9 ms·

We locked down _too soon_ in many places. Hear me out. In my state, Oregon, we locked down when there were only a handful of cases, and not much community spre

We locked down _too soon_ in many places. Hear me out. In my state, Oregon, we locked down when there were only a handful of cases, and not much community spread. Most spread was either in long-term care or familial. But we locked down _hard_ and had pretty good compliance. I am talking, standing in the middle of I-5 at noon compliance. Sure you'd have to keep an eye out for trucks from time to time. But still. We set up surge capacity. Hospitals in Portland set up triage tents and cleared out other beds for a surge...... that never came. A few weeks in, the tents were taken down, the staff was laid off. We sat in our cocoon waiting for something, not sure what. Eventually the pain of being closed started to tick away, and we started reopening... But nothing materially _changed_ between then and now. We just stopped community spread of an infection nobody really had. We've had less than 6k infections in Oregon. Now we are opening up and guess what? Cases are increasing! We didn't flatten the curve we crushed the curve. So there was no controlled spread, it was just us all feeling proud of ourselves for three months while the poor suffered. The sneaky lie was that, in a country as big as the US, a flatten the curve strategy was never going to work at a national level. We need community level response. We locked down Oregon over what was happening in NYC. That is akin to Northern Ireland locking down because of Moscow. That isn't an exaggeration. If anything, it is an understatement. All of the European countries that we are saying "why can't we be more like them?" all had orders of magnitude more cases than Oregon. So if Oregon quadruples in cases over the next month we are still better off than a lot of nations. To flatten the curve, there needs to be a damn curve to flatten. Had we waited until there was known, uncontrolled community spread and _then_ shut down, we would have a lot more political will. Now if it gets to that point after three months of being shut down, I doubt anyone will give a shit what the Governor says. Goodwill has been burned through and then some.

somewhereoutth 6y ago
You make a good point. See Croatia for a similar example in the EU. However we have the advantage of final control over our borders (sovereignty is pooled upwards, not flowed downwards here) - so we are better able to tailor our response and deal with problem areas (Sweden, greater Lisbon).
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Yes. Right now, there is large spread in a community in eastern Oregon around a church. Lets do phase 0 lockdown in that community. Let the rest of Oregon be in a different phase. If it breaks out in Portland, Portland restricts for a while etc. Not just "I am scared lets just close everything". It was never going to work and people were screaming that at the top of their lungs in March. We were called ghouls or accused of supporting genocide. I am not kidding.
triceratops 6y ago
> We locked down _too soon_ in many places Or maybe the real answer was a coordinated national response. Why wasn't the NYC cluster confined to NYC or NY state? If the initial lockdown succeeded in killing community transmission in Oregon, how did it start growing again? Most likely from external sources. Only a national strategy could have made these individual state-level lockdowns worthwhile. Since we didn't have that, the states implemented a haphazard, patchwork of lockdowns that weren't coordinated. > I doubt anyone will give a shit what the Governor says. Goodwill has been burned through and then some. Unfortunately you're right about that.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  State border closures are unconstitutional in the United States, we could never have a national lockdown. The interstate commerce clause prevents it. Among other laws I am sure.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > State border closures are unconstitutional in the United States I'm not an expert, but that doesn't seem to be the case.[1] > interstate commerce clause I thought that just gave Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Again, I'm not a legal expert. 1. https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2020/03/18/296072.htm https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2020/03/18/29607...
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      Right, closing borders between states could be seen as an uneven application of a law and prevent interstate commerce. Especially if it were applied unevenly in the sense of "Oregon can have an open border with Idaho but not Washington" because Washington had more cases. Businesses that rely on the border between OR and WA would sue for relief in a hot minute. I am probably wrong about the law used. IANAL.
      - triceratops 6y ago
glofish 6y ago
This is a really good point, and it all goes back to treating US or even a state as a European nation. The US is not like that at all. What is appalling that the CDC seemed to be completely clueless to these basic observations, as if it weren't their job to make sane recommendations beyond the "everyone everywhere immediately shut yourself indoors for a few months" (a recommendation imported from China FWIW)
khazhoux 6y ago
"We never got wet... these umbrellas were useless!" :-) I tend to agree with your point, though. Many many areas could likely have been just fine by only restricting large gatherings (concerts, etc), requiring masks, strongly encouraging WFH, and so on. But keep open hair salons, local shops, restaurants (with precautions), etc. Even in the Bay Area, I can't help but think we shut too much down.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Go stand with an umbrella in the Atacama. We literally had no "rain" here when we locked down. That is my point. Now that it is raining in the Atacama, we have no political will to do anything. Edit: I was sassy before I saw your edit :D. High-five on agreeing in principle!
  - khazhoux 6y ago
    But of course what we can't see is the alternate timeline where Oregon didn't lock down, cases+deaths rose, and then everyone wishes the lockdown had happened sooner. This is tough and it's a bit of a lose-lose situation. Like you said, there's not enough patience or personal savings to stay like this for another 8 months, and any course of action will be highly criticized, regardless of outcome.
MengerSponge 6y ago
Oregon locked down over what was happening in Seattle. Seattle didn't become NYC because their pols listened to their public health experts. Since we "crushed the curve" we've learned what masks are good for, and how they should be used. We've developed a lifesaving protocol for the most sick patients. We've gotten into the summer which plays somewhat in our favor. In fact, it looks like universal masking and a bit of care is sufficient to get R0<1. Problem solved, eventually. Unfortunately... leadership matters.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Seattle locked down over what was happening in Italy. Seattle never had uncontrolled spread that risked its healthcare. How many people died from other, preventable things, while we learned that masks work? Something we knew then, by the way. Just ask any country that dealt with SARS Ver. 1.0
  - MengerSponge 6y ago
    > Seattle never had uncontrolled spread that risked its healthcare. Because they shut down. They observed community spread and they acted appropriately. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leade... Scientific knowledge is slow and hard to come by, and we didn't know that in February. What we knew was this: Masks don't work for every disease. They don't even work for all coronaviruses. Cloth masks worn by the public can increase transmission of some diseases. SARS-COV2 is not the same as SARS-COV1. 'If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing' -Fauci https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/17/overreaction-coronavirus-precautions/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/17/overreacti...
addicted 6y ago
This is dumb. NYC became NYC because it didn’t lock down when SF or Seattle did. If it had, it would have had about half the deaths it eventually did.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  That simply is not true. Not by a long shot. NY became NY because they responded poorly, infected nursing homes by housing non-critical patients there and intubated patients that didn't need it through "caution" or some excuse. Also, NY is about as dense as the US gets, and has way more shared, multi-generational housing than the rest of the US. Also NYC has way more transit usage than any other area in the USA, which was one important vector. Everyone keeps pretending like the lockdown is the only variable. It isn't!
m4rtink 6y ago
The Czech Republic, here smack in the middle of Europe did something similar - pretty strict lockdown, hospitals cleared of non essential procedures to keep capacity, most shops closed & mandatory masks everywhere. Seems to have worked fine, as the average number of cases has been around 50 daily for a couple of weeks, all that while most of the restrictions have been lifted. So where is the difference ? I think in two aspects: - all the neighboring countries did similar strict lockdown and achieved similar levels of success - we closed our borders to everyone, including preventing residents from going out - the Prague international airport was deserted for month and a half, all international bus and train connections have been shut down & border crossing were guarded by police with army helping out, letting only trucks through I think this really helped as each country could apply their lockdown separately for a limited period, without worrying about international travel bringing it right back in. While from what I've read and even been told by people in the US - even is a single US state did a very strict lockdown with potentially huge economical cost - the neighboring state (or in some cases even the next city!) will do hardly anything at all. Combined with no state border lockdown, the strict state will get infections back in from the less responsible areas. The Czech Republic border is no longer closed, buses and trains go over the borders again & local flights have been reestablished. Still, a version of the border lockdown is still going on, with the Czech Ministry of health maintaining a list of "red" countries, such as for example Sweden or Portugal, that you should not visit but if you do you should go to quarantine and get tested.
- greedo 6y ago
  I call this the pool theory (hat tip to Merlin Mann). The problem as you said is that each state followed its own lockdown policy, yet travel between states is unregulated. It's as if we had a giant pool, and said, "you can pee in this area, but only this area." Not realizing how after a certain amount of time, all the water was tainted with urine.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Most of Oregon's neighbors had strict lockdowns. Idaho being the exception. Except I still went to Washington several times, because interstate travel was never restricted. It is a matter of debate (as someone mentioned in a different reply) if that would be legal in the USA.
refurb 6y ago
This is a good point. Looking back, it would have made more sense to do the lockdown in phases. Ask every company who can have their employees work from to do so. Track the numbers! Ok, is it still spreading quickly? Well identify the next round of business that should shutter. We basically did it all at once and like Oregon, CA was pretty adherent, but I just went for a walk this afternoon and it looks no different than per-Covid. We basically went from on, to off, to on again.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  We stuck a knife in an electrical outlet and got shocked. We turned the power off and back on again and then expected it not to shock us the second time.
Thorentis 6y ago
> We locked down Oregon over what was happening in NYC. That is akin to Northern Ireland locking down because of Moscow. That isn't an exaggeration. If anything, it is an understatement. Yep, this right here is the problem. Unfortunately, social media and the 24/7 news cycle (that magnified 100x by social media) has meant that people react strongly to events that have no effect on them, and then go and do things which have no effect on the underlying cause, just because they saw people doing is thousands of miles away. This is what happened with the COVID lock downs. People panicked when they saw NYC, but there was no reason for most place to lock down (when they did). Far better to wait for a more effective time. But no, you had people slamming governors for doing nothing in states that had very few cases. This extends to a ton of other causes and problems. See the BLM movement. You have people protesting in countries that have nothing to do with George Floyd and a very different police force, risking their lives and others by spreading covid, because they saw people on the news in another country protesting. Utterly absurd.
dillondoyle 6y ago
But ideally wouldn't we have wanted to crush it hard - get prepared with testing, isolation ability, contact tracing so that when we lift and cases rise we can smother them before they get too large? It seems fairly successful so far in China/Korea/Australia etc. Maybe it was never possible with a fractured America filled with selfish idiots. I've completely lost hope in my country for the first time in my life I don't have confidence we can our system can fix itself
muzika 6y ago
As an Oregon resident, I confirm that this is spot on. We handled the lock down very badly, to a point where I had to convince some of my friends that COVID-19 actually exists.
m463 6y ago
The problem is that a properly executed disaster response will be drama free. How many people had covid, self quarantined, and never spread it ... unbeknownst to anyone? The way exponentials work maybe nobody was saved, or maybe a whole nursing home or a city of old people. I recall the y2k problem and the hysteria. In the end, nothing happened. But... was it an overreaction, or was it an appropriate reaction seeing that all these companies didn't meltdown financially?
cbayram 6y ago
Hindsight bias.

somewhereoutth 6y ago

You make a good point. See Croatia for a similar example in the EU. However we have the advantage of final control over our borders (sovereignty is pooled upwards, not flowed downwards here) - so we are better able to tailor our response and deal with problem areas (Sweden, greater Lisbon).

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Yes. Right now, there is large spread in a community in eastern Oregon around a church. Lets do phase 0 lockdown in that community. Let the rest of Oregon be in a different phase. If it breaks out in Portland, Portland restricts for a while etc. Not just "I am scared lets just close everything". It was never going to work and people were screaming that at the top of their lungs in March. We were called ghouls or accused of supporting genocide. I am not kidding.

triceratops 6y ago

> We locked down _too soon_ in many places Or maybe the real answer was a coordinated national response. Why wasn't the NYC cluster confined to NYC or NY state? If the initial lockdown succeeded in killing community transmission in Oregon, how did it start growing again? Most likely from external sources. Only a national strategy could have made these individual state-level lockdowns worthwhile. Since we didn't have that, the states implemented a haphazard, patchwork of lockdowns that weren't coordinated. > I doubt anyone will give a shit what the Governor says. Goodwill has been burned through and then some. Unfortunately you're right about that.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
State border closures are unconstitutional in the United States, we could never have a national lockdown. The interstate commerce clause prevents it. Among other laws I am sure.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > State border closures are unconstitutional in the United States I'm not an expert, but that doesn't seem to be the case.[1] > interstate commerce clause I thought that just gave Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Again, I'm not a legal expert. 1. https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2020/03/18/296072.htm https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2020/03/18/29607...
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    Right, closing borders between states could be seen as an uneven application of a law and prevent interstate commerce. Especially if it were applied unevenly in the sense of "Oregon can have an open border with Idaho but not Washington" because Washington had more cases. Businesses that rely on the border between OR and WA would sue for relief in a hot minute. I am probably wrong about the law used. IANAL.
    - triceratops 6y ago

glofish 6y ago

This is a really good point, and it all goes back to treating US or even a state as a European nation. The US is not like that at all. What is appalling that the CDC seemed to be completely clueless to these basic observations, as if it weren't their job to make sane recommendations beyond the "everyone everywhere immediately shut yourself indoors for a few months" (a recommendation imported from China FWIW)

khazhoux 6y ago

"We never got wet... these umbrellas were useless!" :-) I tend to agree with your point, though. Many many areas could likely have been just fine by only restricting large gatherings (concerts, etc), requiring masks, strongly encouraging WFH, and so on. But keep open hair salons, local shops, restaurants (with precautions), etc. Even in the Bay Area, I can't help but think we shut too much down.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Go stand with an umbrella in the Atacama. We literally had no "rain" here when we locked down. That is my point. Now that it is raining in the Atacama, we have no political will to do anything. Edit: I was sassy before I saw your edit :D. High-five on agreeing in principle!
- khazhoux 6y ago
  But of course what we can't see is the alternate timeline where Oregon didn't lock down, cases+deaths rose, and then everyone wishes the lockdown had happened sooner. This is tough and it's a bit of a lose-lose situation. Like you said, there's not enough patience or personal savings to stay like this for another 8 months, and any course of action will be highly criticized, regardless of outcome.

MengerSponge 6y ago

Oregon locked down over what was happening in Seattle. Seattle didn't become NYC because their pols listened to their public health experts. Since we "crushed the curve" we've learned what masks are good for, and how they should be used. We've developed a lifesaving protocol for the most sick patients. We've gotten into the summer which plays somewhat in our favor. In fact, it looks like universal masking and a bit of care is sufficient to get R0<1. Problem solved, eventually. Unfortunately... leadership matters.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Seattle locked down over what was happening in Italy. Seattle never had uncontrolled spread that risked its healthcare. How many people died from other, preventable things, while we learned that masks work? Something we knew then, by the way. Just ask any country that dealt with SARS Ver. 1.0
- MengerSponge 6y ago
  > Seattle never had uncontrolled spread that risked its healthcare. Because they shut down. They observed community spread and they acted appropriately. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leade... Scientific knowledge is slow and hard to come by, and we didn't know that in February. What we knew was this: Masks don't work for every disease. They don't even work for all coronaviruses. Cloth masks worn by the public can increase transmission of some diseases. SARS-COV2 is not the same as SARS-COV1. 'If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing' -Fauci https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/17/overreaction-coronavirus-precautions/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/17/overreacti...

addicted 6y ago

This is dumb. NYC became NYC because it didn’t lock down when SF or Seattle did. If it had, it would have had about half the deaths it eventually did.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
That simply is not true. Not by a long shot. NY became NY because they responded poorly, infected nursing homes by housing non-critical patients there and intubated patients that didn't need it through "caution" or some excuse. Also, NY is about as dense as the US gets, and has way more shared, multi-generational housing than the rest of the US. Also NYC has way more transit usage than any other area in the USA, which was one important vector. Everyone keeps pretending like the lockdown is the only variable. It isn't!

m4rtink 6y ago

The Czech Republic, here smack in the middle of Europe did something similar - pretty strict lockdown, hospitals cleared of non essential procedures to keep capacity, most shops closed & mandatory masks everywhere. Seems to have worked fine, as the average number of cases has been around 50 daily for a couple of weeks, all that while most of the restrictions have been lifted. So where is the difference ? I think in two aspects: - all the neighboring countries did similar strict lockdown and achieved similar levels of success - we closed our borders to everyone, including preventing residents from going out - the Prague international airport was deserted for month and a half, all international bus and train connections have been shut down & border crossing were guarded by police with army helping out, letting only trucks through I think this really helped as each country could apply their lockdown separately for a limited period, without worrying about international travel bringing it right back in. While from what I've read and even been told by people in the US - even is a single US state did a very strict lockdown with potentially huge economical cost - the neighboring state (or in some cases even the next city!) will do hardly anything at all. Combined with no state border lockdown, the strict state will get infections back in from the less responsible areas. The Czech Republic border is no longer closed, buses and trains go over the borders again & local flights have been reestablished. Still, a version of the border lockdown is still going on, with the Czech Ministry of health maintaining a list of "red" countries, such as for example Sweden or Portugal, that you should not visit but if you do you should go to quarantine and get tested.

greedo 6y ago
I call this the pool theory (hat tip to Merlin Mann). The problem as you said is that each state followed its own lockdown policy, yet travel between states is unregulated. It's as if we had a giant pool, and said, "you can pee in this area, but only this area." Not realizing how after a certain amount of time, all the water was tainted with urine.
salmon30salmon 6y ago
Most of Oregon's neighbors had strict lockdowns. Idaho being the exception. Except I still went to Washington several times, because interstate travel was never restricted. It is a matter of debate (as someone mentioned in a different reply) if that would be legal in the USA.

refurb 6y ago

This is a good point. Looking back, it would have made more sense to do the lockdown in phases. Ask every company who can have their employees work from to do so. Track the numbers! Ok, is it still spreading quickly? Well identify the next round of business that should shutter. We basically did it all at once and like Oregon, CA was pretty adherent, but I just went for a walk this afternoon and it looks no different than per-Covid. We basically went from on, to off, to on again.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
We stuck a knife in an electrical outlet and got shocked. We turned the power off and back on again and then expected it not to shock us the second time.

Thorentis 6y ago

> We locked down Oregon over what was happening in NYC. That is akin to Northern Ireland locking down because of Moscow. That isn't an exaggeration. If anything, it is an understatement. Yep, this right here is the problem. Unfortunately, social media and the 24/7 news cycle (that magnified 100x by social media) has meant that people react strongly to events that have no effect on them, and then go and do things which have no effect on the underlying cause, just because they saw people doing is thousands of miles away. This is what happened with the COVID lock downs. People panicked when they saw NYC, but there was no reason for most place to lock down (when they did). Far better to wait for a more effective time. But no, you had people slamming governors for doing nothing in states that had very few cases. This extends to a ton of other causes and problems. See the BLM movement. You have people protesting in countries that have nothing to do with George Floyd and a very different police force, risking their lives and others by spreading covid, because they saw people on the news in another country protesting. Utterly absurd.

dillondoyle 6y ago

But ideally wouldn't we have wanted to crush it hard - get prepared with testing, isolation ability, contact tracing so that when we lift and cases rise we can smother them before they get too large? It seems fairly successful so far in China/Korea/Australia etc. Maybe it was never possible with a fractured America filled with selfish idiots. I've completely lost hope in my country for the first time in my life I don't have confidence we can our system can fix itself

muzika 6y ago

As an Oregon resident, I confirm that this is spot on. We handled the lock down very badly, to a point where I had to convince some of my friends that COVID-19 actually exists.

m463 6y ago

The problem is that a properly executed disaster response will be drama free. How many people had covid, self quarantined, and never spread it ... unbeknownst to anyone? The way exponentials work maybe nobody was saved, or maybe a whole nursing home or a city of old people. I recall the y2k problem and the hysteria. In the end, nothing happened. But... was it an overreaction, or was it an appropriate reaction seeing that all these companies didn't meltdown financially?

cbayram 6y ago

Hindsight bias.