5 ms·

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 t

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.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    An interesting game theoretical interplay has been an almost irresistible force that draw almost all democracies towards the same behavior: if it was possible for 100% of confidence to separate the group of people at risk from the people whose risk factor is small (e.g. pick some threshold like smaller than the risk dying of any other cause), then sure, it would have worked. But the moment a number of apparently healthy and young people start dying from it, people start thinking thateither a) it's hard to know in advance whether you're at risk (e.g. unknown pre-existing conditions) or b) the disease is stronger than previously thought. And that's even if the actual cause has nothing to do with (a) or (b), i.e. if the data was just a statistical fluke or misattributed deaths (e.g. people dying from X who also had sars-cov-2 in their system). It doesn't matter; there is no time to get to the bottom of things. The authorities have to play it safe, least they will be proven to have acted recklessly. And even if they try to be "brave" and plow ahead, the public opinion will quickly sway towards playing ir safe. This seems to be an especially strong force since people today have an unprecedented capability of communicating and broadcasting "gossip". Even China's strictly controlled public communications wasn't able to censor spontaneous outrage from the citizens. And the fact that China reacted they way they did, set a high bar; any country that wanted to act differently had to be play it pretty convincingly to their populace (e.g. "we can do it, because we're different, we are so disciplined we can pull it off")
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      For example, consider Sweden's approach. I have no idea whether their strategy is right or wrong, how should I know? experts disagree. But it surely takes a lot of confidence to pull that off, knowing that opposition parties will feast on any opportunity to publicly decry your recklessness. Covid-19 is real and it kills people, it's effects can be and will be measured. We do make tradeoffs between economy and safety all the times, but we do that for things we're used to (traffic, pollution, diseases prevention, ...), so some people expect we can do the same kinds of tradeoffs with covid-19. Again, I'm not an expert and have no idea on how to compute such a tradeoff. But my point is that there is a inanimate force that is just pulling that card off the table. It doesn't help that in some countries it also became such a heavily partisan topic. I'm not from the US. I live in a country whose government has been very proactive and the population is generally supportive of the (re cently lifted) lockdown. And that's a country where rarely the populace has anything good to say about the government (a popular saying "it's raining, damned government!") Playing it safe seems much more effective politically, that unless you want to play some "strong man" narrative like some governments did, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in taking excessive risks.
  - maemilius 6y ago
    That raises the question of how to identify the sick. SARS-CoV-2 infections can be transmissible before the infected shows any symptoms, if they present at all. Personally, I don't feel that there are many population centers in the US that are prepared to do the kind of testing that seems like would be needed to properly identify the sick.
    - vondur 6y ago
      Apparently this is not really the case any longer: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-pat...
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    The problem is that you can't isolate the most vulnerable fully. The current lockdown works because it reduces the spread through the wider society, including all the people who are in contact with the most vulnerable. If you don't do that, then we have the Sweden scenario where inevitably there's someone young and fit and infected who brings the disease into the institutions that should be protected, because these young and fit and infected people work there or go there to deliver things. Alternatively, you need a total quarantine isolation - e.g. anyone working in a care home should live there and can't touch their kids if they go to a school where will be spread because everyone else's parents are not on lockdown. Or the most vulnerable will die.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      And has been widely discussed, Sweden has had a lot of excess deaths. Look at death rates compared to Finland, Norway, Denmark.
- erichocean 6y ago
  > i would like to know how to "isolate the vulnerable"...?! We could start by NOT sending people with confirmed COVID-19 infections to live with them.
- nradov 6y ago
  There are a lot of empty hotel and dorm rooms right now so that would be a good start. A lot of those who have died so far were infected in family homes with many people living in close quarters. We should focus our limited resources on providing safe living spaces where those at highest risk can isolate themselves if they voluntarily choose to do so.
dekhn 6y ago
The main problem youi'll have with that is that many people assume that the value of a human life is infinite and we must expend all resources possible to save individuals. Neither of those makes for good economics, so folks who include economics and balanced risk into their equations often conflict with folks who want to take the "safest possible action with respect to human life".
- atomi 6y ago
  The safest possible solution would be for the super wealthy pay to keep the population fed and housed while we wait for a vaccine or improved treatments. Otherwise, the virus will continue to propagate, the poor will have to risk their lives and the virus will inevitably reach the rich and their families in a later wave anyway as was the case with the 1918 flu. Addendum: I posted this fully understanding how unpopular it would be with this crowd. If we ever get hit with a a more fatal and contagious virus this may be our only way of preserving life. And as things stand with our industrial meat processes I suspect we will have more viruses to contend with.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but I will assume it is not. It is not this simple. You can't, in our current system, shift wealth that readily and quickly. Even if you could, how would you approach possibly selling this in a democracy? And assuming it was feasible, and we could get popular support for it, how would it be implemented? Rationing cards? Government ran food stores? This is NOT the Spanish Flu. It is very different in its behavior. There is currently no evidence to expect a more deadly, virulent second wave. Please remember that the Spanish Flu was anomalous because it had a more deadly second wave. Almost all viruses, as a function of evolution, become less deadly over time. And this ignores all of the vast improvements in our understanding of sickness and hygiene, our availability of clean, sanitary conditions etc. Hell, even the change in density between 1918 and 2021 is massively changed.
    - atomi 6y ago
      One way would be to have a monthly payment similar to Trump's $1200 [stimulus check] every month. The government can later recoup that through more equitable tax policies on the ultra wealthy and massive corporations. This has been proposed by legitimate legislators. https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397 https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397 As for your claim to a lack of a second wave, I'll have to defer to the experts on that. I'm looking at a historical case for a worse case scenario which I think is prudent to consider.

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.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  An interesting game theoretical interplay has been an almost irresistible force that draw almost all democracies towards the same behavior: if it was possible for 100% of confidence to separate the group of people at risk from the people whose risk factor is small (e.g. pick some threshold like smaller than the risk dying of any other cause), then sure, it would have worked. But the moment a number of apparently healthy and young people start dying from it, people start thinking thateither a) it's hard to know in advance whether you're at risk (e.g. unknown pre-existing conditions) or b) the disease is stronger than previously thought. And that's even if the actual cause has nothing to do with (a) or (b), i.e. if the data was just a statistical fluke or misattributed deaths (e.g. people dying from X who also had sars-cov-2 in their system). It doesn't matter; there is no time to get to the bottom of things. The authorities have to play it safe, least they will be proven to have acted recklessly. And even if they try to be "brave" and plow ahead, the public opinion will quickly sway towards playing ir safe. This seems to be an especially strong force since people today have an unprecedented capability of communicating and broadcasting "gossip". Even China's strictly controlled public communications wasn't able to censor spontaneous outrage from the citizens. And the fact that China reacted they way they did, set a high bar; any country that wanted to act differently had to be play it pretty convincingly to their populace (e.g. "we can do it, because we're different, we are so disciplined we can pull it off")
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    For example, consider Sweden's approach. I have no idea whether their strategy is right or wrong, how should I know? experts disagree. But it surely takes a lot of confidence to pull that off, knowing that opposition parties will feast on any opportunity to publicly decry your recklessness. Covid-19 is real and it kills people, it's effects can be and will be measured. We do make tradeoffs between economy and safety all the times, but we do that for things we're used to (traffic, pollution, diseases prevention, ...), so some people expect we can do the same kinds of tradeoffs with covid-19. Again, I'm not an expert and have no idea on how to compute such a tradeoff. But my point is that there is a inanimate force that is just pulling that card off the table. It doesn't help that in some countries it also became such a heavily partisan topic. I'm not from the US. I live in a country whose government has been very proactive and the population is generally supportive of the (re cently lifted) lockdown. And that's a country where rarely the populace has anything good to say about the government (a popular saying "it's raining, damned government!") Playing it safe seems much more effective politically, that unless you want to play some "strong man" narrative like some governments did, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in taking excessive risks.
- maemilius 6y ago
  That raises the question of how to identify the sick. SARS-CoV-2 infections can be transmissible before the infected shows any symptoms, if they present at all. Personally, I don't feel that there are many population centers in the US that are prepared to do the kind of testing that seems like would be needed to properly identify the sick.
  - vondur 6y ago
    Apparently this is not really the case any longer: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-pat...
- PeterisP 6y ago
  The problem is that you can't isolate the most vulnerable fully. The current lockdown works because it reduces the spread through the wider society, including all the people who are in contact with the most vulnerable. If you don't do that, then we have the Sweden scenario where inevitably there's someone young and fit and infected who brings the disease into the institutions that should be protected, because these young and fit and infected people work there or go there to deliver things. Alternatively, you need a total quarantine isolation - e.g. anyone working in a care home should live there and can't touch their kids if they go to a school where will be spread because everyone else's parents are not on lockdown. Or the most vulnerable will die.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    And has been widely discussed, Sweden has had a lot of excess deaths. Look at death rates compared to Finland, Norway, Denmark.
erichocean 6y ago
> i would like to know how to "isolate the vulnerable"...?! We could start by NOT sending people with confirmed COVID-19 infections to live with them.
nradov 6y ago
There are a lot of empty hotel and dorm rooms right now so that would be a good start. A lot of those who have died so far were infected in family homes with many people living in close quarters. We should focus our limited resources on providing safe living spaces where those at highest risk can isolate themselves if they voluntarily choose to do so.

dekhn 6y ago

The main problem youi'll have with that is that many people assume that the value of a human life is infinite and we must expend all resources possible to save individuals. Neither of those makes for good economics, so folks who include economics and balanced risk into their equations often conflict with folks who want to take the "safest possible action with respect to human life".

atomi 6y ago
The safest possible solution would be for the super wealthy pay to keep the population fed and housed while we wait for a vaccine or improved treatments. Otherwise, the virus will continue to propagate, the poor will have to risk their lives and the virus will inevitably reach the rich and their families in a later wave anyway as was the case with the 1918 flu. Addendum: I posted this fully understanding how unpopular it would be with this crowd. If we ever get hit with a a more fatal and contagious virus this may be our only way of preserving life. And as things stand with our industrial meat processes I suspect we will have more viruses to contend with.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but I will assume it is not. It is not this simple. You can't, in our current system, shift wealth that readily and quickly. Even if you could, how would you approach possibly selling this in a democracy? And assuming it was feasible, and we could get popular support for it, how would it be implemented? Rationing cards? Government ran food stores? This is NOT the Spanish Flu. It is very different in its behavior. There is currently no evidence to expect a more deadly, virulent second wave. Please remember that the Spanish Flu was anomalous because it had a more deadly second wave. Almost all viruses, as a function of evolution, become less deadly over time. And this ignores all of the vast improvements in our understanding of sickness and hygiene, our availability of clean, sanitary conditions etc. Hell, even the change in density between 1918 and 2021 is massively changed.
  - atomi 6y ago
    One way would be to have a monthly payment similar to Trump's $1200 [stimulus check] every month. The government can later recoup that through more equitable tax policies on the ultra wealthy and massive corporations. This has been proposed by legitimate legislators. https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397 https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1270000771132731397 As for your claim to a lack of a second wave, I'll have to defer to the experts on that. I'm looking at a historical case for a worse case scenario which I think is prudent to consider.