4 ms·

Hence the need for lockdowns to drive infections down to the level where contact tracing becomes feasible.

jerf 6y ago
Lockdowns are not a thing being proposed as a future policy. They are here, and have been for several incubation periods. For that purpose, they have failed. Past tense. I post this as a segue into the general observation that there's still way too many people speaking about hypotheticals as if we're not six months into this process, and have plenty of concrete data to consult rather than theory. If the purpose of X is Y, we are not in a place where we should start doing X to get Y; we are in a place to look to see if X got us Y. In this particular case, it apparently did not. (It's also not a great time to say "Well, X would have led to Y if we just X'd harder". In a good chunk of the world, we X'd as hard as we can. If we didn't get Y, it's not something you're going to get in the future, either. That is something we have to accept and deal with, not wish we could just X harder.)
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  > In a good chunk of the world, we X'd as hard as we can. A good chunk of the USA very explicitly did not "X" anywhere near as hard or smart as they could have.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    "Lockdown" pretty much never happened in the USA. There were these half-assed stay at home orders, which in practice ended up being voluntary and unenforced. People were out horsing around and very few enforcement actions happened, despite most of the orders being enforceable as misdemeanors. Fortunately most people voluntarily did the right thing, but not enough for it to matter.
    - jerf 6y ago
      Mileage varied significantly on those. I haven't seen a lot of evidence that better participation led to proportionately better outcomes. Besides, lockdowns, which have never really been done like this before, may just be something that can not work. You can't suddenly demand that everyone in a society be in the 80%th percentile of conscientiousness, and also be just hunky dory with not going to work anymore and being under effective house arrest for extended periods of time. This is probably one of those cases where HN is not equipped to make an accurate assessment, being exceedingly preferentially chosen from high conscientiousness and college-educated populations (as, if nothing else, college indicates a certain amount of discipline). If you project yourself and your peers out onto society, you are going to grossly misunderstand the real society. Plans to avoid contagion need to deal with the society that we have, not the one we want.
      - ebalit 6y ago
        What do you do of the effects of lock-down in European countries?
- occamrazor 6y ago
  How didn’t they work? Every time they have been implemented properly (Hubei, Italy, Spain. NYC, New Zealand) they reached the objective of reducing the infection levels to a few new cases per day. Obviously they cannot be a permanent solution, but they were never meant to be one.
  - zxspectrum1982 6y ago
    Look at Spain right now. Infection rate is huge again, even with masks being mandatory in public. Lockdown is useless and destroyed their economy, and masks are mostly useless. That's the hard reality. Luckily, this virus is not making us zombies, or killing our children. It's killing our elders and people with a weakened immune system; it's sad but it's great. It could have been a lot worse.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jerf 6y ago

Lockdowns are not a thing being proposed as a future policy. They are here, and have been for several incubation periods. For that purpose, they have failed. Past tense. I post this as a segue into the general observation that there's still way too many people speaking about hypotheticals as if we're not six months into this process, and have plenty of concrete data to consult rather than theory. If the purpose of X is Y, we are not in a place where we should start doing X to get Y; we are in a place to look to see if X got us Y. In this particular case, it apparently did not. (It's also not a great time to say "Well, X would have led to Y if we just X'd harder". In a good chunk of the world, we X'd as hard as we can. If we didn't get Y, it's not something you're going to get in the future, either. That is something we have to accept and deal with, not wish we could just X harder.)

EForEndeavour 6y ago
> In a good chunk of the world, we X'd as hard as we can. A good chunk of the USA very explicitly did not "X" anywhere near as hard or smart as they could have.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  "Lockdown" pretty much never happened in the USA. There were these half-assed stay at home orders, which in practice ended up being voluntary and unenforced. People were out horsing around and very few enforcement actions happened, despite most of the orders being enforceable as misdemeanors. Fortunately most people voluntarily did the right thing, but not enough for it to matter.
  - jerf 6y ago
    Mileage varied significantly on those. I haven't seen a lot of evidence that better participation led to proportionately better outcomes. Besides, lockdowns, which have never really been done like this before, may just be something that can not work. You can't suddenly demand that everyone in a society be in the 80%th percentile of conscientiousness, and also be just hunky dory with not going to work anymore and being under effective house arrest for extended periods of time. This is probably one of those cases where HN is not equipped to make an accurate assessment, being exceedingly preferentially chosen from high conscientiousness and college-educated populations (as, if nothing else, college indicates a certain amount of discipline). If you project yourself and your peers out onto society, you are going to grossly misunderstand the real society. Plans to avoid contagion need to deal with the society that we have, not the one we want.
    - ebalit 6y ago
      What do you do of the effects of lock-down in European countries?
occamrazor 6y ago
How didn’t they work? Every time they have been implemented properly (Hubei, Italy, Spain. NYC, New Zealand) they reached the objective of reducing the infection levels to a few new cases per day. Obviously they cannot be a permanent solution, but they were never meant to be one.
- zxspectrum1982 6y ago
  Look at Spain right now. Infection rate is huge again, even with masks being mandatory in public. Lockdown is useless and destroyed their economy, and masks are mostly useless. That's the hard reality. Luckily, this virus is not making us zombies, or killing our children. It's killing our elders and people with a weakened immune system; it's sad but it's great. It could have been a lot worse.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]