4 ms·

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000

by cirgue 6y ago

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

tdfx 6y ago
I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate to decline (3) inoculation: we find a vaccine with high effectiveness and somehow deliver that widely enough to create the herd immunity situation It seems lockdown can only help with #1 and I'd say the horses have already left the barn on that one. The only things lockdowns can do at this point are to prevent number of acute cases from overwhelming the hospital system. I'm not against lockdowns in extraordinary public health emergencies, but let's not pretend they are getting us any closer to a finish line.
- the_gastropod 6y ago
  Option 1 is the ideal case, yes. And New Zealand pulled it off (unfortunately, it was undone when a covid patient re-entered the country). But it's not the only benefit. Reducing the number of cases obviously reduces the risk of the disease spreading. The idea is to seriously lock down / wear masks, etc. for ~6 weeks to get to a point where the case-load is so small that it's manageable with little effort (not back to 100% normal). Instead, the U.S. strategy has been to put in medium effort / inconvenience indefinitely.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    New Zealand officials don't currently believe that their new outbreak was caused by a patient re-entering the country - they haven't found any link between the detected cases and overseas returnees. No country I'm aware of believes that even the smallest outbreaks can be handled with little effort. Health officials across the globe have been consistently saying that the coronavirus will spread unless people stay very far from normal.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    New Zealand is the perfect example. They have zero immunity, therefore they have to stay absolutely quarantined from the rest of the world indefinitely. If a vaccine is only partially effective, and their tolerance for cases is literally lockdown at the first case, then they will never re-open.
    - xapata 6y ago
      > vaccine is only partially effective Different vaccines will have different efficacy. None will be perfect.
- xapata 6y ago
  Right, but the lockdown helps us choose exit door 3 (inoculation) instead of 2 (herd immunity).
  - partyboat1586 6y ago
    Providing we can stay locked down until the vaccine is ready.
- qubex 6y ago
  A metaphor, if I may: think by analogy to the other famously exponential process, nuclear fission. When neutron flux gets too frisky, you have to throttle the reaction or face a catastrophe. You don’t need to disassemble the reactor to shut it down, it suffices to slam in the control rods and mop up those neutrons so they don’t trigger further fissions. Social Distancing is the “explosive dissassembly” of epidemiology: if the nuclei get too far apart (because the reactor has detonated) the reaction ceases because most neutrons “go wide” and don’t hit another nucleus. We’ve had to rely on the latter because as of yet we don’t have suitably effective control rods to scram the core. Lockdown is all about keeping the fuel elements sufficiently far apart so that the reaction goes sub-critical and eventually peters out (or reaches some background level). (“Argument by analogy is very powerful and entirely fallacious”, so make of my words what you may.)
  - tdfx 6y ago
    Sure, I've actually used that analogy before myself, so I can't judge your use of it :) My point was that in this case, people are expecting lockdown to stop the reaction entirely, when in fact the control rods are only intended to slow it down. The post I replied to seemed to believe that lockdown was intended to shorten the duration of the pandemic, when in fact it has the opposite effect (for the purpose of getting good side effects like keeping ICU beds available).
the_gastropod 6y ago
+1 million. I find it so frustrating the myopic nature of how so many people look at this. We could (and should) have treated this with some respect, worn masks, and stayed mostly inside for ~6 weeks. If we'd done that, we'd still have to practice some precaution, but it would likely be a significantly better reality than we're in today, and will be for the foreseeable future thanks to that fantastic individualism the U.S. does so well.
- qubex 6y ago
  I’m from Italy and though I was abroad when the pandemic hit and the lockdown was declared, I’m pretty proud of the European response in general. The rolling crisis and half-measures that please nobody and solve nothing that we see going on in the United States is just a recipe for never-ending crisis and constant death-count.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Staying inside is wholly unnecessary, especially in low density areas. It's the congregation on beaches etc that is problematic, not just "outside".
zaroth 6y ago
What if the lockdowns just lengthen the duration of the pandemic and the ultimate endpoints are nearly identical? Some amount of lengthening is essential to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, of course. In many lockdown environments, the target case numbers are much lower than necessary for that goal, if not zero.
- cookingrobot 6y ago
  That would be true if there was no vaccine coming and everyone was going to get it eventually. But if we expect a vaccine sometime in the next year or so, we can try to minimize the number of cases and deaths until then. So far about 1.5% of the US has tested positive for it, so maybe 2-10% have been exposed. If we can keep that under 20%, that will be a lot fewer deaths than if we let it run free to herd immunity levels at 95%.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    Exactly. And given that many who have had covid-19 have permanent damage and/or longterm ongoing symptoms it's best to try to minimize the number of people who get it before a vaccine becomes available. A significant number of people with longterm disability caused by covid-19 would also damage the economy.

by cirgue 6y ago

tdfx 6y ago

I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate to decline (3) inoculation: we find a vaccine with high effectiveness and somehow deliver that widely enough to create the herd immunity situation It seems lockdown can only help with #1 and I'd say the horses have already left the barn on that one. The only things lockdowns can do at this point are to prevent number of acute cases from overwhelming the hospital system. I'm not against lockdowns in extraordinary public health emergencies, but let's not pretend they are getting us any closer to a finish line.

the_gastropod 6y ago
Option 1 is the ideal case, yes. And New Zealand pulled it off (unfortunately, it was undone when a covid patient re-entered the country). But it's not the only benefit. Reducing the number of cases obviously reduces the risk of the disease spreading. The idea is to seriously lock down / wear masks, etc. for ~6 weeks to get to a point where the case-load is so small that it's manageable with little effort (not back to 100% normal). Instead, the U.S. strategy has been to put in medium effort / inconvenience indefinitely.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  New Zealand officials don't currently believe that their new outbreak was caused by a patient re-entering the country - they haven't found any link between the detected cases and overseas returnees. No country I'm aware of believes that even the smallest outbreaks can be handled with little effort. Health officials across the globe have been consistently saying that the coronavirus will spread unless people stay very far from normal.
- zaroth 6y ago
  New Zealand is the perfect example. They have zero immunity, therefore they have to stay absolutely quarantined from the rest of the world indefinitely. If a vaccine is only partially effective, and their tolerance for cases is literally lockdown at the first case, then they will never re-open.
  - xapata 6y ago
    > vaccine is only partially effective Different vaccines will have different efficacy. None will be perfect.
xapata 6y ago
Right, but the lockdown helps us choose exit door 3 (inoculation) instead of 2 (herd immunity).
- partyboat1586 6y ago
  Providing we can stay locked down until the vaccine is ready.
qubex 6y ago
A metaphor, if I may: think by analogy to the other famously exponential process, nuclear fission. When neutron flux gets too frisky, you have to throttle the reaction or face a catastrophe. You don’t need to disassemble the reactor to shut it down, it suffices to slam in the control rods and mop up those neutrons so they don’t trigger further fissions. Social Distancing is the “explosive dissassembly” of epidemiology: if the nuclei get too far apart (because the reactor has detonated) the reaction ceases because most neutrons “go wide” and don’t hit another nucleus. We’ve had to rely on the latter because as of yet we don’t have suitably effective control rods to scram the core. Lockdown is all about keeping the fuel elements sufficiently far apart so that the reaction goes sub-critical and eventually peters out (or reaches some background level). (“Argument by analogy is very powerful and entirely fallacious”, so make of my words what you may.)
- tdfx 6y ago
  Sure, I've actually used that analogy before myself, so I can't judge your use of it :) My point was that in this case, people are expecting lockdown to stop the reaction entirely, when in fact the control rods are only intended to slow it down. The post I replied to seemed to believe that lockdown was intended to shorten the duration of the pandemic, when in fact it has the opposite effect (for the purpose of getting good side effects like keeping ICU beds available).

the_gastropod 6y ago

+1 million. I find it so frustrating the myopic nature of how so many people look at this. We could (and should) have treated this with some respect, worn masks, and stayed mostly inside for ~6 weeks. If we'd done that, we'd still have to practice some precaution, but it would likely be a significantly better reality than we're in today, and will be for the foreseeable future thanks to that fantastic individualism the U.S. does so well.

qubex 6y ago
I’m from Italy and though I was abroad when the pandemic hit and the lockdown was declared, I’m pretty proud of the European response in general. The rolling crisis and half-measures that please nobody and solve nothing that we see going on in the United States is just a recipe for never-ending crisis and constant death-count.
nitrogen 6y ago
Staying inside is wholly unnecessary, especially in low density areas. It's the congregation on beaches etc that is problematic, not just "outside".

zaroth 6y ago

What if the lockdowns just lengthen the duration of the pandemic and the ultimate endpoints are nearly identical? Some amount of lengthening is essential to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, of course. In many lockdown environments, the target case numbers are much lower than necessary for that goal, if not zero.

cookingrobot 6y ago
That would be true if there was no vaccine coming and everyone was going to get it eventually. But if we expect a vaccine sometime in the next year or so, we can try to minimize the number of cases and deaths until then. So far about 1.5% of the US has tested positive for it, so maybe 2-10% have been exposed. If we can keep that under 20%, that will be a lot fewer deaths than if we let it run free to herd immunity levels at 95%.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Exactly. And given that many who have had covid-19 have permanent damage and/or longterm ongoing symptoms it's best to try to minimize the number of people who get it before a vaccine becomes available. A significant number of people with longterm disability caused by covid-19 would also damage the economy.