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This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting

This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are very low risk. Most risk is within shared living situations (migrant workers, retirement homes, prisons). We can respond to the _real_ risks and use a nuanced approach that actually saves lives. But instead, the left says "lockdown lockdown lockdown" and the right says "open 100%"... Both are full of shit to the point of it being disgusting. This isn't a game. This has life and death consequences so far beyond COVID-19, and the lack of foresight that the partisans are demonstrating will have reverberations for generations. We are playing the life of real people, we are risking the financial security of real people, who have families and debts and dreams. Finally, the fact that the public health sector has devolved into partisanship really has me worried for when we _actually_ have a repeat of Spanish Flu, or a more virulent Ebola etc. Then we are screwed. Edit: fixed a typo

rootusrootus 6y ago
If we could just convince the hoaxers that wearing masks in public is not emasculating, and convince the doomers that we need to flatten the curve rather than attempt to completely contain the virus, we could go back to something bordering on normal life pretty quickly while we waited for vaccines to come along and kill off the virus altogether. And then we would be prepared to react to the next pandemic, too.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Exactly. We need some humility in people. It is okay to admit that this is (thankfully!) not as bad as we thought, but it is still bad. It will still kill a lot of people. We need to take it seriously, but not as seriously as we feared. The doomers need to have the humility to admit that, and the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. Again, I fear people don't realize that this isn't a game. This is disastrously bad and getting worse every. single. day.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. I don't believe any significant number actually thinks that, it's their counter to "everybody will die, the science is settled". They will aim for something on the opposite extreme, that is a pretty common reaction. Imho: if you don't try to convince them that an asteroid is about to crash into earth, but instead tell them that lots of people are scared to death of an asteroid crashing into earth, they'll have a much easier time saying "okay, sure, I don't want them to be scared, I can wear a mask when I go shopping, I guess". > Again, I fear people don't realize that this isn't a game. This is disastrously bad and getting worse every. single. day. Where you live, maybe. Where I live, we haven't had a case in 10 days in the county of 330k people, we've had laughably low deaths to begin with, the curve was pretty much flattened the moment we went into constraints ... and we still have mandatory masks with no end in sight, and our local government still does not go back to normal mode, the trash is still getting picked up on irregular schedules etc. It's neither disastrous here, and it's not getting worse. But a lot of people are still scared out of their mind. And we need to help them to breathe and calm down, and tell them that it was scary, but that it's okay to go back outside. And at some point we'll have to tell them that they need to go back outside because we can't keep society running around them without them.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      I mean the response is a disaster, not the epidemic itself. The fact that 40m are unemployed, that income tax receipts have nosedived, that business are shuttering leading to blight etc. Those are the long term disasters in the making.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Oh, my mistake, I misunderstood. Thanks for clearing that up!
  - umvi 6y ago
    > and the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. Seasonal flu happens every year. Novel virus pandemics happen once per century. Seasonal flu is much more deadly, just spread out over longer timeline. And estimated covid mortality rate for my age group falls every week. I'm still not convinced it's measurably worse than the flu (for my age group).
- ColanR 6y ago
  I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. The recent hydroxychloroquine is an obvious example [1]; The Lancet should never have published something with data so obviously questionable, and the media should not have picked it up so immediately as political ammunition. But the result is that the media appears to be "once again" lying to the public. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421797
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. Fully agree here. I'm aware of Heterodox Academy trying to tackle this problem in the academic world--is there an analog solving for media bias?
    - jerf 6y ago
      At this point, the only thing I'm hoping for is basically total media collapse. It's actually proceeding apace. By its very nature, being slick TV shows and edited textual content, it'll superficially look like everything's fine until the very end, but the layoffs continue to roll through, marginal outlets are closing, the viewership drops, the respect keeps finding new lows... it's still looking good and may even come sooner than you think. This does not, on its own, solve the problem, but it makes the problem possible to solve.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        Yes for TV news. Not for every kind of news. Some outlets are having a good crisis. In the UK the Daily Telegraph is giving back the government furlough/support money as it doesn't need it. So is The Spectator. Interestingly these are the right wing newspapers. Why give up free money? Because the government really needs it but the newspapers don't, given that they are profitable and subscriptions have been rising, not falling. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-statement-from-the-chairman-of-the-spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-statement-from-the-cha... The Daily Telegraph has doubled subscriptions in March alone.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  In my state the virus has killed less than 2,000 people with a population of 27 million and hospitalization rates continue to plummet in spite of lifted restrictions weeks ago. The problem I have with all arbitrary Covid rules is that they're not based on any objective criteria. For example, if we were rational, we would base policy entirely on local hospital capacity and hospitalization count (the original impetus for draconian shut downs was the belief that hospitals would get overrun, which never happened in 99% of the country). We cannot live in bubbles forever, and the disease may well persist forever with no vaccine. There's no threshold being set for arbitrary rules (i.e. if Covid hospitalizations less than X, restrictions lifted). So we just get this random enforcement of arbitrary policies, where you have leaders in CA fining people for being on the beach, in the sun, in open air, where there's extremely small chance of transmission. For my own part, I choose my own risks, and if you want to a wear a mask, go for it. But the curve was flattened even in places that never had restrictions. So we know by now this isn't the plague. We gotta move on. We only get so many trips around the sun. Can't live it in fear.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    That's exactly the strategy that Washington state is following. We even have a dashboard where can see the indicators, and they are things like infection rates per day per capita over 7 days, hospitilization rates.
throwaway894345 6y ago
In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study of the polarization of science production as opposed to the polarization of science consumption).
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  I didn't want to get into a game of who has been most wrong, because that will automatically trigger people to go back to their camps and hunker down. I agree that the "isolate the vulnerable, continue with life otherwise" is most likely the best outcome. The fact that this idea is attributed to the right is going to mean it is DOA, for the most part.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Understandable. Partisanship is the scourge of our generation.
  - albybisy 6y ago
    i would like to know how to "isolate the vulnerable"...?! We send to an island? we weld inside home? We should talk only if we have a realizable plan and not a "dream/idealistinc" plan.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      Well we were able to somewhat effectively isolate the entire country, so I would say have modified stay-home orders that target those who are most vulnerable. That, in addition to common sense acts like hand washing, isolating the sick etc. would go a long way to flatten the curve enough to not overwhelm the hospitals, which after-all was the original goal.
tw000001 6y ago
>This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. As the article somewhat loosely implies, the problem is that all new data becomes suspect when all of our institutions are openly politicized. You think these biases only exist with respect to COVID? The marginalized right (consider the viceral response you're about to have to reading these next sentences) has been saying the same thing about academia for at least a decade. That goes for climate change and much of modern psychological theory. And no, these aren't extreme far right Nazis/incels as people like to stereotype, these are near center moderates, these are (typically in the minority) doctors, scientists, engineers, this is the so called silent majority that is denied a voice on most modern platforms. And part of the reason that our society is gridlocked is that the majority has decided that this minority is not allowed a voice because in a one dimensional two party system one side falls closer to morally repugnant views, so we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our institutions are collapsing because actors are no longer operating in good faith. And those in power believe there are morally justified in suppressing opposing views. Edit: and I'd like to add, another contribution to gridlock is the tendency for black and white thinking that at this point I'm starting to accept is extremely common human nature - there is a world of nuance between criticism and outright denial that is inevitably ignored almost any time someone expresses criticism for, say, climate change resources or the media (explicitly not scientist) derived predictions.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  There are a lot of moderate liberals who are willing to admit that the political homogeneity of academia is a serious problem as well. Heterdox academy is a bipartisan coalition of academics devoted to addressing this problem. The right has also raised awareness about this in the media, and I (moderate liberal) couldn't agree more. We can't begin to really solve these problems and get everyone on board so long as we have openly partisan epistemological institutions--bias is the enemy of truth and we're maximizing it when we should be minimizing it. Those on the left will be quick to accuse the right of being anti-science and there's certainly some truth there, but I'm very suspicious of the idea that the falling political diversity is a function of the right selecting out of these fields rather than explicit or implicit discrimination (and at least within certain fields of academia, preliminary studies indicate a majority of faculty are willing to openly admit that they would discriminate against conservative candidates). EDIT: I’m definitely not being downvoted out of the same kind of partisan tribalism that TFA is calling out. ◔̯◔
373uehedhd 6y ago
Political realism is about optics. If the Democrats back down on their egregious lockdowns they'll look even more disorganized than they did in the primaries so it's not worth the risk when the progressive arm of the party is still throwing a tantrum and Biden is struggling to unify the party. On the other side, many Republican states have constituencies that see COVID as a matter of personal responsibility and which feel that nearly any restriction is overreach by the government. So neither group has an incentive to back pedal even if both would probably benefit from pivoting. Couple this with the reality that the scientific communities seem to have embraced making normative statements outside the direct scope of their fields (sometimes even acting against or excluding peers with political differences) and you have little reason for people to act on good advice anyway.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states but there's a lot of different ideas gonig around. No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down. Washington state is another place that looked like it was going to get out of control but the shutdown moved us from worst in the us to a much smaller impact than originally feared. Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure. See https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/ (go to daily new cases in texas, click on 7 day average). You can se e the same data at rt.live (find Teaxs, click on per day).
  - 373uehedhd 6y ago
    > The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states...< Yes but (assuming I understand your point correctly) the U.S. federal government isn't in control of the country either in this context. They certainly could have been more cooperative with states in terms of distributing supplies and communicating new developments as they came in but, short of bringing in troops and asserting themselves by force, they lack the authority to implement a hard nation wide lockdown. Given the early panic over the virus it's hard to imagine a federal level quarantine not resulting in violence. >No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down.< I'm not sure if I phrased my first post badly or if we agree here. When I said the lockdowns were egregious compared to Rep. states I was speaking relative to the present. I agree things would have been much worse if early and cautious action hadn't been taken. >Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure.< This is basically the entire national debate. We've seen increasingly that just getting the corona virus isn't a death sentence for most people. Texas' infections have been rising, which will by extension lead to some amount of additional deaths, but Texas also has an extremely low death toll compared to other states in terms of deaths per million people (going by Worldometer). The significance of this is that most infected arent going to die and dying after infection, for the most part, isn't a random lottery and so whether it's wise or not to continue to force people to remain in lock-down is a value/political judgement rather than a distinctly scientific one. This holds especially true when people in need are refraining from visiting hospitals for fear of getting the virus and instances of depression and suicide have risen dramatically as a consequence of lock-down policies. You can argue fewer people might still die with heavy lock-down measures in the present but those deaths arent the same people and so what's ultimately being dicussed is whether or not it's fair to drive certain individuals to death or unnecessary physical suffering in order to save people they largrly have no relation with. And that's before discussing the small business owners who have lost their life's work due to government mandates (consumers didn't stop going out by choice after all). My point about the parties themselves was purely meant to highlight that at this stage both sides could probably be managing their policies better (regardless of value distinctions) but neither wants to make it look like the other team was correct. The irony is that neither side would be taking the same actions since for Dem states like California this would be loosening up a little while for Rep stated it would be tightening up or at least implementing financial support for at-risk individuals and their cohabitants. From here, my broader point was that it's an election year and so, regardless of if any particular state is actually beholden to a particular plan of action, anyone who breaks too far off from the party line (in a manner that risks bad optics) is going to lose clout within their party. I'm not endorsing that as the way things should be but that's the apparent state of things going by the predominantly partisan split in terms of current lock-down action.
Kiro 6y ago
In Sweden it's the opposite: the right wants lockdown and the left opposes it.
- manfredo 6y ago
  It's interesting why this isn't the case in the US, too. Conservatives in the US are much older, and the people in the at-risk age groups are disproportionately Republican. Yet they oppose the lockdown. Liberals, who are the ones being laid off and bearing the economic brunt of the lockdown while being at much lower risk to their own health support it.
  - aaron695 6y ago
    Evolutionary you can see a case for having society members of both keeping culture and changing culture at the same time. Roughly Conservatives don't like change (lockdown) Liberals like change (lockdown)
- ryandvm 6y ago
  Just goes to show you how insidious partisanship is. It's clearly not about liberty or policy principals, but rather whatever solution one party puts forward, the other has no choice but to oppose it. One of my favorite pet daydreams is trying to figure out a way of abolishing political parties altogether...
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    > Just goes to show insidious partisanship is I think this is the wrong take away. The corona debate in Sweden is pretty healthy. Not very partisan and neither side has dug their heels in.
  - Taikonerd 6y ago
    It's a nice dream, but I would settle for having more than 2 political parties. Then at least we could break out of the "are you with Us or are you with Them" dichotomy.
- 6y ago
jamesrcole 6y ago
> the left says "lockdown lockdown lockdown" of course that hasn’t really been the case over the last week or so.
- lotu 6y ago
  This is about what we value most. People on the right then to value individualism, self-sufficiency, and self-determination more. While people on the left value equity, and community more. You can see these values reflected in what each side is willing to take risks for.
matthewdgreen 6y ago
I guess I am on the “left”, and my view throughout this thing has been “do what the experts say we should, while maintaining a diversity of expert views.” This is also the vibe I get from most of my “left” friends. Moreover, Europe has largely followed its experts’ advice —- and with a few exceptions they’ve largely brought cases under control, so it’s not like the advice was bad. This “pox on both houses” post, in which you try to blame both sides equally (while also ignoring the fact that only one controls the executive branch of the Federal government), does not comport with my lived reality.
- guygurari 6y ago
  > “do what the experts say we should, while maintaining a diversity of expert views.” I don’t think this is an actual strategy. If there is a diversity of views, which experts do you listen to? Also, experts in which field? Epidemiologists have generally recommended very strict shutdowns, but they are not economists and are not experts on the economic ramifications. Some economists agree with strict lockdowns, others do not. So it’s not at all clear what “listen to the experts” means in this case.
  - eirini1 6y ago
    obviously you listen to the epidemiologist, not the economist. The economist is an expert on the economy and not on pandemics, and therefore will always give advice that is aimed at keeping up the economy and not saving people and preventing the spread of the virus. Its baffling to me that you think an economist has any kind of valid input on this matter. At best an economist could advise you on how to keep the economy afloat under the restrictions the epidemiologists has advised.
    - Snoozle 6y ago
      Economic problems come with a cost on human life. There are numerous studies and paper that show how bad being poor and unhappy are for a person's health. Why WOULDN'T we consider the economic ramifications?
KarlKemp 6y ago
"The left" doesn't say "lockdown lockdown lockdown". As a card-carrying (ANTIFA, laminated) member of the left, I consider countries like Austria, South Korea, or maybe Germany the gold standard: lockdown, yes, but continually adjusted, exchanging the most draconian measures with lesser ones when more knowledge allows more targeting, or when infection numbers sink. All those countries have now effectively exited lockdowns, at levels of single-digit daily deaths. This allows further lockdown-free reduction by amassing resources for contact tracing every single infection. Meanwhile, the US, UK, Brasil, and other countries are seeing thousands of deaths daily because they stopped maybe two or three weeks too early, and/or did it half-heatedly and/or failed to use that time to stand up alternatives to lockdown. This has won them absolutely nothing, economically, as far as I can tell: Germany is at +3% unemployment (6.6% total) while the US is on >15%. And except hoping for the weather to make a difference, they will either continue to see people dying and incurring the cost of people self-quarantine. Or they'll change course, do another round of sustained lockdowns after all, and use that time to think of an excuse for wasting three months and 100,000 lives on a thought process that took competently managed countries the better part of the last in-person meeting they had this year.
- robocat 6y ago
  Everyone has their own theory about why some countries do better than others, but we don’t yet know why: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-dark-matter-does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-... Does it help to jump to conclusions about the cause being lockdown variations, or weather, or sunlight, or political leanings? Anybody can cherry-pick their example countries to support their argument, but so far I can find counter-examples to their points whenever I look. I do agree lockdowns have their place (e.g. New Zealand has eliminated the disease using a lockdown, and the Asian success stories).
- robocat 6y ago
  Pollen is apparently another cause of variation: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v... Of course, there are multiple causes, and trying to pin variation in infection rates or deaths on a single factor would be silly. Hopefully we find the driving factors... Spring or vitamin D could explain why Italy doctors are opining that the disease is less deadly now than in March.
Press2forEN 6y ago
The US will not resume its position as a functioning democracy until both sides reconcile their differences. But when those differences are on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, perhaps we should be considering other options. At this point, with COVID and the riots, its a matter of life and death.
- umvi 6y ago
  > perhaps we should be considering other options. You mean splitting into 2 countries (blue USA and red USA)? Then whichever country fares worse economically will find a way to blame the more prosperous one, and it could mean war.
microtherion 6y ago
> We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are very low risk. … at very low risk of death, but there seems to be increasing evidence that some COVID-19 survivors, including children, suffer serious, and possibly permanent health effects.
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
By your words, let's allow vastly heightened danger to those over 40. How about, we have national regulations for safe interactions, rules requiring ppe when appropriate, and available ppe. Your company has to provide it if you work together. It turns out its very very hard to provide ppe that protects people when they work closely together (see the meat packing plants, see hospitals). My families economic safety is also impacted if I'm dead or in the hospital with covid, even if they are all in your 'safe' category. Only a few 100 kids will die unnecessarily so we can open the economy?
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  How many kids die of the flu each and every year? How many kids die of malaria? Of tuberculoses? Where were you during the last strong flu season? Get off your high horse and actually contribute ideas instead of fear.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    In [1] it says in the last 10 years the # of deaths from the flu was 10 to 60k, avg about 30k for all americans. I'm not contributing fear. I'm talking about the facts of the situation and the fact is its a serious issue. I'm frustrated that so many people act like it won't hurt them so they dont care somehow. We have to make serious choices between variations of opening up and helping the economy vs saving people. We need to do this in an informed way and not what can ideologically help or hurt various politicians. [2] is a great article about how different cities in 1918 made various choices about socially isolating and the impact of that. 1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      You are creating a Sophie's Choice in your dichotomy of "opening and helping the economy vs. saving people". It isn't that black and white and I would hope you understand that. It is "saving people vs. saving people". That is the stark choice we have to make. It isn't "getting a haircut vs. killing children" or even "helping small business vs. giving old people another year or two". It is literally lives vs lives. If you are so disconnected from the reality of a majority of the country to not understand that three months without work is a life risking disaster, then you won't see the damage created by our continued draconian response to a virus which is much different than originally assumed. My point is, if you stratify death rates by age[1] you see that children are at a very, very low risk from COVID-19. This is the nuanced approach that universal lockdowns trample over. You literally employed the "think of the children" fallacy[2] (technically appeal to emotion) when you know well that children are at a low risk. I mentioned flu, TB, and malaria because they kill legions of children every year. TB killed 200,000 children in 2018[3]. Malaria kills .5 million children a year worldwide[4]. So don't tell me you care about the children. Unless of course you mean American or European children, in which case make your case but admit to yourself that you are viewing the world through a lens of personal risk, not actual risk. Either you want to save the children, in which case we need to dedicate 20% of our GDP to combating TB, malaria and flu worldwide, or you only care about local children, in which case you are okay with burning through 20% of our GDP to prevent kids from getting a disease which isn't dangerous to them. [1] https://twitter.com/daniellevitt22/status/1269454910749196289 https://twitter.com/daniellevitt22/status/126945491074919628... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [3] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi... [4] https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#all-charts-preview https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#all-charts-preview

rootusrootus 6y ago

If we could just convince the hoaxers that wearing masks in public is not emasculating, and convince the doomers that we need to flatten the curve rather than attempt to completely contain the virus, we could go back to something bordering on normal life pretty quickly while we waited for vaccines to come along and kill off the virus altogether. And then we would be prepared to react to the next pandemic, too.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Exactly. We need some humility in people. It is okay to admit that this is (thankfully!) not as bad as we thought, but it is still bad. It will still kill a lot of people. We need to take it seriously, but not as seriously as we feared. The doomers need to have the humility to admit that, and the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. Again, I fear people don't realize that this isn't a game. This is disastrously bad and getting worse every. single. day.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. I don't believe any significant number actually thinks that, it's their counter to "everybody will die, the science is settled". They will aim for something on the opposite extreme, that is a pretty common reaction. Imho: if you don't try to convince them that an asteroid is about to crash into earth, but instead tell them that lots of people are scared to death of an asteroid crashing into earth, they'll have a much easier time saying "okay, sure, I don't want them to be scared, I can wear a mask when I go shopping, I guess". > Again, I fear people don't realize that this isn't a game. This is disastrously bad and getting worse every. single. day. Where you live, maybe. Where I live, we haven't had a case in 10 days in the county of 330k people, we've had laughably low deaths to begin with, the curve was pretty much flattened the moment we went into constraints ... and we still have mandatory masks with no end in sight, and our local government still does not go back to normal mode, the trash is still getting picked up on irregular schedules etc. It's neither disastrous here, and it's not getting worse. But a lot of people are still scared out of their mind. And we need to help them to breathe and calm down, and tell them that it was scary, but that it's okay to go back outside. And at some point we'll have to tell them that they need to go back outside because we can't keep society running around them without them.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    I mean the response is a disaster, not the epidemic itself. The fact that 40m are unemployed, that income tax receipts have nosedived, that business are shuttering leading to blight etc. Those are the long term disasters in the making.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Oh, my mistake, I misunderstood. Thanks for clearing that up!
- umvi 6y ago
  > and the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu. Seasonal flu happens every year. Novel virus pandemics happen once per century. Seasonal flu is much more deadly, just spread out over longer timeline. And estimated covid mortality rate for my age group falls every week. I'm still not convinced it's measurably worse than the flu (for my age group).
ColanR 6y ago
I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. The recent hydroxychloroquine is an obvious example [1]; The Lancet should never have published something with data so obviously questionable, and the media should not have picked it up so immediately as political ammunition. But the result is that the media appears to be "once again" lying to the public. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421797
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. Fully agree here. I'm aware of Heterodox Academy trying to tackle this problem in the academic world--is there an analog solving for media bias?
  - jerf 6y ago
    At this point, the only thing I'm hoping for is basically total media collapse. It's actually proceeding apace. By its very nature, being slick TV shows and edited textual content, it'll superficially look like everything's fine until the very end, but the layoffs continue to roll through, marginal outlets are closing, the viewership drops, the respect keeps finding new lows... it's still looking good and may even come sooner than you think. This does not, on its own, solve the problem, but it makes the problem possible to solve.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Yes for TV news. Not for every kind of news. Some outlets are having a good crisis. In the UK the Daily Telegraph is giving back the government furlough/support money as it doesn't need it. So is The Spectator. Interestingly these are the right wing newspapers. Why give up free money? Because the government really needs it but the newspapers don't, given that they are profitable and subscriptions have been rising, not falling. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-statement-from-the-chairman-of-the-spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-statement-from-the-cha... The Daily Telegraph has doubled subscriptions in March alone.
chrisco255 6y ago
In my state the virus has killed less than 2,000 people with a population of 27 million and hospitalization rates continue to plummet in spite of lifted restrictions weeks ago. The problem I have with all arbitrary Covid rules is that they're not based on any objective criteria. For example, if we were rational, we would base policy entirely on local hospital capacity and hospitalization count (the original impetus for draconian shut downs was the belief that hospitals would get overrun, which never happened in 99% of the country). We cannot live in bubbles forever, and the disease may well persist forever with no vaccine. There's no threshold being set for arbitrary rules (i.e. if Covid hospitalizations less than X, restrictions lifted). So we just get this random enforcement of arbitrary policies, where you have leaders in CA fining people for being on the beach, in the sun, in open air, where there's extremely small chance of transmission. For my own part, I choose my own risks, and if you want to a wear a mask, go for it. But the curve was flattened even in places that never had restrictions. So we know by now this isn't the plague. We gotta move on. We only get so many trips around the sun. Can't live it in fear.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  That's exactly the strategy that Washington state is following. We even have a dashboard where can see the indicators, and they are things like infection rates per day per capita over 7 days, hospitilization rates.

throwaway894345 6y ago

In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study of the polarization of science production as opposed to the polarization of science consumption).

salmon30salmon 6y ago
I didn't want to get into a game of who has been most wrong, because that will automatically trigger people to go back to their camps and hunker down. I agree that the "isolate the vulnerable, continue with life otherwise" is most likely the best outcome. The fact that this idea is attributed to the right is going to mean it is DOA, for the most part.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Understandable. Partisanship is the scourge of our generation.
- albybisy 6y ago
  i would like to know how to "isolate the vulnerable"...?! We send to an island? we weld inside home? We should talk only if we have a realizable plan and not a "dream/idealistinc" plan.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    Well we were able to somewhat effectively isolate the entire country, so I would say have modified stay-home orders that target those who are most vulnerable. That, in addition to common sense acts like hand washing, isolating the sick etc. would go a long way to flatten the curve enough to not overwhelm the hospitals, which after-all was the original goal.

tw000001 6y ago

>This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. As the article somewhat loosely implies, the problem is that all new data becomes suspect when all of our institutions are openly politicized. You think these biases only exist with respect to COVID? The marginalized right (consider the viceral response you're about to have to reading these next sentences) has been saying the same thing about academia for at least a decade. That goes for climate change and much of modern psychological theory. And no, these aren't extreme far right Nazis/incels as people like to stereotype, these are near center moderates, these are (typically in the minority) doctors, scientists, engineers, this is the so called silent majority that is denied a voice on most modern platforms. And part of the reason that our society is gridlocked is that the majority has decided that this minority is not allowed a voice because in a one dimensional two party system one side falls closer to morally repugnant views, so we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our institutions are collapsing because actors are no longer operating in good faith. And those in power believe there are morally justified in suppressing opposing views. Edit: and I'd like to add, another contribution to gridlock is the tendency for black and white thinking that at this point I'm starting to accept is extremely common human nature - there is a world of nuance between criticism and outright denial that is inevitably ignored almost any time someone expresses criticism for, say, climate change resources or the media (explicitly not scientist) derived predictions.

throwaway894345 6y ago
There are a lot of moderate liberals who are willing to admit that the political homogeneity of academia is a serious problem as well. Heterdox academy is a bipartisan coalition of academics devoted to addressing this problem. The right has also raised awareness about this in the media, and I (moderate liberal) couldn't agree more. We can't begin to really solve these problems and get everyone on board so long as we have openly partisan epistemological institutions--bias is the enemy of truth and we're maximizing it when we should be minimizing it. Those on the left will be quick to accuse the right of being anti-science and there's certainly some truth there, but I'm very suspicious of the idea that the falling political diversity is a function of the right selecting out of these fields rather than explicit or implicit discrimination (and at least within certain fields of academia, preliminary studies indicate a majority of faculty are willing to openly admit that they would discriminate against conservative candidates). EDIT: I’m definitely not being downvoted out of the same kind of partisan tribalism that TFA is calling out. ◔̯◔

373uehedhd 6y ago

Political realism is about optics. If the Democrats back down on their egregious lockdowns they'll look even more disorganized than they did in the primaries so it's not worth the risk when the progressive arm of the party is still throwing a tantrum and Biden is struggling to unify the party. On the other side, many Republican states have constituencies that see COVID as a matter of personal responsibility and which feel that nearly any restriction is overreach by the government. So neither group has an incentive to back pedal even if both would probably benefit from pivoting. Couple this with the reality that the scientific communities seem to have embraced making normative statements outside the direct scope of their fields (sometimes even acting against or excluding peers with political differences) and you have little reason for people to act on good advice anyway.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago
The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states but there's a lot of different ideas gonig around. No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down. Washington state is another place that looked like it was going to get out of control but the shutdown moved us from worst in the us to a much smaller impact than originally feared. Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure. See https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/ (go to daily new cases in texas, click on 7 day average). You can se e the same data at rt.live (find Teaxs, click on per day).
- 373uehedhd 6y ago
  > The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states...< Yes but (assuming I understand your point correctly) the U.S. federal government isn't in control of the country either in this context. They certainly could have been more cooperative with states in terms of distributing supplies and communicating new developments as they came in but, short of bringing in troops and asserting themselves by force, they lack the authority to implement a hard nation wide lockdown. Given the early panic over the virus it's hard to imagine a federal level quarantine not resulting in violence. >No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down.< I'm not sure if I phrased my first post badly or if we agree here. When I said the lockdowns were egregious compared to Rep. states I was speaking relative to the present. I agree things would have been much worse if early and cautious action hadn't been taken. >Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure.< This is basically the entire national debate. We've seen increasingly that just getting the corona virus isn't a death sentence for most people. Texas' infections have been rising, which will by extension lead to some amount of additional deaths, but Texas also has an extremely low death toll compared to other states in terms of deaths per million people (going by Worldometer). The significance of this is that most infected arent going to die and dying after infection, for the most part, isn't a random lottery and so whether it's wise or not to continue to force people to remain in lock-down is a value/political judgement rather than a distinctly scientific one. This holds especially true when people in need are refraining from visiting hospitals for fear of getting the virus and instances of depression and suicide have risen dramatically as a consequence of lock-down policies. You can argue fewer people might still die with heavy lock-down measures in the present but those deaths arent the same people and so what's ultimately being dicussed is whether or not it's fair to drive certain individuals to death or unnecessary physical suffering in order to save people they largrly have no relation with. And that's before discussing the small business owners who have lost their life's work due to government mandates (consumers didn't stop going out by choice after all). My point about the parties themselves was purely meant to highlight that at this stage both sides could probably be managing their policies better (regardless of value distinctions) but neither wants to make it look like the other team was correct. The irony is that neither side would be taking the same actions since for Dem states like California this would be loosening up a little while for Rep stated it would be tightening up or at least implementing financial support for at-risk individuals and their cohabitants. From here, my broader point was that it's an election year and so, regardless of if any particular state is actually beholden to a particular plan of action, anyone who breaks too far off from the party line (in a manner that risks bad optics) is going to lose clout within their party. I'm not endorsing that as the way things should be but that's the apparent state of things going by the predominantly partisan split in terms of current lock-down action.

Kiro 6y ago

In Sweden it's the opposite: the right wants lockdown and the left opposes it.

manfredo 6y ago
It's interesting why this isn't the case in the US, too. Conservatives in the US are much older, and the people in the at-risk age groups are disproportionately Republican. Yet they oppose the lockdown. Liberals, who are the ones being laid off and bearing the economic brunt of the lockdown while being at much lower risk to their own health support it.
- aaron695 6y ago
  Evolutionary you can see a case for having society members of both keeping culture and changing culture at the same time. Roughly Conservatives don't like change (lockdown) Liberals like change (lockdown)
ryandvm 6y ago
Just goes to show you how insidious partisanship is. It's clearly not about liberty or policy principals, but rather whatever solution one party puts forward, the other has no choice but to oppose it. One of my favorite pet daydreams is trying to figure out a way of abolishing political parties altogether...
- im3w1l 6y ago
  > Just goes to show insidious partisanship is I think this is the wrong take away. The corona debate in Sweden is pretty healthy. Not very partisan and neither side has dug their heels in.
- Taikonerd 6y ago
  It's a nice dream, but I would settle for having more than 2 political parties. Then at least we could break out of the "are you with Us or are you with Them" dichotomy.
6y ago

jamesrcole 6y ago

> the left says "lockdown lockdown lockdown" of course that hasn’t really been the case over the last week or so.

lotu 6y ago
This is about what we value most. People on the right then to value individualism, self-sufficiency, and self-determination more. While people on the left value equity, and community more. You can see these values reflected in what each side is willing to take risks for.

matthewdgreen 6y ago

I guess I am on the “left”, and my view throughout this thing has been “do what the experts say we should, while maintaining a diversity of expert views.” This is also the vibe I get from most of my “left” friends. Moreover, Europe has largely followed its experts’ advice —- and with a few exceptions they’ve largely brought cases under control, so it’s not like the advice was bad. This “pox on both houses” post, in which you try to blame both sides equally (while also ignoring the fact that only one controls the executive branch of the Federal government), does not comport with my lived reality.

guygurari 6y ago
> “do what the experts say we should, while maintaining a diversity of expert views.” I don’t think this is an actual strategy. If there is a diversity of views, which experts do you listen to? Also, experts in which field? Epidemiologists have generally recommended very strict shutdowns, but they are not economists and are not experts on the economic ramifications. Some economists agree with strict lockdowns, others do not. So it’s not at all clear what “listen to the experts” means in this case.
- eirini1 6y ago
  obviously you listen to the epidemiologist, not the economist. The economist is an expert on the economy and not on pandemics, and therefore will always give advice that is aimed at keeping up the economy and not saving people and preventing the spread of the virus. Its baffling to me that you think an economist has any kind of valid input on this matter. At best an economist could advise you on how to keep the economy afloat under the restrictions the epidemiologists has advised.
  - Snoozle 6y ago
    Economic problems come with a cost on human life. There are numerous studies and paper that show how bad being poor and unhappy are for a person's health. Why WOULDN'T we consider the economic ramifications?

KarlKemp 6y ago

"The left" doesn't say "lockdown lockdown lockdown". As a card-carrying (ANTIFA, laminated) member of the left, I consider countries like Austria, South Korea, or maybe Germany the gold standard: lockdown, yes, but continually adjusted, exchanging the most draconian measures with lesser ones when more knowledge allows more targeting, or when infection numbers sink. All those countries have now effectively exited lockdowns, at levels of single-digit daily deaths. This allows further lockdown-free reduction by amassing resources for contact tracing every single infection. Meanwhile, the US, UK, Brasil, and other countries are seeing thousands of deaths daily because they stopped maybe two or three weeks too early, and/or did it half-heatedly and/or failed to use that time to stand up alternatives to lockdown. This has won them absolutely nothing, economically, as far as I can tell: Germany is at +3% unemployment (6.6% total) while the US is on >15%. And except hoping for the weather to make a difference, they will either continue to see people dying and incurring the cost of people self-quarantine. Or they'll change course, do another round of sustained lockdowns after all, and use that time to think of an excuse for wasting three months and 100,000 lives on a thought process that took competently managed countries the better part of the last in-person meeting they had this year.

robocat 6y ago
Everyone has their own theory about why some countries do better than others, but we don’t yet know why: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-dark-matter-does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-... Does it help to jump to conclusions about the cause being lockdown variations, or weather, or sunlight, or political leanings? Anybody can cherry-pick their example countries to support their argument, but so far I can find counter-examples to their points whenever I look. I do agree lockdowns have their place (e.g. New Zealand has eliminated the disease using a lockdown, and the Asian success stories).
robocat 6y ago
Pollen is apparently another cause of variation: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v... Of course, there are multiple causes, and trying to pin variation in infection rates or deaths on a single factor would be silly. Hopefully we find the driving factors... Spring or vitamin D could explain why Italy doctors are opining that the disease is less deadly now than in March.

Press2forEN 6y ago

The US will not resume its position as a functioning democracy until both sides reconcile their differences. But when those differences are on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, perhaps we should be considering other options. At this point, with COVID and the riots, its a matter of life and death.

umvi 6y ago
> perhaps we should be considering other options. You mean splitting into 2 countries (blue USA and red USA)? Then whichever country fares worse economically will find a way to blame the more prosperous one, and it could mean war.

microtherion 6y ago

> We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are very low risk. … at very low risk of death, but there seems to be increasing evidence that some COVID-19 survivors, including children, suffer serious, and possibly permanent health effects.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago

By your words, let's allow vastly heightened danger to those over 40. How about, we have national regulations for safe interactions, rules requiring ppe when appropriate, and available ppe. Your company has to provide it if you work together. It turns out its very very hard to provide ppe that protects people when they work closely together (see the meat packing plants, see hospitals). My families economic safety is also impacted if I'm dead or in the hospital with covid, even if they are all in your 'safe' category. Only a few 100 kids will die unnecessarily so we can open the economy?

salmon30salmon 6y ago
How many kids die of the flu each and every year? How many kids die of malaria? Of tuberculoses? Where were you during the last strong flu season? Get off your high horse and actually contribute ideas instead of fear.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  In [1] it says in the last 10 years the # of deaths from the flu was 10 to 60k, avg about 30k for all americans. I'm not contributing fear. I'm talking about the facts of the situation and the fact is its a serious issue. I'm frustrated that so many people act like it won't hurt them so they dont care somehow. We have to make serious choices between variations of opening up and helping the economy vs saving people. We need to do this in an informed way and not what can ideologically help or hurt various politicians. [2] is a great article about how different cities in 1918 made various choices about socially isolating and the impact of that. 1. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    You are creating a Sophie's Choice in your dichotomy of "opening and helping the economy vs. saving people". It isn't that black and white and I would hope you understand that. It is "saving people vs. saving people". That is the stark choice we have to make. It isn't "getting a haircut vs. killing children" or even "helping small business vs. giving old people another year or two". It is literally lives vs lives. If you are so disconnected from the reality of a majority of the country to not understand that three months without work is a life risking disaster, then you won't see the damage created by our continued draconian response to a virus which is much different than originally assumed. My point is, if you stratify death rates by age[1] you see that children are at a very, very low risk from COVID-19. This is the nuanced approach that universal lockdowns trample over. You literally employed the "think of the children" fallacy[2] (technically appeal to emotion) when you know well that children are at a low risk. I mentioned flu, TB, and malaria because they kill legions of children every year. TB killed 200,000 children in 2018[3]. Malaria kills .5 million children a year worldwide[4]. So don't tell me you care about the children. Unless of course you mean American or European children, in which case make your case but admit to yourself that you are viewing the world through a lens of personal risk, not actual risk. Either you want to save the children, in which case we need to dedicate 20% of our GDP to combating TB, malaria and flu worldwide, or you only care about local children, in which case you are okay with burning through 20% of our GDP to prevent kids from getting a disease which isn't dangerous to them. [1] https://twitter.com/daniellevitt22/status/1269454910749196289 https://twitter.com/daniellevitt22/status/126945491074919628... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [3] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi... [4] https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#all-charts-preview https://ourworldindata.org/malaria#all-charts-preview