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Blanket lockdown has to end. This policy has outlived its usefulness, and is harming people's quality of life without a clear goal. The initial premise of the

Blanket lockdown has to end. This policy has outlived its usefulness, and is harming people's quality of life without a clear goal. The initial premise of the "flatten the curve" memes was to avoid overwhelming hospitals. The shelter-in-place has not only had this effect, it's been too effective. Hospital utilization in the bay area is at around 10% when you count surge capacity that has been added [1]. Meanwhile, data is coming out to show that coronavirus has a very low fatality risk to anyone under the age of 50, and to anyone without pre-existing health conditions. A blanket shutdown does not make any sense when the vulnerable demographic has been clearly identified. How is it moral to order people to shelter in place when their risk of death is around 0.01% for 18-45 year olds. Blanket lockdown doesn't make sense anymore. There is no risk posed to the majority of the population from covid-19. We need to switch to targeted approach, and let people get back to their lives. Our political leaders (in California) are being fearful, afraid to take leadership and base their decisions on data. [1] https://www.smchealth.org/post/san-mateo-county-covid-19-data-1 https://www.smchealth.org/post/san-mateo-county-covid-19-dat... [2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#download https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#downl... and https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-preliminary-results/ https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-prelimina...

gotoeleven 6y ago
Hopefully this will be the impetus we need to finally start living underground like mole people.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  How well do we know mole viruses?
anorphirith 6y ago
Agreed, these are simply political moves
jamroom 6y ago
Our society includes people who are over 50 - how do ensure that YOU do not transmit coronavirus to them if you are under 50 and asymptomatic? I know a lot of people are pretty upset but it's not just about YOU. It's about everyone you come in contact with.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  THEY are the ones who need to take extra precautions.
  - quicklime 6y ago
    No, your right to shed virus particles ends at the tip of my nose.
    - jaywalk 6y ago
      That's a nice platitude you've got there. Too bad it means basically nothing.
      - arblify 6y ago
        It actually does mean something, which is that freedom is not unlimited. Your freedom of action ends at the point where it harms someone else. Classically, "your right to throw your fist ends at my face." It's the same reason (legally) you can't point a firearm at me. What we have here is the problem that merely by breathing around someone, you can cause them harm. Unfortunately we lack the ability to determine whether or not you will, but given the contagiousness of this disease if you are infected (or become infected) it is quite likely.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Thankfully, you appear to be overwhelmingly outvoted in this "let's set up a peeing section for the swimming pool" position. Lockdown measures and the activist governors pursuing them are, for the moment, overwhelmingly popular --- the population as a whole is strongly more concerned that lockdowns will end too early, and strongly more worried that they will suffer health consequences from C19 than that they'll suffer economic consequences from lockdown.
adamnemecek 6y ago
US is not ready for that. https://time.com/5826918/hokkaido-coronavirus-lockdown/ https://time.com/5826918/hokkaido-coronavirus-lockdown/
wiredone 6y ago
While I disagree with a bunch of the reasoning you use above, I agree that blanket lockdowns aren’t needed anymore. Seattle seems to be getting out and about now, but people are being super careful and everyone’s giving each other tons of space. I don’t see why that shouldn’t apply in other places too. In a lot of ways the shelter in place guidance is a mental drain more than a real policy in my mind at this stage.
throwlaplace 6y ago
>How is it moral to order people to shelter in place when their risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds How brave of you to sacrifice people other than yourself. Everyone advocating for this should have to forfeit %50 of their earnings for the next 10 years to fund the medical care of all of those affected. That way at least everyone has some skin in the game.
- smallgovt 6y ago
  To be fair, the cost of COVID medical care pales in comparison to the likely impact on future earnings these shutdowns are having. If it's strictly about money, we should cease shutdowns immediately. But, it's not. People are dying.
  - beefalo 6y ago
    The future earnings of dead people is 0
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    >If it's strictly about money, we should cease shutdowns immediately. But, it's not. People are dying. it's not about money in my opinion and is about deaths. i could've said "everyone advocating for this has to lose a digit for every person that dies" but i thought people would downvote. guess i was wrong since they downvoted anyway.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > it's not about money in my opinion and is about deaths Are you aware of the fact that people die every day to e.g. deliver groceries to your store, harvest plants, build houses etc pp? Do we shut down all activity that will lead to somebody somewhere losing their life?
      - throwlaplace 6y ago
        >deliver groceries to your store, harvest plants, build houses As I saw somewhere on Twitter: I didn't realize workplace deaths were contagious? I mean they are now but not how you meant it. >Do we shut down all activity that will lead to somebody somewhere losing their life? I think it's so funny that people don't know any history. In the early 20th century workers had almost no rights and labor activists had to argue for workplace safety that was controversial for the same reasons: economic inefficiency. So in a very real and exact sense yes we as a society have stopped certain activities because people were dying every day doing them.
ars 6y ago
I've been wondering for a while what the end game is. There seems to only be 3 options: 1: Lockdown forever. 2: Everyone becomes immune. 3: Vaccine. 1 is unrealistic. 3 will take a year. 2 the lockdown is too effective - we need at least some people to get infected, and hospitals to be utilized at a manageable rate. Is there a 4th option I did not think of? Because I can't figure out how they are going to end this. I guess reopen a state, let people get infected, then close again? Basically a poorly done version of 2?
- thereisnospork 6y ago
  > Is there a 4th option I did not think of? Because I can't figure out how they are going to end this. Some flavor of mandatory mask/glove/bunny suit wearing and social distancing (e.g. mandatory table-to-table distance at restaurants) would keep the curve flat while allowing a majority of day-to-day life to resume.
- tsbinz 6y ago
  Lockdown until you can get back to containment (drive infection numbers so low that you have the resources to trace/test contacts and send possible infections into quarantine). "Everyone becomes immune" will take longer than vaccine if you don't want to overload your hospitals, and bets on long-term immunity which we don't know yet.
- eloisius 6y ago
  This sounds like a false tricotomy (see what I did there?). Taiwan has effectively contained the outbreak with fewer than 500 cumulative cases for their very dense population of 23m. Unfortunately we can't go back and act swiftly in the beginning like they did, so we'll never approach that level of success, but we can take some lessons from what they continue to do. I was there in January and February and had my temperature taken routinely to enter populous shopping areas, tourist-packed areas, transit, etc. Mask usage was mandatory in some cases, like buses. They ensured they had sufficient inventory of masks, and even published it so that you could look up which pharmacy to go to. There were lines down the block outside of them, but they also had a reliable ration available for anyone who would wait. State-side, I haven't had my temperature checked once. Even when I reentered the US, there wasn't so much as a thermal camera to walk in front of (that I could see, anyway). This was the procedure upon entering both Taiwan and transiting through Japan all the way back in January when cases in Taiwan were in the single digits. I can't even find a single mask here. People were sensible and conscientious there. People voluntarily cut back their social behaviors, but they haven't enacted a hard shut down. It seems to me that we just haven't implemented any common sense behaviors and expect Trump/the governor/Fauci/whoever to come up with some genius plan to solve the crisis for us.
tptacek 6y ago
We in fact know very little about the consequences of serious C19 infections in people under 50, and people in their 40s apparently make up a substantial cohort of ICU C19 patients. We also don't know the long-term health implications of a severe C19 case, and there's some evidence to suggest permanent lung damage is one possible outcome. And, even if we didn't know any of those things, avoiding the deaths of people over the age of 50 and the deaths of people of all ages with asthma and hypertension would still be a worthy reason to hit the brakes while we learn more.
- rbritton 6y ago
  At what cost? When do you factor in the additional deaths and other consequences from suicides, domestic violence, increased substance abuse, and so on? There are two sides to the equation.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Perhaps when the data starts showing it.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      There is dated data (from 1981) showing a 37,000 increase in deaths for each percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate. It comes from a book called “Corporate Flight: The Causes and Consequences of Economic Dislocation” by Barry Bluestone, Bennett Harrison and Lawrence Baker. From the article citation below: > Here’s the paragraph from Thomas’ book that applies: “According to one study [the one by Bluestone et al.] a 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks], 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.” The data is stale, for sure, but the correlation (economic downturn->increase in deaths) is arguably proven. https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/explaining-the-link-between-unemployment-deaths-amid-coronavirus/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/explaining-the-link-between-un... (I was unable to find an online version of the book to link to in Google Books or openlibrary.org; I bought the book used from Amazon, it's headed to the Internet Archive for scanning).
zozbot234 6y ago
The "very low fatality risk" thing only applies to people who can get proper treatment for the disease. If healthcare resources get overwhelmed, the fatality risk will get a lot higher, for the younger population also.
smallgovt 6y ago
> How is it moral to order people to shelter in place when their risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds The data from your second source indicates that the case fatality rate in New York for 18-45 yr olds is 0.833% (14 deaths in 1705 confirmed cases). Where are you getting 0.01% from?
- glofish 6y ago
  the number of cases (infections) is at least an order of magnitude higher than the reported numbers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    I don't see how the math for that works out unless literally everyone in NYC is already infected. 0.1% of the population of New York City has already died from Covid. The only way to get the CFR much lower is if virtually everyone is an asymptomatic carrier.
- jhwang5 6y ago
  Food for thought - if say 70% of cases are asymptomatic or mild (and therefore they don't get tested), then NYC's CFR already drops to 0.2% for the bucket you are referring to.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    In fact that's the number reported for that demographic from Wuhan data way back in January, so it wouldn't surprise anyone. It's still 20x higher than the one quoted upthread.
AnotherGoodName 6y ago
I assume you're in agreement that a complete re-opening would be stupid? If so what things specifically would you like to see re-opened specifically? I think asking to re-open some specific low risk businesses would be reasonable.
quotemstr 6y ago
In circumstances such as these, widespread civil disobedience is justifiable.
timerol 6y ago
> The new order will include limited easing of specific restrictions for a small number of lower-risk activities. It appears that this will be the slow start of ending the lockdown.
scott_s 6y ago
I've seen you say similar things in a few other threads, and myself and others have said, every time: the risk to everyone is that the hospitals become overwhelmed. They are not right now because of stay-at-home orders. What you think of as failure - hospitals currently low utilization - is in fact success.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  You can ease up on the lockdown without ending it. That's what I read the parent to be implying.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Ease up how? I mean, what's the specific proposal? The lockdown isn't "total" anyway -- very large numbers of people are still working at full salary (including, it must be pointed out, probably more than half the readers of this very site). There's little to no low hanging fruit of safe jobs that can be reopened. Just go look at the California list of "essential" jobs and tell us what needs to be added. Fundamentally this is just a complicated strawman. People are arguing against "lockdown" but not in favor of another option. But we were all here in late march and we know what this disease does without containment.
    - skellington 6y ago
      Are you not aware that "lockdown" covers a wide continuum of practices?! Ease up can mean a lot of things between what we have now and no lockdown whatsoever. What level of easing depends on the goal and the data showing what level of control is being achieved.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        I'm painfully aware, which is why I asked the question. Who would you like to see back to work, and are you certain they're not already on the list of essential positions?
    - 6y ago
chrisseaton 6y ago
> The initial premise of the "flatten the curve" memes was to avoid overwhelming hospitals. I don't think it was a 'meme' - if you're thinking it was just something on Facebook or something like that. It was and still is a government goal informing their policy.
- jkasdflklzxcv 6y ago
  fuck the government and fuck you if you support this
- jshevek 6y ago
  Setting aside Dawkins, and looking beyond image macros, it seems to me that the meaning of 'meme', in it's common usage, can encompass the meanings of "message", "claim", "idea" and more. It's not necessarily dismissive, and can sometimes emphasize the simplicity of structure or frequency of use.
liuliu 6y ago
The second link is death per 100,000 people (not death of confirmed cases), that, for 18-45, is 14.21 per 100,000 (0.014%). There are confirmed cases of 1705.26 per 100,000 for 18-45. Thus, the death for 18-45 over confirmed cases is 0.83%, much higher than flu for 18-49, which is 0.02%: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html. Noted that the new antibody tests showed much higher cases than the confirmed cases. But the 0.01% number you cited is wrong. Please fix.
nkkollaw 6y ago
1 more month will probably put a huge number of businesses out of business. Is there a reason why they'd do something like this, where anyone who looks will see that it's not at all needed?
- luckylion 6y ago
  Opening too early would be the end of a political career. A ruined economy isn't, you can always point to "the virus" that did it.
  - forgotmylogin2 6y ago
    Yup. Sadly, our politicians care more about getting re-elected than doing what's right for society.
  - nkkollaw 6y ago
    I see. I can see this being the reason, yes.
_jal 6y ago
You sound far more confident about a number of those details than I think anyone with expertise are. > are being fearful This is a conclusion you can only reach retrospectively. I'm not arguing that the extension is correct; I'm arguing that your assertions do not provide reason to think it is incorrect.
- hn_check 6y ago
  You are aware that this is Hacker News, aren't you? These are Great Minds who have accomplishments like "made a one page app" and "talk about Rust a lot". Only on HN can you read a group that is so absolutely sure that they are experts on any topic. An enormous number of users on here are outright liars as well, carefully molding themselves into whatever persona they think carries the most powerful position. I pointing out one such case (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22981613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22981613), had +5...flagged. LOL.
arrty88 6y ago
"We can't let the cure be worse than the problem"
primeradical 6y ago
To anyone reading the comment above, it is extremely poor advice and should not be followed. Stay at home and shelter in place orders are not solely for the purpose of protecting ones-self from contracting the virus. They also serve to limit the spread from unsuspecting carriers. You can carry and spread the virus unknowingly and this will result in susceptible people contracting it and dying. The only way we know that shelter in place orders worked is if they feel like an overreaction after this is all over with. We're all scared and desperately seeking answers and relief. We all want this to be over as soon as possible. But we must put the public health above all else. This is not the time for egocentric defiance of the recommendations from our leaders.
- cobookman 6y ago
  So when do you lift the stay in place? When there's 0 cases? If so, what if that never happens?
  - xsmasher 6y ago
    I've heard some mention of "two weeks of decline in the number of new cases." That sounds reasonable to me.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Nearly uniform testing levels among the states sufficient to indicate that we're getting a real sample of the population, and not the biased sick sample we're getting with PCR testing, would be a start. If you want to be angry about something, be angry that we can't get our act together to get this data collected. It's going to be a lot easier to win arguments about lockdown when we're confident in our testing data. Right now, nobody is.
  - MrGando 6y ago
    You start doing it when you can gather enough information, fast enough to prevent new spikes from happening. The number of "known cases" becomes very low, and then ideally one can react fast enough when new clusters start forming.
  - 6y ago
thomascgalvin 6y ago
> Meanwhile, data is coming out to show that coronavirus has a very low fatality risk to anyone under the age of 50, and to anyone without pre-existing health conditions. 34% of America is aged 50 and over[1]. Almost 40% of America is obese[2], which is a risk factor for COVID-19 complications[3]. > A blanket shutdown does not make any sense when the vulnerable demographic has been clearly identified. When the "vulnerable demographic" is forty percent of the population, a blanket shutdown makes a lot more sense. We cannot simply consign four out of ten people to severe illness, unknown long-term complications, and/or death. [1] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housing_americas_older_adults_2014-ch2_0.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housin... [2] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housing_americas_older_adults_2014-ch2_0.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housin... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/groups-at-higher-risk.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...
- nathanaldensr 6y ago
  Personal responsibility must enter the equation; otherwise, you're consigning those of us who have made good decisions about our health to pay the price for those who haven't.
  - throwaway287391 6y ago
    So glad I made the decision to be born after 1970. At the time all my friends said I was crazy but it really paid off.
  - tmh79 6y ago
    Solidarity must enter the equation because if you don't take care of those who are vulnerable, the economy will tank worse than it already has. People dying is expensive, and this many people dying is a lot more expensive than the cost of keeping things officially shut down.
  - lanternfish 6y ago
    Why does my life, as someone who has made 'good decisions', matter more than someone's who has made 'bad decisions'. Especially when many of those 'bad decisions', like obesity, are products of socioeconomic environmental risk factors. This seems like a very privileged perspective which probably isn't very productive in managing a diverse society in times of crisis.
snewman 6y ago
> ...risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds. Where do you get this figure? Your first link shows 14 deaths per 100,000 in that age range, or 0.014%, but that is for the entire population, not just people who have had the virus. The same data set reports 1705 cases in that age range. 14 deaths out of 1705 cases is an 0.82% fatality rate. Of course, that 0.82% figure, reflecting only confirmed cases, is inflated. But conversely, some of those 1705 afflicted 18-45 year olds may still succumb to the virus. The true IFR in this age range in this region _might_ be closer to 0.1% than 0.82%. But 0.01% is just wrong.
benjaminwootton 6y ago
Funny that this is exactly the same narrative as here in the UK. Initially it was about flattening the curve for healthcare capacity, now we are in some weird holding pattern where the goal is becoming increasingly vague.
- chasd00 6y ago
  no one wants to go first.
hartator 6y ago
> Our political leaders (in California) are being fearful, afraid to take leadership and base their decisions on data. Or maybe too much “leadership” that ends up just being another form of authorianism.
anonAndOn 6y ago
This is only possible with widespread repeated testing. Unless you can quickly identify and isolate all of the carriers, we are flying blind.
BurningFrog 6y ago
I think this is a lot like finishing your full 7 day medication treatment, even though you feel fine on day 3. That said, I don't know when and how the right way to wind down is, and I don't think anyone else does either. I'm glad we're doing this in a decentralized way over 50 states, so many different strategies can be tried. I would also add that we who can WFH with full wages do well to remember millions of already less well off people have been left without income and life structure, and they're not just complaining because they're spoiled children!
- amluto 6y ago
  When you take a 7 day course of antibiotics, you are reducing your bacterial load to a level at which it is highly unlikely to bounce back from zero and, critically, the chance that it bounces back and selects for resistant strains is comfortably low. No one seriously expects any length of shutdown in the US to reduce the case count enough to eliminate COVID-19. Worse, even if we reduce the case count to an unnoticeably low number, we’ve made essentially no progress toward a suppression strategy that will detect and control new cases to avoid another shutdown.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    I didn't mean the parallel to be so literal. I was more saying that you probably need to wait longer than it seems you should. In part because we're dealing with exponential growth. > Worse, even if we reduce the case count to an unnoticeably low number, we’ve made essentially no progress toward a suppression strategy that will detect and control new cases to avoid another shutdown. Another reason to postpone everyone getting infected is that the longer that waits, the better treatments we'll have for the sick.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? We are already seeing the damage because a number of meatpacking plants had to go off-line when a substantial part of their workforce was ill and could not report to work, yet many citizens advocate for even lighter restrictions. Nothing of this makes any sense.
- jshevek 6y ago
  >In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? When it comes to complete elimination, you leave out the most important ingredient: all three countries have fantastic border control, thanks to geography in two cases, and an extremist neighbor in the third.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Compared to some Western European countries, the US are looking pitiful. Italy went from 5000 cases/day in early April to 2000 now and Germany from 7000 cases/day to 1500 now. The US continues with 25000 new cases every day and no downward trajectory in sight. This is community transmission, not imported cases.
    - jshevek 6y ago
      This is in no way relevant to my point. You brought up three countries that have nearly eliminated the virus from their land, while overlooking the single most important prerequisite in all three cases. Edit: In other words, we can strive to reduce community transmission, but achieving the specific results found in the three you mentioned would also require a radical change in how we handle our borders.
      - fzeroracer 6y ago
        No it wouldn't. You ignored his point entirely, which is that even if we did manage to further lock down our borders, it does nothing to stop community transmissions. Those countries you listed weren't able to control the virus through strong border control, they did so through strong controls over community transmission. Which should've been obvious, considering the initial transmissions in South Korea came from a cult.
suyash 6y ago
Let's wait and hear what they say this week, hopefully there will be more ease in the current shelter in place guidelines.
jupp0r 6y ago
> Blanket lockdown has to end. What's different now vs before the lockdown started regarding flattening the curve? R0 is a little under 1 right now, but what will it be when most things reopen? The goal of the lockdown is to keep R0 under 1 until we have measures in place to permanently mitigate the spread [1]. This means lots of testing and contact tracing, which is not even possible right now with case numbers being as big as they are. Reopening right now would just get us back to #flattenthecurve in a matter of 4 weeks. > There is no risk posed to the majority of the population from covid-19 There is risk to everybody, it's just lower for some. There's enough evidence of permanent damage inflicted on organs and other gnarly details that I (34M) will be absolutely careful not to get this disease. [2] [1] https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/California-Roadmap-to-Modify-the-Stay-at-Home-Order.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/California... [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/more-bad-news-on-the-long-term-effects-of-the-coronavirus.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/more-bad-news-on-the...
- usaar333 6y ago
  Multiple counties have already confirmed they are contact tracing every case. The Bay Area has a lower per capita daily case rate than Germany who is opening schools. This should be manageable.
  - jupp0r 6y ago
    Anecdotally, it’s still hard to get tested, even if people have symptoms. Happened to two friends of mine in the last 2 weeks.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Now we should be slightly reopening and targeting an Rt near 1, and driving towards population-based immunity. We had looser controls from mid-March to the beginning of April. They were evidently effective. Why do we need to stay in a regime of stricter controls-- mayhaps we can loosen a little from ehre and see what happens? Plenty of jurisdictions have less restrictive orders than the SF Bay Area, and are showing declining case counts.
smallgovt 6y ago
> Blanket lockdown has to end. I tend to agree. Why is nobody focusing on Sweden's COVID numbers? Sweden didn't institute city-wide shutdown measures. Yet, there hospitals are not overwhelmed. And, their COVID case counts and death counts are plateauing. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866
- usaar333 6y ago
  Sweden is taking a lot of death though. I prefer looking at Norway or Germany, countries that haven't taken high death hits and opening up with higher daily case counts per capita than us.
forgotmylogin2 6y ago
+1. Continuing a lockdown of this severity makes no sense. San Francisco has only had 22 Covid deaths. A city the size of SF would be expected to see 5x as many cancer deaths as that in a normal month [1] and 7x as many heart disease deaths [2]. Instead, we're maintaining a policy that discourages people from seeking preventative treatment for these diseases on the basis that we don't want them contracting a less deadly disease. The lockdown has proven to be excessive. The doomsday predictions have not come to pass, and we're entering a time of year that is known to be correlated with reduced rates of viral spread (Flu infection rates are 30x higher in the winter than the summer [3]). We need to get people back to work now. Social distancing should still be maintained where feasible but a blanket lockdown will cause way more harm than good. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/cancer_2020.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/cancer_202... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm [3] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
- atourgates 6y ago
  > The lockdown has proven to be excessive. The doomsday predictions have not come to pass Alternate interpretation: the lockdown worked. I fully agree that continual lockdown without a concrete plan for what its achievable goals are, and how and when we'll reopen is excessive. Some kind of targeted, data-driven reopening in stages is the right way to be headed.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I'm starting to see these arguments take startling similarity with the anti-vaccine arguments. Which is that vaccines aren't necessary because people are no longer dying from said vaccinated diseases. Perhaps it's important to consider that one of the reasons why the doomsday predictions haven't came true is because places took action early.
- nickv 6y ago
  This reminds me of a quote going around a few weeks ago: "If we have done a good job, everyone will say we over-reacted." As a counter point, NYC did _not_ do a good job and at it's peak COVID-19 killed more people than heart disease and cancer during the month of March [1]. [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-cause-death-per-day-us-surpassing-heart-disease-cancer-1495607 https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-caus... (This is a national number but its even worse when you consider the vast majority of cases are in NYC/NYS)
mxcrossb 6y ago
> The shelter-in-place has not only had this effect, it's been too effective. Hospital utilization in the bay area is at around 10% when you count surge capacity that has been added [1]. This matters if the end game is herd immunity, but not if the end game is to wait out a vaccine, or a sophisticated testing infrastructure. Unfortunately, I don’t think we know what the end game is going to look like now.

gotoeleven 6y ago

Hopefully this will be the impetus we need to finally start living underground like mole people.

BurningFrog 6y ago
How well do we know mole viruses?

anorphirith 6y ago

Agreed, these are simply political moves

jamroom 6y ago

Our society includes people who are over 50 - how do ensure that YOU do not transmit coronavirus to them if you are under 50 and asymptomatic? I know a lot of people are pretty upset but it's not just about YOU. It's about everyone you come in contact with.

jaywalk 6y ago
THEY are the ones who need to take extra precautions.
- quicklime 6y ago
  No, your right to shed virus particles ends at the tip of my nose.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    That's a nice platitude you've got there. Too bad it means basically nothing.
    - arblify 6y ago
      It actually does mean something, which is that freedom is not unlimited. Your freedom of action ends at the point where it harms someone else. Classically, "your right to throw your fist ends at my face." It's the same reason (legally) you can't point a firearm at me. What we have here is the problem that merely by breathing around someone, you can cause them harm. Unfortunately we lack the ability to determine whether or not you will, but given the contagiousness of this disease if you are infected (or become infected) it is quite likely.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Thankfully, you appear to be overwhelmingly outvoted in this "let's set up a peeing section for the swimming pool" position. Lockdown measures and the activist governors pursuing them are, for the moment, overwhelmingly popular --- the population as a whole is strongly more concerned that lockdowns will end too early, and strongly more worried that they will suffer health consequences from C19 than that they'll suffer economic consequences from lockdown.

adamnemecek 6y ago

US is not ready for that. https://time.com/5826918/hokkaido-coronavirus-lockdown/ https://time.com/5826918/hokkaido-coronavirus-lockdown/

wiredone 6y ago

While I disagree with a bunch of the reasoning you use above, I agree that blanket lockdowns aren’t needed anymore. Seattle seems to be getting out and about now, but people are being super careful and everyone’s giving each other tons of space. I don’t see why that shouldn’t apply in other places too. In a lot of ways the shelter in place guidance is a mental drain more than a real policy in my mind at this stage.

throwlaplace 6y ago

>How is it moral to order people to shelter in place when their risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds How brave of you to sacrifice people other than yourself. Everyone advocating for this should have to forfeit %50 of their earnings for the next 10 years to fund the medical care of all of those affected. That way at least everyone has some skin in the game.

smallgovt 6y ago
To be fair, the cost of COVID medical care pales in comparison to the likely impact on future earnings these shutdowns are having. If it's strictly about money, we should cease shutdowns immediately. But, it's not. People are dying.
- beefalo 6y ago
  The future earnings of dead people is 0
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  >If it's strictly about money, we should cease shutdowns immediately. But, it's not. People are dying. it's not about money in my opinion and is about deaths. i could've said "everyone advocating for this has to lose a digit for every person that dies" but i thought people would downvote. guess i was wrong since they downvoted anyway.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > it's not about money in my opinion and is about deaths Are you aware of the fact that people die every day to e.g. deliver groceries to your store, harvest plants, build houses etc pp? Do we shut down all activity that will lead to somebody somewhere losing their life?
    - throwlaplace 6y ago
      >deliver groceries to your store, harvest plants, build houses As I saw somewhere on Twitter: I didn't realize workplace deaths were contagious? I mean they are now but not how you meant it. >Do we shut down all activity that will lead to somebody somewhere losing their life? I think it's so funny that people don't know any history. In the early 20th century workers had almost no rights and labor activists had to argue for workplace safety that was controversial for the same reasons: economic inefficiency. So in a very real and exact sense yes we as a society have stopped certain activities because people were dying every day doing them.

ars 6y ago

I've been wondering for a while what the end game is. There seems to only be 3 options: 1: Lockdown forever. 2: Everyone becomes immune. 3: Vaccine. 1 is unrealistic. 3 will take a year. 2 the lockdown is too effective - we need at least some people to get infected, and hospitals to be utilized at a manageable rate. Is there a 4th option I did not think of? Because I can't figure out how they are going to end this. I guess reopen a state, let people get infected, then close again? Basically a poorly done version of 2?

thereisnospork 6y ago
> Is there a 4th option I did not think of? Because I can't figure out how they are going to end this. Some flavor of mandatory mask/glove/bunny suit wearing and social distancing (e.g. mandatory table-to-table distance at restaurants) would keep the curve flat while allowing a majority of day-to-day life to resume.
tsbinz 6y ago
Lockdown until you can get back to containment (drive infection numbers so low that you have the resources to trace/test contacts and send possible infections into quarantine). "Everyone becomes immune" will take longer than vaccine if you don't want to overload your hospitals, and bets on long-term immunity which we don't know yet.
eloisius 6y ago
This sounds like a false tricotomy (see what I did there?). Taiwan has effectively contained the outbreak with fewer than 500 cumulative cases for their very dense population of 23m. Unfortunately we can't go back and act swiftly in the beginning like they did, so we'll never approach that level of success, but we can take some lessons from what they continue to do. I was there in January and February and had my temperature taken routinely to enter populous shopping areas, tourist-packed areas, transit, etc. Mask usage was mandatory in some cases, like buses. They ensured they had sufficient inventory of masks, and even published it so that you could look up which pharmacy to go to. There were lines down the block outside of them, but they also had a reliable ration available for anyone who would wait. State-side, I haven't had my temperature checked once. Even when I reentered the US, there wasn't so much as a thermal camera to walk in front of (that I could see, anyway). This was the procedure upon entering both Taiwan and transiting through Japan all the way back in January when cases in Taiwan were in the single digits. I can't even find a single mask here. People were sensible and conscientious there. People voluntarily cut back their social behaviors, but they haven't enacted a hard shut down. It seems to me that we just haven't implemented any common sense behaviors and expect Trump/the governor/Fauci/whoever to come up with some genius plan to solve the crisis for us.

tptacek 6y ago

We in fact know very little about the consequences of serious C19 infections in people under 50, and people in their 40s apparently make up a substantial cohort of ICU C19 patients. We also don't know the long-term health implications of a severe C19 case, and there's some evidence to suggest permanent lung damage is one possible outcome. And, even if we didn't know any of those things, avoiding the deaths of people over the age of 50 and the deaths of people of all ages with asthma and hypertension would still be a worthy reason to hit the brakes while we learn more.

rbritton 6y ago
At what cost? When do you factor in the additional deaths and other consequences from suicides, domestic violence, increased substance abuse, and so on? There are two sides to the equation.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Perhaps when the data starts showing it.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    There is dated data (from 1981) showing a 37,000 increase in deaths for each percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate. It comes from a book called “Corporate Flight: The Causes and Consequences of Economic Dislocation” by Barry Bluestone, Bennett Harrison and Lawrence Baker. From the article citation below: > Here’s the paragraph from Thomas’ book that applies: “According to one study [the one by Bluestone et al.] a 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks], 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.” The data is stale, for sure, but the correlation (economic downturn->increase in deaths) is arguably proven. https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/explaining-the-link-between-unemployment-deaths-amid-coronavirus/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/explaining-the-link-between-un... (I was unable to find an online version of the book to link to in Google Books or openlibrary.org; I bought the book used from Amazon, it's headed to the Internet Archive for scanning).

zozbot234 6y ago

The "very low fatality risk" thing only applies to people who can get proper treatment for the disease. If healthcare resources get overwhelmed, the fatality risk will get a lot higher, for the younger population also.

smallgovt 6y ago

> How is it moral to order people to shelter in place when their risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds The data from your second source indicates that the case fatality rate in New York for 18-45 yr olds is 0.833% (14 deaths in 1705 confirmed cases). Where are you getting 0.01% from?

glofish 6y ago
the number of cases (infections) is at least an order of magnitude higher than the reported numbers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  I don't see how the math for that works out unless literally everyone in NYC is already infected. 0.1% of the population of New York City has already died from Covid. The only way to get the CFR much lower is if virtually everyone is an asymptomatic carrier.
jhwang5 6y ago
Food for thought - if say 70% of cases are asymptomatic or mild (and therefore they don't get tested), then NYC's CFR already drops to 0.2% for the bucket you are referring to.
- newacct583 6y ago
  In fact that's the number reported for that demographic from Wuhan data way back in January, so it wouldn't surprise anyone. It's still 20x higher than the one quoted upthread.

AnotherGoodName 6y ago

I assume you're in agreement that a complete re-opening would be stupid? If so what things specifically would you like to see re-opened specifically? I think asking to re-open some specific low risk businesses would be reasonable.

quotemstr 6y ago

In circumstances such as these, widespread civil disobedience is justifiable.

timerol 6y ago

> The new order will include limited easing of specific restrictions for a small number of lower-risk activities. It appears that this will be the slow start of ending the lockdown.

scott_s 6y ago

I've seen you say similar things in a few other threads, and myself and others have said, every time: the risk to everyone is that the hospitals become overwhelmed. They are not right now because of stay-at-home orders. What you think of as failure - hospitals currently low utilization - is in fact success.

crocodiletears 6y ago
You can ease up on the lockdown without ending it. That's what I read the parent to be implying.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Ease up how? I mean, what's the specific proposal? The lockdown isn't "total" anyway -- very large numbers of people are still working at full salary (including, it must be pointed out, probably more than half the readers of this very site). There's little to no low hanging fruit of safe jobs that can be reopened. Just go look at the California list of "essential" jobs and tell us what needs to be added. Fundamentally this is just a complicated strawman. People are arguing against "lockdown" but not in favor of another option. But we were all here in late march and we know what this disease does without containment.
  - skellington 6y ago
    Are you not aware that "lockdown" covers a wide continuum of practices?! Ease up can mean a lot of things between what we have now and no lockdown whatsoever. What level of easing depends on the goal and the data showing what level of control is being achieved.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      I'm painfully aware, which is why I asked the question. Who would you like to see back to work, and are you certain they're not already on the list of essential positions?
  - 6y ago

chrisseaton 6y ago

> The initial premise of the "flatten the curve" memes was to avoid overwhelming hospitals. I don't think it was a 'meme' - if you're thinking it was just something on Facebook or something like that. It was and still is a government goal informing their policy.

jkasdflklzxcv 6y ago
fuck the government and fuck you if you support this
jshevek 6y ago
Setting aside Dawkins, and looking beyond image macros, it seems to me that the meaning of 'meme', in it's common usage, can encompass the meanings of "message", "claim", "idea" and more. It's not necessarily dismissive, and can sometimes emphasize the simplicity of structure or frequency of use.

liuliu 6y ago

The second link is death per 100,000 people (not death of confirmed cases), that, for 18-45, is 14.21 per 100,000 (0.014%). There are confirmed cases of 1705.26 per 100,000 for 18-45. Thus, the death for 18-45 over confirmed cases is 0.83%, much higher than flu for 18-49, which is 0.02%: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html. Noted that the new antibody tests showed much higher cases than the confirmed cases. But the 0.01% number you cited is wrong. Please fix.

nkkollaw 6y ago

1 more month will probably put a huge number of businesses out of business. Is there a reason why they'd do something like this, where anyone who looks will see that it's not at all needed?

luckylion 6y ago
Opening too early would be the end of a political career. A ruined economy isn't, you can always point to "the virus" that did it.
- forgotmylogin2 6y ago
  Yup. Sadly, our politicians care more about getting re-elected than doing what's right for society.
- nkkollaw 6y ago
  I see. I can see this being the reason, yes.

_jal 6y ago

You sound far more confident about a number of those details than I think anyone with expertise are. > are being fearful This is a conclusion you can only reach retrospectively. I'm not arguing that the extension is correct; I'm arguing that your assertions do not provide reason to think it is incorrect.

hn_check 6y ago
You are aware that this is Hacker News, aren't you? These are Great Minds who have accomplishments like "made a one page app" and "talk about Rust a lot". Only on HN can you read a group that is so absolutely sure that they are experts on any topic. An enormous number of users on here are outright liars as well, carefully molding themselves into whatever persona they think carries the most powerful position. I pointing out one such case (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22981613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22981613), had +5...flagged. LOL.

arrty88 6y ago

"We can't let the cure be worse than the problem"

primeradical 6y ago

To anyone reading the comment above, it is extremely poor advice and should not be followed. Stay at home and shelter in place orders are not solely for the purpose of protecting ones-self from contracting the virus. They also serve to limit the spread from unsuspecting carriers. You can carry and spread the virus unknowingly and this will result in susceptible people contracting it and dying. The only way we know that shelter in place orders worked is if they feel like an overreaction after this is all over with. We're all scared and desperately seeking answers and relief. We all want this to be over as soon as possible. But we must put the public health above all else. This is not the time for egocentric defiance of the recommendations from our leaders.

cobookman 6y ago
So when do you lift the stay in place? When there's 0 cases? If so, what if that never happens?
- xsmasher 6y ago
  I've heard some mention of "two weeks of decline in the number of new cases." That sounds reasonable to me.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Nearly uniform testing levels among the states sufficient to indicate that we're getting a real sample of the population, and not the biased sick sample we're getting with PCR testing, would be a start. If you want to be angry about something, be angry that we can't get our act together to get this data collected. It's going to be a lot easier to win arguments about lockdown when we're confident in our testing data. Right now, nobody is.
- MrGando 6y ago
  You start doing it when you can gather enough information, fast enough to prevent new spikes from happening. The number of "known cases" becomes very low, and then ideally one can react fast enough when new clusters start forming.
- 6y ago

thomascgalvin 6y ago

> Meanwhile, data is coming out to show that coronavirus has a very low fatality risk to anyone under the age of 50, and to anyone without pre-existing health conditions. 34% of America is aged 50 and over[1]. Almost 40% of America is obese[2], which is a risk factor for COVID-19 complications[3]. > A blanket shutdown does not make any sense when the vulnerable demographic has been clearly identified. When the "vulnerable demographic" is forty percent of the population, a blanket shutdown makes a lot more sense. We cannot simply consign four out of ten people to severe illness, unknown long-term complications, and/or death. [1] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housing_americas_older_adults_2014-ch2_0.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housin... [2] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housing_americas_older_adults_2014-ch2_0.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/jchs-housin... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/groups-at-higher-risk.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...

nathanaldensr 6y ago
Personal responsibility must enter the equation; otherwise, you're consigning those of us who have made good decisions about our health to pay the price for those who haven't.
- throwaway287391 6y ago
  So glad I made the decision to be born after 1970. At the time all my friends said I was crazy but it really paid off.
- tmh79 6y ago
  Solidarity must enter the equation because if you don't take care of those who are vulnerable, the economy will tank worse than it already has. People dying is expensive, and this many people dying is a lot more expensive than the cost of keeping things officially shut down.
- lanternfish 6y ago
  Why does my life, as someone who has made 'good decisions', matter more than someone's who has made 'bad decisions'. Especially when many of those 'bad decisions', like obesity, are products of socioeconomic environmental risk factors. This seems like a very privileged perspective which probably isn't very productive in managing a diverse society in times of crisis.

snewman 6y ago

> ...risk of death is 0.01% for 18-45 year olds. Where do you get this figure? Your first link shows 14 deaths per 100,000 in that age range, or 0.014%, but that is for the entire population, not just people who have had the virus. The same data set reports 1705 cases in that age range. 14 deaths out of 1705 cases is an 0.82% fatality rate. Of course, that 0.82% figure, reflecting only confirmed cases, is inflated. But conversely, some of those 1705 afflicted 18-45 year olds may still succumb to the virus. The true IFR in this age range in this region _might_ be closer to 0.1% than 0.82%. But 0.01% is just wrong.

benjaminwootton 6y ago

Funny that this is exactly the same narrative as here in the UK. Initially it was about flattening the curve for healthcare capacity, now we are in some weird holding pattern where the goal is becoming increasingly vague.

chasd00 6y ago
no one wants to go first.

hartator 6y ago

> Our political leaders (in California) are being fearful, afraid to take leadership and base their decisions on data. Or maybe too much “leadership” that ends up just being another form of authorianism.

anonAndOn 6y ago

This is only possible with widespread repeated testing. Unless you can quickly identify and isolate all of the carriers, we are flying blind.

BurningFrog 6y ago

I think this is a lot like finishing your full 7 day medication treatment, even though you feel fine on day 3. That said, I don't know when and how the right way to wind down is, and I don't think anyone else does either. I'm glad we're doing this in a decentralized way over 50 states, so many different strategies can be tried. I would also add that we who can WFH with full wages do well to remember millions of already less well off people have been left without income and life structure, and they're not just complaining because they're spoiled children!

amluto 6y ago
When you take a 7 day course of antibiotics, you are reducing your bacterial load to a level at which it is highly unlikely to bounce back from zero and, critically, the chance that it bounces back and selects for resistant strains is comfortably low. No one seriously expects any length of shutdown in the US to reduce the case count enough to eliminate COVID-19. Worse, even if we reduce the case count to an unnoticeably low number, we’ve made essentially no progress toward a suppression strategy that will detect and control new cases to avoid another shutdown.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I didn't mean the parallel to be so literal. I was more saying that you probably need to wait longer than it seems you should. In part because we're dealing with exponential growth. > Worse, even if we reduce the case count to an unnoticeably low number, we’ve made essentially no progress toward a suppression strategy that will detect and control new cases to avoid another shutdown. Another reason to postpone everyone getting infected is that the longer that waits, the better treatments we'll have for the sick.

HarryHirsch 6y ago

In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? We are already seeing the damage because a number of meatpacking plants had to go off-line when a substantial part of their workforce was ill and could not report to work, yet many citizens advocate for even lighter restrictions. Nothing of this makes any sense.

jshevek 6y ago
>In New Zealand, South Korea and Australia coronaplague is on the way out thanks to testing and contact tracing. Why can't the US muster the political will to do the same? When it comes to complete elimination, you leave out the most important ingredient: all three countries have fantastic border control, thanks to geography in two cases, and an extremist neighbor in the third.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Compared to some Western European countries, the US are looking pitiful. Italy went from 5000 cases/day in early April to 2000 now and Germany from 7000 cases/day to 1500 now. The US continues with 25000 new cases every day and no downward trajectory in sight. This is community transmission, not imported cases.
  - jshevek 6y ago
    This is in no way relevant to my point. You brought up three countries that have nearly eliminated the virus from their land, while overlooking the single most important prerequisite in all three cases. Edit: In other words, we can strive to reduce community transmission, but achieving the specific results found in the three you mentioned would also require a radical change in how we handle our borders.
    - fzeroracer 6y ago
      No it wouldn't. You ignored his point entirely, which is that even if we did manage to further lock down our borders, it does nothing to stop community transmissions. Those countries you listed weren't able to control the virus through strong border control, they did so through strong controls over community transmission. Which should've been obvious, considering the initial transmissions in South Korea came from a cult.

suyash 6y ago

Let's wait and hear what they say this week, hopefully there will be more ease in the current shelter in place guidelines.

jupp0r 6y ago

> Blanket lockdown has to end. What's different now vs before the lockdown started regarding flattening the curve? R0 is a little under 1 right now, but what will it be when most things reopen? The goal of the lockdown is to keep R0 under 1 until we have measures in place to permanently mitigate the spread [1]. This means lots of testing and contact tracing, which is not even possible right now with case numbers being as big as they are. Reopening right now would just get us back to #flattenthecurve in a matter of 4 weeks. > There is no risk posed to the majority of the population from covid-19 There is risk to everybody, it's just lower for some. There's enough evidence of permanent damage inflicted on organs and other gnarly details that I (34M) will be absolutely careful not to get this disease. [2] [1] https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/California-Roadmap-to-Modify-the-Stay-at-Home-Order.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/California... [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/more-bad-news-on-the-long-term-effects-of-the-coronavirus.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/more-bad-news-on-the...

usaar333 6y ago
Multiple counties have already confirmed they are contact tracing every case. The Bay Area has a lower per capita daily case rate than Germany who is opening schools. This should be manageable.
- jupp0r 6y ago
  Anecdotally, it’s still hard to get tested, even if people have symptoms. Happened to two friends of mine in the last 2 weeks.
mlyle 6y ago
Now we should be slightly reopening and targeting an Rt near 1, and driving towards population-based immunity. We had looser controls from mid-March to the beginning of April. They were evidently effective. Why do we need to stay in a regime of stricter controls-- mayhaps we can loosen a little from ehre and see what happens? Plenty of jurisdictions have less restrictive orders than the SF Bay Area, and are showing declining case counts.

smallgovt 6y ago

> Blanket lockdown has to end. I tend to agree. Why is nobody focusing on Sweden's COVID numbers? Sweden didn't institute city-wide shutdown measures. Yet, there hospitals are not overwhelmed. And, their COVID case counts and death counts are plateauing. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866

usaar333 6y ago
Sweden is taking a lot of death though. I prefer looking at Norway or Germany, countries that haven't taken high death hits and opening up with higher daily case counts per capita than us.

forgotmylogin2 6y ago

+1. Continuing a lockdown of this severity makes no sense. San Francisco has only had 22 Covid deaths. A city the size of SF would be expected to see 5x as many cancer deaths as that in a normal month [1] and 7x as many heart disease deaths [2]. Instead, we're maintaining a policy that discourages people from seeking preventative treatment for these diseases on the basis that we don't want them contracting a less deadly disease. The lockdown has proven to be excessive. The doomsday predictions have not come to pass, and we're entering a time of year that is known to be correlated with reduced rates of viral spread (Flu infection rates are 30x higher in the winter than the summer [3]). We need to get people back to work now. Social distancing should still be maintained where feasible but a blanket lockdown will cause way more harm than good. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/cancer_2020.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/cancer_202... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm [3] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

atourgates 6y ago
> The lockdown has proven to be excessive. The doomsday predictions have not come to pass Alternate interpretation: the lockdown worked. I fully agree that continual lockdown without a concrete plan for what its achievable goals are, and how and when we'll reopen is excessive. Some kind of targeted, data-driven reopening in stages is the right way to be headed.
fzeroracer 6y ago
I'm starting to see these arguments take startling similarity with the anti-vaccine arguments. Which is that vaccines aren't necessary because people are no longer dying from said vaccinated diseases. Perhaps it's important to consider that one of the reasons why the doomsday predictions haven't came true is because places took action early.
nickv 6y ago
This reminds me of a quote going around a few weeks ago: "If we have done a good job, everyone will say we over-reacted." As a counter point, NYC did _not_ do a good job and at it's peak COVID-19 killed more people than heart disease and cancer during the month of March [1]. [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-cause-death-per-day-us-surpassing-heart-disease-cancer-1495607 https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-becomes-number-one-caus... (This is a national number but its even worse when you consider the vast majority of cases are in NYC/NYS)

mxcrossb 6y ago

> The shelter-in-place has not only had this effect, it's been too effective. Hospital utilization in the bay area is at around 10% when you count surge capacity that has been added [1]. This matters if the end game is herd immunity, but not if the end game is to wait out a vaccine, or a sophisticated testing infrastructure. Unfortunately, I don’t think we know what the end game is going to look like now.