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“Opinion polls have generally shown a bipartisan majority of Americans want to remain at home to protect themselves from the coronavirus, despite the impact to

“Opinion polls have generally shown a bipartisan majority of Americans want to remain at home to protect themselves from the coronavirus, despite the impact to the economy.” I’ll trust public opinion with my next health decision, it’s always spot on.

jarfil 6y ago
Reopening or not is a simple balance between "risk of avoidable deaths" vs. "risk of economic damage". Different people put a different value on each one of those, which makes it a political decision.
dogma1138 6y ago
I’m not sure if you are being sarcastic. People don’t want to get sick especially given the enormous costs of hospitalization in the US.
eric_b 6y ago
It's remarkable that people are begging their governors to take away their civil liberties. Table 2 is all a rational person should need to see to realize the quarantine is the work of fear-mongering by politicians and the media: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm (For those who need an explanation - over the last two months, the data compiled in this chart shows that for people under 54, they are vanishingly unlikely to die from COVID. It shows that there is no rational reason that people under 54 should be locked down. The flu killed 5x more people under 24 in the last two months than COVID did)
- woofyman 6y ago
  Covid-19 deaths are what they are because social distancing works. Even then, it’s the second cause of death. Only surpassed by heart disease.
- jedberg 6y ago
  I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see in Table 2. I see more dead than Influenza. And that's despite most everything being closed. We don't close the country for influenza. So clearly this thing is way worse.
  - eric_b 6y ago
    Thanks for not even trying. What you should see if you open your eyes and your mind is that anyone under 54 is many times more likely to die from something else other than COVID. Surely even someone such as yourself could imagine a scenario where not EVERYONE needs to be locked down? Perhaps just those in the higher risk brackets?
    - jedberg 6y ago
      The elderly still need to interact with society. Infected but asymptotic people are even more dangerous to them, because they can still get infected. If the 22 year old check stand worker at the market goes to a bar and gets COVID-19 and then spreads it to the elderly patron they serve, that's bad. How can you protect against that? Also, they are now finding that COVID-19 causes strokes in young people. Those deaths were not counted as COVID related. We just have no idea how this virus works or what it does to the human body. Every health official says "stay home". I tend to agree with them. The solution is not to "open the economy", it's for the government to step in and help people. Why are we the only country that is begging to reopen? Perhaps it's our social safety net that needs reevaluation, not our lockdown.
      - eric_b 6y ago
        The faster the young and less vulnerable get the disease and get over it, the faster the older folks can be let out. It's really not complicated. This disease is too contagious to contain. The only way forward is through. Lockdowns merely delay the inevitable. Yes, some people will die. We can't stay home forever. It's not just the US that wants out, but you go on thinking like you do and enjoy your privileged bubble.
- bsder 6y ago
  Funny. I didn't hear much talk about civil liberties about RealID, buffing up social security number checks, accidentally detaining US citizens in the border concentration camps, US citizens being denied their right to vote, etc. Politics isn't religion. Some of us will fight you when you trot out your particular bigoted prejudices. Try some different Cambridge Analytica AI word salad. This batch isn't working. (Hrm. I seem to be particularly grouchy today ...)
- betterattrib 6y ago
  Help me understand your position. I look at table 2 and see almost 30k people that died DESPITE a nationwide lockdown. Given what we know about the virus, that number would've hit 2M-4M had we not had the lockdown. What am I missing?
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I think the idea is that as more data comes in it looks like this virus is not as bad as was first feared. There is no current data supporting a U.S. death toll of 2-4 million. And a lockdown at this point doesn't save any lives, it only postpones the inevitable spread of the virus. It is not reasonable to stay in lockdown for a couple years until there is a vaccine, not for a virus that kills only 1 of 500 people.
    - bagacrap 6y ago
      yes, additionally, it is probably better to face the tide of covid cases during the warm weather rather than waiting for cold weather to compound its severity
- nightfly 6y ago
  Real-world hospitals in the US in areas that were hit hard by COVID-19 were/are overwhelmed by it. And even areas that aren't that hard hit can't provide enough tests to know who is actually infected.
- IIAOPSW 6y ago
  Fear mongering? You can literally see the exponential growth just looking at the number of digits in the first column of table 1!
  - eric_b 6y ago
    You know 7,600 people die every day in the US right? 2.8M a year. We don't shut anything down for those. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Im not saying COVID isn't a big deal. I'm saying the response was an overreaction. We need perspective on the actual severity. If the serological studies coming out are accurate, the total number of deaths is likely ~250k max. That's an alzheimers + suicides. National policy needs to be driven by statistics not emotion.
    - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
      >> If the serological studies coming out are accurate That's a BIG optimistic assumption to make. And every optimistic assumption that's been made relative to COVID has only fucked us over further. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into that yet, cuz if it's off and the CFR is tipped the other way, we could be talking up to 30M deaths, not just 250k...
bsder 6y ago
The problem is that the majority of states reopening were on course to exhaust their unemployment budgets. Consequently, this looks like a bunch of Republican governors trying to deny people unemployment benefits rather than a positive move to get back to normal.
jedberg 6y ago
The point of that is to counteract the claims of politicians that Americans want to return to normal. They don't. Health officials have been saying to stay home all along. It's politicians that are saying it's ok not to. I don't know about you, but I'd rather take advice from health officials instead of politicians.
- tdhoot 6y ago
  I'm not saying health officials are wrong, but they're rightfully focused primarily on health implications. Politicians should be responsible for determining policy -- balancing economic, legal, and health considerations after listening to experts.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Politicians are supposed to represent the people. The majority of people want to stay home.
    - tdhoot 6y ago
      I don't see how this is relevant to my comment at all. And politicians are free to and often should disagree with their constituents. We have a representative democracy and you're free to not vote for them the next election but they don't have to follow every poll for every decision.

jarfil 6y ago

Reopening or not is a simple balance between "risk of avoidable deaths" vs. "risk of economic damage". Different people put a different value on each one of those, which makes it a political decision.

dogma1138 6y ago

I’m not sure if you are being sarcastic. People don’t want to get sick especially given the enormous costs of hospitalization in the US.

eric_b 6y ago

It's remarkable that people are begging their governors to take away their civil liberties. Table 2 is all a rational person should need to see to realize the quarantine is the work of fear-mongering by politicians and the media: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm (For those who need an explanation - over the last two months, the data compiled in this chart shows that for people under 54, they are vanishingly unlikely to die from COVID. It shows that there is no rational reason that people under 54 should be locked down. The flu killed 5x more people under 24 in the last two months than COVID did)

woofyman 6y ago
Covid-19 deaths are what they are because social distancing works. Even then, it’s the second cause of death. Only surpassed by heart disease.
jedberg 6y ago
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see in Table 2. I see more dead than Influenza. And that's despite most everything being closed. We don't close the country for influenza. So clearly this thing is way worse.
- eric_b 6y ago
  Thanks for not even trying. What you should see if you open your eyes and your mind is that anyone under 54 is many times more likely to die from something else other than COVID. Surely even someone such as yourself could imagine a scenario where not EVERYONE needs to be locked down? Perhaps just those in the higher risk brackets?
  - jedberg 6y ago
    The elderly still need to interact with society. Infected but asymptotic people are even more dangerous to them, because they can still get infected. If the 22 year old check stand worker at the market goes to a bar and gets COVID-19 and then spreads it to the elderly patron they serve, that's bad. How can you protect against that? Also, they are now finding that COVID-19 causes strokes in young people. Those deaths were not counted as COVID related. We just have no idea how this virus works or what it does to the human body. Every health official says "stay home". I tend to agree with them. The solution is not to "open the economy", it's for the government to step in and help people. Why are we the only country that is begging to reopen? Perhaps it's our social safety net that needs reevaluation, not our lockdown.
    - eric_b 6y ago
      The faster the young and less vulnerable get the disease and get over it, the faster the older folks can be let out. It's really not complicated. This disease is too contagious to contain. The only way forward is through. Lockdowns merely delay the inevitable. Yes, some people will die. We can't stay home forever. It's not just the US that wants out, but you go on thinking like you do and enjoy your privileged bubble.
bsder 6y ago
Funny. I didn't hear much talk about civil liberties about RealID, buffing up social security number checks, accidentally detaining US citizens in the border concentration camps, US citizens being denied their right to vote, etc. Politics isn't religion. Some of us will fight you when you trot out your particular bigoted prejudices. Try some different Cambridge Analytica AI word salad. This batch isn't working. (Hrm. I seem to be particularly grouchy today ...)
betterattrib 6y ago
Help me understand your position. I look at table 2 and see almost 30k people that died DESPITE a nationwide lockdown. Given what we know about the virus, that number would've hit 2M-4M had we not had the lockdown. What am I missing?
- mikem170 6y ago
  I think the idea is that as more data comes in it looks like this virus is not as bad as was first feared. There is no current data supporting a U.S. death toll of 2-4 million. And a lockdown at this point doesn't save any lives, it only postpones the inevitable spread of the virus. It is not reasonable to stay in lockdown for a couple years until there is a vaccine, not for a virus that kills only 1 of 500 people.
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    yes, additionally, it is probably better to face the tide of covid cases during the warm weather rather than waiting for cold weather to compound its severity
nightfly 6y ago
Real-world hospitals in the US in areas that were hit hard by COVID-19 were/are overwhelmed by it. And even areas that aren't that hard hit can't provide enough tests to know who is actually infected.
IIAOPSW 6y ago
Fear mongering? You can literally see the exponential growth just looking at the number of digits in the first column of table 1!
- eric_b 6y ago
  You know 7,600 people die every day in the US right? 2.8M a year. We don't shut anything down for those. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Im not saying COVID isn't a big deal. I'm saying the response was an overreaction. We need perspective on the actual severity. If the serological studies coming out are accurate, the total number of deaths is likely ~250k max. That's an alzheimers + suicides. National policy needs to be driven by statistics not emotion.
  - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
    >> If the serological studies coming out are accurate That's a BIG optimistic assumption to make. And every optimistic assumption that's been made relative to COVID has only fucked us over further. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into that yet, cuz if it's off and the CFR is tipped the other way, we could be talking up to 30M deaths, not just 250k...

bsder 6y ago

The problem is that the majority of states reopening were on course to exhaust their unemployment budgets. Consequently, this looks like a bunch of Republican governors trying to deny people unemployment benefits rather than a positive move to get back to normal.

jedberg 6y ago

The point of that is to counteract the claims of politicians that Americans want to return to normal. They don't. Health officials have been saying to stay home all along. It's politicians that are saying it's ok not to. I don't know about you, but I'd rather take advice from health officials instead of politicians.

tdhoot 6y ago
I'm not saying health officials are wrong, but they're rightfully focused primarily on health implications. Politicians should be responsible for determining policy -- balancing economic, legal, and health considerations after listening to experts.
- jedberg 6y ago
  Politicians are supposed to represent the people. The majority of people want to stay home.
  - tdhoot 6y ago
    I don't see how this is relevant to my comment at all. And politicians are free to and often should disagree with their constituents. We have a representative democracy and you're free to not vote for them the next election but they don't have to follow every poll for every decision.