6 ms·

I'm in continued amazement that people act like we've beaten this things, when infection rates are shown leveling off. All that shows is that NOT opening, and s

I'm in continued amazement that people act like we've beaten this things, when infection rates are shown leveling off. All that shows is that NOT opening, and staying quarantined are effective.

CubsFan1060 6y ago
And I'm in continued amazement that people don't seem to understand that "beating it" was never the goal. It was to flatten the curve, not eliminate it. Empty hospitals likely mean we went too far. Staying quarantined until a vaccine is available is likely not a sustainable plan.
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  They hated CubsFan1060 because he told the truth.
- umvi 6y ago
  > And I'm in continued amazement that people don't seem to understand that "beating it" was never the goal I've argued with many people who firmly believe it is worth burning the economy to the ground in order to "save lives". Eventually, the argument distills down to: "Do you care more about corporate profits and bankers and billionaires OR peoples' lives?"
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It doesn't even boil down to that. Plenty (essentially all) of credible economists attribute much of the economic harm to the disease epidemic, and not just to the government response. People have to feel like eating at a restaurant is safe for being open to matter.
    - CubsFan1060 6y ago
      I think that's very true. That being said, the government response and the media has certainly ratcheted up the fear.
      - umvi 6y ago
        > That being said, the government response and the media has certainly ratcheted up the fear. This is not brought up enough. There's a family of immigrants in my neighborhood from Sierra Leone, and the mom is so terrified of covid-19 that she won't let her kids go out and play, or even go to the local elementary school for free meals (they are on government assistance). We've delivered them food because of this fear. I've tried to explain that kids are at low risk and that it's probably worse to keep them locked inside for months vs. letting them play out side, but alas, the fear is too strong...
      - paulgb 6y ago
        Depends which government and which media. People who were going to spring break in Florida in March apparently weren't scared enough, and messages from the government and Fox News that this would be over by Easter didn't help that.
  - pinkfoot 6y ago
    Value of a Statistical Life "VISCUSI: If you multiply the 1 million lives saved [Trump], and if the lives are worth $10 million each [OHSA], the result is $10 trillion. … Ten trillion dollars is half of the U.S. GDP, which means that in order to justify completely opening businesses back up, the economy would need to lose half of its value." [1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      To be pedantic, Covid is far more fatal to the elderly whose statistical "worth" is significantly less.
      - pinkfoot 6y ago
        Er no, as TFA mentions, when the USG they tried that American protested with signs saying "Granny for sale". Sufficiently that the USG dropped the 'pensioner discount'. You'd have to argue why its suddenly OK now. You can also argue to discount children - where I live, we make them by the dozen. It is less applicable to COVID-19 through. But VSL the correct framework because its based on the premium the average American at large puts on jobs to compensate for the risk of injury or death. What could be more democratic? But $10T is such a large envelope that even if you added the granny discount, you would still come out at an enormous fraction of USA and hence world GDP.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pacala 6y ago
      The 'economy' is not some abstract entity. It is us, the people, going about our business every day. A hard lockdown is destroying all of the economy. No accounting tricks can mask that. We should not play accounting tricks to begin with. If we want to stoop at the article's level, note that the numbers are flawed, as they don't account for age distribution of the risk. https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609/photo/1 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609/p...
  - Gwypaas 6y ago
    What makes that question even harder is when you take into account the huge body of people back in January which were right at the margin of famine. When supply chains stop how will the lowest of the lowest on the ladder cope? "About 265 million people around the world are forecast to be facing acute food insecurity by the end of this year, a doubling of the 130 million estimated to suffer severe food shortages last year." [0] Excess death because overrun hospitals should never happen, but the global perspective is horrifying and will never give any easy answers. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-could-be-next-big-impact-of-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-...
  - Johanx64 6y ago
    No, the argument doesn't distill down to "corporate profits and bankers". It goes down to - do you want to save lives of wealthy - usually old middle class people in 1st world countries who can "afford to quarantine" or do you want to save more lives of people who are going to starve, become homeless or die due to massive economic disruption this extended quarantine is going to bring upon. It's only middle class pencil pushers who can quarantine at will semi-indefinitely and work from home who think extended general quarantine is even a viable option in the first place.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  There is, and was, a lot of confusion about what the goals were, although they all aligned in immediate massive action. 'Crushing' the curve and getting back to contact tracing levels is one. 'Flattening' and avoiding Lombardy is another. I was hoping we would have used the time to have massive testing programs by now in the US, to follow Korea's example, but that hasn't happened at all. Paul Romer's plan is my favorite but the country has seen little progress since he proposed it https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/paul-romer-on-how-to-survive-the-chaos-of-the-coronavirus https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/paul-romer-on-how-to-...
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    The US has more testing capacity than South Korea relative to total population (so we've ramped up significantly), the problem is that our numbers of infected are too high to use that capacity for suppression.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Exactly! I am amazed at how many people have said, "Well we'll have a vaccine in 18 months." This is absolutely irresponsible of the big-pharma industry to push. Safe vaccines take years or decades to develop, and some of the techniques they're clinically trialing now have never created vaccines that made it through the approval process before. Could one of these magically work? Maybe, but it's still highly unlikely everything in these trials will go perfectly. Places like NZ are looking at total eradication, but the rest of the world will most like just have this spread through our populations before any effective treatment of vaccine is produced. Countries like NZ .. might not ever be able to open their boards again. If the antibodies don't last long, yes we could see reoccurances for the rest of our lives. It's in our environment. It took 20 years of very big vaccination efforts to eradicate smallpox. Sure we have better technology now, but to think we can eliminate this in less than a year is hubris. I wrote this post last week, about how we might just be in denial that our life expectancy might now be lower, and how we might need to just come to terms with that: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...
- corty 6y ago
  The plan is to almost beat it, get the new infections down to almost zero by strict lockdowns. Then commence contact tracing and quarantine for each new infection and all first, second and maybe third order contacts while general restrictions are eased. This continues until a vaccine or cure is found. If you want to know more, google Hammer and Dance. Flattening the curve just below hospital capacity is shown to be dangerous because you cannot control the infection rate with sufficient precision, causing slipups and second, third, fourth waves necessitating repeated longer lockdowns. All in all this damages the economy more because of the panic it periodically creates, repeated longer lockdowns (albeit maybe not as strict) and the uncertainty. There is always another lockdown looming just a few bad numbers ahead. Flattening the curve is sooo March 2020 ;)
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Respectfully, that's the plan that you may have wanted, but it's not the plan that most governments have actually implemented. "Almost zero" is not generally considered feasible.
    - corty 6y ago
      That is unfortunately accurate.
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  Your perspective, i. e. "flatten the curve", is outdated. It's entirely obvious now that R can be pushed below 1.0. The data from Germany, for example, implies their (medium) level of lockdown came out to about 0.5. China, with harsher measures, did even better. Germany is now trying to feel its way to a best possible compromise of somewhat lesser/better targeted restrictions that still keep R<1.0 and, thus, the virus on track for elimination.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  We know much more about the virus than before. Even without a vaccine, gaining as many time as possible until we catch it, can make a huge difference.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Infection rates in Germany have fallen from about 6,500/day at the peak to about 1,000/day now. The vast majority of the early countries in Europe and Asia has seen drastic successes. See, for example, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#cases https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m... (scroll up slightly or search for "decreasing"). Among the richer countries, it's just the UK, US, and Sweden that are "levelling off".

I'm in continued amazement that people act like we've beaten this things, when infection rates are shown leveling off. All that shows is that NOT opening, and staying quarantined are effective.

CubsFan1060 6y ago

And I'm in continued amazement that people don't seem to understand that "beating it" was never the goal. It was to flatten the curve, not eliminate it. Empty hospitals likely mean we went too far. Staying quarantined until a vaccine is available is likely not a sustainable plan.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago
They hated CubsFan1060 because he told the truth.
umvi 6y ago
> And I'm in continued amazement that people don't seem to understand that "beating it" was never the goal I've argued with many people who firmly believe it is worth burning the economy to the ground in order to "save lives". Eventually, the argument distills down to: "Do you care more about corporate profits and bankers and billionaires OR peoples' lives?"
- maxerickson 6y ago
  It doesn't even boil down to that. Plenty (essentially all) of credible economists attribute much of the economic harm to the disease epidemic, and not just to the government response. People have to feel like eating at a restaurant is safe for being open to matter.
  - CubsFan1060 6y ago
    I think that's very true. That being said, the government response and the media has certainly ratcheted up the fear.
    - umvi 6y ago
      > That being said, the government response and the media has certainly ratcheted up the fear. This is not brought up enough. There's a family of immigrants in my neighborhood from Sierra Leone, and the mom is so terrified of covid-19 that she won't let her kids go out and play, or even go to the local elementary school for free meals (they are on government assistance). We've delivered them food because of this fear. I've tried to explain that kids are at low risk and that it's probably worse to keep them locked inside for months vs. letting them play out side, but alas, the fear is too strong...
    - paulgb 6y ago
      Depends which government and which media. People who were going to spring break in Florida in March apparently weren't scared enough, and messages from the government and Fox News that this would be over by Easter didn't help that.
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  Value of a Statistical Life "VISCUSI: If you multiply the 1 million lives saved [Trump], and if the lives are worth $10 million each [OHSA], the result is $10 trillion. … Ten trillion dollars is half of the U.S. GDP, which means that in order to justify completely opening businesses back up, the economy would need to lose half of its value." [1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    To be pedantic, Covid is far more fatal to the elderly whose statistical "worth" is significantly less.
    - pinkfoot 6y ago
      Er no, as TFA mentions, when the USG they tried that American protested with signs saying "Granny for sale". Sufficiently that the USG dropped the 'pensioner discount'. You'd have to argue why its suddenly OK now. You can also argue to discount children - where I live, we make them by the dozen. It is less applicable to COVID-19 through. But VSL the correct framework because its based on the premium the average American at large puts on jobs to compensate for the risk of injury or death. What could be more democratic? But $10T is such a large envelope that even if you added the granny discount, you would still come out at an enormous fraction of USA and hence world GDP.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pacala 6y ago
    The 'economy' is not some abstract entity. It is us, the people, going about our business every day. A hard lockdown is destroying all of the economy. No accounting tricks can mask that. We should not play accounting tricks to begin with. If we want to stoop at the article's level, note that the numbers are flawed, as they don't account for age distribution of the risk. https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609/photo/1 https://twitter.com/AndyBiotech/status/1241741127205572609/p...
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  What makes that question even harder is when you take into account the huge body of people back in January which were right at the margin of famine. When supply chains stop how will the lowest of the lowest on the ladder cope? "About 265 million people around the world are forecast to be facing acute food insecurity by the end of this year, a doubling of the 130 million estimated to suffer severe food shortages last year." [0] Excess death because overrun hospitals should never happen, but the global perspective is horrifying and will never give any easy answers. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-could-be-next-big-impact-of-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/global-hunger-...
- Johanx64 6y ago
  No, the argument doesn't distill down to "corporate profits and bankers". It goes down to - do you want to save lives of wealthy - usually old middle class people in 1st world countries who can "afford to quarantine" or do you want to save more lives of people who are going to starve, become homeless or die due to massive economic disruption this extended quarantine is going to bring upon. It's only middle class pencil pushers who can quarantine at will semi-indefinitely and work from home who think extended general quarantine is even a viable option in the first place.
arcticfox 6y ago
There is, and was, a lot of confusion about what the goals were, although they all aligned in immediate massive action. 'Crushing' the curve and getting back to contact tracing levels is one. 'Flattening' and avoiding Lombardy is another. I was hoping we would have used the time to have massive testing programs by now in the US, to follow Korea's example, but that hasn't happened at all. Paul Romer's plan is my favorite but the country has seen little progress since he proposed it https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/paul-romer-on-how-to-survive-the-chaos-of-the-coronavirus https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/paul-romer-on-how-to-...
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The US has more testing capacity than South Korea relative to total population (so we've ramped up significantly), the problem is that our numbers of infected are too high to use that capacity for suppression.
djsumdog 6y ago
Exactly! I am amazed at how many people have said, "Well we'll have a vaccine in 18 months." This is absolutely irresponsible of the big-pharma industry to push. Safe vaccines take years or decades to develop, and some of the techniques they're clinically trialing now have never created vaccines that made it through the approval process before. Could one of these magically work? Maybe, but it's still highly unlikely everything in these trials will go perfectly. Places like NZ are looking at total eradication, but the rest of the world will most like just have this spread through our populations before any effective treatment of vaccine is produced. Countries like NZ .. might not ever be able to open their boards again. If the antibodies don't last long, yes we could see reoccurances for the rest of our lives. It's in our environment. It took 20 years of very big vaccination efforts to eradicate smallpox. Sure we have better technology now, but to think we can eliminate this in less than a year is hubris. I wrote this post last week, about how we might just be in denial that our life expectancy might now be lower, and how we might need to just come to terms with that: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon...
corty 6y ago
The plan is to almost beat it, get the new infections down to almost zero by strict lockdowns. Then commence contact tracing and quarantine for each new infection and all first, second and maybe third order contacts while general restrictions are eased. This continues until a vaccine or cure is found. If you want to know more, google Hammer and Dance. Flattening the curve just below hospital capacity is shown to be dangerous because you cannot control the infection rate with sufficient precision, causing slipups and second, third, fourth waves necessitating repeated longer lockdowns. All in all this damages the economy more because of the panic it periodically creates, repeated longer lockdowns (albeit maybe not as strict) and the uncertainty. There is always another lockdown looming just a few bad numbers ahead. Flattening the curve is sooo March 2020 ;)
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Respectfully, that's the plan that you may have wanted, but it's not the plan that most governments have actually implemented. "Almost zero" is not generally considered feasible.
  - corty 6y ago
    That is unfortunately accurate.
IAmEveryone 6y ago
Your perspective, i. e. "flatten the curve", is outdated. It's entirely obvious now that R can be pushed below 1.0. The data from Germany, for example, implies their (medium) level of lockdown came out to about 0.5. China, with harsher measures, did even better. Germany is now trying to feel its way to a best possible compromise of somewhat lesser/better targeted restrictions that still keep R<1.0 and, thus, the virus on track for elimination.
pvaldes 6y ago
We know much more about the virus than before. Even without a vaccine, gaining as many time as possible until we catch it, can make a huge difference.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

Infection rates in Germany have fallen from about 6,500/day at the peak to about 1,000/day now. The vast majority of the early countries in Europe and Asia has seen drastic successes. See, for example, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage#cases https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m... (scroll up slightly or search for "decreasing"). Among the richer countries, it's just the UK, US, and Sweden that are "levelling off".