be refused access to hospital resources if they get sick. It would neatly address a lot of issues.
You're acting in bad faith and you know it. You can't just say "lockdowns/masks/vaccines should have stopped covid, but they didn't", when you know that a lot of people out there refused to mask up, refused to quarantine and refused to get the vaccine.
People with your thinking are the reason we're still in this pandemic.
Attacking another user like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. Please review the rules and stick to them when posting to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I realize emotions have been running high on this topic for a long time now, but that's a reason to be more mindful of the rules. As they say:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
I said this above, but if your solution requires every living person to obey you it is not a serious suggestion for a solution. Everyone in the world was never going to mask up and lock themselves away, this was actually an argument made by people as part of why these measures wouldn't work. Is the current state of things proof they were right? I'm surprised to see this excuse for failure of these measures so often touted in a forum largely comprised of computer scientists.
So you're aware it was noncompliance that reduced the effectiveness of those measures, and you think... those measures shouldn't have been taken at all? I'm not clear on what the alternative was, apart from that.
There's a difference between what's reasonable and being perfect. I think they were absolutely reasonable solutions, since I haven't heard a peep about any better ones available, and even with noncompliance they are helpful.
