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>If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. I thought the purpose of the lockdown was to keep hospitals from being ove

>If we're going to lock-down, we might as well do it until the crisis is manageable. I thought the purpose of the lockdown was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed? Maybe that is what you meant by manageable? My two cents: Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? We have been locked down and covid still circulates through the population, and appears that it will do so until we reach herd immunity and/or have a vaccine, with the likely/hopeful outcome, based on how these types of coronaviruses often behave, being a decrease in the danger posed by this specific virus over time. Playing devils advocate: How much of a difference do mandated lockdowns even make? Sweden doesn't have a lockdown and they are doing better than a number of other western countries, worse than some others, but pretty much well within the same bell curve given the fuzzy data we have at the moment. When does it become selfish to tell tens of millions of people they can't provide for themselves because you are scared of the coronavirus. They might not be. The risk profile can be very different for different people. As long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed why not self-isolate, and let other people do what they want? That was the justification when we started these lockdowns, to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, right?

sethammons 6y ago
You are getting down voted, and I'm not sure why. I've grown the opinion that you cannot have any discussion around any measured approach related to COVID. It seems some people view COVID as guaranteed death and any questioning of lock downs ending means that you are or are about to be a mass murderer.
- cfmcdonald 6y ago
  One reason could be that GP seems to assume that spread to herd immunity is inevitable, ignoring the countries that have had great success in containing the virus.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    What countries are you thinking of? New Zealand has been able to pretty much eradicate the virus through lockdowns and contact tracing, but they only had 1000 cases. There is no precedent for doing that in a country with millions of cases, like the U.S. It may be too late for that. So is the purpose of continued lockdowns in the U.S. to eradicate the virus? That is what I am skeptical about, I don't see the evidence that such a thing is possible.
- throwawayrcheck 6y ago
  For the 'hard lockdown' crowd, how long can we put time on hold? A week? A month? A year? A decade? It is an elementary fact that life rides on the derivative. Stop work and no wealth gets created. No meat, no veggies, no crops, no gas, no electricity, no metal, no lumber, no stone, no plastic, no industrials, no dentists, no medical services, no schools, no nothing. Modern people cannot live subsistence lives off the chickens in their backyard and a plot of land within walking distance. Our stockpiles will last for a while, but not forever. At a second degree, the social connections that enable the amazing collaboration underpinning modern society break down. The longer we are locked down, the harder will be to come back and figure out our place in the grand social puzzle. It is a terrible situation. Most people are going to get infected, and a non-negligible fraction of them [1%] are going to die. Everywhere where the virus got endemic. Perhaps a handful of East Asian countries will manage 100% border shutdowns and 100% contact tracing for years on end. More power to them, the rest of the world lacks the social cohesion to pull off something like that. Worse, the impact is going to be unequal. Some social strata will have more options to stay isolated for longer. It will appear, for a while, that they are somehow performing better than everybody else. Rest assured, there will be very few that can avoid the disease for long enough (~18 months) to be on the upside of a hypothetical vaccine. All we can hope is that, eventually, this disease goes the way of the common cold. Toughen up. This is not Man's making. Nature send a Russian Roulette our way, we have no choice but to play. In the meantime, try to avoid media that does it's best to paint this disease as the second coming of the Black Death. One of the technique is to cherry pick. Say 'one of my co-workers died', implying that they are next. Instead of '1 out of 73,348 of my colleagues' died. It is unavoidable tragedy that there may be anywhere between 73 and 733 of their colleagues that are going to die before we see the end of this.
  - bandushrew 6y ago
    Sure, we cant shutdown forever, but I dont understand the rush to sacrifice. Covid will be with us forever now, and in just a few months we already understand a lot more about it than we did at the start. The longer we can delay mass infection, the more effective our treatment of the disease will be, and the more likely we will have vaccines. Lets delay for a while, figure out the best treatment methods, and then let it through.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ryandrake 6y ago
  GP brought out the tired "Give people who aren't afraid the freedom to choose" argument, which misses the point: The Stay at Home order is not about those freedom people. It is about the people those people will infect.
brlewis 6y ago
> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? That's a big if. The last stats I saw showed Sweden experiencing 4x deaths per capita compared to its neighbors, which is a clue that eschewing lockdown does make a difference. Every country is different. How do you know that Sweden's approach used in a different country wouldn't overwhelm hospitals? Once you let the pandemic get more widespread in a population, it gets hard to stop. Think very carefully about irreversible decisions.
- augustt 6y ago
  They have more deaths because they're paying up front. The bet is that over time deaths will be roughly the same, lockdown or not. Considering that we're far off from a vaccine and world economy can't be left on life support for years, I'm inclined to believe them.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    It may work out that way. But I don't think that was Sweden's intent. Just yesterday I read that the guy who devised their pandemic response was surprised by the deaths. (Sorry, I don't recall the source...)
  - brlewis 6y ago
    > The bet is that over time deaths will be roughly the same, lockdown or not The total number of infections will be the same up until a vaccine is developed, but the death rate can be lowered by delaying widespread infection until treatments are developed, tested, and deployed, and by keeping the infection rate at a level the medical system can handle.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      Can that be a personal decision, for example: Person #1) I'm at risk and there are no good treatments, so I will self-isolate, waiting for vaccines, better treatment, and/or this to go away. Person #2) I'm young, my risk is negligable, hospitals are not overwhelmed, and I have to support my family, my kids need to go to school, etc. Why does person #1 get to tell person #2 what to do?
obelos 6y ago
It’s also to slow the rate of infection in order to buy time until we figure out more effective treatments and potentially a vaccine, and also to improve detection and isolation practices. The goal isn't “spread 1,000,000 deaths out over a longer period of time.” It’s also to reduce the number of deaths and infections altogether. Unfortunately, in the US we haven’t used our lockdown time in a useful way. We’ve kept hospitals (mostly) from being overwhelmed for now, but none of the infra that supports an effective test/trace/isolation regime was deployed. Hospitals still can’t get sufficient PPE. Etc.
- mikem170 6y ago
  The purpose of the lockdowns initialy was to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, i.e. Flatten the Curve. Are there other useful ways to use a lockdown at this point, when there are already millions of infected? There's no precendent/evidence that anything else can be done at this point, there's too many cases. Are you thinking that we should change the goal of the lockdown, to be eradication? Is that possible? This thing is still spreading, even during the current lockdowns.
  - obelos 6y ago
    The purpose of TTI isn’t necessarily to eradicate the virus altogether, which does seem unlikely. It’s the alternative to lockdowns. Like lockdown, it reduces the new infection rate. Unlike lockdown, society is more able to carry on with something resembling regular economic activity and mobility liberties. In the US we have squandered our lockdown time in a way that will make TTI more difficult, more expensive, and less effective because, the outbreak is more widespread. But even with those marks against it, it would be better (in terms of economics, health outcomes, and personal liberty) than extending lockdown indefinitely or “opening up” the economy to what will quickly result in resuming exponential growth of infections and, consequently, deaths.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 6y ago
> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? Because until we have an effective vaccine or treatment, that'd mean something about 2% mortality rate across the infected population, which, without any containment, would be close to 100% as this thing is crazy contagious. That's 6 million dead people. And keep in mind that 2% is a very optimistic number. Germany has twice as many. In the US about 6% of the confirmed cases are already dead, with only about half recovered. From that 6%, it'd be 22 million dead people.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? The premise of the question is false. The states making aggressive reopening moves are largely on upward trends of cases and show no sign of being able to avoid overwhelming their health systems if they reopen (some are on track to so so with their, often already too lenient, “lockdowns”), and even the states doing more measured reopenings that seem to have the caseload situation more in hand (like California) don't have the surveillance in place to detect a new surge in time to effectively respond. The latter approach is risky but arguably responsible given the context of the grossly negligent federal economic response, but the former is just flatly indefensible.
- mikem170 6y ago
  I would agree with your concern about the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed with no lockdown. But then again that has not happened in Sweden. You mentioned being concerned with the caseload in states that are doing graduated openings. I was thinking of this mostly in terms of hospitals being overwhelmed. Are you thinking we can eradicate this in the U.S. with a long term lockdown? I don't think that's possible anymore.

sethammons 6y ago

You are getting down voted, and I'm not sure why. I've grown the opinion that you cannot have any discussion around any measured approach related to COVID. It seems some people view COVID as guaranteed death and any questioning of lock downs ending means that you are or are about to be a mass murderer.

cfmcdonald 6y ago
One reason could be that GP seems to assume that spread to herd immunity is inevitable, ignoring the countries that have had great success in containing the virus.
- mikem170 6y ago
  What countries are you thinking of? New Zealand has been able to pretty much eradicate the virus through lockdowns and contact tracing, but they only had 1000 cases. There is no precedent for doing that in a country with millions of cases, like the U.S. It may be too late for that. So is the purpose of continued lockdowns in the U.S. to eradicate the virus? That is what I am skeptical about, I don't see the evidence that such a thing is possible.
throwawayrcheck 6y ago
For the 'hard lockdown' crowd, how long can we put time on hold? A week? A month? A year? A decade? It is an elementary fact that life rides on the derivative. Stop work and no wealth gets created. No meat, no veggies, no crops, no gas, no electricity, no metal, no lumber, no stone, no plastic, no industrials, no dentists, no medical services, no schools, no nothing. Modern people cannot live subsistence lives off the chickens in their backyard and a plot of land within walking distance. Our stockpiles will last for a while, but not forever. At a second degree, the social connections that enable the amazing collaboration underpinning modern society break down. The longer we are locked down, the harder will be to come back and figure out our place in the grand social puzzle. It is a terrible situation. Most people are going to get infected, and a non-negligible fraction of them [1%] are going to die. Everywhere where the virus got endemic. Perhaps a handful of East Asian countries will manage 100% border shutdowns and 100% contact tracing for years on end. More power to them, the rest of the world lacks the social cohesion to pull off something like that. Worse, the impact is going to be unequal. Some social strata will have more options to stay isolated for longer. It will appear, for a while, that they are somehow performing better than everybody else. Rest assured, there will be very few that can avoid the disease for long enough (~18 months) to be on the upside of a hypothetical vaccine. All we can hope is that, eventually, this disease goes the way of the common cold. Toughen up. This is not Man's making. Nature send a Russian Roulette our way, we have no choice but to play. In the meantime, try to avoid media that does it's best to paint this disease as the second coming of the Black Death. One of the technique is to cherry pick. Say 'one of my co-workers died', implying that they are next. Instead of '1 out of 73,348 of my colleagues' died. It is unavoidable tragedy that there may be anywhere between 73 and 733 of their colleagues that are going to die before we see the end of this.
- bandushrew 6y ago
  Sure, we cant shutdown forever, but I dont understand the rush to sacrifice. Covid will be with us forever now, and in just a few months we already understand a lot more about it than we did at the start. The longer we can delay mass infection, the more effective our treatment of the disease will be, and the more likely we will have vaccines. Lets delay for a while, figure out the best treatment methods, and then let it through.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 6y ago
GP brought out the tired "Give people who aren't afraid the freedom to choose" argument, which misses the point: The Stay at Home order is not about those freedom people. It is about the people those people will infect.

brlewis 6y ago

> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? That's a big if. The last stats I saw showed Sweden experiencing 4x deaths per capita compared to its neighbors, which is a clue that eschewing lockdown does make a difference. Every country is different. How do you know that Sweden's approach used in a different country wouldn't overwhelm hospitals? Once you let the pandemic get more widespread in a population, it gets hard to stop. Think very carefully about irreversible decisions.

augustt 6y ago
They have more deaths because they're paying up front. The bet is that over time deaths will be roughly the same, lockdown or not. Considering that we're far off from a vaccine and world economy can't be left on life support for years, I'm inclined to believe them.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  It may work out that way. But I don't think that was Sweden's intent. Just yesterday I read that the guy who devised their pandemic response was surprised by the deaths. (Sorry, I don't recall the source...)
- brlewis 6y ago
  > The bet is that over time deaths will be roughly the same, lockdown or not The total number of infections will be the same up until a vaccine is developed, but the death rate can be lowered by delaying widespread infection until treatments are developed, tested, and deployed, and by keeping the infection rate at a level the medical system can handle.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    Can that be a personal decision, for example: Person #1) I'm at risk and there are no good treatments, so I will self-isolate, waiting for vaccines, better treatment, and/or this to go away. Person #2) I'm young, my risk is negligable, hospitals are not overwhelmed, and I have to support my family, my kids need to go to school, etc. Why does person #1 get to tell person #2 what to do?

obelos 6y ago

It’s also to slow the rate of infection in order to buy time until we figure out more effective treatments and potentially a vaccine, and also to improve detection and isolation practices. The goal isn't “spread 1,000,000 deaths out over a longer period of time.” It’s also to reduce the number of deaths and infections altogether. Unfortunately, in the US we haven’t used our lockdown time in a useful way. We’ve kept hospitals (mostly) from being overwhelmed for now, but none of the infra that supports an effective test/trace/isolation regime was deployed. Hospitals still can’t get sufficient PPE. Etc.

mikem170 6y ago
The purpose of the lockdowns initialy was to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed, i.e. Flatten the Curve. Are there other useful ways to use a lockdown at this point, when there are already millions of infected? There's no precendent/evidence that anything else can be done at this point, there's too many cases. Are you thinking that we should change the goal of the lockdown, to be eradication? Is that possible? This thing is still spreading, even during the current lockdowns.
- obelos 6y ago
  The purpose of TTI isn’t necessarily to eradicate the virus altogether, which does seem unlikely. It’s the alternative to lockdowns. Like lockdown, it reduces the new infection rate. Unlike lockdown, society is more able to carry on with something resembling regular economic activity and mobility liberties. In the US we have squandered our lockdown time in a way that will make TTI more difficult, more expensive, and less effective because, the outbreak is more widespread. But even with those marks against it, it would be better (in terms of economics, health outcomes, and personal liberty) than extending lockdown indefinitely or “opening up” the economy to what will quickly result in resuming exponential growth of infections and, consequently, deaths.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rbanffy 6y ago

> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? Because until we have an effective vaccine or treatment, that'd mean something about 2% mortality rate across the infected population, which, without any containment, would be close to 100% as this thing is crazy contagious. That's 6 million dead people. And keep in mind that 2% is a very optimistic number. Germany has twice as many. In the US about 6% of the confirmed cases are already dead, with only about half recovered. From that 6%, it'd be 22 million dead people.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Why shouldn't we remove the lockdown if we can manage to do so without overwhelming hospitals? The premise of the question is false. The states making aggressive reopening moves are largely on upward trends of cases and show no sign of being able to avoid overwhelming their health systems if they reopen (some are on track to so so with their, often already too lenient, “lockdowns”), and even the states doing more measured reopenings that seem to have the caseload situation more in hand (like California) don't have the surveillance in place to detect a new surge in time to effectively respond. The latter approach is risky but arguably responsible given the context of the grossly negligent federal economic response, but the former is just flatly indefensible.

mikem170 6y ago
I would agree with your concern about the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed with no lockdown. But then again that has not happened in Sweden. You mentioned being concerned with the caseload in states that are doing graduated openings. I was thinking of this mostly in terms of hospitals being overwhelmed. Are you thinking we can eradicate this in the U.S. with a long term lockdown? I don't think that's possible anymore.