<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Mediterraneo10</author><text>&amp;gt; I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible.&lt;p&gt;I believe two factors at play can be identified:&lt;p&gt;1) Among ordinary internet users, the “stay home and save lives” recommendation in spring of last year became highly memetic, and although the median age of death is now there for anyone to learn, the blanket admonishment continues to be rather unthinkingly repeated across society even though in many countries the lockdown is really starting to bite the economy. It is not that people consciously like the COVID world, they are simply perpetuating the social pressures that formed at the outbreak of the epidemic a year ago. (It doesn’t help that often one cannot public take an anti-lockdown stance and participate in  street protests, because then one risks being lumped in with the anti-vaxxers and 5G crazies that tend to be so visible at those protests.)&lt;p&gt;2) Elected officials cannot ease off the restrictions, because the opposition will immediately accuse them of killing grandma or whatever. In this case, the opposition may in fact be acting much like a “concern troll”; they might not really care about the elderly (and deep down, they themselves might be thirsting for an end to lockdown), but they cannot ignore the political point-scoring that they could do with such a position.</text><parent_chain><item><author>salmon30salmon</author><text>Thank you. I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible. Some may like working remotely, others may like the wider acceptance of meal and grocery delivery, others may prefer the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is the only way I can rationalize the insistence of lockdowns here on HN and elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;Either that or COVID is another social issue that is being exploited by nefarious actors to divide western nations.&lt;p&gt;Or both.</text></item><item><author>drcross</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m Irish in Ireland, I&amp;#x27;ve been following the matter closely.&lt;p&gt;Ireland had one of the strictest lockdowns in most of Europe since March, no pubs, nightclubs, limited restaurants, churches, limited sports, 5km travel restrictions were on and off. We masked up early and our national broadcaster was constantly warning everyone non-stop. Schools were open however.&lt;p&gt;We were the poster boy for lockdown success up until at least November. Other nations were commenting on our achievements. You can see what has happened since.&lt;p&gt;The WHO warns that lockdown should only be treated as a last resort, to truly flatten the curve and no more. We ignored that.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s my sincere opinion that we&amp;#x27;ve tried to push back a virus through our lockdown measures and social distancing that eventually cannot be controlled.&lt;p&gt;Holding back a virus is like holding back a damn, eventually something will burst and typically at the wrong time.&lt;p&gt;If we had listened to the WHO by not locking down, gaining natural immunity during the summer (when coronaviruses aren&amp;#x27;t as prevalent) we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be in the mess that we are in now.&lt;p&gt;The median age of death of this virus is 82. Please conceptualise this. Less than 20 people under the age of 44 died from covid in 2020. With our current technology dying is a part of life that cannot be avoided. The people who are dying from covid at the moment are people who were going to die this year, remember, people have to die, most of them have already made peace with this idea.&lt;p&gt;If we didn&amp;#x27;t try so hard to prevent these aged people from dying we wouldn&amp;#x27;t have our resources stretched thin which is compounding the death rate further.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sorry to be the person to tell you this but we all have to die, we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be stopping the living from enjoying their days on earth. Lockdowns are hurting the young and middle age to a drastic degree. You may not care because you work from home and are still guaranteed a paycheck. It&amp;#x27;s easy to virtue signal that you want to save everyone from the comfort of your keyboard. You aren&amp;#x27;t impacted by business closures but if you had any shed of humanity you would disagree to these lockdowns because they are causing more harm than good.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>I believe US could see rolling series of “Ireland events” over next 2 months</title><url>https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-ireland-event-2/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>drcross</author><text>I agree. I think it&amp;#x27;s a combination of factors-&lt;p&gt;The people who are currently on a good WFH salary are seeing their savings grow thinking they are doing well for themselves because &lt;i&gt;soon they will buy a house&lt;/i&gt; but what they don&amp;#x27;t realise is that eventually they will have to pay for the 400k people on the pandemic unemployment payment, the 5 billion that was lost this year in tourism, the 10 million we are spending weekly on PCR testing. This all adds up and with only 2.3 million wage earners in Ireland they are going to be stung for a lot of tax to pay for this.&lt;p&gt;There are people with short term or part time jobs who are happier to be paid 350 per week for staying at home. Why would you want to work a menial job if you didnt need to?&lt;p&gt;Like Prof. Johan Giesecke from Sweden said, the western countries got themselves into a lockdown without thinking of a plan on how to get out of it and no one wants to be seen as the person who made the decision to kill loads of people.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also the vaccine angle which is sure to make those companies lots of money this year.</text><parent_chain><item><author>salmon30salmon</author><text>Thank you. I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible. Some may like working remotely, others may like the wider acceptance of meal and grocery delivery, others may prefer the reduction in greenhouse gases. That is the only way I can rationalize the insistence of lockdowns here on HN and elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;Either that or COVID is another social issue that is being exploited by nefarious actors to divide western nations.&lt;p&gt;Or both.</text></item><item><author>drcross</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m Irish in Ireland, I&amp;#x27;ve been following the matter closely.&lt;p&gt;Ireland had one of the strictest lockdowns in most of Europe since March, no pubs, nightclubs, limited restaurants, churches, limited sports, 5km travel restrictions were on and off. We masked up early and our national broadcaster was constantly warning everyone non-stop. Schools were open however.&lt;p&gt;We were the poster boy for lockdown success up until at least November. Other nations were commenting on our achievements. You can see what has happened since.&lt;p&gt;The WHO warns that lockdown should only be treated as a last resort, to truly flatten the curve and no more. We ignored that.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s my sincere opinion that we&amp;#x27;ve tried to push back a virus through our lockdown measures and social distancing that eventually cannot be controlled.&lt;p&gt;Holding back a virus is like holding back a damn, eventually something will burst and typically at the wrong time.&lt;p&gt;If we had listened to the WHO by not locking down, gaining natural immunity during the summer (when coronaviruses aren&amp;#x27;t as prevalent) we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be in the mess that we are in now.&lt;p&gt;The median age of death of this virus is 82. Please conceptualise this. Less than 20 people under the age of 44 died from covid in 2020. With our current technology dying is a part of life that cannot be avoided. The people who are dying from covid at the moment are people who were going to die this year, remember, people have to die, most of them have already made peace with this idea.&lt;p&gt;If we didn&amp;#x27;t try so hard to prevent these aged people from dying we wouldn&amp;#x27;t have our resources stretched thin which is compounding the death rate further.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sorry to be the person to tell you this but we all have to die, we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be stopping the living from enjoying their days on earth. Lockdowns are hurting the young and middle age to a drastic degree. You may not care because you work from home and are still guaranteed a paycheck. It&amp;#x27;s easy to virtue signal that you want to save everyone from the comfort of your keyboard. You aren&amp;#x27;t impacted by business closures but if you had any shed of humanity you would disagree to these lockdowns because they are causing more harm than good.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>I believe US could see rolling series of “Ireland events” over next 2 months</title><url>https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-ireland-event-2/</url></story>