8 ms·

San Francisco emerged from a lockdown too soon during the 1918 Spanish flu

30 points by vinnyglennon 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I am starting to wonder if there is any good way for dealing with this. If you lock down preventatively, you are at risk of hurting the economy, losing a ton of jobs and looking silly if things turn out to be not as bad. If you wait, you are at risk of killing people. It seems only in hindsight there is a clear path that balances all factors. I definitely wouldn’t want to have to make decisions right now. You can pretty much only fail in one way or the other. I think what we should learn is that we need to put much more effort into vaccines even if they are not profitable immediately but the cost of a pandemic is just so high that it’s worth being on top of things. In a way we are lucky that this didn’t happen some decades earlier when remote work was much less of an option. When I look at my company there are definitely problems from not being able to access equipment at the office that keep accumulating but overall things are moving along pretty well. Without a 100 megabit connection I would not be able to do much.
- GekkePrutser 7y ago
  It's a lot more than just 'looking silly'. The lockdown kills many jobs leading to people losing hope and triggering a recession worse than 2007's. That will have its death toll too.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    On the other side, without a lockdown many people would have stayed home anyway. The hospitals would have been overwhelmed and there would be a general sense of panic. It's not clear to me the economic result would be much different.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      Worse, without an official lockdown there isn't any instrument available to get people back into the world once it's safe.
  - throwaway-2020 7y ago
    Does anyone have figures for the increase in deaths during the last great recession? I'm tired of the cure cannot be worse than the disease rhetoric. Economies will recover. The dead won't.
    - GekkePrutser 7y ago
      But this situation will also lead to deaths. I already hear the mental hospitals are overflowing. And really, if we would do everything possible to prevent deaths, we would have tackled traffic, alcohol, poverty, pollution etc. In some countries even poor healthcare overall (Trump is still fighting 'Obamacare'). It's not as black and white as this; the virus isn't the only problem in our society.
      - jamesmontalvo3 7y ago
        Approximately 36k deaths per year in the US are from traffic [1]. About 88k from alcohol [2]. Poverty and pollution is harder to pin down with a quick web search. According to [3], deaths-per-day from COVID-19 flattened at about 2000 deaths about three weeks ago. So in that time ~40k deaths from COVID. That’s with the curve flattened...with the curve flattened it was approximately equal to traffic deaths. If exponential growth had continued what would it be? I think deaths-per-day would doubled about 4 times. So 32k per day. Each day we’d be in the ballpark of traffic deaths. Wait a few days and it would have eclipsed alcohol-related deaths. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_... [2] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh... [3] https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en
    - malandrew 7y ago
      National economies will recover. Many towns and small cities will not. Medium to large cities are reasonably well diversified to weather the storm.
- Cyclone_ 7y ago
  Agreed there really are no solutions without major downsides in this. Anyone who can't synthesize pros and cons of various approaches probably shouldn't be in charge.
- Exmoor 7y ago
  I came to the conclusion a while ago that the current situation is essentially a mental "trap" for people who are "big thinkers" used to being able to look at large, complex problems and come up with reasonable plans to solve them. There's just an impossible amount of variables and every choice is "wrong" in that it has unconscionable downsides. There are no "good" solutions to Covid-19 only horrific solutions at every turn.
goalieca 7y ago
The spanish flu killed working age people. The case fatality rate for Italian health care workers (frequently tested so should be a good proxy for IFR) is sitting around 0,35%. When you adjust for age (those under 60) you end up with <0.1%. When you look at data based on cfr, serology, etc it all paints a picture of stratified risks based on age. The best gift my age group can give is build herd immunity. Given most deaths in Canada are in long term care homes (up to 80% in Quebec), this gives us a clear target to improve.
- bluejekyll 7y ago
  > The best gift my age group can give is build herd immunity. Careful with that. There have been a number of deaths in younger age groups, statistically not as significant as those in older and at risk groups, but the risk is there.
  - shakopeeant 7y ago
    And the media is there to tell you about every single case, which in itself should tell you something.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    Also reports of damage in nervous system, permanent lung damage, etc.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    Statistically not as significant? Or statistically not significant?
    - bluejekyll 7y ago
      Thanks, I updated my comment to be a little more clear that it is statistically not as significant. Didn’t realize that was ambiguous at first.
  - greedo 7y ago
    There's no current evidence that those who have been previously infected are immune.
coldcode 7y ago
50M people died worldwide from "Spanish" Flu, in a world much different than today, yet within a couple years the world had mostly recovered. So far we are still a long way from that number. The problem is you won't know if you are to be in the dead or gravely ill category, or the mild or perfectly fine category, irrespective of age, until it happens. What we could have had today is the ability to identify, isolate, and thus properly quarantine those who are ill or spreading, but we did not as a society deem it valuable to invest in (outside of places like S Korea). It's a classic pay me now or pay me later situation; now we are reaping the lack of investment in the past (even before the current ineptitude). I always thought the lack of a comprehensive nation healthcare system or at least a plan that covered everyone in some way in the US would bite us if there ever was a pandemic. We as a society decided that long term planning was not economically viable or even desirable. But we did not even do a minimum. Now we have to hope for the best. As a nation having everyone (not just some people) healthy and when not have access to affordable healthcare is a benefit to the nation as a whole and the economy, something that the new German nation back in the late 1800's figured out. How we get there in the US in the future I don't know, I just hope we come to the same realization and do something.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ranDOMscripts 7y ago
  Very few people want to spend $40 on a fire extinguisher every few years until the moment when their kitchen is actually on fire.* *That is, unless, history repeats itself and we lose ~1-2% of the world population[0] this Fall. That might provide sufficient motivation. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
  - pravda 7y ago
    >spend $40 on a fire extinguisher every few years Gosh, I hope they last longer then that! I have a (genuine) Halon fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. According to the internets, Halon was banned in 1994! The pressure dial on it is still in the green.

30 points by vinnyglennon 7y ago

I am starting to wonder if there is any good way for dealing with this. If you lock down preventatively, you are at risk of hurting the economy, losing a ton of jobs and looking silly if things turn out to be not as bad. If you wait, you are at risk of killing people. It seems only in hindsight there is a clear path that balances all factors. I definitely wouldn’t want to have to make decisions right now. You can pretty much only fail in one way or the other. I think what we should learn is that we need to put much more effort into vaccines even if they are not profitable immediately but the cost of a pandemic is just so high that it’s worth being on top of things. In a way we are lucky that this didn’t happen some decades earlier when remote work was much less of an option. When I look at my company there are definitely problems from not being able to access equipment at the office that keep accumulating but overall things are moving along pretty well. Without a 100 megabit connection I would not be able to do much.

GekkePrutser 7y ago
It's a lot more than just 'looking silly'. The lockdown kills many jobs leading to people losing hope and triggering a recession worse than 2007's. That will have its death toll too.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  On the other side, without a lockdown many people would have stayed home anyway. The hospitals would have been overwhelmed and there would be a general sense of panic. It's not clear to me the economic result would be much different.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    Worse, without an official lockdown there isn't any instrument available to get people back into the world once it's safe.
- throwaway-2020 7y ago
  Does anyone have figures for the increase in deaths during the last great recession? I'm tired of the cure cannot be worse than the disease rhetoric. Economies will recover. The dead won't.
  - GekkePrutser 7y ago
    But this situation will also lead to deaths. I already hear the mental hospitals are overflowing. And really, if we would do everything possible to prevent deaths, we would have tackled traffic, alcohol, poverty, pollution etc. In some countries even poor healthcare overall (Trump is still fighting 'Obamacare'). It's not as black and white as this; the virus isn't the only problem in our society.
    - jamesmontalvo3 7y ago
      Approximately 36k deaths per year in the US are from traffic [1]. About 88k from alcohol [2]. Poverty and pollution is harder to pin down with a quick web search. According to [3], deaths-per-day from COVID-19 flattened at about 2000 deaths about three weeks ago. So in that time ~40k deaths from COVID. That’s with the curve flattened...with the curve flattened it was approximately equal to traffic deaths. If exponential growth had continued what would it be? I think deaths-per-day would doubled about 4 times. So 32k per day. Each day we’d be in the ballpark of traffic deaths. Wait a few days and it would have eclipsed alcohol-related deaths. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_... [2] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh... [3] https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en
  - malandrew 7y ago
    National economies will recover. Many towns and small cities will not. Medium to large cities are reasonably well diversified to weather the storm.
Cyclone_ 7y ago
Agreed there really are no solutions without major downsides in this. Anyone who can't synthesize pros and cons of various approaches probably shouldn't be in charge.
Exmoor 7y ago
I came to the conclusion a while ago that the current situation is essentially a mental "trap" for people who are "big thinkers" used to being able to look at large, complex problems and come up with reasonable plans to solve them. There's just an impossible amount of variables and every choice is "wrong" in that it has unconscionable downsides. There are no "good" solutions to Covid-19 only horrific solutions at every turn.

goalieca 7y ago

The spanish flu killed working age people. The case fatality rate for Italian health care workers (frequently tested so should be a good proxy for IFR) is sitting around 0,35%. When you adjust for age (those under 60) you end up with <0.1%. When you look at data based on cfr, serology, etc it all paints a picture of stratified risks based on age. The best gift my age group can give is build herd immunity. Given most deaths in Canada are in long term care homes (up to 80% in Quebec), this gives us a clear target to improve.

bluejekyll 7y ago
> The best gift my age group can give is build herd immunity. Careful with that. There have been a number of deaths in younger age groups, statistically not as significant as those in older and at risk groups, but the risk is there.
- shakopeeant 7y ago
  And the media is there to tell you about every single case, which in itself should tell you something.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  Also reports of damage in nervous system, permanent lung damage, etc.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Statistically not as significant? Or statistically not significant?
  - bluejekyll 7y ago
    Thanks, I updated my comment to be a little more clear that it is statistically not as significant. Didn’t realize that was ambiguous at first.
- greedo 7y ago
  There's no current evidence that those who have been previously infected are immune.

coldcode 7y ago

50M people died worldwide from "Spanish" Flu, in a world much different than today, yet within a couple years the world had mostly recovered. So far we are still a long way from that number. The problem is you won't know if you are to be in the dead or gravely ill category, or the mild or perfectly fine category, irrespective of age, until it happens. What we could have had today is the ability to identify, isolate, and thus properly quarantine those who are ill or spreading, but we did not as a society deem it valuable to invest in (outside of places like S Korea). It's a classic pay me now or pay me later situation; now we are reaping the lack of investment in the past (even before the current ineptitude). I always thought the lack of a comprehensive nation healthcare system or at least a plan that covered everyone in some way in the US would bite us if there ever was a pandemic. We as a society decided that long term planning was not economically viable or even desirable. But we did not even do a minimum. Now we have to hope for the best. As a nation having everyone (not just some people) healthy and when not have access to affordable healthcare is a benefit to the nation as a whole and the economy, something that the new German nation back in the late 1800's figured out. How we get there in the US in the future I don't know, I just hope we come to the same realization and do something.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ranDOMscripts 7y ago
Very few people want to spend $40 on a fire extinguisher every few years until the moment when their kitchen is actually on fire.* *That is, unless, history repeats itself and we lose ~1-2% of the world population[0] this Fall. That might provide sufficient motivation. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
- pravda 7y ago
  >spend $40 on a fire extinguisher every few years Gosh, I hope they last longer then that! I have a (genuine) Halon fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. According to the internets, Halon was banned in 1994! The pressure dial on it is still in the green.