vearwhershuh

Here is the pattern:

1) Establish a false dichotomy ("All vaccines are good, all vaccines are bad")

2) Come up with a pithy slur for the other side ("Antivaxx")

3) Emphasize the looniest people on the other side, ignore and hide the reasonable people on the other side.

4) Use this slur to browbeat moderates, the skeptical, the unsure and the open minded into silence.

It's very effective.

Are there cranks, nutjobs and trolls in this sub?

Yes.

Are there reasonable people with valid concerns and perspectives worth considering?

Also yes.

The practical lesson here is, as always: be extremely wealthy.

No matter what you do, people will think it is profoundly smart.

OK. Did LA? Portland? Seattle? Seattle rebounded the fastest, what did they do? (Of course this is a pointless question, it was a completely different time and the data here is impossibly corrupt and old.)

Are there other variables involved? Were those different times? Grand Rapids had the lowest mortality rate and, if I'm reading the chart right, had no NPIs. Why?

People pushing these hysterical false dichotomies (coupled with a hefty amount virtue signalling) are going to be responsible for a huge amount of human suffering in the coming months and years.

Gah, I got it wrong. I'll update parent.

That's an impossibly certain statement given the evidence you have offered.

The linked article does not say that the cities locked down, only that they implemented what they call Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). They didn't say that they locked everyone inside.

The evidence offered shows that the west wasn't has hard hit as the east. I can think of all sorts of confounding variables in that situation, particularly back then when the east was much more heavily industrialized.

It is possible that if we had quarantined the at risk population and focused our efforts on reasonable NPIs such as masks and social distancing, we could have kept the economy open, leading to far less suffering and death in the long run. Hysterical black-and-white choices like we are being given are their own form of gas-lighting.

A simple alternative would have be to quarantine the at risk people (60+ and pre-existing conditions) and let the rest of the world create the wealth necessary to help keep the at risk groups alive, focusing our healthcare attention on the at risk groups.

That's a false dichotomy.

We could have locked down the vulnerable (60+ and those with pre-existing conditions), and anyone with a temperature, focused our healthcare efforts on them and let everyone else go about their business with more caution (masks + hand washing).

We would have built societal (cows are a herd, humans are a society) immunity by this point and could slowly return to normal for the at-risk crowd.

As it stands, we haven't built up any social immunity and will have to wait over a year for a vaccine which, by definition, we will not know the long term effects of.

The best thing that could happen to the United States would be an amicable divorce.

It is ridiculous to have national elections matter so much at the local level and come down to a few counties in a few contested states, remote from the vast majority of citizens.

Edit: It's heartening to see all the principled federalism and subsidiarity here in the HN comments. I'm sure it would be the same if a Democrat were in office and a Republican governer were talking this way, no?

An elite globalist thinks that more globalism is the answer to issues caused by globalism.

OK.