5 ms·

Compared to what? Governments that try to trade safety for the economy will end up with neither.

Applejinx 6y ago
This, emphatically. All that will happen is places will explode with plague: the way to prevent that happening is to lock down completely, and the way to keep it within 'we still have sort of an economy' parameters is to cope with severe economic hits due to the change in people's behavior. Otherwise, it's arguing with physics, which seems to be in fashion and has really predictable results with no outliers or exceptions. We've already made sure the 'before times' economy is gone forever. We're now working out what we can have, instead. That's an interesting design challenge and we're certainly not out of ideas, but 'keep the old economy' is simply not on the table.
LaMarseillaise 6y ago
I keep seeing and hearing this sentiment, but I think it is a false dichotomy. There have been places that responded effectively to the crisis without lockdowns (Iceland, for example). The choices are not strict, widespread, extended lockdowns or no response at all, with nothing in between. We may yet find that those who undertook either of those strategies have both poor economic and health outcomes.
- nutjob2 6y ago
  Those places have a populace that is cooperative and considerate of others. In a more "each man for himself" culture it doesn't work so well.
- kelchm 6y ago
  There's also the fact that people are not robots -- just because you tell them to do something doesn't mean they will do it. As an example -- even among people that are wearing masks consistently, how many of them are actually following the correct protocols around mask resuse or fit?
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    Those protocols are designed for surgical masks where the objective is to protect the wearer from droplets. The objective of cloth masks is to protect other people from your droplets (although there is a small protective effect for the wearer too). Even cloth masks with poor fit around the nose have great cost/benefit ratio for reducing transmission.
  - text70 6y ago
    The discovery of viruses has only become known a little over 100 years ago. Could these people be be skeptic sticklers?
matz1 6y ago
Trade safety? How? The latest cdc estimate of ifr is only 0.65%, how is that going to destroy the economy?
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Convalescence in hospitalized patients (about 20 % of patients will end up in hospital) is extremely protracted. You will end up with a torrent of people unable to work for months if not years if the disease continues to spread. The recent JAMA paper from Italy (this one: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351) is frankly terrifying.
  - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
    Maybe 20% of people with symptoms (though that's likely an overestimate). The number of people with a COVID infection is likely 10-12x the number of symptomatic cases.
- Latty 6y ago
  I mean, the thing that jumps to mind when you say that is that it seems like a myopic view of the issue. Deaths are not the only thing that hurt the economy. There is a lot of evidence of people who survive having long-term health problems that could impact their ability to work for the rest of their lives. That rate also presumably assumes certain things: if the situation gets worse, that rate could no doubt jump (e.g: if the healthcare system is overwhelmed and no one can get treatment, presumably many more people will die).
  - matz1 6y ago
    All disease could cause long term damage in some people. Nothing new. Do u know that hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this pandemic? This nothing new either.
- nutjob2 6y ago
  Fear. No-one wants to be in that 0.65%. Also with finite medical facilities that number quickly goes up to 5-10% or worse if a lot of people get sick at once. And then there is the fact that even if you don't die, the disease can be debilitating, for some for the rest of their lives.
Latty 6y ago
We have this incredibly long history of taking short term gain at the cost of long term loss that far outweighs it, and yet we continue to make the same mistakes time and time again. The countries that spent the most and locked down the hardest took the smallest hit because they were able to mitigate most of the damage, which is much more expensive. People have to stop pretending countries are people economically, the cost of locking down is something developed countries can bear, and should. Of course, this is all a microcosm of the same problem we face with climate change. It'd be really nice if we could finally learn the lesson and start paying the price now, rather than waiting and paying far more down the line.
daenz 6y ago
Strange, I first read this as "Governments that try to trade the economy for safety will end up with neither" and wholeheartedly agreed. I think both versions are right, unfortunately.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  The larger economy is unavoidably global and local policy can't do anything about that being destroyed, it's a consequence of pandemic disease. But, locally of course elimination means you can open safely. We know that's not just theory because New Zealand did it in June. They have stadium-filling events, because they can now, and so why wouldn't they? Yes, their border has to be essentially closed to non-citizens and there's much more surveillance testing (ie people who have no symptoms getting tested "just in case") than you'd have without a pandemic, but locally it's normal. And so I think this actually puts a lie to the idea that you can't trade economy for safety. New Zealand shut down, tested and traced, eliminated the disease, opened back up in about three months. Will they see economic damage? Yes. Largely because everywhere in the whole world gets damaged. Wishful thinking by Trump aside, this won't be put right by November. But are they safe? Zero cases in over two months for a population of around five million sounds pretty safe to me.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The question is whether you actually can eliminate locally. Australia was trying to, but they failed, and now they're starting to send cities back into lockdown. All the Asian and European countries I know of have made it clear that social distancing is here to stay and they don't expect to reach "safe" until a vaccine has been deployed.
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      I presented an existence proof. New Zealand did this. So there is no residual doubt that it can be done. Generally people determined not to learn anything will look for excuses. New Zealand has relatively low population density (outside the cities where it had community transmission...). Or it's further away from other countries. Maybe the virus hates the cold (remember how we pretended maybe it hates the heat? Yeah, good luck with that). Such excuses don't matter. They might help some politician keep their job, but they won't stop you dying from a disease that those politicians decided they weren't really bothered about eliminating. I follow infectious disease eradication programmes. Elimination works. Other approaches can reduce the impact of a disease, maybe temporarily suppress it in the First World, but only elimination actually makes it go away and stay gone. The US ought to know this. It has endemic disease of a wide variety of types otherwise not seen in the First World, because it decided not to give its citizens healthcare. So if you're poor in America and you've got some awful parasitic disease that any other developed country in the world would fix as a priority public health measure, America says "Too bad, get a job" and the disease spreads. A vaccine is about luck. We do not understand virology well enough to firmly guarantee we can build a vaccine for all the money in the world. So maybe you get lucky in the next few months and an effective vaccine is available in 2021. But maybe you don't ever get lucky, and then what? "Social distancing" forever?
bpodgursky 6y ago
It's pretty Orwellian to take a phrase calling out the dangers of trading freedom for security ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety") and twist it into the exact opposite.
briefcomment 6y ago
Sweden's excess deaths look no worse than any other country [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
- gpderetta 6y ago
  it is not worse than the worse hit countries in europe, but significantly worse than its neighbouring countries [1] [1] https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Two points, in defense of Sweden 1. If we believe the flatten the curve rhetoric, Sweden is behind the worst of it, and Norway, Finland, and Denmark will see slightly elevated excess deaths for a while, bringing the disparity closer. 2. Sweden may have staved off the some of the economic losses of locking down. We still need more time to see what happens and evaluate the above. One thing to note is that Sweden's excess death percentage is by no means a catastrophe compared to other countries. It's a data point of what the ceiling for mortality may look like if a country does nothing. One other important thing to note, the percentage of non-covid excess deaths seems much higher for countries that lock down compared to Sweden for example [1]. It's possible that lockdowns spread covid deaths out over time instead of decreasing them, while creating non-covid excess deaths that you otherwise wouldn't have. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
    - greedo 6y ago
      The entire purpose of using excess deaths is to account for the discrepancy in the way different countries attribute cause of death. So referencing "the percentage of non-covid excess deaths seems much higher for countries that lock down compared to Sweden for example" is nonsensical.
sdinsn 6y ago
> Governments that try to trade safety for the economy will end up with neither. [Citation needed]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

This, emphatically. All that will happen is places will explode with plague: the way to prevent that happening is to lock down completely, and the way to keep it within 'we still have sort of an economy' parameters is to cope with severe economic hits due to the change in people's behavior. Otherwise, it's arguing with physics, which seems to be in fashion and has really predictable results with no outliers or exceptions. We've already made sure the 'before times' economy is gone forever. We're now working out what we can have, instead. That's an interesting design challenge and we're certainly not out of ideas, but 'keep the old economy' is simply not on the table.

LaMarseillaise 6y ago

I keep seeing and hearing this sentiment, but I think it is a false dichotomy. There have been places that responded effectively to the crisis without lockdowns (Iceland, for example). The choices are not strict, widespread, extended lockdowns or no response at all, with nothing in between. We may yet find that those who undertook either of those strategies have both poor economic and health outcomes.

nutjob2 6y ago
Those places have a populace that is cooperative and considerate of others. In a more "each man for himself" culture it doesn't work so well.
kelchm 6y ago
There's also the fact that people are not robots -- just because you tell them to do something doesn't mean they will do it. As an example -- even among people that are wearing masks consistently, how many of them are actually following the correct protocols around mask resuse or fit?
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Those protocols are designed for surgical masks where the objective is to protect the wearer from droplets. The objective of cloth masks is to protect other people from your droplets (although there is a small protective effect for the wearer too). Even cloth masks with poor fit around the nose have great cost/benefit ratio for reducing transmission.
- text70 6y ago
  The discovery of viruses has only become known a little over 100 years ago. Could these people be be skeptic sticklers?

matz1 6y ago

Trade safety? How? The latest cdc estimate of ifr is only 0.65%, how is that going to destroy the economy?

HarryHirsch 6y ago
Convalescence in hospitalized patients (about 20 % of patients will end up in hospital) is extremely protracted. You will end up with a torrent of people unable to work for months if not years if the disease continues to spread. The recent JAMA paper from Italy (this one: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768351) is frankly terrifying.
- AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
  Maybe 20% of people with symptoms (though that's likely an overestimate). The number of people with a COVID infection is likely 10-12x the number of symptomatic cases.
Latty 6y ago
I mean, the thing that jumps to mind when you say that is that it seems like a myopic view of the issue. Deaths are not the only thing that hurt the economy. There is a lot of evidence of people who survive having long-term health problems that could impact their ability to work for the rest of their lives. That rate also presumably assumes certain things: if the situation gets worse, that rate could no doubt jump (e.g: if the healthcare system is overwhelmed and no one can get treatment, presumably many more people will die).
- matz1 6y ago
  All disease could cause long term damage in some people. Nothing new. Do u know that hospital are frequently overwhelmed even before this pandemic? This nothing new either.
nutjob2 6y ago
Fear. No-one wants to be in that 0.65%. Also with finite medical facilities that number quickly goes up to 5-10% or worse if a lot of people get sick at once. And then there is the fact that even if you don't die, the disease can be debilitating, for some for the rest of their lives.

Latty 6y ago

We have this incredibly long history of taking short term gain at the cost of long term loss that far outweighs it, and yet we continue to make the same mistakes time and time again. The countries that spent the most and locked down the hardest took the smallest hit because they were able to mitigate most of the damage, which is much more expensive. People have to stop pretending countries are people economically, the cost of locking down is something developed countries can bear, and should. Of course, this is all a microcosm of the same problem we face with climate change. It'd be really nice if we could finally learn the lesson and start paying the price now, rather than waiting and paying far more down the line.

daenz 6y ago

Strange, I first read this as "Governments that try to trade the economy for safety will end up with neither" and wholeheartedly agreed. I think both versions are right, unfortunately.

tialaramex 6y ago
The larger economy is unavoidably global and local policy can't do anything about that being destroyed, it's a consequence of pandemic disease. But, locally of course elimination means you can open safely. We know that's not just theory because New Zealand did it in June. They have stadium-filling events, because they can now, and so why wouldn't they? Yes, their border has to be essentially closed to non-citizens and there's much more surveillance testing (ie people who have no symptoms getting tested "just in case") than you'd have without a pandemic, but locally it's normal. And so I think this actually puts a lie to the idea that you can't trade economy for safety. New Zealand shut down, tested and traced, eliminated the disease, opened back up in about three months. Will they see economic damage? Yes. Largely because everywhere in the whole world gets damaged. Wishful thinking by Trump aside, this won't be put right by November. But are they safe? Zero cases in over two months for a population of around five million sounds pretty safe to me.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The question is whether you actually can eliminate locally. Australia was trying to, but they failed, and now they're starting to send cities back into lockdown. All the Asian and European countries I know of have made it clear that social distancing is here to stay and they don't expect to reach "safe" until a vaccine has been deployed.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    I presented an existence proof. New Zealand did this. So there is no residual doubt that it can be done. Generally people determined not to learn anything will look for excuses. New Zealand has relatively low population density (outside the cities where it had community transmission...). Or it's further away from other countries. Maybe the virus hates the cold (remember how we pretended maybe it hates the heat? Yeah, good luck with that). Such excuses don't matter. They might help some politician keep their job, but they won't stop you dying from a disease that those politicians decided they weren't really bothered about eliminating. I follow infectious disease eradication programmes. Elimination works. Other approaches can reduce the impact of a disease, maybe temporarily suppress it in the First World, but only elimination actually makes it go away and stay gone. The US ought to know this. It has endemic disease of a wide variety of types otherwise not seen in the First World, because it decided not to give its citizens healthcare. So if you're poor in America and you've got some awful parasitic disease that any other developed country in the world would fix as a priority public health measure, America says "Too bad, get a job" and the disease spreads. A vaccine is about luck. We do not understand virology well enough to firmly guarantee we can build a vaccine for all the money in the world. So maybe you get lucky in the next few months and an effective vaccine is available in 2021. But maybe you don't ever get lucky, and then what? "Social distancing" forever?

bpodgursky 6y ago

It's pretty Orwellian to take a phrase calling out the dangers of trading freedom for security ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety") and twist it into the exact opposite.

briefcomment 6y ago

Sweden's excess deaths look no worse than any other country [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...

gpderetta 6y ago
it is not worse than the worse hit countries in europe, but significantly worse than its neighbouring countries [1] [1] https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
- briefcomment 6y ago
  Two points, in defense of Sweden 1. If we believe the flatten the curve rhetoric, Sweden is behind the worst of it, and Norway, Finland, and Denmark will see slightly elevated excess deaths for a while, bringing the disparity closer. 2. Sweden may have staved off the some of the economic losses of locking down. We still need more time to see what happens and evaluate the above. One thing to note is that Sweden's excess death percentage is by no means a catastrophe compared to other countries. It's a data point of what the ceiling for mortality may look like if a country does nothing. One other important thing to note, the percentage of non-covid excess deaths seems much higher for countries that lock down compared to Sweden for example [1]. It's possible that lockdowns spread covid deaths out over time instead of decreasing them, while creating non-covid excess deaths that you otherwise wouldn't have. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
  - greedo 6y ago
    The entire purpose of using excess deaths is to account for the discrepancy in the way different countries attribute cause of death. So referencing "the percentage of non-covid excess deaths seems much higher for countries that lock down compared to Sweden for example" is nonsensical.

sdinsn 6y ago

> Governments that try to trade safety for the economy will end up with neither. [Citation needed]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]