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Well this really is still a health related message. I think it's obvious to pretty much everyone that it's really not economically feasible to stay locked down

Well this really is still a health related message. I think it's obvious to pretty much everyone that it's really not economically feasible to stay locked down forever. So he is saying that, given that we do need to reopen, it should be safe if we take significant precautions when doing so.

jchook 6y ago
If we can actually "re-open America" without significantly increasing the spread of COVID-19, that will make the lockdown look like a major over-reaction. On the other hand, if we re-open and then see a return to doubling the number of cases every 3-4 days... what then? Will people go back on lockdown?
- wallacoloo 6y ago
  > Will people go back on lockdown? It depends. People with the means to do so will weigh the consequences and decide for themselves. Like, I’ll be limiting my physical contact with my parents and aunts/uncles for quite a few more months whichever way this goes, I expect. I’ll probably not be eating at restaurants, though I may partake in dinner parties with very close friends instead. Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown. Generally, if we can put the right structures in place to give everyone the ability to reduce their exposure at their choice, a lockdown isn’t necessary. Seriously: if you and anyone you care about could live decently without human contact, then we wouldn’t need to force a lockdown on anybody else. We’ll never get there fully — humans are social animals and many will weigh the value seeing a select group of family/friends regularly greater than the risk of disease. But there’s so much room for decreasing R without lockdown (I.e. in a non-compulsory way) that we haven’t explored yet. Obvious ones include some form of UBI so that people aren’t forced into high-risk jobs. Or subsidies to organizations based on how much they decrease transmission associated with their practices (e.g. curbside pickup for retail, sanitizing warehouse/store surfaces and testing employees regularly, subsidizing safer local transit (biking, scooters — just not busses), etc). I think one of our larger mistakes in handling this is embracing mandatory lockdown as the be-all end-all solution. It’s not a long-term solution. It risks building serious animosity among the classes of people who feel deprived from opportunity as a result of it, and generally there’s no telling what compliance will look like after 4 months, 6 months, or a reopening followed by another lockdown. We have to find ways of reducing the lockdown while replacing its benefits with other tools that have fewer negative impacts on society.
  - jchook 6y ago
    > Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown Doesn't this ignore the idea of viral spread? I mean, the nurses of the elderly come home to their "voluntary" lockdown, and the young mailmail delivers mail to boomer parents. Many people carry and spread the disease without knowing they have it.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  I don't think the lockdown orders are necessary when behavior has changed. Sweden never had a lockdown order, their confirmed cases have been stable since the beginning of April and their deaths are going down. Germany reopened weeks ago, their cases are still slowly declining.

jchook 6y ago

If we can actually "re-open America" without significantly increasing the spread of COVID-19, that will make the lockdown look like a major over-reaction. On the other hand, if we re-open and then see a return to doubling the number of cases every 3-4 days... what then? Will people go back on lockdown?

wallacoloo 6y ago
> Will people go back on lockdown? It depends. People with the means to do so will weigh the consequences and decide for themselves. Like, I’ll be limiting my physical contact with my parents and aunts/uncles for quite a few more months whichever way this goes, I expect. I’ll probably not be eating at restaurants, though I may partake in dinner parties with very close friends instead. Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown. Generally, if we can put the right structures in place to give everyone the ability to reduce their exposure at their choice, a lockdown isn’t necessary. Seriously: if you and anyone you care about could live decently without human contact, then we wouldn’t need to force a lockdown on anybody else. We’ll never get there fully — humans are social animals and many will weigh the value seeing a select group of family/friends regularly greater than the risk of disease. But there’s so much room for decreasing R without lockdown (I.e. in a non-compulsory way) that we haven’t explored yet. Obvious ones include some form of UBI so that people aren’t forced into high-risk jobs. Or subsidies to organizations based on how much they decrease transmission associated with their practices (e.g. curbside pickup for retail, sanitizing warehouse/store surfaces and testing employees regularly, subsidizing safer local transit (biking, scooters — just not busses), etc). I think one of our larger mistakes in handling this is embracing mandatory lockdown as the be-all end-all solution. It’s not a long-term solution. It risks building serious animosity among the classes of people who feel deprived from opportunity as a result of it, and generally there’s no telling what compliance will look like after 4 months, 6 months, or a reopening followed by another lockdown. We have to find ways of reducing the lockdown while replacing its benefits with other tools that have fewer negative impacts on society.
- jchook 6y ago
  > Voluntary social distancing but not as strictly as the lockdown Doesn't this ignore the idea of viral spread? I mean, the nurses of the elderly come home to their "voluntary" lockdown, and the young mailmail delivers mail to boomer parents. Many people carry and spread the disease without knowing they have it.
gridlockd 6y ago
I don't think the lockdown orders are necessary when behavior has changed. Sweden never had a lockdown order, their confirmed cases have been stable since the beginning of April and their deaths are going down. Germany reopened weeks ago, their cases are still slowly declining.