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It's not guaranteed that keeping businesses operating would stop them going out of business either. It's possible that a better strategy is to force everyone to

It's not guaranteed that keeping businesses operating would stop them going out of business either. It's possible that a better strategy is to force everyone to shut down and get it over with quickly, so that customers can feel comfortable going out and spending money again.

krona 6y ago
force everyone to shut down and get it over with quickly On a purely factual point, the way to get it over with quickly is not to stop people coming in to close contact with one another. Everyone seems to have forgotten what the original and only purpose for the lockdown was: to avoid overwhelming hospitals.
- quicklime 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s as purely factual as you make it out to be. Maybe that was the purpose for the US, but other countries did it for the purpose of eradication (eg New Zealand) or to get it to a point that the contact tracing workload was manageable. The hospital capacity threshold is just one of many arbitrary targets.
  - makomk 6y ago
    It's not entirely arbitrary - the fact that the US is not a small island about 1000 miles from its nearest neighbour seems to comprehensively eliminate the New Zealand-style elimination option, given the trouble they're having with it. Like, even if you assume an equally competent lockdown in the US would have the exact same per-capita chances of infections slipping through from outside, with no disadvantage from the porous southern land border with a country that has a major outbreak, it still has 100 times the population. Which means that rather than causing a new major imported cluster once in 100 days, the leaks which the New Zealand government can't identify, fix, and reckons are likely an inherent limitation that they'll just have do deal with would cause them roughly daily. That means no elimination, not even if the numbers worked out slightly better than my rough estimate. And remember, New Zealand was the last big, well-known elimination success story left standing.
    - avani 6y ago
      Canada manages pretty well with a "porous southern land border with a country that has a major outbreak". I wonder what the difference is. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/i-crossed-back-state-denial/616126/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/i-crossed-...
    - Retric 6y ago
      100x the size is neither beneficial nor harmful when controlling a pandemic. As demonstrated by the US’s successful reduction in spread before opening things up again. 0.9 new cases per existing case and it goes away. 1.1 new cases per existing case and it grows uncontrollably. There isn’t a true middle ground.
      - makomk 6y ago
        It doesn't even make sense to talk about cases per existing case for imported cases, because by definition they're not caused by existing cases within the country. Like, maybe that could help tame down the clusters from those imported cases, but then you have to impose lockdown restrictions indefinitely and lose one of the big benefits of elimination over the "try and keep R just below 1.0" strategy - being able to lift those restrictions and avoid the ongoing economic and social damage they cause. Also, I think that in reality this isn't actually as scale-free as the nice simplified models suggest, and having 100x the population would make it harder to stamp out spread within the country. Remember, the number of cases per existing case isn't some fundamental physical constant - it's an average over a bunch of different opportunities for transmission with wildly varying expected numbers of new cases per existing case. 100x the scale means 100x the opportunities for low-probability superspreading events that ruin your day.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        Retric 6y ago
        Reproduction rates is below 1 mean a small number of new cases from minor outbreaks or border crossings are effectively meaningless. The US is currently reducing the number of active infections with poorly implemented social distancing and minimal mask usage. DisneyWorld for example is open and without becoming a hotspot of infections. Reaching that point 4 months ago was a completely reasonable goal. Sure, our current situation is improved by some herd immunity, but that’s far from the only effect in play.
war1025 6y ago
The economic devastation here in Iowa seems objectively less severe than in states that locked down more completely. People shit on Iowa at every turn for our pandemic response, but we've got a functioning economy and a whopping 3% of our population has tested positive for the virus so far.
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  Unfortunately, Iowa also has a relatively high positive test rate, which indicates that most cases there aren't being tested.
- evgen 6y ago
  When your economy does not have as far to fall before it becomes tragic I guess the drop doesn't feel too bad. Iowa's pandemic response has been pathetic and between Covid Kim pushing for opening things up while the state continues to see increased growth of covid cases and a senator who claims there have only been 10K covid deaths I think Iowa has absolutely nothing to feel good about. I keep calling back to parents who are rightfully afraid to go out with the large number of maskless morons walking around town while oblivious neices and nephews enjoy house parties in Ames and Iowa City for the first week of classes. You are less than two weeks from a peak of covid cases being diagnosed, schools are being pushed to open, and at this point it is no longer a question of whether you will see new covid diagnosis peaks by the end of the month but rather how high it will jump. There are states that have had good responses to the pandemic, Iowa is not one of them.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > There are states that have had good responses to the pandemic, Iowa is not one of them. I work in Ames and live in the next town over. As I said before, and as I will repeat any time it comes up, for a place that is supposedly doing "everything wrong", there is very little impact on daily life. As in, literally zero. You wear a mask to the store. Other than that, life continues mostly as before. People are in my opinion making a serious mistake holding Iowa up as the picture of failure because Coronavirus is literally a non-event in most people's lives here. I've been told for months now that we're on the cusp of everything going wrong. It's been one big nothing after another.

krona 6y ago

force everyone to shut down and get it over with quickly On a purely factual point, the way to get it over with quickly is not to stop people coming in to close contact with one another. Everyone seems to have forgotten what the original and only purpose for the lockdown was: to avoid overwhelming hospitals.

quicklime 6y ago
I don’t think that’s as purely factual as you make it out to be. Maybe that was the purpose for the US, but other countries did it for the purpose of eradication (eg New Zealand) or to get it to a point that the contact tracing workload was manageable. The hospital capacity threshold is just one of many arbitrary targets.
- makomk 6y ago
  It's not entirely arbitrary - the fact that the US is not a small island about 1000 miles from its nearest neighbour seems to comprehensively eliminate the New Zealand-style elimination option, given the trouble they're having with it. Like, even if you assume an equally competent lockdown in the US would have the exact same per-capita chances of infections slipping through from outside, with no disadvantage from the porous southern land border with a country that has a major outbreak, it still has 100 times the population. Which means that rather than causing a new major imported cluster once in 100 days, the leaks which the New Zealand government can't identify, fix, and reckons are likely an inherent limitation that they'll just have do deal with would cause them roughly daily. That means no elimination, not even if the numbers worked out slightly better than my rough estimate. And remember, New Zealand was the last big, well-known elimination success story left standing.
  - avani 6y ago
    Canada manages pretty well with a "porous southern land border with a country that has a major outbreak". I wonder what the difference is. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/i-crossed-back-state-denial/616126/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/i-crossed-...
  - Retric 6y ago
    100x the size is neither beneficial nor harmful when controlling a pandemic. As demonstrated by the US’s successful reduction in spread before opening things up again. 0.9 new cases per existing case and it goes away. 1.1 new cases per existing case and it grows uncontrollably. There isn’t a true middle ground.
    - makomk 6y ago
      It doesn't even make sense to talk about cases per existing case for imported cases, because by definition they're not caused by existing cases within the country. Like, maybe that could help tame down the clusters from those imported cases, but then you have to impose lockdown restrictions indefinitely and lose one of the big benefits of elimination over the "try and keep R just below 1.0" strategy - being able to lift those restrictions and avoid the ongoing economic and social damage they cause. Also, I think that in reality this isn't actually as scale-free as the nice simplified models suggest, and having 100x the population would make it harder to stamp out spread within the country. Remember, the number of cases per existing case isn't some fundamental physical constant - it's an average over a bunch of different opportunities for transmission with wildly varying expected numbers of new cases per existing case. 100x the scale means 100x the opportunities for low-probability superspreading events that ruin your day.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 6y ago
        Reproduction rates is below 1 mean a small number of new cases from minor outbreaks or border crossings are effectively meaningless. The US is currently reducing the number of active infections with poorly implemented social distancing and minimal mask usage. DisneyWorld for example is open and without becoming a hotspot of infections. Reaching that point 4 months ago was a completely reasonable goal. Sure, our current situation is improved by some herd immunity, but that’s far from the only effect in play.

war1025 6y ago

The economic devastation here in Iowa seems objectively less severe than in states that locked down more completely. People shit on Iowa at every turn for our pandemic response, but we've got a functioning economy and a whopping 3% of our population has tested positive for the virus so far.

sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
Unfortunately, Iowa also has a relatively high positive test rate, which indicates that most cases there aren't being tested.
evgen 6y ago
When your economy does not have as far to fall before it becomes tragic I guess the drop doesn't feel too bad. Iowa's pandemic response has been pathetic and between Covid Kim pushing for opening things up while the state continues to see increased growth of covid cases and a senator who claims there have only been 10K covid deaths I think Iowa has absolutely nothing to feel good about. I keep calling back to parents who are rightfully afraid to go out with the large number of maskless morons walking around town while oblivious neices and nephews enjoy house parties in Ames and Iowa City for the first week of classes. You are less than two weeks from a peak of covid cases being diagnosed, schools are being pushed to open, and at this point it is no longer a question of whether you will see new covid diagnosis peaks by the end of the month but rather how high it will jump. There are states that have had good responses to the pandemic, Iowa is not one of them.
- war1025 6y ago
  > There are states that have had good responses to the pandemic, Iowa is not one of them. I work in Ames and live in the next town over. As I said before, and as I will repeat any time it comes up, for a place that is supposedly doing "everything wrong", there is very little impact on daily life. As in, literally zero. You wear a mask to the store. Other than that, life continues mostly as before. People are in my opinion making a serious mistake holding Iowa up as the picture of failure because Coronavirus is literally a non-event in most people's lives here. I've been told for months now that we're on the cusp of everything going wrong. It's been one big nothing after another.