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Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count. In Korea and many other places, they ended lockdowns after a few months because

Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count. In Korea and many other places, they ended lockdowns after a few months because cases dropped orders of magnitude. In the US, we're "opening back up" while many states are hitting daily records. Our lockdowns were a disaster and "opening back up" is going to cause an explosion in cases. If our lockdowns had been done right we would be able to reopen the economy now with little risk

aguyfromnb 6y ago
>Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count. Is it any wonder? Look at the comments here. Look at guys like Elon Musk breaking quarantine for economic reasons and getting praised for it. Conspiracies abound. This didn't happen in less partisan countries. Like absolutely everything else in the US, the lockdown became a political issue, for and against it. Where I'm from, everyone took it seriously and in a matter of weeks we got down to ZERO active cases. Then again, we don't hate people who have different politics.
- eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  its not just political. The rich and powerful have too much influence. Countries with high income equality are the ones with successful lockdowns. When your president is one of the richest men in the world its hard to convince leadership to shut down the economy. And the US is pretty much unique with the whole "corporation is a person" nonsense
zdragnar 6y ago
Lockdowns were not meant to stop people from getting sick, they were meant to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed. NYC is about the only hospital system that came close to being overwhelmed and even they made almost no use of the temporary hospitals. The record numbers of cases we see now coincides with record levels of testing- with such limited availability of testing prior to the lockdown, the majority of cases- those not needing hospitalization- were never counted.
- eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  maybe in the US, but lockdowns in many other countries have suppressed virus transmission completely. Why would our goal be different? Because we can't achieve that?
  - strictnein 6y ago
    The US spans a continent and is the 3rd most populous nation. Comparing it to someplace like Taiwan or Singapore doesn't make any sense.
    - eggsnbacon1 6y ago
      China and India are larger. China suppressed the virus, India is doing worse than the US. Comparing to those countries doesn't make much sense either because US is much wealthier. We should be doing far better than both, and we're not.
      - zdragnar 6y ago
        Meaningful comparisons require reasonably accurate data, and there is nothing like that to be found in any of these countries. Aside from the fact that testing has been minimal for a number of reasons, different areas have perverse incentives to either over or under count COVID fatalities. In the US, any and every death of someone who had the virus, and many who did not, are still counted among the death tolls. The recent case of the guy who died from alcohol poisoning comes to mind, though I personally know of others who died from other causes, and were counted even though they hadnt been tested. Conversely, there is good reason to be skeptical of China's accounting as well- both due to government interference and the simple fact that they were not able to reliably test the majority of cases.
        eggsnbacon1 6y ago
        You can look at the EU average, which is close to US population and still makes the US look bad. Test positive rates can tell you how roughly how much a country is undercounting. If US has twice the test positive rate as another, they're only testing half the cases. The fact is no matter what metric you look at, the US is doing worse with our response than almost anywhere else.
jdminhbg 6y ago
> Our lockdowns were a disaster and "opening back up" is going to cause an explosion in cases. That was in fact the prediction for Georgia, see for example the expert predictions here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-experts-expect-a-surge-in-georgias-covid-19-cases/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe... Of course it turns out not to have actually happened: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavi...
- GrinningFool 6y ago
  As far as I saw from the start, predictions for Georgia were that they'd start to see an uptick in about 3-5 weeks. I think that window starts this week.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    You can read the article I linked, the predictions were for the week ending May 16.
    - GrinningFool 6y ago
      It has largely been within that consensus range at the low end: "579 and 2,292"; but that's splitting hairs, since the low end is not an increasing count. With that said, my own reading prior to this point has suggested we'd see the uptick starting in this coming week, through the next two weeks.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Izkata 6y ago
      Georgia is now backfilling based on date of first symptoms, rather than date of diagnosis. Numbers as far back as a week or two week could still increase.
- Spellman 6y ago
  That's not completely true. The panel of experts estimated about 1k/day during the week ending May 16, ranging 579/day to 2292/day. And while so far there aren't that many cases reported today, the data isn't complete due to the lag in testing results. In fact the lag is for 14 days. So we're still in a wait and see point.
strictnein 6y ago
A lot of states are hitting daily records because they're ramping up testing. There isn't more sickness, there's more accurate numbers. Basically by following absolute numbers, and commenting on them as if there's a failure on the state's part, you're punishing states for increasing testing.
- eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  This can be disproven by looking at daily death rates. Many states are also peaking in daily deaths vs average. There's undoubtedly more testing, but its not the main contributor to the lack of suppression
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    Deaths are a lagging indicator and shouldn't be used for this comparison. On average, in cases of death, it is about 18 - 23 days between diagnosis and death (compared to 12 - 17 days for recovery).
blhack 6y ago
Which states are hitting records? AZ, one of the strongest reopenings as far as i know, has been on a downward trend on every relevant metric for about a month now.
- ksdale 6y ago
  I know a lot of the sources say different things, but the NYT site does not show AZ improving on daily case count - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-coronavirus-cases.html#cases https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-coronavi...
  - blhack 6y ago
    Here is the data directly from the arizona department of health: https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-cont... I'm a broken record talking about how nytimes/etc. will always pick the more sensational data to sell ads, and how it doesn't matter for them if they're wrong (and how they actually have a financial incentive to be wrong). Maybe it is all just an accident though.
    - ksdale 6y ago
      Doesn't this also show daily case counts trending upward for the past month?
      - blhack 6y ago
        Yes, but that’s because Arizona is doing more testing. If you click the “lab testing” section on that site you’ll see that the testing positive rate is also down substantially (from 11% to 5%) from our peak over a month ago. It’s one of the things that public health officials have been warning about pretty consistently: as testing increases, positive cases will go up, but that shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing.
        6y ago

aguyfromnb 6y ago

>Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count. Is it any wonder? Look at the comments here. Look at guys like Elon Musk breaking quarantine for economic reasons and getting praised for it. Conspiracies abound. This didn't happen in less partisan countries. Like absolutely everything else in the US, the lockdown became a political issue, for and against it. Where I'm from, everyone took it seriously and in a matter of weeks we got down to ZERO active cases. Then again, we don't hate people who have different politics.

eggsnbacon1 6y ago
its not just political. The rich and powerful have too much influence. Countries with high income equality are the ones with successful lockdowns. When your president is one of the richest men in the world its hard to convince leadership to shut down the economy. And the US is pretty much unique with the whole "corporation is a person" nonsense

zdragnar 6y ago

Lockdowns were not meant to stop people from getting sick, they were meant to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed. NYC is about the only hospital system that came close to being overwhelmed and even they made almost no use of the temporary hospitals. The record numbers of cases we see now coincides with record levels of testing- with such limited availability of testing prior to the lockdown, the majority of cases- those not needing hospitalization- were never counted.

eggsnbacon1 6y ago
maybe in the US, but lockdowns in many other countries have suppressed virus transmission completely. Why would our goal be different? Because we can't achieve that?
- strictnein 6y ago
  The US spans a continent and is the 3rd most populous nation. Comparing it to someplace like Taiwan or Singapore doesn't make any sense.
  - eggsnbacon1 6y ago
    China and India are larger. China suppressed the virus, India is doing worse than the US. Comparing to those countries doesn't make much sense either because US is much wealthier. We should be doing far better than both, and we're not.
    - zdragnar 6y ago
      Meaningful comparisons require reasonably accurate data, and there is nothing like that to be found in any of these countries. Aside from the fact that testing has been minimal for a number of reasons, different areas have perverse incentives to either over or under count COVID fatalities. In the US, any and every death of someone who had the virus, and many who did not, are still counted among the death tolls. The recent case of the guy who died from alcohol poisoning comes to mind, though I personally know of others who died from other causes, and were counted even though they hadnt been tested. Conversely, there is good reason to be skeptical of China's accounting as well- both due to government interference and the simple fact that they were not able to reliably test the majority of cases.
      - eggsnbacon1 6y ago
        You can look at the EU average, which is close to US population and still makes the US look bad. Test positive rates can tell you how roughly how much a country is undercounting. If US has twice the test positive rate as another, they're only testing half the cases. The fact is no matter what metric you look at, the US is doing worse with our response than almost anywhere else.

jdminhbg 6y ago

> Our lockdowns were a disaster and "opening back up" is going to cause an explosion in cases. That was in fact the prediction for Georgia, see for example the expert predictions here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-experts-expect-a-surge-in-georgias-covid-19-cases/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe... Of course it turns out not to have actually happened: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavi...

GrinningFool 6y ago
As far as I saw from the start, predictions for Georgia were that they'd start to see an uptick in about 3-5 weeks. I think that window starts this week.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  You can read the article I linked, the predictions were for the week ending May 16.
  - GrinningFool 6y ago
    It has largely been within that consensus range at the low end: "579 and 2,292"; but that's splitting hairs, since the low end is not an increasing count. With that said, my own reading prior to this point has suggested we'd see the uptick starting in this coming week, through the next two weeks.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Izkata 6y ago
    Georgia is now backfilling based on date of first symptoms, rather than date of diagnosis. Numbers as far back as a week or two week could still increase.
Spellman 6y ago
That's not completely true. The panel of experts estimated about 1k/day during the week ending May 16, ranging 579/day to 2292/day. And while so far there aren't that many cases reported today, the data isn't complete due to the lag in testing results. In fact the lag is for 14 days. So we're still in a wait and see point.

strictnein 6y ago

A lot of states are hitting daily records because they're ramping up testing. There isn't more sickness, there's more accurate numbers. Basically by following absolute numbers, and commenting on them as if there's a failure on the state's part, you're punishing states for increasing testing.

eggsnbacon1 6y ago
This can be disproven by looking at daily death rates. Many states are also peaking in daily deaths vs average. There's undoubtedly more testing, but its not the main contributor to the lack of suppression
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  Deaths are a lagging indicator and shouldn't be used for this comparison. On average, in cases of death, it is about 18 - 23 days between diagnosis and death (compared to 12 - 17 days for recovery).

blhack 6y ago

Which states are hitting records? AZ, one of the strongest reopenings as far as i know, has been on a downward trend on every relevant metric for about a month now.

ksdale 6y ago
I know a lot of the sources say different things, but the NYT site does not show AZ improving on daily case count - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-coronavirus-cases.html#cases https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-coronavi...
- blhack 6y ago
  Here is the data directly from the arizona department of health: https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-cont... I'm a broken record talking about how nytimes/etc. will always pick the more sensational data to sell ads, and how it doesn't matter for them if they're wrong (and how they actually have a financial incentive to be wrong). Maybe it is all just an accident though.
  - ksdale 6y ago
    Doesn't this also show daily case counts trending upward for the past month?
    - blhack 6y ago
      Yes, but that’s because Arizona is doing more testing. If you click the “lab testing” section on that site you’ll see that the testing positive rate is also down substantially (from 11% to 5%) from our peak over a month ago. It’s one of the things that public health officials have been warning about pretty consistently: as testing increases, positive cases will go up, but that shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing.
      - 6y ago