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> Evidence from China and Italy is that they don't actually work. Don’t work for what purpose? They work well at shutting down the virus in the short term. In

> Evidence from China and Italy is that they don't actually work. Don’t work for what purpose? They work well at shutting down the virus in the short term. In Wuhan the reproductive number of the virus is estimated to have dropped from above 3 to ~0.3 after the lockdown. > In Italy, with two weeks of lockdown, the exponential growth of new infections hasn't even slowed This is definitely not true. If you plot Italian cases or deaths on a logarithmic scale it’s easy to see the curve slowly bending down. Keep in mind it takes ~2 weeks for public health interventions to start showing up in data about identified cases, and ~3 weeks for them to show up in data about deaths. > places like Korea have no trouble stopping the virus without the authoritarianism Places like South Korea have had plenty of “trouble”, but have stopped transmission through nationwide testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, along with early school closures and a mass social distancing effort among the public, pervasive use of face masks, etc. The South Korean public health response (and we might add also Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) was much faster and more decisive than the response in the US or Europe. As a result they have avoided the situation of widespread community spread, and not needed to undertake a total societal shutdown as became necessary in Hubei or Italy. What other countries should be learning from South Korea is to act quickly and stay on top of the virus before it gets out of control.

vanniv 7y ago
If the Wuhan lockdown had worked, they wouldn't have to continue it until the end of time to prevent the virus coming back. As it stands, there is no reason to expect the virus to stay away no matter how long the lockdown continues. Meanwhile, the richest country in the history of the world has been reduced to breadlines in only weeks -- and it does nothing (except guarantee more poverty and starvation)
- jacobolus 7y ago
  The Wuhan lockdown clearly worked insofar as it stopped the exponential spread of the epidemic in the short term, saving millions of lives throughout China and by now allowing temporary hospitals to empty, overworked imported medical staff to return home, transportation networks to restart, etc. Over the coming months economic activity should slowly ramp up (already has in most of the country), hopefully without restarting widespread community spread of the virus. Yes this is an extremely economically painful kind of response, more or less pausing all economic activity for months. But if the alternative is the death of >1% of the population, all drowning alone at home while the overwhelmed medical system collapses, it’s hard to counterfactually guess at the relative effects on the economy.

vanniv 7y ago

If the Wuhan lockdown had worked, they wouldn't have to continue it until the end of time to prevent the virus coming back. As it stands, there is no reason to expect the virus to stay away no matter how long the lockdown continues. Meanwhile, the richest country in the history of the world has been reduced to breadlines in only weeks -- and it does nothing (except guarantee more poverty and starvation)

jacobolus 7y ago
The Wuhan lockdown clearly worked insofar as it stopped the exponential spread of the epidemic in the short term, saving millions of lives throughout China and by now allowing temporary hospitals to empty, overworked imported medical staff to return home, transportation networks to restart, etc. Over the coming months economic activity should slowly ramp up (already has in most of the country), hopefully without restarting widespread community spread of the virus. Yes this is an extremely economically painful kind of response, more or less pausing all economic activity for months. But if the alternative is the death of >1% of the population, all drowning alone at home while the overwhelmed medical system collapses, it’s hard to counterfactually guess at the relative effects on the economy.