3 ms·

So we’ve never done a lockdown before. We sort of knew there would be harms based on decades of research we’ve done on substance abuse, domestic violence, cance

So we’ve never done a lockdown before. We sort of knew there would be harms based on decades of research we’ve done on substance abuse, domestic violence, cancer, heart disease, etc. But there we go, running the worlds largest experiment on social distancing to try and find out which measures work or not. Except we didn’t even get good controls for it. Germany is doing that now apparently. edit: how many papers are out there trying to quantify all of these measures? There's dozens of published papers and hundreds of pre-prints. How can we view this as anything but an experiment!?

crpatino 6y ago
You are not only wrong, but absolutely confused. The lock down is not a scientific study, but an emergency response. Leaders respond to emergencies by making educated guesses and having his followers live with the consequences. It is not that they DO NOT KNOW what will happen, but that they CANNOT KNOW. Decision under uncertainty is baked on the cake from the start. We can debate whether the particular decisions being made around the World were appropriate for the emergency or not, - and in an ideal world the careers of the politicians/executives who made particularly poor decisions would be ruined beyond repair,- but the fact that they did not sit and look pretty until some peer reviewed article told them what to do was absolutely right. Otherwise there would be millions of death already, with dozens of millions who would have recovered with lifelong sequels. (And it would be naive to not think about the economic and social consequences of that as well) But hey! At least we would be close to herd immunity by the end of the year.