Completely anecdotal, but while I work in tech, most of my family remains working in trades. Back in March we (I help out where I can) were all in a panic because we assumed discretionary income spending would immediately dry up due to the incoming recession — they are very much working class people, and will be in deep trouble if work dries up.
But the opposite has happened, apparently _a lot_ of people decided now is the time to remodel/improve their home, and the family business is booked _months_ in advance. Furthermore, customers also assume that business must be low, and are aghast when we tell them that "No, work cannot start next week, does late February work?". At the moment their biggest issue is finding enough skilled labor to meet demand, and excruciatingly slow permitting process.
We're still extremely wary with how this economy is playing out, and continue to plan for the worst. I still worry for them a lot because, well Covid, but safety protocols and N95 masks were the norm before the virus took hold.
Just follow the HD and LOW tickers. They had an incredible volume ever since the pandemic started.
Which makes sense. Many people still have their jobs and income. But now are spending more time than ever inside their own houses. Not traveling, and for the most part, not dining out or otherwise spending money elsewhere.
So it makes sense that, if you are in the home remodeling business, you are seeing lots of activity. Also why USPS, UPS and Fedex are overloaded. And the reason PC parts are rarer than gold. TVs flew off the (virtual) shelves on Black Friday. And so on.
The problem is: many people did lose their income. So on one hand you see an incredible influx of customers remodeling homes and spending money on superfluous things, on the other hand you see people becoming homeless, or relying on food banks for the first time in their lives.
This is not like a recession. Some activities have essentially stopped, other are on overdrive. This will create an enormous imbalance, which could bring a recession (long predicted) even after COVID is done. Assuming we can get rid of it.
Covid has had some surprising results. I tried to book a horseback riding lesson for my daughter as an outdoor birthday activity, and they struggled to fit us in. It’s not like it was the only place with horses nearby—This is rural Maryland—there are probably a dozen farms with horses within a 15 minute drive. Horseback riding just became a super popular activity during the pandemic.
I supply natural stone to customers in 10 states and am building a custom home for myself and family.
The construction business is BOOMING at least in the Midwest.
Lumber costs are sky high. Most other subs (plumbing, roofing, siding etc.) are booked beyond what they can handle.
We had our best year at our business in it's 21 year existence.
Anecdotally, I see the same. No relations in the home improvement business or anything related, but the number of small contractors moving through the neighborhood doing all sized job is insane.
We're no different, my wife completely redecorated the main level of our home. It was all things we wanted to do but were putting off. I guess being home 24/7 pushed us to action to improve the space.
The title and heading are wrong. The article and associated says Covid could push an additional 207 million people into extreme poverty, for a total of 1 billion.
Edit: the underlying UN study actually states 251 million additional people in poverty. Not sure where that 207 number in the article and many others coming from.
That is also the worst case scenario. The expected case is 44 million. It’s a tragedy regardless, but the headline is inaccurate clickbait
I feel like it would be better if we just tagged poverty as being off-topic to Hacker News. The vast vast majority of people in technology do not currently experience poverty in any real sense. The same tired and completely unproductive discussion plays out every time. You have:
* The "I was broke once and I made it" crowd. They made it out so everyone else should be able to. This creates a predictable argument of one side asserting privilege is a thing and the other side taking it as an insult to their self-worth and industriousness. Both are right, both are wrong, nobody learns anything.
* The "Policy" or "Solutioning" threads. Usually started with little nuance or specifics, or with an idea that is so large you'll have to go 10 replies deep to have a chance to get down to anyone's personal beliefs or life experiences as to why they believe how they do.
* The "I myself am doing badly because I can't afford a 7 figure home in silicon valley" threads. The arguments are one side saying they're out of touch with "real" people and the other empathizing with the lack of security that comes with not owning a home. Housing discussions follow which I would've hoped are as boring to others as they are by now to me.
Were we to emphasise having productive or at least different conversations, we might try for what I call the "missing" threads, IE the ones that don't happen but should. Threads from:
* People who had to go to a food bank lately.
* People on SNAP, Social Security, Disability.
* People currently or in the past outside the western world who have experience with poverty.
This may not be the demographic that goes to HN, but if you take time to listen to people trapped in poverty for even 10 minutes and BELIEVE them, you might learn something really interesting.
Go give $100 to a local or international food bank now. They need it desperately. Instead of discussing policy on here go look at the lines of people who are currently hungry in the first world:
>I feel like it would be better if we just tagged poverty as being off-topic to Hacker News.
I understand where what's underlying this sentiment, but "you don't get to talk about this subject unless you've personally experienced it" is ultimately unproductive at best.
If for nothing else, when it comes to poverty in particular it's worth keeping in mind that educated people earning middle or higher incomes make up the most generous and most frequent donors to charity. "Shut up but pay up" doesn't read all that well.
I'm a freelancer, I also have imposter syndrome. I've been using Vue for 3 years, and laravel since 2013. My depression and anxiety over current events, turning forty mixed with some burnout has led to a very rough six months. We had to use gofund me for the rent for the past two months. We had to get on SNAP.
An old friend wanted help with wordpress (I hate wordpress), but had to take it. I jumped at $30/hour for 5 hours of work, just so we could put gas in the car, and get a few gifts for our toddler's for Christmas.
Not everybody on HN is doing great making 6-7 figure incomes. My best year, I maybe did 70k. My hourly is $40, generally as a freelance dev, even though others get $100, I've not once been able to secure that kind of pay. At 41, I'm getting a bit frustrated with the life, I had dreams of building a SaaS but just getting out of bed is so hard lately.
Or I just want to spend every waking minute w/ my kids, cause I have this dread that Covid will take me, and I'll miss out on valuable moments with them. My wife's never had a depressed day in her life, until this year, she's on anti-depressants now, her mom died in August from cancer. Usually she'd keep me out of my depression, now I have to find a way to pull her out of hers.
I'm sure there's more people in this thread who are in the demographic, than you think are. Lots of people go to HN and Reddit startup threads to get ideas to break out of poverty. (That's why I learned to code in the first place).
Would imagine a lot of ppl on here are products on the great recession and into tech which kind of makes us a unique group. We graduated, had zero prospects, felt like we were going to be a failure, tech boomed and so did we.
My prediction is that before this is all said and done, far more people are going to be killed by the economic fallout of bad reactions to Covid than the disease itself.
Many people here are extremely privileged and can work remotely and haven’t been hit by the real despair many families in the real world are feeling. So many people don’t realize that not every job can be done over Zoom.
And it seems destined to get worse as the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mentality is going to go into overdrive next year as elitists around the world are going to try and ram through their power grabs that will make our current dystopia look like the good old days.
These (additional 207 million people pushed to extreme poverty) are the type of numbers that make me wonder why we are permitting the economic impact of lockdowns. If the side effects of the "lockdown cure" are going to be exorbitant poverty and starvation, doesn't that make the cure worse than the disease?
In addition to this article, UNICEF says[0] up to 132 million people will face starvation related to the lockdowns in 2020.
Just cursory searching yields the current COVID-19 death count at 1.6m[1] (a total which is disputed due to the "died from COVID-19" vs "died with COVID-19" distinction).
It seems like the starvation and poverty numbers from the lockdowns are likely to exceed any potential COVID-19 death count (even with no lockdowns).
And none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides, lack of medical care for existing medical conditions, and other impacts from being isolated or stuck inside.
Is this all emotional/fear-based/CYA decision making? I keep hearing "follow the science", but it doesn't seem like anybody is doing that at a basic life-saving or economic level. It feels like I'm going crazy, because none of the decisions being made make sense to me and are resulting in significant suffering and death.
It would be great to learn more if there are things I am overlooking here, but I've just been baffled lately.
> are the type of numbers that make me wonder why we are permitting the economic impact of lockdowns.
Permitting? What do you propose be done? The economic impacts aren't primarily from civil direction -- there may be a margin that comes from that, but the vast majority of shifted behavior comes because people don't feel safe. You could wave a magic wand and drop ALL restrictions today and the economic gains would be marginal until people do credibly believe their safe.
The basic idea of a dichotomy between economics and epidemic is wrong. Economic impacts are an inevitable part of an uncontrolled epidemic.
> none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides
Are there numbers for lockdown related mental health impacts?
In general, health and well-being don't seem to suffer like you'd expect from economic difficulty:
> lack of medical care for existing medical conditions
This is actually one reason some civil direction to control covid cases is necessary. Having followed family members through multiple non-covid hospitalizations recently, I can tell you that the system isn't keeping margins of unused capacity for covid, it's struggling to keep up with demand imposed by it.
Politicians are cynically deciding they’d rather not be blamed for deaths even if they’re categorically failing to protect the most vulnerable. So they’ve decided to obliterate small business and the working class by essentially outlawing work.
The especially frustrating thing about this is that the vast majority of the risk for serious illness from COVID is concentrated in a few high risk groups, in particular the elderly. Lockdowns and outside help targeted to those groups could probably get much wider buy-in and flatten the curve much more. Instead, while 23 year olds are forbidden from going to bars, there is still a person in his 70s bagging groceries at my local supermarket.
Mailing vitamin D pills to everyone in the country probably would also do more to reduce Covid deaths than the lockdowns (though might not be feasible for logistics/supply chain reasons).
I personally I'm getting richer. Working for a big corp as a software engineer, I've done nothing but saving more money since the lock down started. I've also done much more shopping on Amazon, so I guess I'm giving back some of that money to other big corps. Doing groceries at Costo so money is not leaving the circle of big corps.
I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
> Doing groceries at Costo so money is not leaving the circle of big corps.
Costco's net margin is ~2.6%, so the other 97.4% is leaving Costco for labor (notably well-paid for grocery stores) and whoever their suppliers are. Are they substantially different from your normal grocery store's suppliers? For that matter, is your normal grocery store itself different from Costco in some structural way that is meaningful to you? Perhaps you were previously shopping at a coop like San Francisco's Rainbow Groceries or New York's Park Slope Food Coop?
So you’re getting more for less by eating out more often and not tipping? And you’re also saving more than ever? I mean, that’s cool, but I hope you don’t think you’re being altruistic.
> I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
If you live in the US this is a real jerk move. You're talking about how you're getting richer, but then aren't willing to tip the service worker making less than minimum wage?
If every bar and restaurant within 10 miles of me were 100% open for sit-down dining, I'd have eaten in exactly zero of them for the last 6 months, down from probably 50 or more visits plus 20 bar visits in the same period in 2019.
> It would be more honest if predictions like this were mentioned alongside articles in the press that claim lockdowns are the only option we have.
What are the other options? For all of humanity's advancements, quarantine-like behavior is our best bet against novel diseases.
In fact, many governments only implemented half-assed "soft" lockdowns. They should have acted immediately and decisively. Lockdown early and hard, at the very first signs that this thing was becoming a pandemic. And don't let go until it's under control.
Instead, we got this lame lockdown-but-not-quite (places of worship open, are you serious?), no mask mandate, nothing. And as soon as things start to look better, reopen. Oops, bad again, close. And now are are only prolonging the suffering.
Developing countries are once again in a bad shape, but richer countries should know better. Treat this as a war, support your citizens. Even though large companies like airlines are important, most of the focus should have been towards small businesses and individuals. Also on PPE at the very beginning.
There is enough money in the developed world to help with the problem. Make some fewer F-35 (at 200M a pop) if need be. That's a lot of food and rent money.
That's not true though. Even if the government does nothing you still have people altering their behavior out of fear. More online shopping, working from home, less traveling, activities outside the home. Looking at Sweden where they didn't lock down, I would say that seems a very large part of the change in economic activity.
And because the virus tends to get more out of control, this change is magnified compared to when the government takes action. Is it really better for the economy over the long term to lockdown or not? I don't think we know the answer one way or the other.
To take the extreme example. China was the epicenter of the pandemic, took the strongest government action and snuffed it out. Now our economy suffers while theirs does much better. Maybe our problem is we couldn't be as extreme as them, we don't have a hope of eliminating it in our countries in the West through lockdowns.
There’s so many assumptions and ignored aspects in this discussion. Whether it be the effectiveness of mitigation strategies, respect for individual rights, costs of lost years of education for 10s of millions of kids and how that affects their lives, cost to business that are destroyed forever more, health consequences due to shuttering inside, mental health consequences, the list goes on...
We’re told all of this is in our best interest by rich people who will not suffer much cost if any - most politicians may come out ahead financially.
Basic Income Now, with an immutable tenet that the basic income cannot be restricted or reduced, or contain compliance dependencies. Its time to empower individuals.
The only reason why people in tech still have jobs (and why SV hasn’t blown up) is because the c-suite is getting rich off of stock market. When that party ends (likely in February/March timeframe), there will be a depression and civil unrest.
Correction: the virus hasn't done anything to anyone who wasn't already at risk. This is a downvote worthy perspective because it reflects the truth of the situation while countering the narrative from the media.
Grand gestures by politicians seeking re-election and an opportunity to assert their authority is shoving people into poverty and the largest mental health crisis we've ever seen.
In March, lockdowns and temporary restrictions were appropriate because we had no idea of what we were dealing with. I mean cover on, Ford was ready to manufacturer 50k ventilators!
We know who's at risk at this point. Locking down the healthy is not helping the unhealthy (by choice or by no fault of their own, doesn't matter, everyone deserves to live).
Instead of providing assistance to those most at risk, government officials have capitalized on the opportunity to expand their control over individuals not at risk.
[+] [-] ProfessorLayton|5 years ago|reply
But the opposite has happened, apparently _a lot_ of people decided now is the time to remodel/improve their home, and the family business is booked _months_ in advance. Furthermore, customers also assume that business must be low, and are aghast when we tell them that "No, work cannot start next week, does late February work?". At the moment their biggest issue is finding enough skilled labor to meet demand, and excruciatingly slow permitting process.
We're still extremely wary with how this economy is playing out, and continue to plan for the worst. I still worry for them a lot because, well Covid, but safety protocols and N95 masks were the norm before the virus took hold.
[+] [-] outworlder|5 years ago|reply
Which makes sense. Many people still have their jobs and income. But now are spending more time than ever inside their own houses. Not traveling, and for the most part, not dining out or otherwise spending money elsewhere.
So it makes sense that, if you are in the home remodeling business, you are seeing lots of activity. Also why USPS, UPS and Fedex are overloaded. And the reason PC parts are rarer than gold. TVs flew off the (virtual) shelves on Black Friday. And so on.
The problem is: many people did lose their income. So on one hand you see an incredible influx of customers remodeling homes and spending money on superfluous things, on the other hand you see people becoming homeless, or relying on food banks for the first time in their lives.
This is not like a recession. Some activities have essentially stopped, other are on overdrive. This will create an enormous imbalance, which could bring a recession (long predicted) even after COVID is done. Assuming we can get rid of it.
[+] [-] rayiner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhruvkar|5 years ago|reply
Lumber costs are sky high. Most other subs (plumbing, roofing, siding etc.) are booked beyond what they can handle.
We had our best year at our business in it's 21 year existence.
[+] [-] alistairSH|5 years ago|reply
We're no different, my wife completely redecorated the main level of our home. It was all things we wanted to do but were putting off. I guess being home 24/7 pushed us to action to improve the space.
[+] [-] topkai22|5 years ago|reply
Edit: the underlying UN study actually states 251 million additional people in poverty. Not sure where that 207 number in the article and many others coming from.
That is also the worst case scenario. The expected case is 44 million. It’s a tragedy regardless, but the headline is inaccurate clickbait
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|5 years ago|reply
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/18/the-risks-of-ke...
[+] [-] loraa|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] taurath|5 years ago|reply
* The "I was broke once and I made it" crowd. They made it out so everyone else should be able to. This creates a predictable argument of one side asserting privilege is a thing and the other side taking it as an insult to their self-worth and industriousness. Both are right, both are wrong, nobody learns anything.
* The "Policy" or "Solutioning" threads. Usually started with little nuance or specifics, or with an idea that is so large you'll have to go 10 replies deep to have a chance to get down to anyone's personal beliefs or life experiences as to why they believe how they do.
* The "I myself am doing badly because I can't afford a 7 figure home in silicon valley" threads. The arguments are one side saying they're out of touch with "real" people and the other empathizing with the lack of security that comes with not owning a home. Housing discussions follow which I would've hoped are as boring to others as they are by now to me.
Were we to emphasise having productive or at least different conversations, we might try for what I call the "missing" threads, IE the ones that don't happen but should. Threads from:
* People who had to go to a food bank lately.
* People on SNAP, Social Security, Disability.
* People currently or in the past outside the western world who have experience with poverty.
This may not be the demographic that goes to HN, but if you take time to listen to people trapped in poverty for even 10 minutes and BELIEVE them, you might learn something really interesting.
Go give $100 to a local or international food bank now. They need it desperately. Instead of discussing policy on here go look at the lines of people who are currently hungry in the first world:
https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/long-lines-at-food-bank...
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/527462-long-lines-form-at...
You, on hacker news, can afford it.
[+] [-] CharlesW|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for the reminder about this simple action for good. It was trivial to find my local food banks, and took only a couple minutes to give.
(I used charitynavigator.org to decide between a couple of local options.)
[+] [-] cmdshiftf4|5 years ago|reply
I understand where what's underlying this sentiment, but "you don't get to talk about this subject unless you've personally experienced it" is ultimately unproductive at best.
If for nothing else, when it comes to poverty in particular it's worth keeping in mind that educated people earning middle or higher incomes make up the most generous and most frequent donors to charity. "Shut up but pay up" doesn't read all that well.
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|5 years ago|reply
An old friend wanted help with wordpress (I hate wordpress), but had to take it. I jumped at $30/hour for 5 hours of work, just so we could put gas in the car, and get a few gifts for our toddler's for Christmas.
Not everybody on HN is doing great making 6-7 figure incomes. My best year, I maybe did 70k. My hourly is $40, generally as a freelance dev, even though others get $100, I've not once been able to secure that kind of pay. At 41, I'm getting a bit frustrated with the life, I had dreams of building a SaaS but just getting out of bed is so hard lately.
Or I just want to spend every waking minute w/ my kids, cause I have this dread that Covid will take me, and I'll miss out on valuable moments with them. My wife's never had a depressed day in her life, until this year, she's on anti-depressants now, her mom died in August from cancer. Usually she'd keep me out of my depression, now I have to find a way to pull her out of hers.
I'm sure there's more people in this thread who are in the demographic, than you think are. Lots of people go to HN and Reddit startup threads to get ideas to break out of poverty. (That's why I learned to code in the first place).
[+] [-] ulisesrmzroche|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdgrech23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macinjosh|5 years ago|reply
FTFY
[+] [-] logicalmonster|5 years ago|reply
My prediction is that before this is all said and done, far more people are going to be killed by the economic fallout of bad reactions to Covid than the disease itself.
Many people here are extremely privileged and can work remotely and haven’t been hit by the real despair many families in the real world are feeling. So many people don’t realize that not every job can be done over Zoom.
And it seems destined to get worse as the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mentality is going to go into overdrive next year as elitists around the world are going to try and ram through their power grabs that will make our current dystopia look like the good old days.
[+] [-] AndrewBissell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatthesmack|5 years ago|reply
In addition to this article, UNICEF says[0] up to 132 million people will face starvation related to the lockdowns in 2020.
Just cursory searching yields the current COVID-19 death count at 1.6m[1] (a total which is disputed due to the "died from COVID-19" vs "died with COVID-19" distinction).
It seems like the starvation and poverty numbers from the lockdowns are likely to exceed any potential COVID-19 death count (even with no lockdowns).
And none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides, lack of medical care for existing medical conditions, and other impacts from being isolated or stuck inside.
Is this all emotional/fear-based/CYA decision making? I keep hearing "follow the science", but it doesn't seem like anybody is doing that at a basic life-saving or economic level. It feels like I'm going crazy, because none of the decisions being made make sense to me and are resulting in significant suffering and death.
It would be great to learn more if there are things I am overlooking here, but I've just been baffled lately.
[0] https://data.unicef.org/resources/sofi-2020/
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
[+] [-] wwweston|5 years ago|reply
Permitting? What do you propose be done? The economic impacts aren't primarily from civil direction -- there may be a margin that comes from that, but the vast majority of shifted behavior comes because people don't feel safe. You could wave a magic wand and drop ALL restrictions today and the economic gains would be marginal until people do credibly believe their safe.
The basic idea of a dichotomy between economics and epidemic is wrong. Economic impacts are an inevitable part of an uncontrolled epidemic.
> none of the aforementioned includes lockdown-related suicides
Are there numbers for lockdown related mental health impacts?
In general, health and well-being don't seem to suffer like you'd expect from economic difficulty:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928172530.h...
https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-economy-life-e...
> lack of medical care for existing medical conditions
This is actually one reason some civil direction to control covid cases is necessary. Having followed family members through multiple non-covid hospitalizations recently, I can tell you that the system isn't keeping margins of unused capacity for covid, it's struggling to keep up with demand imposed by it.
[+] [-] gnusty_gnurc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewBissell|5 years ago|reply
Mailing vitamin D pills to everyone in the country probably would also do more to reduce Covid deaths than the lockdowns (though might not be feasible for logistics/supply chain reasons).
[+] [-] marcosdumay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtrhtrhtrhtr|5 years ago|reply
I've tried to eat out more often, even leaving less or no tips in order to feel more incentivized to not eat at home.
[+] [-] prh8|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akka47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|5 years ago|reply
Costco's net margin is ~2.6%, so the other 97.4% is leaving Costco for labor (notably well-paid for grocery stores) and whoever their suppliers are. Are they substantially different from your normal grocery store's suppliers? For that matter, is your normal grocery store itself different from Costco in some structural way that is meaningful to you? Perhaps you were previously shopping at a coop like San Francisco's Rainbow Groceries or New York's Park Slope Food Coop?
[+] [-] oivey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trasmatta|5 years ago|reply
If you live in the US this is a real jerk move. You're talking about how you're getting richer, but then aren't willing to tip the service worker making less than minimum wage?
[+] [-] amptorn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loblollyboy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jdhn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnord77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] think814|5 years ago|reply
The reaction to the virus by the government does that.
It would be more honest if predictions like this were mentioned alongside articles in the press that claim lockdowns are the only option we have.
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
Zero government influence in the above paragraph.
[+] [-] outworlder|5 years ago|reply
What are the other options? For all of humanity's advancements, quarantine-like behavior is our best bet against novel diseases.
In fact, many governments only implemented half-assed "soft" lockdowns. They should have acted immediately and decisively. Lockdown early and hard, at the very first signs that this thing was becoming a pandemic. And don't let go until it's under control.
Instead, we got this lame lockdown-but-not-quite (places of worship open, are you serious?), no mask mandate, nothing. And as soon as things start to look better, reopen. Oops, bad again, close. And now are are only prolonging the suffering.
Developing countries are once again in a bad shape, but richer countries should know better. Treat this as a war, support your citizens. Even though large companies like airlines are important, most of the focus should have been towards small businesses and individuals. Also on PPE at the very beginning.
There is enough money in the developed world to help with the problem. Make some fewer F-35 (at 200M a pop) if need be. That's a lot of food and rent money.
[+] [-] eloff|5 years ago|reply
And because the virus tends to get more out of control, this change is magnified compared to when the government takes action. Is it really better for the economy over the long term to lockdown or not? I don't think we know the answer one way or the other.
To take the extreme example. China was the epicenter of the pandemic, took the strongest government action and snuffed it out. Now our economy suffers while theirs does much better. Maybe our problem is we couldn't be as extreme as them, we don't have a hope of eliminating it in our countries in the West through lockdowns.
[+] [-] gnusty_gnurc|5 years ago|reply
We’re told all of this is in our best interest by rich people who will not suffer much cost if any - most politicians may come out ahead financially.
[+] [-] skybrian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] captainredbeard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loraa|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] quibbler|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bigphishy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tboyd47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehejsbbejsk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|5 years ago|reply
Grand gestures by politicians seeking re-election and an opportunity to assert their authority is shoving people into poverty and the largest mental health crisis we've ever seen.
In March, lockdowns and temporary restrictions were appropriate because we had no idea of what we were dealing with. I mean cover on, Ford was ready to manufacturer 50k ventilators!
We know who's at risk at this point. Locking down the healthy is not helping the unhealthy (by choice or by no fault of their own, doesn't matter, everyone deserves to live).
Instead of providing assistance to those most at risk, government officials have capitalized on the opportunity to expand their control over individuals not at risk.