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> just how outrageously bad things looked in late March. I agree things looked terrible then. I think a big part of the conversation now is "how much was lockd

> just how outrageously bad things looked in late March. I agree things looked terrible then. I think a big part of the conversation now is "how much was lockdown, and how much was bad projections?" Given what we knew at the time, it was the right choice. Now we need to decide how to move forward.

newacct583 7y ago
> I think a big part of the conversation now is "how much was lockdown, and how much was bad projections?" With all due respect: That's not a conversation among any serious academics. It's a conversation happening among political actors in political contexts (c.f. Tucker Carlson floating this two nights ago). It's just not correct. And as you phrase it, it doesn't even make sense. "Projections" don't cause a change in R0. If you want to argue that this happened for some other reason than lockdowns you need to have a reason. And there are none that make sense. (I mean, maybe it's herd immunity. In that case, why did the infection curves in different US states at very different death counts all bend the same way at roughly the same time after lockdown? Maybe it's weather: likewise, also the fact that the early China outbreak with similar behavior happened in the middle of winter. Maybe it's a mutant strain: nope, no particular evidence for specific ones having different behavior.) If you want to have a conversation, you need to come to the table with a working theory. Social isolation has been known for centuries to work exactly the way it has here. It's a very attractive hypothesis, and is going to be difficult to disprove.
- war1025 7y ago
  Yes, lockdown absolutely works. Yes, things are terrible in New York City. The question, maybe not debated among "academics" but debated among others, is whether spread rates ever would have gotten as bad in suburban and rural areas as they did in densely populated cities. Models that used the same variables for NYC with population density of 30k people / sq mile as for rural states with tens or hundreds of people per square mile are just not realistic. The virus is a serious threat. It's good that we took the actions we did. That is in the past. The question now is how we move forward. Part of that is gaining a better understanding of how bad the conditions on the ground actually are. All indications are that we can relax restrictions to some extent and still not overwhelm the hospital system. Indications also point that our current restrictions are absolutely catastrophic for the economy. So we have to find the balance.
  - newacct583 7y ago
    FWIW: the fastest growing US states right now are Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas (though Illinois is also up there, and no doubt dominated by the Chicago metro area). The idea that rural areas don't see rapid growth isn't really well-founded. What happened was that large international cities experienced their outbreaks earlier. Nebraska may be small still, but at their current growth rate they'll match New York's all time high new infection rate (per capita) in just two weeks. Go browse the charts at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ and note how similar all these curves look. No one is special. Everyone grows rapidly without lockdown. Everyone levels off with it. Only a few states have actually seen a peak and a significant reduction in new infections (c.f. Vermont, Montana, Hawaii). Those are the ones that might consider opening up right now. Everyone else just isn't safe yet.
    - war1025 7y ago
      I am in Iowa. I am aware of our situation here. It is highly localized to several meat processing plants. Bigger cities are seeing larger numbers. I live less than an hour away from the capital, Des Moines. We have ~30 confirmed cases total in my county. My mom lives near the northern border. They have 2 confirmed cases total. We never went to strict "shelter in place". Today the majority of the state is relaxing restrictions and restaurants can allow limited dine-in options if they wish. Maybe it will go terrible. Maybe it won't. We will see.
      - newacct583 7y ago
        > Maybe it will go terrible. Maybe it won't. We will see. Would you have recommended that strategy to Lombardy in February? I mean, you're citing current absolute statistics at a time when your infection count is growing rapidly. Your per capita new infection rate now is the same as New York's was on March 22. You understand that's not the right way to think about an epidemic, right? If you aren't flat then you're in the process of growing exponentially, and that doesn't just fix itself.
        7y ago
ineedasername 7y ago
I think it's difficult to argue that it was "bad projections" instead of lockdowns that have made things better than projected. Because if it is wasn't the lockdown that helped, why has the virus behavior been so different in NY & NJ, but we didn't see outbreaks on the scale of NYC in other metro areas that had the benefit of seeing what was happening in those hotspots and acted accordingly? If the lockdown wasn't helping things, I would expect other densely populated areas to have had similar outbreaks. If the lockdown wasn't a significant determining factor, then we shouldn't be seeing hotspots in areas around the meat processing plants where the lockdown might as well not exist for the portion of the population that worked at the plant, and their families. The models probably weren't perfect, but I don't think they were wrong in their general trends, even if the magnitude of those trends would have been slightly different in reality. In any case, we'll know more in 2-3 weeks if things start to tick back upwards in areas that ease restrictions. Though even then, my concern is that the effect of lifting restrictions will occur too slowly and subtly, and so by the time we know there's a problem it will already be too late to easily contain.

newacct583 7y ago

> I think a big part of the conversation now is "how much was lockdown, and how much was bad projections?" With all due respect: That's not a conversation among any serious academics. It's a conversation happening among political actors in political contexts (c.f. Tucker Carlson floating this two nights ago). It's just not correct. And as you phrase it, it doesn't even make sense. "Projections" don't cause a change in R0. If you want to argue that this happened for some other reason than lockdowns you need to have a reason. And there are none that make sense. (I mean, maybe it's herd immunity. In that case, why did the infection curves in different US states at very different death counts all bend the same way at roughly the same time after lockdown? Maybe it's weather: likewise, also the fact that the early China outbreak with similar behavior happened in the middle of winter. Maybe it's a mutant strain: nope, no particular evidence for specific ones having different behavior.) If you want to have a conversation, you need to come to the table with a working theory. Social isolation has been known for centuries to work exactly the way it has here. It's a very attractive hypothesis, and is going to be difficult to disprove.

war1025 7y ago
Yes, lockdown absolutely works. Yes, things are terrible in New York City. The question, maybe not debated among "academics" but debated among others, is whether spread rates ever would have gotten as bad in suburban and rural areas as they did in densely populated cities. Models that used the same variables for NYC with population density of 30k people / sq mile as for rural states with tens or hundreds of people per square mile are just not realistic. The virus is a serious threat. It's good that we took the actions we did. That is in the past. The question now is how we move forward. Part of that is gaining a better understanding of how bad the conditions on the ground actually are. All indications are that we can relax restrictions to some extent and still not overwhelm the hospital system. Indications also point that our current restrictions are absolutely catastrophic for the economy. So we have to find the balance.
- newacct583 7y ago
  FWIW: the fastest growing US states right now are Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas (though Illinois is also up there, and no doubt dominated by the Chicago metro area). The idea that rural areas don't see rapid growth isn't really well-founded. What happened was that large international cities experienced their outbreaks earlier. Nebraska may be small still, but at their current growth rate they'll match New York's all time high new infection rate (per capita) in just two weeks. Go browse the charts at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ and note how similar all these curves look. No one is special. Everyone grows rapidly without lockdown. Everyone levels off with it. Only a few states have actually seen a peak and a significant reduction in new infections (c.f. Vermont, Montana, Hawaii). Those are the ones that might consider opening up right now. Everyone else just isn't safe yet.
  - war1025 7y ago
    I am in Iowa. I am aware of our situation here. It is highly localized to several meat processing plants. Bigger cities are seeing larger numbers. I live less than an hour away from the capital, Des Moines. We have ~30 confirmed cases total in my county. My mom lives near the northern border. They have 2 confirmed cases total. We never went to strict "shelter in place". Today the majority of the state is relaxing restrictions and restaurants can allow limited dine-in options if they wish. Maybe it will go terrible. Maybe it won't. We will see.
    - newacct583 7y ago
      > Maybe it will go terrible. Maybe it won't. We will see. Would you have recommended that strategy to Lombardy in February? I mean, you're citing current absolute statistics at a time when your infection count is growing rapidly. Your per capita new infection rate now is the same as New York's was on March 22. You understand that's not the right way to think about an epidemic, right? If you aren't flat then you're in the process of growing exponentially, and that doesn't just fix itself.
      - 7y ago

ineedasername 7y ago

I think it's difficult to argue that it was "bad projections" instead of lockdowns that have made things better than projected. Because if it is wasn't the lockdown that helped, why has the virus behavior been so different in NY & NJ, but we didn't see outbreaks on the scale of NYC in other metro areas that had the benefit of seeing what was happening in those hotspots and acted accordingly? If the lockdown wasn't helping things, I would expect other densely populated areas to have had similar outbreaks. If the lockdown wasn't a significant determining factor, then we shouldn't be seeing hotspots in areas around the meat processing plants where the lockdown might as well not exist for the portion of the population that worked at the plant, and their families. The models probably weren't perfect, but I don't think they were wrong in their general trends, even if the magnitude of those trends would have been slightly different in reality. In any case, we'll know more in 2-3 weeks if things start to tick back upwards in areas that ease restrictions. Though even then, my concern is that the effect of lifting restrictions will occur too slowly and subtly, and so by the time we know there's a problem it will already be too late to easily contain.