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I'm sorry but I can't take serious something that claims to take an impartial look at all the evidence related to the lockdown but then tries its damnedest to p

I'm sorry but I can't take serious something that claims to take an impartial look at all the evidence related to the lockdown but then tries its damnedest to present all possible negatives it could without doing the same for positives. For example, there's clear evidence that the lockdown has decreased lives lost to traffic accidents but that appears nowhere here. And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented. Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives. Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated". This thing is so littered with bias and lack of facts that it is not useful for any serious consideration of this. I'm sure it's great for people who already have their mind set in one direction, though.

ryankemper 6y ago
The positive externalities is not a bad point. Where I'm having trouble is, it seems that if we wouldn't pass a law ordering people to not drive around in normal times, then it feels wrong to point to it as a positive when it's induced by people not being able to do anything. That being said, I think it does make sense to account for positive externalities. Can you think of others that are lockdown-specific? The classic ones right now are pollution. > Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives. I'm not sure if that is a great example of only looking at the negatives. This is one dimension where the effects of the lockdown are basically exclusively negative as opposed to being a mixed bag. So this feels like something that absolutely _should_ be mentioned. Particularly when factoring in the irony of it increasing mortality from other non-COVID-19 infectious diseases. > Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated". I don't think this is at all fair either, but I must admit I chuckled a bit. It is a funny thought. > And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented. So, this is the biggest hole that I personally see in my argument, so I very much agree here. The trouble I ran into is, this is such an unprecedented situation that it would have felt ridiculous if I just started making up mortality predictions. So it felt like a good balance to highlight the _potential_ for increased mortality. I do think that means I likely need to soften the language around lockdown causing more mortality to accentuate the fact that it's merely _likely_ that it does. -- Is there anything else you can think of? Thanks for the feedback.
- cjhopman 6y ago
  > we wouldn't pass a law ordering people to not drive around in normal times, We absolutely pass a ton of laws to make driving around safer, including restricting driving around when it's particularly dangerous (for example, when a person has had a bit to drink).
cjhopman 6y ago
Here's more random stream of consciousness about this: > Pareto Mitigation: An evidence-based approach I love how this uses "evidence-based" as a dogwhistle followed by proposing an approach without providing any sort of evidence about the efficacy of the approach. > Those who have lost their jobs tend to be those workers who are in a lower socio-economic bracket and have jobs that do not allow one to “work from home”. This is presented without evidence. I think there's a reasonable chance this is the case, but many essential businesses/industries employ primarily lower socio-economic classes so who knows. This is just presented like you should agree with it. It's also not clear that those that are more disadvantaged are actually worse off here. There has been a very large increase in the amount and accessibility of unemployment benefits. There seems to be excessive use of bolding random segments of sentences. I don't know if this is just a stylistic thing, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. On suicides, it seems like most of the argument should be verifiable from data (i.e. by its claims, we should be able to see an actual increase in suicide deaths). Is that data not available yet? > A preventable decline in preventative care Even the (supposedly evidence-based) proposed approach would likely lead to exactly the same decline in preventative care. This error is repeated throughout the document where there's this idea that the changes that we've seen are due to lockdown and will just go away otherwise (except, of course, for when the change is positive and, clearly, the not-quite-lockdown approach recommended would continue that positive change). > Be wary of “hero culture” This is maybe the strangest section. Why does this just talk about a hero culture related to real scientists? Do we think that people are more likely to think some nerdy scientist is a hero rather than our heroic manly president? This seems like it should be a point in support of lockdown to me (tbh, it seems like it shouldn't be a point at all, it's just an attempt to discredit experts). > The Soul of the Country is at Stake OMG. I skipped this in first skim. Yeah, this makes me think I've wasted my time even thinking about this thing, this is clearly a plea to the emotions of a specific subset of the population. I'm done.
- cjhopman 6y ago
  > This error is repeated throughout the document where there's this idea that the changes that we've seen are due to lockdown and will just go away otherwise For these, it could be good to compare what has happened in countries or areas with different responses to these. I.e compare sweden vs norway.
cjhopman 6y ago
> Specifically, once the proportion of recovered in the population reaches 1/(1-R_0), there are no longer enough vectors (infectable indviduals) remaining for a serious outbreak to occur. It’s worth noting that this is the same principle that vaccination relies upon; vaccination is just an artificial way to build immunity without having to undergo a full infection. I should learn to never read anything from random people working in areas they don't have any expertise in. This whole section is wrong. The idea that vaccination and epidemics need the same percent of immunity is completely 100% wrong. An active epidemic is going to infect way more people before dying out than the simple, naive herd immunity calculation will give you. In fact, while an r0 of 2 indicates that you get herd immunity with just 50% of the population, a typical active epidemic with the same r0 would infect 80+% before dying out. This is clear when you think for about 1 second about it. The `1/(1-R_0)` value gives you the point where infected people infect 1 more person, it doesn't give the point when the infection stops spreading.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  I'm sure you're getting weary at this point, but I really need your help understanding what you're saying here, because to me it seems supremely untrue. First, `1/1-R_0`. This is exactly what Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics And it makes intuitive sense that once you infect <= 1.00 people, growth is no longer exponential. So I don't think that point is wrong at all. > The idea that vaccination and epidemics need the same percent of immunity is completely 100% wrong. An active epidemic is going to infect way more people before dying out than the simple, naive herd immunity calculation will give you. In fact, while an r0 of 2 indicates that you get herd immunity with just 50% of the population, a typical active epidemic with the same r0 would infect 80+% before dying out. This doesn't make any sense to me. Vaccination is just an artificial way to build immunity. So I don't understand your active epidemic point at all. Or put another way, as the proportion of % recovered goes up, we start approaching the eventual limit where `1/1-R_0`->1. That is to say, in your example we start with R_0 = 2, then as people recover that value slowly starts decreasing until it hits 1 at the herd immunity threshold. It's not clear to me what the discrepancy you're detecting is here.

ryankemper 6y ago

The positive externalities is not a bad point. Where I'm having trouble is, it seems that if we wouldn't pass a law ordering people to not drive around in normal times, then it feels wrong to point to it as a positive when it's induced by people not being able to do anything. That being said, I think it does make sense to account for positive externalities. Can you think of others that are lockdown-specific? The classic ones right now are pollution. > Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives. I'm not sure if that is a great example of only looking at the negatives. This is one dimension where the effects of the lockdown are basically exclusively negative as opposed to being a mixed bag. So this feels like something that absolutely _should_ be mentioned. Particularly when factoring in the irony of it increasing mortality from other non-COVID-19 infectious diseases. > Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated". I don't think this is at all fair either, but I must admit I chuckled a bit. It is a funny thought. > And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented. So, this is the biggest hole that I personally see in my argument, so I very much agree here. The trouble I ran into is, this is such an unprecedented situation that it would have felt ridiculous if I just started making up mortality predictions. So it felt like a good balance to highlight the _potential_ for increased mortality. I do think that means I likely need to soften the language around lockdown causing more mortality to accentuate the fact that it's merely _likely_ that it does. -- Is there anything else you can think of? Thanks for the feedback.

cjhopman 6y ago
> we wouldn't pass a law ordering people to not drive around in normal times, We absolutely pass a ton of laws to make driving around safer, including restricting driving around when it's particularly dangerous (for example, when a person has had a bit to drink).

cjhopman 6y ago

Here's more random stream of consciousness about this: > Pareto Mitigation: An evidence-based approach I love how this uses "evidence-based" as a dogwhistle followed by proposing an approach without providing any sort of evidence about the efficacy of the approach. > Those who have lost their jobs tend to be those workers who are in a lower socio-economic bracket and have jobs that do not allow one to “work from home”. This is presented without evidence. I think there's a reasonable chance this is the case, but many essential businesses/industries employ primarily lower socio-economic classes so who knows. This is just presented like you should agree with it. It's also not clear that those that are more disadvantaged are actually worse off here. There has been a very large increase in the amount and accessibility of unemployment benefits. There seems to be excessive use of bolding random segments of sentences. I don't know if this is just a stylistic thing, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. On suicides, it seems like most of the argument should be verifiable from data (i.e. by its claims, we should be able to see an actual increase in suicide deaths). Is that data not available yet? > A preventable decline in preventative care Even the (supposedly evidence-based) proposed approach would likely lead to exactly the same decline in preventative care. This error is repeated throughout the document where there's this idea that the changes that we've seen are due to lockdown and will just go away otherwise (except, of course, for when the change is positive and, clearly, the not-quite-lockdown approach recommended would continue that positive change). > Be wary of “hero culture” This is maybe the strangest section. Why does this just talk about a hero culture related to real scientists? Do we think that people are more likely to think some nerdy scientist is a hero rather than our heroic manly president? This seems like it should be a point in support of lockdown to me (tbh, it seems like it shouldn't be a point at all, it's just an attempt to discredit experts). > The Soul of the Country is at Stake OMG. I skipped this in first skim. Yeah, this makes me think I've wasted my time even thinking about this thing, this is clearly a plea to the emotions of a specific subset of the population. I'm done.

cjhopman 6y ago
> This error is repeated throughout the document where there's this idea that the changes that we've seen are due to lockdown and will just go away otherwise For these, it could be good to compare what has happened in countries or areas with different responses to these. I.e compare sweden vs norway.

cjhopman 6y ago

> Specifically, once the proportion of recovered in the population reaches 1/(1-R_0), there are no longer enough vectors (infectable indviduals) remaining for a serious outbreak to occur. It’s worth noting that this is the same principle that vaccination relies upon; vaccination is just an artificial way to build immunity without having to undergo a full infection. I should learn to never read anything from random people working in areas they don't have any expertise in. This whole section is wrong. The idea that vaccination and epidemics need the same percent of immunity is completely 100% wrong. An active epidemic is going to infect way more people before dying out than the simple, naive herd immunity calculation will give you. In fact, while an r0 of 2 indicates that you get herd immunity with just 50% of the population, a typical active epidemic with the same r0 would infect 80+% before dying out. This is clear when you think for about 1 second about it. The `1/(1-R_0)` value gives you the point where infected people infect 1 more person, it doesn't give the point when the infection stops spreading.

ryankemper 6y ago
I'm sure you're getting weary at this point, but I really need your help understanding what you're saying here, because to me it seems supremely untrue. First, `1/1-R_0`. This is exactly what Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics And it makes intuitive sense that once you infect <= 1.00 people, growth is no longer exponential. So I don't think that point is wrong at all. > The idea that vaccination and epidemics need the same percent of immunity is completely 100% wrong. An active epidemic is going to infect way more people before dying out than the simple, naive herd immunity calculation will give you. In fact, while an r0 of 2 indicates that you get herd immunity with just 50% of the population, a typical active epidemic with the same r0 would infect 80+% before dying out. This doesn't make any sense to me. Vaccination is just an artificial way to build immunity. So I don't understand your active epidemic point at all. Or put another way, as the proportion of % recovered goes up, we start approaching the eventual limit where `1/1-R_0`->1. That is to say, in your example we start with R_0 = 2, then as people recover that value slowly starts decreasing until it hits 1 at the herd immunity threshold. It's not clear to me what the discrepancy you're detecting is here.