Are lockdowns justified?

[Irreligious Atheist]

Um, what exactly are “Freedom Rallies” and who was charged? And have they exhibited the same sort of relative restraint that the vast majority of BLM protests have, even in the behavioral sink that is the USA? Were they protesting for something that they’ve been trying to get for centuries and still haven’t gotten or are they just trying to beat up the public health of Canada for its milk money and hoping they don’t get sick in the process? And are they at least likely to follow the same protocols that they asked the BLM protesters to follow or (as I’m starting to suspect) are their goals diametrically opposed to such things?

Doesn't matter what they are against and if they are as pure in their goals as BLM is to you. They should be allowed to assemble and protest. They are anti-lockdown and anti-maskers. You give up the moral high ground when you try to prevent these people from assembling to protest outdoors though. You don't prove the people protesting that the government is taking away people's rights wrong by taking away their rights. Duh. Corona is much harder to spread outdoors as well. And even if some people did get Corona at some of those rallies, I highly value the right to assemble and would be willing to accept that.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/fr...-1.5816160

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/st...-1.5817816

https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-an...ly-charged

[Angrboda]

You'll pardon me if I don't reflexively swallow the claim that these people were being denied their rights. If they were charged with breaking the law then I'm gonna take a big leap and say they didn't have such rights.

[Irreligious Atheist]

I think they are a bit overboard.

Nope it's perfect and its objectors are a bunch of selfish crybabies.

 I don't mind wearing a mask, but people getting charged here in Canada for organizing freedom rallies is outrageous.

Those psychopaths are getting off light, And they aren't freedom anything their an "I'm a selfish asshole rally"

 When BLM were rallying here in my city, the top public health official marched with them and said it was ok to go as long as you isolated for two weeks after.

Yup because that was for a worthy cause and didn't have any real impact on the spread.

 Then when it was people protesting against the politicians rather than the police, that protesting suddenly became unacceptable and organizers were and are still being charged.

Yup, those crybaby superspreader rallies were justly brought down.

Canada has or had curfews in Quebec.

Good

 

Homeless people are being ticketed for violating curfew.

Doesn't matter they will never have to pay it.

 People fined for playing Pokemon Go alone in parking lots.

Good, what the hell are they doing?

 This is beyond stupidity.

Nope, It's perfect. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

Damn, so first you're cool with Canadian journalists getting into legal trouble for criticizing Islam, and now you are happy that the government is protecting you from people sitting alone in their cars in parking lots playing Pokemon Go? You want to defund the police and use those funds to hire other people to go check parking lots so they can fine people playing Pokemon Go?

It's called mental health, dude. Not everyone has perfect mental health like you might, or enjoys this lockdown as much as you do. Going and playing Pokemon or whatever can help with mental health.

---

You'll pardon me if I don't reflexively swallow the claim that these people were being denied their rights.  If they were charged with breaking the law then I'm gonna take a big leap and say they didn't have such rights.

And how many BLM rally organizers have been charged exactly?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Damn, so first you're cool with Canadian journalists getting into legal trouble for criticizing Islam, 

I already refuted this they weren't just " criticizing Islam"

and now you are happy that the government is protecting you from people sitting alone in their cars in parking lots playing Pokemon Go? 

Nobody should be loitering in parking lots period.

You want to defund the police and use those funds to hire other people to go check parking lots so they can fine people playing Pokemon Go?

Anybody can hand out a fine and redirecting finds for cops to stuff that will actually deal with the cause rather than symptoms is good.

It's called mental health, dude. Not everyone has perfect mental health like you might, or enjoys this lockdown as much as you do.

That's an issue of society's general lack of concern for the mentally ill. That's a problem lockdown or no. But I find it fucking hilarious that people who didn't give a damn about the mental illness before are all of a sudden concerned about it now that it suits their agenda. How very convenient 

 Going and playing Pokemon or whatever can help with mental health.

And lots of things that aren't that can do that too.

---

Doesn't matter what they are against and if they are as pure in their goals as BLM is to you. 

Yes, it does matter and no their goal is not pure in the slightest.

They should be allowed to assemble and protest.

Nope

 They are anti-lockdown and anti-maskers. 

This is why they shouldn't be allowed to protest.

You give up the moral high ground when you try to prevent these people from assembling to protest outdoors though.

Nope, their protest is by nature immoral.

 

You don't prove the people protesting that the government is taking away people's rights wrong by taking away their rights.

They don't have the right to endanger the public because they are butthurt.

 Duh. Corona is much harder to spread outdoors as well. And even if some people did get Corona at some of those rallies, I highly value the right to assemble and would be willing to accept that.

Nobody gives a damn what you value.

---

You'll pardon me if I don't reflexively swallow the claim that these people were being denied their rights.  If they were charged with breaking the law then I'm gonna take a big leap and say they didn't have such rights.

They indeed had no such rights

[The Grand Nudger]

Freedom rallies in canadia are the same as they are here. Bunch of white supremacists yammering on about jesus, the covid conspiracy, and their rights. They saw the tiki torches and the insurrection down here and got super jealous.

[FlatAssembler]

Btw, if your method predicts an outcome 16.7% better than chance then unless your margin of error is greater than or equal to 16.7%, then it is by definition better than guessing.

Not really. A person who is guessing how a word will evolve in a language will not produce unpronounceable words. Algorithm that modifies words randomly will produce many unpronounceable words, such as, as I exemplified in my paper, "krzkd" or "ghghad".

[Rev. Rye]

Um, what exactly are “Freedom Rallies” and who was charged? And have they exhibited the same sort of relative restraint that the vast majority of BLM protests have, even in the behavioral sink that is the USA? Were they protesting for something that they’ve been trying to get for centuries and still haven’t gotten or are they just trying to beat up the public health of Canada for its milk money and hoping they don’t get sick in the process? And are they at least likely to follow the same protocols that they asked the BLM protesters to follow or (as I’m starting to suspect) are their goals diametrically opposed to such things?

Doesn't matter what they are against and if they are as pure in their goals as BLM is to you. They should be allowed to assemble and protest. They are anti-lockdown and anti-maskers. You give up the moral high ground when you try to prevent these people from assembling to protest outdoors though. You don't prove the people protesting that the government is taking away people's rights wrong by taking away their rights. Duh. Corona is much harder to spread outdoors as well. And even if some people did get Corona at some of those rallies, I highly value the right to assemble and would be willing to accept that.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/fr...-1.5816160

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/st...-1.5817816

https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-an...ly-charged

If they’re anti-mask and anti-lockdown, odds are, they’re just demanding the government do something that’s going to happen in a few months anyway with or without them. And not only that, but making the problems with COVID even worse in the interim. 

Are you familiar with Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance? This is basically that as it applies not just to the health of a democracy, but the actual public health. Even if the rallies are held outdoors, they’re basically arguing that it’s important that the virus be made easier to spread.

If they’re still doing this when public health officials are saying that it looks like the pandemic is finally past, that COVID is no longer a threat, then these arguments would be justified, but they’re not, so they’re not.

[HappySkeptic]

The right to assemble and protest is usually considered to be fundamental in a democracy. It could be argued that it overrides public health declarations. However, Canada does not really provide guarantees for protest like the U.S. Constitution does.

[LadyForCamus]

So, as some of you probably know, I think government-mandated lockdowns are not justified. Here is why:

1) How do you test scientifically that they actually prevent the spread of COVID? Like, how do you make an actual scientific study about it, with a meaningful p-value? Mechanicistic evidence is not meaningful here, because whether or not lockdowns work is a matter of how people actually respond to it (For example, many people responded to lockdowns by rushing into grocery stores and buying unreasonable quantities of everyday products, arguably contributing to the spread of COVID.). To me it seems like you can make essentially three types of study about it:
a) Do non-controlled experiments, like the famous Delaware study. And any conclusion following from them is, of course, a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. I think it should not be controversial that the Delaware study is seriously flawed. First, they imply that the 88% reduction in deaths between April and July in Delaware is due to the lockdown. However, during the same time period, the deaths with COVID also drastically declined in Sweden.

But Sweden had no lockdown at that time. That strongly suggests the drastic reduction in mortality during that time period in Delaware is mostly not due to lockdown, but due to some other factor. Maybe it is Vitamin D, since Vitamin D deficiency (which appears to drastically increase the incidence and severity of COVID) is lower in summer. Second reason why that Delaware study is flawed is that, as they say, the mortality in Delaware peaked one week after the lockdown began. Though they cite that as evidence the mortality indeed started decreasing because of the lockdown, I'd argue it is evidence of the opposite. In order to die from COVID, you need to have it for around three weeks. So, the reduction in the number of infections had to start around two weeks before the lockdown.
b) Do cross-country comparisons, to see if there is a correlation between the severity of the lockdown and COVID-related deaths. And, of course, the only way to do that is to lump good and policies together, like the Economic Freedom Index is doing. Obviously, any such study is next to meaningless.
c) Compare the real-world data with what the computer models tell you what happens if there is no lockdown. The problem with that is that in science we want to eliminate the human factor as much as possible, and computer models are a huge human factor. Plus, as the academics who write computer models tend to be left-wind and thus pro-lockdown, there is probably also an agenda involved. And even if there is no agenda involved, my experience tells me not to trust computer models on the matters of soft sciences. In my latest paper about linguistics, I describe how I made a 1000-lines-of-code model that predicts phonological evolution of languages... as it turned out, only 16.7% better than chance. So, only slightly better than chance and certainly no better than guessing.
It seems that the claim that lockdowns work against COVID is one of those claims that, while they seem testable at first, are not actually meaningfully testable. Like the claim that circumcision decreases sexual pleasure: how exactly would you do a scientifically valid study about that, one that controls for the placebo effect? If we should have a government in the first place, it should be a government that bases its policies on science.

2) Lockdowns probably have side-effects in the form of damaging mental health (increased suicide, especially among the young) and, caused by that, economic damages. The constant fear-mongering about COVID is, to young people, certainly more harmful than COVID itself is. And it is far more wrong if a policy results in a death of a young and healthy person, who would otherwise live for another 100 years (or by whatever amount of time the human lifetime increases this century), than if it causes a death of somebody who would otherwise live just a few more months. And if people are depressed, the economy cannot work, causing even more deaths. To be fair, it is hard to tell how much effect lockdowns themselves have on mental health and the economy. Obviously, economic damages happen even in countries without a lockdown, as has happened in Sweden. On the other hand, economies of countries are interconnected, and, if the world's economy suffers, Swedish economy will suffer because of that. I think it is hard to deny lockdowns have played a significant negative effect on the economy, even if we do not know exactly how much (compared to just the fear-mongering). The predictions that the economy will return back to normal a few weeks or months after the lockdowns have been implemented world-wide have, as far as I understand it, proven spectacularly wrong.

3) If the studies showing a link between Vitamin D deficiency and COVID mortality are correct, lockdowns are probably counter-productive. Now, this is, as far as I understand it, a very complicated topic. Somewhat similar to the question of whether low-carbohydrate low-protein diets somehow help against epilepsy: many studies show they do, but there is a complete lack of scientific explanation for how they might. I think the most honest position to take here is not to bet on the either side: do not assume that Vitamin D protects against COVID, but do not assume it does not help either. However, implementing lockdowns is basically betting on the association between COVID and Vitamin D deficiency not being true, which does not seem very reasonable.

4) In just about every country, lockdowns are unconstitutional. If we allow the governments to break the law now, they will have more justification for doing so in the future. Government overreach is a serious problem, which can significantly affect the quality of life of those who are young today.

5) Even if we take for granted that properly implemented lockdowns work, there is little relation between what a proper lockdown would be, and what the governments are actually doing. The US government, led by Andrew Cuomo, was putting COVID patients into nursing homes not to overwhelm the hospitals, going wildly against science and undoubtedly leading to even more deaths. The Croatian government organized massive commemorations of the events from the Yugoslav Wars (the commemoration of Vukovar Massacre was attended by around 30000 people) and World War 2, in the middle of the pandemic, which led to a spike of COVID cases.

As for the masks, I also think there are too many unknowns to justify forcing their usage. First of all, is COVID-19 airborn or is it spread only by droplets? If it is airborn, masks that are usually worn have zero effect. But let's take it for granted it is not airborn and can only be spread by droplets. There comes the matter of social sciences. How do people actually act when forced to wear masks? Do they change and wash their masks often enough? Do they touch their face significantly more often when wearing a mask? And so on... It is incredibly hard to investigate scientifically. The most rigorous study about that done thus far, the Danish study, which involved 3000 people, had a statistical-significance-cut-off at 46%. They could not, with the massive funding they had, design a study which could detect effects larger than 46%. Of course, it failed to detect any effect of masks, as they are usually worn, on COVID-19.

You’re a dumb dumb. 

[no one]

Only when in accordance with my wishes.