14 ms·

New restrictions in Hong Kong show that a single lockdown won’t be enough

73 points by othello 7y ago

empath75 7y ago
Successive lockdowns and easings are probably going to continue for up to two years. Anybody arguing that the stock market or the economy is going to bounce back quickly in the next two months are either bullshitting you or deluding themselves. No “stimulus” package is going to be effective, because you can’t use spending to stimulate an economy which has been forced to stop producing goods and services. All you will accomplish is inflation as more money chases fewer goods and services.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  /r/Wallstreetbets just had someone put $775k, the person’s entire net worth, into options on the idea that the market will crash by 6/19. I am sure comments like yours give them hope that they are right. Personally, I think that the economy will change significantly, but crash vs recover for markets is different. If suddenly workers got a fair wage and everyone got universal healthcare we could easily see the country doing a lot better while the markets would tank as this would undoubtedly be paid for by loss of corporate profits.
  - bob33212 7y ago
    From a first principal perspective there is no reason why anyone should think that it is impossible for China or another country to create 2 billion vaccine doses in the next 6 months. There are plenty of reasons to say this will not happen but it isn't impossible. If it does happen everything flips very quickly.
    - empath75 7y ago
      It’s also possible no vaccine will be discovered as there are no coronavirus vaccines.
      - heavenlyblue 7y ago
        Your black-and-white answer to this also has a pretty low probability. We may not find a vaccine, however we may find ways of treating the illness making the ICU less needed.
      - fedorareis 7y ago
        There are no human approved coronavirus vaccines. There were a number of SARS vaccines that never finished clinical trials because SARS became pretty much a non-issue before they finished. There are also coronavirus vaccines approved for animals. Both of these things could potentially help with faster developing a vaccine for COVID-19.
    - gizmo686 7y ago
      From a practical perspective, there seems to be no appetite in the medical community to attempt this. We have vaccine candidates now, and the consensus opinion seems to be that we should go through the trial process. There just isn't much room to shorten the timeline without cutting corners and safety and efficacy verifications. Unless we learn something dramatic and terrifying new about this virus in the near future, I don't see what would cause this calculus to change.
    - pretendscholar 7y ago
      Which first principles are you using to come to that conclusion?
    - bawolff 7y ago
      Huh? From first principles there is no reason why anyone should think that their won't be 2 billion vaccines tomorrow (perhaps via divine intervention). Heck, from first principles I'm not even sure Australia exists (Maybe Australia is a giant hoax. After all, i have never been there.) Proving things from first principles is really hard. The fact you weren't able to disprove a statement from first principles is not strong evidence the statement is actually true.
      - bob33212 7y ago
        Sorry, I don't believe in a magical skyman as a first principal.
        bawolff 7y ago
        Well you can of course take anything you want as a first principle, this is kind of an odd choice. Typically people take as first principles foundational things they believe to be true but know they can't prove. Things like, our memory reflects things that happened in the past or other people exist as real people and aren't just complex NPC. Most atheists believe that there is no reasonable evidence for a deity, thus it makes no sense to believe in one (or some varation of that). In particular they believe this conclusion is rational and can be arrived at through reasoning. Taking "there is no deities" as a first principle, is in essense taking a view about religion on just "faith". My understanding is that to most atheists, this sort of appeal to faith is an anathema.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      Before administering a vaccine into everybody, we must first make sure it's not worse than the disease (on average, what is a very high var). This test takes some time, so no, not on the next 6 months. One can realistically expect it by 2022, if we are willing to rush and accept some risk. By the way, 6 months is how long it takes to create a batch of flu vaccines.
  - masonhensley 7y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fpo4y5/brothers_the_time_has_come_for_the_ultimate_yolo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fpo4y5/brot...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - alexandercrohde 7y ago
    That's a dumb bet. If the system crashes odds are pretty high they aren't getting paid.
- vladd 7y ago
  The economy is going to change, for sure. But different verticals are going to react differently to this state of intermittent lock-downs. Travel-related industries (hotels, restaurants, airlines, oil) are going downwards. Food delivery and gym@home equipment is going to sky-rocket. At the end of the day, it's a gamble to state where overall GDP or stock-market is ending, but over time increased air-born disease risks are going to facilitate new industries to come to life, and old ones to offset. Just like it always happened. Like Warren Buffett says, "From a standing start 240 years ago, Americans have combined human ingenuity with a market system to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers...". There is nothing to suggest this is suddenly going to stop moving forward, even as we adapt to these new realities.
  - empath75 7y ago
    I’ll just give one example of how things will change — massive amounts of women are going to leave the workforce. Schools and day cares are not going to be reliable for the foreseeable future and women are more likely to quit their jobs and stay home if that becomes necessary.
    - vladd 7y ago
      There are significant second order effects (and 3rd, 4th degree effects and so on) that are difficult to foresee and accurately simulate. For example, just to continue on your train of thoughts, the number of average children in existing young families is going to go up, which is going to increase food consumption and, potentially decades later, construction activities in real estate.
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        Why would young families suddenly have more children?
        swsieber 7y ago
        There are various memes floating around about how there's going to be a surge of kids conceived during this quarantine/social distancing times. In short, it seems likely people are going to have more sex when they are stuck at home. OTOH, I know people with children who are going crazy. I don't they are encouraged to have more children.
- DenisM 7y ago
  >either bullshitting you or deluding themselves Was this the best possible way to treat an intellectual disagreement? Surely people can disagree with you without being liars or delusionary? Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - danharaj 7y ago
    Surely people can tell you the Earth is flat without being delusional or a liar. At some point, when the stakes are so high, willful ignorance is harmful and should be called out.
    - amylene 7y ago
      The difference is that flat earthers reject objective evidence. This is someone disagreeing over projections about the future. And, to be frank, nobody has a fucking clue how to estimate the medium term effects of this.
      - danharaj 7y ago
        If nobody has a fucking clue then anyone who is certain that the economy will recover in 2 months is either deluded or bullshitting themselves. But we do know certainly that we will only be hitting the peak of infections sometime in April in states that were much more proactive than the median. It is extremely unlike that things will clear up, say, by Easter. Those who are so optimistic are innumerate and don't understand exponential functions.
        amylene 7y ago
        Yes, certainty in future economic projections is delusional, but it’s a delusion that is well received by society. Humans prefer confidence over competence, and abhor uncertainty. Right now, we have a lot of uncertainty.
- anonsubmit2671 7y ago
  First part is mostly correct. Second part, you're dead wrong in two areas. Manufacturing of essential goods continues in haste. And, stimulus is essential for people have lost their jobs and need to buy food. So take your theoretical keyboard economics degree and leave it at the door. Let's take away your source of income, ability to work and see how you feed your family.
  - empath75 7y ago
    It will keep people in their houses in the very short term, but it won’t fix the overall economic problems if the economy is frozen for a year or more.
- throwaway122378 7y ago
  For the next 2 years? You understand that there are antivirals being tested as we speak and vaccines in trial for a 12 month release right?
chippy 7y ago
Baity title - the actual article was more interesting than the sensationalist baity title suggested
- xwdv 7y ago
  Quite an inflammatory title too. Don’t tell me what to do.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
China woo this again. Not sure n ext round will be 20 years long if they continue their eating and Gov social control.
jimmySixDOF 7y ago
There is another study from Harvard released this week saying the same thing about multiple surges of containment: [1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927586 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927586
jariel 7y ago
This is terrible thinking: South Korea and other places have not locked down and they have effectively contained the virus. We are doing Trillions of damage they are avoiding. Given the costs we should be spending billions studying what they are doing. We need to understand more effectively how the virus is spreading and focus on those spots, not this lockdown stuff which is too costly. Some basic policies like mask-wearing for everyone in public, gloves, and masks in restaurants, and on subways busses, N95 maybe for anyone in crowded area jobs, anyone with any sickness immediately self-isolates etc.. These total shut-downs seem like a 'home vacay' for now but it will start causing serious pain very soon. Edit: I should add by 'trillions in damage' I'm not worried about shareholders; this will have serious consequences for people. Many millions are losing their jobs, millions will be evicted, foreclosed, homeless, jobless, and otherwise, have their lives severely disrupted. FYI in America no job = no healthcare. At some point, the shelves stop being stocked. We need to be smart.
- chinathrow 7y ago
  From the article: HK did in fact not effectively contain the virus. "In recent days, this semblance of normalcy has vanished. The number of confirmed cases here has ticked upward at a much quicker pace than before, worrying health experts. The government reversed course on its easing of restrictions, sending workers back home, closing parks and city facilities, and reiterating calls for social distancing."
  - jariel 7y ago
    Sorry, I meant to wite South Korea.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    It's actually even worse than that on the ground in HK right now. Ban on non-residents. Groups of more than 4 people are broken up. A growing skittish-ness about "foreigners", (thought to be the people who brought the second wave of infections to HK). Etc etc. HK and Tokyo are not examples to be emulated, they are examples of what we should be trying to avoid.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
But of course. If you intentionally prevent ppl from being infected then they remain susceptible. Short of a vaccine, you can't put it off forever. Those ppl can't hide forever. This is an expected - or should be - result of "flatten the curve." FTC is not about the virus per se, it's about the healthcare system. That is, to not exceed the volume the healthcare system can handle. Put another way, an increase in the number of positives isn't necessarily a bad thing. If if stays towards the 80% who are asymptomatic or low risk then the more the better. They'll get it. Recovery and will be past it. The key number - the number the media should be emphasizing - is the positives in high risk individuals. That's the curve we don't want to see spike. Furthermore, it's where those happen. One-thousand as 50 in 20 cities is not the same as 500 in one city (e.g., NYC) and the other 500 distributed evenly elsewhere. The aggregate numbers make great - but crap - headlines. The understanding is in the details.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  It's amazing how many people copy-paste knowledge without doing the most basic logical checks on it. For example, nobody yet explained to me how flattening the curve is gonna make much difference when say NYC has 3,000 ventilators, and the average time on a ventilator is 20 days. If 1/100 of NYC's 8 million population need a ventilator that'd still be 80,000 ventilators needed. So flattening would reduce the deaths to 74,000 instead of 77,000? [To be clear I'm not saying this math is exact. But I am saying I am owed the actual math by people who want me to change my life over it]
  - patall 7y ago
    8.000.000 by 100 is 80.000. And if the governor is able to somehow organize another 30000 ventilators in 3 weeks, your death count goes down from 77k to 44k. Or 11 times 9/11.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      The improvement isn't quite that high, because people sick enough to need a ventilator are often going to die even if they get one, but I agree with your point that increasing medical capacity is the high-leverage play here.
tomatocracy 7y ago
The political acceptability of releasing then locking down again is likely to be very low in my view. Friends and colleagues I speak to who haven’t followed the modelling papers etc think the point of a lockdown is to eliminate the virus entirely - not contain, not delay but eliminate entirely. There is also a very strong fear of getting the virus (many of the same people are convinced that it’s a death sentence almost akin to Ebola). I suspect that these views are very widespread and this is why the lockdowns currently enjoy strong popular support. A release followed by a second lockdown would, I think, be viewed as an admission that the policy was a failure therefore and would also lead to a reassessment of how dangerous it really is amongst those people. Those still suffering from the economic damage from the first (which will be almost everyone) will have a lot of reasons to resist very hard and I think most governments in democratic countries would struggle to implement such a policy.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  Right, if there's a resurgence I'm not participating. The cure would be worse than the disease. I encourage susceptible populations to quarantine themselves, rather than everybody quarantining. We must work, date, and life must go on.
  - GavinMcG 7y ago
    The cure would likely be worse than the disease for you. Are millions of people dying an acceptable trade-off for us to be able to date?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - brightball 7y ago
      Is it an acceptable trade off for you? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734
    - izend 7y ago
not_exactly__ 7y ago
“ Hong Kong and Singapore were early examples of places that were able to contain the spread of the virus” coughTAIWANcough Again for the people in the back: T•A•I•W•A•N
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Being an island nation is definitely an advantage in this regard.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    not for UK evidently
    - patall 7y ago
      Which evidence? Do we have a continental control UK where results are the same? In my parents county, there is one village with 9 cases out of 800 inhabitants that has been put on full lock-down, nobody is allowed to leave the village. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of hiking trails in the area and somehow, some of the locals have gotten 'lost' in their backyard, only to reappear in the next towns supermarket.
vanniv 7y ago
Now that governments have proven that people will let them imprison everyone at any time, just by saying "virus", they're gearing up to do it again, all the time, forever, whenever it would be convenient. After they've done it a few times, they'll just make it permanent. By everyone agreeing to huddle terrified in their homes over nothing, we have permanently ended free movement and free assembly in our societies.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  This is voluntary. At least in the US, there is nowhere near enough police (including every last sworn officer and every single military member, police or not) to force people to stay at home. They are extremely outnumbered, both by population and by weaponry. Imagining this leading to an authoritarian state is fearmongering.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Multiple of my college buddies, who I know to otherwise be reasonable people, are calling for martial law so people will be forced at gunpoint to stay home for months. I agree that an authoritarian state is a low probability outcome, but the mechanism by which it remains low probability is people making it clear that we won't stand for it.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      I agree, there are definitely some people panicking and advocating for completely disproportionate responses to the pandemic. I see it in my own circle, I see it on HN. Hopefully we can do enough to dampen the death count so that people don't freak out any further.
  - clairity 7y ago
    no authoritarian state has ever had enough police and military to come close to outnumbering the citizenry. numerical equivalency is not a necessary condition for the exertion of power and coercion. we must remain vigilant in protecting our rights and maintaining the dispersion of power while we get through this pandemic. part of that is keeping fear responses in check by putting our rational powers to use discerning facts, accepting uncertainty, rejecting falsehoods, and collectively yielding the time needed to compile valuable information, rather than getting frothed up by the frenzy.
shahbaby 7y ago
Fuck China. If Iran had intentionally spread this virus the way CCP has done, there would already be war but because it came from China, here we are worried about being called racist. It's quite jarring when you compare this to how the world reacted after 9/11. When I hear people say things like "China bought the world time" it's infuriating. The CCP needs to pay.
- dang 7y ago
  Using HN for nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20nationalis&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
soared 7y ago
Technically this is clickbait - the title's implication is that we'll have more lockdowns in the future, while the article only talks about how the current lockdown will ebb and flow. If something is lifted and reinstated its really the same lockdown, not a new one. I was hoping to read an article about the potential of other coronaviruses or threats that may cause global lockdowns in the future.
- makomk 7y ago
  Ir's arguably less clickbaity than saying that the lockdown is going to last for the next two years, which is the alternative framing.
lazylizard 7y ago
Why wont the world stay at home together for 3 months? Lets start apr1! Then by july there will be no more covid19. And lots of other infectious diseases too, i imagine..
- sebazzz 7y ago
  If only there was a way to suspend the entire economy.

73 points by othello 7y ago

Successive lockdowns and easings are probably going to continue for up to two years. Anybody arguing that the stock market or the economy is going to bounce back quickly in the next two months are either bullshitting you or deluding themselves. No “stimulus” package is going to be effective, because you can’t use spending to stimulate an economy which has been forced to stop producing goods and services. All you will accomplish is inflation as more money chases fewer goods and services.

IgorPartola 7y ago
/r/Wallstreetbets just had someone put $775k, the person’s entire net worth, into options on the idea that the market will crash by 6/19. I am sure comments like yours give them hope that they are right. Personally, I think that the economy will change significantly, but crash vs recover for markets is different. If suddenly workers got a fair wage and everyone got universal healthcare we could easily see the country doing a lot better while the markets would tank as this would undoubtedly be paid for by loss of corporate profits.
- bob33212 7y ago
  From a first principal perspective there is no reason why anyone should think that it is impossible for China or another country to create 2 billion vaccine doses in the next 6 months. There are plenty of reasons to say this will not happen but it isn't impossible. If it does happen everything flips very quickly.
  - empath75 7y ago
    It’s also possible no vaccine will be discovered as there are no coronavirus vaccines.
    - heavenlyblue 7y ago
      Your black-and-white answer to this also has a pretty low probability. We may not find a vaccine, however we may find ways of treating the illness making the ICU less needed.
    - fedorareis 7y ago
      There are no human approved coronavirus vaccines. There were a number of SARS vaccines that never finished clinical trials because SARS became pretty much a non-issue before they finished. There are also coronavirus vaccines approved for animals. Both of these things could potentially help with faster developing a vaccine for COVID-19.
  - gizmo686 7y ago
    From a practical perspective, there seems to be no appetite in the medical community to attempt this. We have vaccine candidates now, and the consensus opinion seems to be that we should go through the trial process. There just isn't much room to shorten the timeline without cutting corners and safety and efficacy verifications. Unless we learn something dramatic and terrifying new about this virus in the near future, I don't see what would cause this calculus to change.
  - pretendscholar 7y ago
    Which first principles are you using to come to that conclusion?
  - bawolff 7y ago
    Huh? From first principles there is no reason why anyone should think that their won't be 2 billion vaccines tomorrow (perhaps via divine intervention). Heck, from first principles I'm not even sure Australia exists (Maybe Australia is a giant hoax. After all, i have never been there.) Proving things from first principles is really hard. The fact you weren't able to disprove a statement from first principles is not strong evidence the statement is actually true.
    - bob33212 7y ago
      Sorry, I don't believe in a magical skyman as a first principal.
      - bawolff 7y ago
        Well you can of course take anything you want as a first principle, this is kind of an odd choice. Typically people take as first principles foundational things they believe to be true but know they can't prove. Things like, our memory reflects things that happened in the past or other people exist as real people and aren't just complex NPC. Most atheists believe that there is no reasonable evidence for a deity, thus it makes no sense to believe in one (or some varation of that). In particular they believe this conclusion is rational and can be arrived at through reasoning. Taking "there is no deities" as a first principle, is in essense taking a view about religion on just "faith". My understanding is that to most atheists, this sort of appeal to faith is an anathema.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Before administering a vaccine into everybody, we must first make sure it's not worse than the disease (on average, what is a very high var). This test takes some time, so no, not on the next 6 months. One can realistically expect it by 2022, if we are willing to rush and accept some risk. By the way, 6 months is how long it takes to create a batch of flu vaccines.
- masonhensley 7y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fpo4y5/brothers_the_time_has_come_for_the_ultimate_yolo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fpo4y5/brot...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  That's a dumb bet. If the system crashes odds are pretty high they aren't getting paid.
vladd 7y ago
The economy is going to change, for sure. But different verticals are going to react differently to this state of intermittent lock-downs. Travel-related industries (hotels, restaurants, airlines, oil) are going downwards. Food delivery and gym@home equipment is going to sky-rocket. At the end of the day, it's a gamble to state where overall GDP or stock-market is ending, but over time increased air-born disease risks are going to facilitate new industries to come to life, and old ones to offset. Just like it always happened. Like Warren Buffett says, "From a standing start 240 years ago, Americans have combined human ingenuity with a market system to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers...". There is nothing to suggest this is suddenly going to stop moving forward, even as we adapt to these new realities.
- empath75 7y ago
  I’ll just give one example of how things will change — massive amounts of women are going to leave the workforce. Schools and day cares are not going to be reliable for the foreseeable future and women are more likely to quit their jobs and stay home if that becomes necessary.
  - vladd 7y ago
    There are significant second order effects (and 3rd, 4th degree effects and so on) that are difficult to foresee and accurately simulate. For example, just to continue on your train of thoughts, the number of average children in existing young families is going to go up, which is going to increase food consumption and, potentially decades later, construction activities in real estate.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      Why would young families suddenly have more children?
      - swsieber 7y ago
        There are various memes floating around about how there's going to be a surge of kids conceived during this quarantine/social distancing times. In short, it seems likely people are going to have more sex when they are stuck at home. OTOH, I know people with children who are going crazy. I don't they are encouraged to have more children.
DenisM 7y ago
>either bullshitting you or deluding themselves Was this the best possible way to treat an intellectual disagreement? Surely people can disagree with you without being liars or delusionary? Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- danharaj 7y ago
  Surely people can tell you the Earth is flat without being delusional or a liar. At some point, when the stakes are so high, willful ignorance is harmful and should be called out.
  - amylene 7y ago
    The difference is that flat earthers reject objective evidence. This is someone disagreeing over projections about the future. And, to be frank, nobody has a fucking clue how to estimate the medium term effects of this.
    - danharaj 7y ago
      If nobody has a fucking clue then anyone who is certain that the economy will recover in 2 months is either deluded or bullshitting themselves. But we do know certainly that we will only be hitting the peak of infections sometime in April in states that were much more proactive than the median. It is extremely unlike that things will clear up, say, by Easter. Those who are so optimistic are innumerate and don't understand exponential functions.
      - amylene 7y ago
        Yes, certainty in future economic projections is delusional, but it’s a delusion that is well received by society. Humans prefer confidence over competence, and abhor uncertainty. Right now, we have a lot of uncertainty.
anonsubmit2671 7y ago
First part is mostly correct. Second part, you're dead wrong in two areas. Manufacturing of essential goods continues in haste. And, stimulus is essential for people have lost their jobs and need to buy food. So take your theoretical keyboard economics degree and leave it at the door. Let's take away your source of income, ability to work and see how you feed your family.
- empath75 7y ago
  It will keep people in their houses in the very short term, but it won’t fix the overall economic problems if the economy is frozen for a year or more.
throwaway122378 7y ago
For the next 2 years? You understand that there are antivirals being tested as we speak and vaccines in trial for a 12 month release right?

chippy 7y ago

Baity title - the actual article was more interesting than the sensationalist baity title suggested

xwdv 7y ago
Quite an inflammatory title too. Don’t tell me what to do.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

China woo this again. Not sure n ext round will be 20 years long if they continue their eating and Gov social control.

jimmySixDOF 7y ago

There is another study from Harvard released this week saying the same thing about multiple surges of containment: [1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927586 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927586

jariel 7y ago

This is terrible thinking: South Korea and other places have not locked down and they have effectively contained the virus. We are doing Trillions of damage they are avoiding. Given the costs we should be spending billions studying what they are doing. We need to understand more effectively how the virus is spreading and focus on those spots, not this lockdown stuff which is too costly. Some basic policies like mask-wearing for everyone in public, gloves, and masks in restaurants, and on subways busses, N95 maybe for anyone in crowded area jobs, anyone with any sickness immediately self-isolates etc.. These total shut-downs seem like a 'home vacay' for now but it will start causing serious pain very soon. Edit: I should add by 'trillions in damage' I'm not worried about shareholders; this will have serious consequences for people. Many millions are losing their jobs, millions will be evicted, foreclosed, homeless, jobless, and otherwise, have their lives severely disrupted. FYI in America no job = no healthcare. At some point, the shelves stop being stocked. We need to be smart.

chinathrow 7y ago
From the article: HK did in fact not effectively contain the virus. "In recent days, this semblance of normalcy has vanished. The number of confirmed cases here has ticked upward at a much quicker pace than before, worrying health experts. The government reversed course on its easing of restrictions, sending workers back home, closing parks and city facilities, and reiterating calls for social distancing."
- jariel 7y ago
  Sorry, I meant to wite South Korea.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  It's actually even worse than that on the ground in HK right now. Ban on non-residents. Groups of more than 4 people are broken up. A growing skittish-ness about "foreigners", (thought to be the people who brought the second wave of infections to HK). Etc etc. HK and Tokyo are not examples to be emulated, they are examples of what we should be trying to avoid.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

But of course. If you intentionally prevent ppl from being infected then they remain susceptible. Short of a vaccine, you can't put it off forever. Those ppl can't hide forever. This is an expected - or should be - result of "flatten the curve." FTC is not about the virus per se, it's about the healthcare system. That is, to not exceed the volume the healthcare system can handle. Put another way, an increase in the number of positives isn't necessarily a bad thing. If if stays towards the 80% who are asymptomatic or low risk then the more the better. They'll get it. Recovery and will be past it. The key number - the number the media should be emphasizing - is the positives in high risk individuals. That's the curve we don't want to see spike. Furthermore, it's where those happen. One-thousand as 50 in 20 cities is not the same as 500 in one city (e.g., NYC) and the other 500 distributed evenly elsewhere. The aggregate numbers make great - but crap - headlines. The understanding is in the details.

alexandercrohde 7y ago
It's amazing how many people copy-paste knowledge without doing the most basic logical checks on it. For example, nobody yet explained to me how flattening the curve is gonna make much difference when say NYC has 3,000 ventilators, and the average time on a ventilator is 20 days. If 1/100 of NYC's 8 million population need a ventilator that'd still be 80,000 ventilators needed. So flattening would reduce the deaths to 74,000 instead of 77,000? [To be clear I'm not saying this math is exact. But I am saying I am owed the actual math by people who want me to change my life over it]
- patall 7y ago
  8.000.000 by 100 is 80.000. And if the governor is able to somehow organize another 30000 ventilators in 3 weeks, your death count goes down from 77k to 44k. Or 11 times 9/11.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    The improvement isn't quite that high, because people sick enough to need a ventilator are often going to die even if they get one, but I agree with your point that increasing medical capacity is the high-leverage play here.

tomatocracy 7y ago

The political acceptability of releasing then locking down again is likely to be very low in my view. Friends and colleagues I speak to who haven’t followed the modelling papers etc think the point of a lockdown is to eliminate the virus entirely - not contain, not delay but eliminate entirely. There is also a very strong fear of getting the virus (many of the same people are convinced that it’s a death sentence almost akin to Ebola). I suspect that these views are very widespread and this is why the lockdowns currently enjoy strong popular support. A release followed by a second lockdown would, I think, be viewed as an admission that the policy was a failure therefore and would also lead to a reassessment of how dangerous it really is amongst those people. Those still suffering from the economic damage from the first (which will be almost everyone) will have a lot of reasons to resist very hard and I think most governments in democratic countries would struggle to implement such a policy.

alexandercrohde 7y ago
Right, if there's a resurgence I'm not participating. The cure would be worse than the disease. I encourage susceptible populations to quarantine themselves, rather than everybody quarantining. We must work, date, and life must go on.
- GavinMcG 7y ago
  The cure would likely be worse than the disease for you. Are millions of people dying an acceptable trade-off for us to be able to date?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - brightball 7y ago
    Is it an acceptable trade off for you? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734
  - izend 7y ago

not_exactly__ 7y ago

“ Hong Kong and Singapore were early examples of places that were able to contain the spread of the virus” coughTAIWANcough Again for the people in the back: T•A•I•W•A•N

CydeWeys 7y ago
Being an island nation is definitely an advantage in this regard.
- dominotw 7y ago
  not for UK evidently
  - patall 7y ago
    Which evidence? Do we have a continental control UK where results are the same? In my parents county, there is one village with 9 cases out of 800 inhabitants that has been put on full lock-down, nobody is allowed to leave the village. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of hiking trails in the area and somehow, some of the locals have gotten 'lost' in their backyard, only to reappear in the next towns supermarket.

vanniv 7y ago

Now that governments have proven that people will let them imprison everyone at any time, just by saying "virus", they're gearing up to do it again, all the time, forever, whenever it would be convenient. After they've done it a few times, they'll just make it permanent. By everyone agreeing to huddle terrified in their homes over nothing, we have permanently ended free movement and free assembly in our societies.

rootusrootus 7y ago
This is voluntary. At least in the US, there is nowhere near enough police (including every last sworn officer and every single military member, police or not) to force people to stay at home. They are extremely outnumbered, both by population and by weaponry. Imagining this leading to an authoritarian state is fearmongering.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Multiple of my college buddies, who I know to otherwise be reasonable people, are calling for martial law so people will be forced at gunpoint to stay home for months. I agree that an authoritarian state is a low probability outcome, but the mechanism by which it remains low probability is people making it clear that we won't stand for it.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    I agree, there are definitely some people panicking and advocating for completely disproportionate responses to the pandemic. I see it in my own circle, I see it on HN. Hopefully we can do enough to dampen the death count so that people don't freak out any further.
- clairity 7y ago
  no authoritarian state has ever had enough police and military to come close to outnumbering the citizenry. numerical equivalency is not a necessary condition for the exertion of power and coercion. we must remain vigilant in protecting our rights and maintaining the dispersion of power while we get through this pandemic. part of that is keeping fear responses in check by putting our rational powers to use discerning facts, accepting uncertainty, rejecting falsehoods, and collectively yielding the time needed to compile valuable information, rather than getting frothed up by the frenzy.

shahbaby 7y ago

Fuck China. If Iran had intentionally spread this virus the way CCP has done, there would already be war but because it came from China, here we are worried about being called racist. It's quite jarring when you compare this to how the world reacted after 9/11. When I hear people say things like "China bought the world time" it's infuriating. The CCP needs to pay.

dang 7y ago
Using HN for nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20nationalis&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

soared 7y ago

Technically this is clickbait - the title's implication is that we'll have more lockdowns in the future, while the article only talks about how the current lockdown will ebb and flow. If something is lifted and reinstated its really the same lockdown, not a new one. I was hoping to read an article about the potential of other coronaviruses or threats that may cause global lockdowns in the future.

makomk 7y ago
Ir's arguably less clickbaity than saying that the lockdown is going to last for the next two years, which is the alternative framing.

lazylizard 7y ago

Why wont the world stay at home together for 3 months? Lets start apr1! Then by july there will be no more covid19. And lots of other infectious diseases too, i imagine..

sebazzz 7y ago
If only there was a way to suspend the entire economy.