6 ms·

The irony of this is that the countries who were worst at their handling of the covid problem will be at an advantage at the end of it.

KerryJones 6y ago
How do you mean? They likely will have much higher deaths -- only if they decide to quarantine longer could I imagine that they have a success -- but "not handling covid 19 well" does not mean they will quarantine longer or that they will do a good job after their bang-up job.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  It feels deeply wrong to cold-heartedly choose a course of action that will result in the death of many people and the resulting suffering of those who survive their loved ones. But people are resilient. People face death from other causes all the time. Yes, there will be a measurable increase due to covid-19 but in countries that are already ravaged by poverty, crime, disease, wars, etc, it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing. From that POV, all other things being equal, one could expect that those countries might grow their economies while the rest of the world loses opportunities. I'm not sure I buy that argument though. World economy is not entirely a zero sum game
  - KerryJones 6y ago
    This feels like it's based on a lot of "gut feel", though I appreciate he devils-advocate argument. Specifically, these points: > it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing. Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation. The world is very interconnected (as I'm sure you know) In addition, I believe that many people would suffer significantly _more_ if many more people were dying around them. They would have friends and family who died or who were tied to people who died. I don't think it would be something as simple as "eh, someone else's problem". In addition, it's not just deaths -- there is a lot of data showing that there are long-term lung issues that develop if you do survive.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation Which countries, exactly, are closing their borders to trade? There are definitely a lot of restrictions being placed on travel and tourism, but banning cargo makes no sense in this context. If anything, things will probably just get lonelier for merchant seamen.
  - daxfohl 6y ago
    I wasn't implying that nations should choose this course. But say a year from now when most of their population is immune and the disease is no longer worrisome within that nation (relative to the zillion other things you can die from), then from that point they my ironically be better off. Of course this assumes 1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now) 2. the response was dorked up down to the individual level (which is most decidedly not the case -- plenty of individuals (especially among highish-income) are choosing to self isolate and take precautions, and thus will not contract the virus for quite some time no matter how bad the government response was, so immunity within these groups will never form, so the government will not be able to reopen anyway) So even in the absence of other considerations, the 2nd point above pretty much cancels out my original post.
    - orwin 6y ago
      >> 1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now) Not necessarily, you can have a short-term immunization that only last a year or two. This is why the "herd immunity" might be a poor idea when we don't know much about this virus. Anyway, i demanded a work/vacation visa to NZ for this October, i fear this won't be possible :/
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Ask Ireland or its overlords how choosing short term economy over people worked out for them with the Irish Potato Famine. Andrew Carnegie became wealthy in the US instead of generating income for the UK - regardless of one's opinions of his overall morals or lack of them he was far more productive than the harvest they sold. That was a more extreme case of 20% to 25% of the population but losing a sizable percentage of productivity with the population is very expensive in ways apparent both on and off the balance sheets. It is the epitome of penny wise pound foolish to make such a trade - the bloody gains will fade away in time while the loss echoes.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      Yes, the size and age of the group matters though
atlasunshrugged 6y ago
Why do you say that?
- edgefield0 6y ago
  Herd immunity? Assuming such a thing can exist for Covid and it doesn't mutate every season like influenza.
  - BeefySwain 6y ago
    Do we know it won't mutate? I was under the impression this was unknowable at this point.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      There are already several mutations in circulation, so we know it does mutate. The questions remaining are: * how much does it mutate? * does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to another mutation? * does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to the same mutation?
  - Endlessly 6y ago
    Herd immunity is commonly not well understood in my opinion by the general public. All it means is the point where the spread is no longer “viral” — as in for ever person that’s infected, that person infects less than 1.0 people. People still get infected, die, etc. Higher the true R0 value for the virus, higher the threshold for reaching herd immunity and the eventual point the infection rate reaching 0.0; globally, without a vaccine, very possible corona will continue to exist years, if not longer.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      > People still get infected, die, etc. Yes, but fewer of them, which is the point.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
centimeter 6y ago
Sure, if you define “worst at handling covid” as “had a relatively small overreaction”. Sweden is looking great now (look at actual total mortality numbers, not the pessimistic “projections” they keep changing). No substantial QALY loss from covid, and substantially less economic devastation, stress, and depression compared to those countries that overreacted.
- glangdale 6y ago
  You have to be on a different planet to define Sweden's mortality numbers to be "great". They are 5-10x worse than the other Nordics, have one of the highest death rates in the world, and it's not obvious that they will have a long-run advantage despite all the propagandizing for it. Their approach is highly experimental, which makes it all the more bizarre that they aren't testing very much. They have a "developing world" or "overwhelmed country" cases:deaths ratio (about 1:8) which suggests that they have a huge number of cases they don't know about. It's not clear why a country taking a radically experimental approach to COVID-19 would also test so lightly - it suggests that they don't want to know what's going on. It's possible that they don't want to have embarrassingly high case numbers, but it's just as possible that their numbers are embarrassing in the other direction - i.e. while they've killed a huge bunch of oldies, they also haven't got nearly enough cases to have herd immunity. We will also get to see, long term, what the morbidity effects of taking this approach are. They will not look super-intelligent if there is any kind of effective treatment or vaccine developed in the next 6-12 months. They only look good when you compare them with hard-hit countries. The difference is that Belgians and Spaniards aren't patrolling every goddamn social media site announcing how well they've done with the virus. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?time=2020-03-12..&country=NOR+FIN+DNK+SWE+FRA+ESP+ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
  - iso947 6y ago
    You can infer cases from deaths, as a whole you’re going to get the same death rate. Getting the death rate is tricky, what you need to look at is the increase in mortality over the 5 year average.
xupybd 6y ago
Yeah it's likely that could be true. Here in NZ we've not yet been hit by the economic toll as the government is paying wage subsidies. That's a short term fix. Years of high taxes will follow. Job losses will mount as the tourism sector falls over. It will not be pretty. So was it a wise move to shut down? Maybe, given the information they had at the time. Better to be safe than sorry. In hindsight with all the facts we have now maybe not but they didn't have those facts at the start.
Gibbon1 6y ago
The countries that are ruthless in dealing this will be able to reopen their economies quickly, reopen borders with other sane countries. Economically they will recover very quickly. Countries like the US which have no unified and sane policy are going to take a full decade to recover. Some parts will never recover.
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  It's likely going to be the opposite as recent tests in Korea seem to show immunity does happen. The countries that did little to stop the spread will have or be close to immune while the countries that aggressively locked down will not be able to interact with most of the world.
  - iso947 6y ago
    No country has got anywhere near 50% of infections. There seems no appetite currently for 4,000 deaths per million people that reaching herd immunity levels would require, at least in the western economies.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Deniers keep assuming that everyone will haplessly let themselves get infected. And the pandemic will be over in a couple of weeks. That is an incredibly stupid thing to believe. Consider. Lets say that because people are terrified of the virus they protect themselves. Which to their credit most people are. And the growth rate drops from 35% to 5% a week. So how long does it take to get from 2% infected to 60%? Do the math and you find out it's 70 weeks or 18 months.
      - iso947 6y ago
        You could get Bill Gates to infect everyone with 5g?
op03 6y ago
What advantage? More likely unintended consequences and costs will keep mounting. And at some point cross covid costs. After that political tunes will change. It's not like the ant hill can just build a border around itself and survive for ever.
procinct 6y ago
I don’t really understand how so. Countries that have handled it aggressively at least have the option to open borders and allow the virus to spread if they felt like that would for some reason put them in a better position. But this way they can hold off for a vaccine or effective treatment and have a far better outcome.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The concern is that they might not have that option. A politician would have to be extraordinarily brave to get on TV and say "we've decided we should let the Americans come give us coronavirus".

KerryJones 6y ago

How do you mean? They likely will have much higher deaths -- only if they decide to quarantine longer could I imagine that they have a success -- but "not handling covid 19 well" does not mean they will quarantine longer or that they will do a good job after their bang-up job.

ithkuil 6y ago
It feels deeply wrong to cold-heartedly choose a course of action that will result in the death of many people and the resulting suffering of those who survive their loved ones. But people are resilient. People face death from other causes all the time. Yes, there will be a measurable increase due to covid-19 but in countries that are already ravaged by poverty, crime, disease, wars, etc, it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing. From that POV, all other things being equal, one could expect that those countries might grow their economies while the rest of the world loses opportunities. I'm not sure I buy that argument though. World economy is not entirely a zero sum game
- KerryJones 6y ago
  This feels like it's based on a lot of "gut feel", though I appreciate he devils-advocate argument. Specifically, these points: > it might not significantly alter the emotional balance of those who survive. That's particularly true in those countries whose authorities successfully downplay the effects of covid-19, e.g. by not doing much testing. Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation. The world is very interconnected (as I'm sure you know) In addition, I believe that many people would suffer significantly _more_ if many more people were dying around them. They would have friends and family who died or who were tied to people who died. I don't think it would be something as simple as "eh, someone else's problem". In addition, it's not just deaths -- there is a lot of data showing that there are long-term lung issues that develop if you do survive.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Most countries in the world rely on global supply chains, and many countries are now closing their borders to external trade, meaning that their own prices will sky-rocket, likely causing layoffs and bankruptcies, causing stimulus packages and therefore inflation Which countries, exactly, are closing their borders to trade? There are definitely a lot of restrictions being placed on travel and tourism, but banning cargo makes no sense in this context. If anything, things will probably just get lonelier for merchant seamen.
- daxfohl 6y ago
  I wasn't implying that nations should choose this course. But say a year from now when most of their population is immune and the disease is no longer worrisome within that nation (relative to the zillion other things you can die from), then from that point they my ironically be better off. Of course this assumes 1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now) 2. the response was dorked up down to the individual level (which is most decidedly not the case -- plenty of individuals (especially among highish-income) are choosing to self isolate and take precautions, and thus will not contract the virus for quite some time no matter how bad the government response was, so immunity within these groups will never form, so the government will not be able to reopen anyway) So even in the absence of other considerations, the 2nd point above pretty much cancels out my original post.
  - orwin 6y ago
    >> 1. some kind of immunity (which I'd think indications are pointing toward, or I'd expect to have seen more repeat contractions by now) Not necessarily, you can have a short-term immunization that only last a year or two. This is why the "herd immunity" might be a poor idea when we don't know much about this virus. Anyway, i demanded a work/vacation visa to NZ for this October, i fear this won't be possible :/
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Ask Ireland or its overlords how choosing short term economy over people worked out for them with the Irish Potato Famine. Andrew Carnegie became wealthy in the US instead of generating income for the UK - regardless of one's opinions of his overall morals or lack of them he was far more productive than the harvest they sold. That was a more extreme case of 20% to 25% of the population but losing a sizable percentage of productivity with the population is very expensive in ways apparent both on and off the balance sheets. It is the epitome of penny wise pound foolish to make such a trade - the bloody gains will fade away in time while the loss echoes.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    Yes, the size and age of the group matters though

atlasunshrugged 6y ago

Why do you say that?

edgefield0 6y ago
Herd immunity? Assuming such a thing can exist for Covid and it doesn't mutate every season like influenza.
- BeefySwain 6y ago
  Do we know it won't mutate? I was under the impression this was unknowable at this point.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    There are already several mutations in circulation, so we know it does mutate. The questions remaining are: * how much does it mutate? * does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to another mutation? * does exposure to one mutation lend immunity to the same mutation?
- Endlessly 6y ago
  Herd immunity is commonly not well understood in my opinion by the general public. All it means is the point where the spread is no longer “viral” — as in for ever person that’s infected, that person infects less than 1.0 people. People still get infected, die, etc. Higher the true R0 value for the virus, higher the threshold for reaching herd immunity and the eventual point the infection rate reaching 0.0; globally, without a vaccine, very possible corona will continue to exist years, if not longer.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    > People still get infected, die, etc. Yes, but fewer of them, which is the point.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

centimeter 6y ago

Sure, if you define “worst at handling covid” as “had a relatively small overreaction”. Sweden is looking great now (look at actual total mortality numbers, not the pessimistic “projections” they keep changing). No substantial QALY loss from covid, and substantially less economic devastation, stress, and depression compared to those countries that overreacted.

glangdale 6y ago
You have to be on a different planet to define Sweden's mortality numbers to be "great". They are 5-10x worse than the other Nordics, have one of the highest death rates in the world, and it's not obvious that they will have a long-run advantage despite all the propagandizing for it. Their approach is highly experimental, which makes it all the more bizarre that they aren't testing very much. They have a "developing world" or "overwhelmed country" cases:deaths ratio (about 1:8) which suggests that they have a huge number of cases they don't know about. It's not clear why a country taking a radically experimental approach to COVID-19 would also test so lightly - it suggests that they don't want to know what's going on. It's possible that they don't want to have embarrassingly high case numbers, but it's just as possible that their numbers are embarrassing in the other direction - i.e. while they've killed a huge bunch of oldies, they also haven't got nearly enough cases to have herd immunity. We will also get to see, long term, what the morbidity effects of taking this approach are. They will not look super-intelligent if there is any kind of effective treatment or vaccine developed in the next 6-12 months. They only look good when you compare them with hard-hit countries. The difference is that Belgians and Spaniards aren't patrolling every goddamn social media site announcing how well they've done with the virus. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?time=2020-03-12..&country=NOR+FIN+DNK+SWE+FRA+ESP+ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
- iso947 6y ago
  You can infer cases from deaths, as a whole you’re going to get the same death rate. Getting the death rate is tricky, what you need to look at is the increase in mortality over the 5 year average.

xupybd 6y ago

Yeah it's likely that could be true. Here in NZ we've not yet been hit by the economic toll as the government is paying wage subsidies. That's a short term fix. Years of high taxes will follow. Job losses will mount as the tourism sector falls over. It will not be pretty. So was it a wise move to shut down? Maybe, given the information they had at the time. Better to be safe than sorry. In hindsight with all the facts we have now maybe not but they didn't have those facts at the start.

Gibbon1 6y ago

The countries that are ruthless in dealing this will be able to reopen their economies quickly, reopen borders with other sane countries. Economically they will recover very quickly. Countries like the US which have no unified and sane policy are going to take a full decade to recover. Some parts will never recover.

tick_tock_tick 6y ago
It's likely going to be the opposite as recent tests in Korea seem to show immunity does happen. The countries that did little to stop the spread will have or be close to immune while the countries that aggressively locked down will not be able to interact with most of the world.
- iso947 6y ago
  No country has got anywhere near 50% of infections. There seems no appetite currently for 4,000 deaths per million people that reaching herd immunity levels would require, at least in the western economies.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Deniers keep assuming that everyone will haplessly let themselves get infected. And the pandemic will be over in a couple of weeks. That is an incredibly stupid thing to believe. Consider. Lets say that because people are terrified of the virus they protect themselves. Which to their credit most people are. And the growth rate drops from 35% to 5% a week. So how long does it take to get from 2% infected to 60%? Do the math and you find out it's 70 weeks or 18 months.
    - iso947 6y ago
      You could get Bill Gates to infect everyone with 5g?

op03 6y ago

What advantage? More likely unintended consequences and costs will keep mounting. And at some point cross covid costs. After that political tunes will change. It's not like the ant hill can just build a border around itself and survive for ever.

procinct 6y ago

I don’t really understand how so. Countries that have handled it aggressively at least have the option to open borders and allow the virus to spread if they felt like that would for some reason put them in a better position. But this way they can hold off for a vaccine or effective treatment and have a far better outcome.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The concern is that they might not have that option. A politician would have to be extraordinarily brave to get on TV and say "we've decided we should let the Americans come give us coronavirus".