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Harvard, Oxford, Stanford doctors among leaders of global anti-lockdown movement

• dustinmoris 6y ago
  WHO has also spoken against lockdowns recently and harshly criticised it.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    Citation? I'm finding nothing on their site more recently than August that could even be characterized as criticism, and to call that "harsh" would be wildly overstating the case.
    • vondur 6y ago
      https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus-who-backflips-on-virus-stance-by-condemning-lockdowns/news-story/f2188f2aebff1b7b291b297731c3da74#.rgt2i https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus...
      • throwanem 6y ago
        Yeah, the original appears to be https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/reflections-about-the-middle-path/ https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/reflections-about-t.... Notably, Navarro is explicit in that article about it not being an argument for the let-it-run-wild "herd immunity" approach.
  • cscurmudgeon 6y ago
    Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organiza...
  • verst 6y ago
    They criticized lockdowns as the primary means to control the virus. They didn't argue against the usefulness of lockdowns in themselves. However, lockdowns have significant impact on poor people getting poorer. WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro: > "We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus" > "The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it." > "Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer" > "Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays" > "Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition."
    • tathougies 6y ago
      Well kudos to them for finally seeing reason, but I'm not willing to give them much of a break. They pushed for lockdowns full well knowing all these consequences before hand. Everyone (including myself) who mentioned a few months ago that lockdowns will make the poor poorer and will push large portions of the population into destitution were accused of being anti-science shills who cared more about property than human life. Now the chickens have come home to roost and the WHO has once again demonstrated its lack of understanding of topics beyond the realm of health. In and of itself of course, the WHO not being competent in running a society is not a bad thing -- doctors are not politicians after all -- but what is scary is how much influence they have had making societal decisions extending well beyond medicine.
      • rrss 6y ago
        > Everyone (including myself) who mentioned a few months ago that lockdowns will make the poor poorer Everyone, including the WHO, too. Read the WHO's "COVID-19 Strategy Update" from mid-April. It's pretty clear about the cost of lockdown-esque restrictions. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/covid-strategy-update-14april2020.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/covid-s..., especially page 9.
  • whycombagator 6y ago
    I can’t take the WHO or the CDC very seriously after everything this year. One such example is when both organizations spread fallacies that masks are either not necessary/effective or only necessary in certain settings.
  • rrss 6y ago
    David Nabarro of the WHO said in an interview that lockdowns should not be the primary method of control and that lockdowns should only be used to buy time to develop better strategies to test, trace, and isolate clusters. He mentions Asian countries, Germany, and Canada as some countries that have done this pretty decently. I don't think this is new, controversial, or a "backflip" (as some headlines have claimed). This is pretty much what the general guidance has been since March.
  • brylie 6y ago
    I can't find a source where WHO harshly criticises lockdowns. The recent statement by David Nabarro seems much more nuanced. "We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus ... Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer"
  • vannevar 6y ago
    Sort of. Nabarro criticized the notion of lockdowns as the primary mechanism. His essay on the subject is here: https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/reflections-about-the-middle-path/ https://www.4sd.info/covid-19-narratives/reflections-about-t... In his first point, he notes: "People are encouraged to adopt all precautions all the time. As Tedros of WHO says: ‘Do it All’: physical distancing, proper face-masking, hand/cough/surface hygiene, self-isolating when ill and shielding those most at risk. There should be no exceptions anywhere. This is best achieved through engaging people and trusting them rather than coercion if at all possible." While he encourages voluntary measures rather than coercive ones, he is also clear: there should be no exceptions to mask-wearing and social distancing. That's politically hard to achieve in many countries. Hence, economic lockdowns instead.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  The overwhelming consensus says lockdown. 1% of scientists say don't. So obviously the jury is out...
  • graton 6y ago
    Citations please.
  • jMyles 6y ago
    If I told you a year ago that you'd describe a position as "overwhelming consensus", but that Ioannidis, Katz, Levitt, and Gupta had a different opinion, do you think you'd raise an eyebrow at that? How can it be consensus when most of the top echelon of experts disagree?
    • LatteLazy 6y ago
      There are more than 8 people in the top echelon.
      • jMyles 6y ago
        Of course. And there are a lot more than these four who have been questioning lockdowns from the beginning. The point is: there isn't consensus. There is debate.
    • throwaway2245 6y ago
      It's hardly surprising that a small number of the most privileged academics have taken an anti-lockdown opinion - which is their opinion, not backed by even the simplest credible scientific model. Business as usual is a pretty sweet deal for a professor at one of these universities. They will face absolutely minimal personal risk, and it further benefits them to get publicity by taking a contrary position.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        I think this is deeply unfair to the GB signees. The issue here is not that they have a different "scientific model". They are suggesing giving a different weight to the competing costs of various approaches to covid19. I'm not sure I agree with them, but they're not disputing everybody else's science. They're saying "look, given what we know now, we think that if you rate the impact of the lockdown approach on poor people, and consider that to be a very important factor, you wouldn't see lockdowns as such a good idea". None of that means that they are denying what lockdowns do, or the problems of a no-lockdown approach. They are saying that given a certain set of weights for each component of the consequences of a policy, we should try to avoid lockdowns. You're free (as we all are) to disagree about the weight they choose for each consequence.
• JacksonGariety 6y ago
  Bret Weinstein (the evolutionary biologist) has argued for a new, "brief but intense" lockdown. We know so much more about the virus now than we did back in March, we might yet be able to orchestrate a way to suffocate the virus completely.
  • ragnese 6y ago
    I feel like a lot of scientists have been saying this. Maybe not as explicitly, though, which can be part of the problem. Even Fauci keeps talking about how we didn't really lock down hard enough. It makes sense. If individuals are supposed to quarantine for two weeks when they're exposed, then if everyone quarantined for the same two weeks, it would be gone. Obviously you can't do a true, 100%, lockdown like that, but the logic is there: the harder the lockdown, the shorter it needs to be; the looser the lockdown, the longer it'll be before this thing gets better.
    • JacksonGariety 6y ago
      > Obviously you can't do a true, 100%, lockdown like that If you're willing to ration food and other resources, a lot of options open up. Nobody wants to rip the bandaid off, though, so we're stuck in limbo.
      • ragnese 6y ago
        You can't shutdown hospital ER rooms, etc, though. You can't totally turn off all military bases, 911 dispatchers, fire fighters, etc. The rest of us schmoes, yes.
      • petre 6y ago
        How/where does one lock down homeless people?
        • Alupis 6y ago
          > How/where does one lock down homeless people? In $8,000 per month hotel rooms, of course![1] [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-s-hotels-for-the-homeless-program-is-15598897.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-s-hotels-for...
• Someone1234 6y ago
  It was created by a Koch "economic policy think tank"[2], who regularly argues against climate change[3], the minimum wage, and social safety nets, and isn't focused on medical arguments, but rather economic well-being. It stretches credibility to suggest their primary interests are for the poor all of a sudden. The argument is also predicated on there never being a working vaccine, and herd immunity being the primary mechanism of eventually ending the COVID-19 pandemic/lockdown[0]. > [0]Sunetra Gupta, an infectious disease epidemiologist, has been a critic of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic lockdown strategy, arguing that the cost is too high for the poorest in society. That's an economic argument, not a medical one. Considering at least two vaccines are coming out of stage III trials[1] and may be widely available as early as summer 2021, I'd prefer to wait for that, rather than a scheme hatched by economically interested individuals who want to sacrifice a lot of people for essentially more wealth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Vaccine_candidates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#Vaccine_candi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economic_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economic_Research#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economi...
  • jMyles 6y ago
    Yes, Sunetra Gupta, that rabid death cult capitalist.
  • k4l3 6y ago
    If the poorest in society can no longer buy food or medicine, the problem becomes very medical very quickly.
    • Someone1234 6y ago
      Which is where social safety nets, socialized medicine, and a stronger minimum wage come into play, but this same economic think tank as argued against all of them. They've been on record, numerous times, arguing against benefits to the poor/poorest, and now suddenly we've meant to believe that they're looking out for the poor when it also benefits the wealthiest for the poor to sacrifice themselves? Seems more than a little disingenuous if you look at whom we're discussing here.
• jMyles 6y ago
  > “It hinges on how many deaths we are going to tolerate before we get to a level of herd immunity where we stop transmission,” Rutherford said. “I have to come down on the side of preventing mortality.” I must say I find this perspective difficult to understand - how can this person believe he's on the side of preventing mortality? It appears certain at this point that there is no remaining mathematical possibility for the population-wide mortality rate in the US to end up as low as Sweden, which of course did not close primary schools or engage in any lockdown at all. Sweden is by no means a model response - they did many things wrong. But at a minimum, it's a baseline count, no? If the USA mortality rate is higher, without even accounting for second-order mortality from the lockdowns themselves, then how can the US policy possibly be defended as anti-mortality?
  • ptx 6y ago
    > as low as Sweden As low as only a thousand times higher than Taiwan?
    • jMyles 6y ago
      Yes, that's the point - Sweden is a baseline for what happens with no lockdowns or school closures (but also few other sound counter-measures). The US had lockdowns and fared much worse. Taiwan had no lockdowns or school closures (but also has done some things that Sweden hasn't done, like isolate older populations) and has, so far, done better.
      • lewilewilewi 6y ago
        You can't use Sweden as a counterfactual for the US (or any other country aside from their nearest neighbours) because their culture is so different. Most people in Sweden live by themselves, it's a reasonably socially-distant culture by default, etc. Saying that it is what happens if you don't lockdown or close schools isn't comparing apples with apples.
  • benmmurphy 6y ago
    a simplification of his argument is the end goal for all the policies is currently herd immunity. the problem with the current policy is reaches herd immunity by spreading the virus through both the vulnerable and less vulnerable population. however, they are proposing reaching herd immunity by trying to spread the virus only through the less vulnerable population. because there is different rates of death between the two populations this should lead to less death overall.
• epistasis 6y ago
  There has been something very strange going on at Stanford since this began. Tons of really really bad stats, stuff that should destroy a person's career, even if it wasn't during a global pandemic and the bad stats resulted in the death of people. Politics have overtaken some people's scientific sensibilities. Fortunately there are still lots of great people at Stanford, but they aren't the ones who are going on mass media.
  • aphextron 6y ago
    >Politics have overtaken some people's scientific sensibilities. Fortunately there are still lots of great people at Stanford, but they aren't the ones who are going on mass media. They've always leaned far more conservative than almost any other academic institution I can think of. Probably it's to do with the pervading influence of big business there. The Hoover Institution is one of the oldest conservative think tanks in the US.
    • epistasis 6y ago
      It's weird because I had never heard that Jay Bhattacharya was super political. But early on he designed a study with unethical participant recruitment, juked and terrible stats, to push a bad pre-print for a contrarian number on the death rate that has proven to be very very very wrong. And he went out into media and pushed his bad study, at a crucial time. That the Mercury News is publishing his words is a huge black eye both for Stanford and for the Mercury News. It's clear that his COVID work is not driven by science, but rather strange political beliefs that can not be justified by data. Shameful.
      • bhk 6y ago
        > ... a contrarian number on the death rate that has proven to be very very very wrong. What was that "very very wrong" number? I found [1] from April in which Bhattacharya estimates that the IFR is probably one tenth of the CFR of 3-4%, which would mean an IFR of 0.3-0.4%. That doesn't seem very contrarian or wrong. The CDC in May estimated 0.26% IFR [2]. The WHO just the other day [3] said that 10% of the world's population may have been infected with the virus. They also estimate ~1,000,000 deaths globally. That would imply an IFR much lower than 0.3%. [1] https://padailypost.com/2020/04/06/stanford-experts-say-covid-19-death-estimates-may-be-too-high/ https://padailypost.com/2020/04/06/stanford-experts-say-covi... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/05/fact-check-cdc-estimates-covid-19-death-rate-0-26/5269331002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/05/fac... [3] https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-united-nations-54a3a5869c9ae4ee623497691e796083 https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-united-nat... [4] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20201005-weekly-epi-update-8.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
• unethical_ban 6y ago
  I am okay with qualified medical professionals having a good-faith debate about the broad physical and mental health impacts of lockdowns as it pertains to this particular virus. It is a fair discussion to have. I am not okay with unqualified politicians making inaccurate claims about the virus, and prioritizing economic health in the absence of good governance. I believe there are obvious risks to mental health of adults and children in being isolated from others, unable to socialize with other humans in person. I read recently too, that things like kids in school in person allow teachers and members of the community to be a safe space for children to be seen and essentially monitored for child abuse/poor living conditions. People may go to the doctor less because of fear of the disease, rather than get treatment. It is certainly a balance - we cannot go full "save every possible life" - thus the term "flatten the curve", where the metric for success was not to have absolute minimum deaths, but to preserve the integrity of the health system to best serve all who need emergency care for any reason. There was an article in February called "The Hammer and the Dance" that predicted a cycle of shutdowns and reopenings to balance social interaction and jobs with overriding systemic medical concerns. We are in that now.
  • calpaterson 6y ago
    > I am not okay with unqualified politicians making inaccurate claims about the virus, and prioritizing economic health in the absence of good governance. This sounds a bit like you are raising the qualification barrier to participate in the debate, but only if that person disagrees with you.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • BobbyJo 6y ago
      I think 'inaccurate' was the key word. I think that's a reasonable barrier.
      • young_unixer 6y ago
        Politicians, journalists and the general population make inaccurate claims all the time in both pro-lockdown and anti-lockdown stances.
• erulabs 6y ago
  In business, science, philosophy - the first objective is to define your goals. I find these kinds of papers and the general discussion surrounding lock-downs seem to miss this first step. If the goal is to preserve the maximum number of human lives, lock-downs are probably reasonable (particularly since lives saved keeping the highways closed alone meets or exceeds lives saved from COVID) - this logic also would have probably kept it out of WW2, kept us from sending humans to the moon, etc. If the goal is prevent the maximum damage to the economy possible, then lock-downs should probably be extremely brief and extremely intense. If the goal is maximum human freedom, again, the choices are obvious. Any discussion that doesn't first define the goals is useless with this topic.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Excellent point. Except .. for many individuals and for many groups of humans, goals change as the costs of a given goal become more clear. It's not always possible to state a priori what the goal is, and even after settling on one goal, new reasons (new costs) may appear to push us towards a different goal.
  • thefounder 6y ago
    You compare sending humans to the moon with a pandemic. Same with WW2. Staying out of WW2 didin't guarantee you safety, quite the opposite. There are still many unknowns about the virus impact on health so telling people they should take a chance because it might not be worse than working remotely seems a bit inresponsible. Governments should either impose lock-downs until they find a vaccine or develop ways to "live/work" with the virus(i.e strict measures, keep the virus under control etc), though it's hard if we can't/don't even want to wear a facemask and commander in chief claims the virus is a hoax.
    • stickfigure 6y ago
      Lockdowns don't guarantee safety either; the virus is still out there. And the consequences of lockdowns are material, with a lot of hard-to-quantify downside risk - the black swan case could be "second great depression leading to WW3". It's not obvious which position is the responsible one.
• PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  It is deeply frustrating to me that there doesn't even seem to be agreement on basic facts about sars-cov-2/covid19 yet. Death rate? They're still arguing. Risk of serious complications by age group or complications? Still arguing. Negative impacts of social distancing/lockdown measures? Still arguing. I think it's great that there is an argument about this, but it still feels disappointing that it will still clearly take a lot longer then 10 months to clarify these points to a level where no serious high level medical professional disagrees. In the meantime, I'd also appreciate it if we could get back to a lot more talk of "flatten the curve" in our public discourse. Nobody seems to seriously doubt that at some point almost all humans will be exposed to the virus. The question is how rapidly that happens, and the concomittant impact on health care and the economy if it happens too fast.
  • dustinmoris 6y ago
    I agree with your sentiment. It really shows that COVID-19 has been politicised so much that people can't debate on the topic anymore in good faith, because nobody wants to admit that they might have been wrong. Especially people like Donald Trump make a scientific debate extremely difficult, because he has been undermining the virus from the beginning and even if science was to find that the virus was less dangerous than initially thought many scientists, especially those who had public exposure, wouldn't want to support/admit an idea which could play into Trump's favour. The whole thing is just a bloody mess. > Nobody seems to seriously doubt that at some point almost all humans will be exposed to the virus. Unfortunately there are many people who really believe we can eliminate the virus through strict measures. Just read many responses here on Hacker News and you'll find plenty of those people.
    • argc 6y ago
      This rings true. As soon as it was politicized neither side will budge an inch. And scientific progress requires people being able to admit they were wrong in the face of new evidence. Egos should not be wrapped up in how many feet at which social distancing is effective and how effective masks are and when lockdowns should be enforced or let up. Its really unfortunate and, in my opinion, goes to show the two party system is bad for democracy, science, progress, etc. We need more polictical parties and ranked choice voting, and less blind following of one's parties ideals/agenda/candidates.
• devwastaken 6y ago
  "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk" This flies in the face of rationality. You don't just get sick for a day and gain herd immunity. You are sick and contagious for weeks, you then infect other people whom go out and infect other people. Do these doctors seriously believe people at risk can just isolate themselves from the world? Most don't even realize they're at risk. If you want to put that risk of infection and death onto people then say it, but don't try to sugar coat it like this is a good idea that will protect everyone. If anything it's necessary to keep markets afloat and various economies from failing.
  • istorical 6y ago
    It would seem you are perhaps not giving them credit for their "better protecting those who are at highest risk" statement. Without knowing the specifics of their plan, perhaps it would cost less to simply give all high risks populations a stipend and highly controlled housing and months of prepackaged food supplies / shelf stable foods than to continue to keep large sectors of the economy closed. In essence, "here are all the essentials for life, please sequester. if you cannot sequester and require assistance, contact _____".
• vessenes 6y ago
  These calls for a certain sort of action are very hard to parse properly and assess, even if we could all agree on an assessment mechanism (itself also almost impossible). I’m personally skeptical of these minority-report PhD calls to action because I think they prescribe a direction rather than raising the actual things to be considered by local jurisdictions to make a good decision. And it’s really hard to even get agreement on what to consider in order to decide! For instance, a strict utilitarian assessment needs to consider (and opine) on the following questions: * Does full lockdown, which it is agreed would reduce COVID deaths, increase or reduce net deaths over the same period in all cause mortality (poverty, depression, abuse, etc)? * Does full lockdown increase or reduce net deaths over some longer period of time for all cause mortality? Then we get to the really hard stuff, in two directions: first, cultural: * Will full lockdown + contact tracing be implementable in the US / UK? * If so, are the privacy and government centralization harms worth the benefit? * If not, are the privacy, government centralization, and mortality related harms / benefits worth the tradeoff? Second, in ‘softer’ terms: * Will lockdown disadvantage certain members of society? (see the “K shaped recover” for lots on this. * Are those harms short or long term, and are they worth the lifesaving that (may/will/definitely will/probably won’t) result? Again, this is all presuming we agree to be utilitarian about this, (which I am not particularly inclined to be personally). And, crucially, the answers to these questions is going to vary based on how much control a given government has right now, how much trust citizens have in their governments, how good the social safety net is, how protected / enforceable the borders surrounding the lockdown are — it’s impossible to get a global answer here.
  • verdverm 6y ago
    There are constitutional questions as well. The US Constitution has no clauses which allow for its suspension in an emergency. Executive branches have some ability for short periods of time. There are some instances & cases (like the Japanese internment camps in the US during WW2) that are interesting to consider in context with this.
    • vessenes 6y ago
      Yeah exactly. I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast the two countries that have done best with this: China and New Zealand. China is high control and high trust (mostly) and well controlled border , New Zealand is like mid to low control but very high trust, and it has a perfectly defined and controlled border. US is (broadly) low control, low trust, net importer with large land borders and neighboring countries by sea, so it’s a much harder problem even if you had consistent messaging and planning from the top.
• jrochkind1 6y ago
  It's a huge mistake to think the choices are "lockdown" or nothing. We should stop talking about "lockdowns", and possibly never should have thought that way. The question is over restrictions, WHAT restrictions should we have, what alterations to usual way of doing things. For instance, do you know Sweden, all along and still now, was in fact prohibiting gatherings of over 50 people, with criminal penalties for violating? Schools for children over 16 were closed. Social distancing was encouraged. Sweden didn't actually do particularly well -- although they have done BETTER than the U.S. in deaths per 100k population. But however poorly or well they did, contrary to the narrative, they in fact made major changes to social life, and in the end may have controlled social distancing BETTER than the US! (through a combination of legal restrictions and voluntary compliance, compared to the U.S. piecemeal, ever-changing, lockdown-then-nothing low-compliance environment). So it is definitely a problem to think that our choices are a total lockdown which can reduce all risks to zero (unsustainable and not actually POSSIBLE; quotes about "which grandparents are going to die" suggest that if we do things right it will be no grandparents, which is unfortunately not true) -- and doing virtually nothing except maybe some half-hearted mask-wearing, which will result in years of ongoing massive illnesses (including possibly long-lasting chronic illness) and deaths. In fact, we have to figure out how to do restrictions RIGHT. restrictions that are sustainable for the long-haul (becuase in fact this is going to be something we're dealing with for years, there is no deus ex machina vaccine miracle that will put things back to how they were), and that optimize for minimal infection with maximal social life. (In normal life, I have trouble explaining what I mean by 'optimizing' like this, it's nice to be talking on HN in an engineering culture that will immediately understand what i mean). The US doesn't seem any closer to being motivated to do that though. And I"m not sure this letter actually helps,this comes across as just another allegience in the "do everything or do nothing" weird public health culture wars, which are not serving us. (For instance, "Herd immunity" is mostly not a useful thing to be thinking about here, and mentioning it just seems like signaling a 'do nothing' allegiance or implying that intentionally increasing infection rates is somehow a good thing, which it is not, unless you like years of ongoing chronic illnesses and deaths).
  • gpderetta 6y ago
    Yes, it seems to me that total lockdown is the last resort of the unprepared.
• lozaning 6y ago
  "Paulette Altmaier, a former Cisco Systems vice president and philanthropist who criticized Santa Clara County’s slow reopening in a full-page newspaper ad in May, found it refreshing." Honestly Im not sure I'm trust anyone who has the money to be placing full page ads in papers to be looking out for me. Oh what do you know....after googling it it turns out this person is associated with The Federalist.
• jennyyang 6y ago
  To a large degree, this makes sense. In the UK, 75% of deaths are people aged 75 and older. I'm not sure if its the same age profile in the US but I would think yes. Even here in the Bay Area, the death rate is about 0.5% for everyone below the age of 60. If we lock down those over 60, and let everyone else live with masks and social distancing, the infection rate may skyrocket but the hospitalization and death rates will plummet. This is basically what we are seeing globally now, where the infection rate is higher than in March but death rates are much lower. Granted, there were less tests being run so that makes things hard to compare. Also, the bigger problem is those that need to take care of their parents who are in this age group. The infectiousness is so high that if the children get sick, the parents will definitely get sick. So this is the biggest quagmire, that entire families will become isolated to protect the parents. It's not a perfect solution but better on a percentage basis for the entire country than locking down everyone, even though the risk profiles are drastically different.
  • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    How do nursing homes continue to operate in this scenario? I hear a lot of people talking about this kind of shield the vulnerable approach, but no-one who can answer the question of how nursing homes work in this condition.
    • clairity 6y ago
      you put them in a government-aided bubble.
    • DuskStar 6y ago
      Thus far? Nursing homes have operated as 'places people go to die'. COVID has just made those deaths a little faster. In all seriousness, taking any amount of effort to protect nursing homes would be better than what we have right now. Like, "stop sending COVID patients to nursing homes" levels of effort. (Thanks, NY and MI - plus others I'm sure)
      • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
• martingoodson 6y ago
  I don't understand why people are still taking Sunetra Gupta seriously, Oxford or not. She predicted that half the UK population may have already had COVID-19, back in March. Even as late as May, the true figure was less than 7%. I wrote about this in this post, which was discussed here on HN at the time: https://rssdss.design.blog/2020/03/31/all-models-are-wrong-but-some-are-completely-wrong/ https://rssdss.design.blog/2020/03/31/all-models-are-wrong-b...
  • ketamine__ 6y ago
    People in public health have made a lot of bad calls and predictions as well. That's the nature of the virus. We just don't know.
  • nradov 6y ago
    We don't actually know the true figure of how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. The antibody assays used in most population studies miss many of the mild cases. This is naturally difficult to quantify. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3364 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3364
    • IshKebab 6y ago
      You can infer it from models though. If you know the R number, fatality rate, and death rates you can fit it all to a model and estimate how many people have been infected. Not as simple as that, but my point is that testing people isn't the only method, so imperfect tests don't mean that we definitely don't know the answer. This is the best one I've seen for the UK - they just updated it today and estimate that 9-15% of people in England have been infected. https://joshuablake.github.io/public-RTM-reports/iframe.html https://joshuablake.github.io/public-RTM-reports/iframe.html
      • nradov 6y ago
        No you can't infer the infection rate from models. That's circular logic. You have to accurately measure the infection rate first before you can calculate the fatality rate. All of the existing tests have a fairly high false negative rate. So we can only calculate the lower bound on infections; the upper bound remains unknown.
• grumple 6y ago
  Interesting points to note: 1) This declaration was made at a conference on economics. That makes the motivations seem like they are economic in nature, not driven by medical motivations. 2) It isn't clear to me that these doctors are experts on coronavirus. Only one is mentioned as currently practicing. As I understand it, death isn't the only negative consequence associated with coronavirus. Their declaration seems to ignore this and only seems to be based on a meta-analysis of death rates. 3) We do not currently have a lockdown. We have some restrictions in place. Their declaration is not just against lockdowns, it's against gathering restrictions, masks, etc.
• FranklinMaillot 6y ago
  Here is a wired article about the scientific consensus on this issue: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration-herd-immunity-scientific-divide https://www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration... "The project was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libertarian think tank funded by billionaire Charles Koch's conservative Koch Foundation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration The Koch brothers are known for financing climate change deniers.
• moosey 6y ago
  For the as long as I've been alive, the human collective has destroyed natural areas, polluted, and harmed human populations that were unable to defend themselves, all in the interest of serving "the economy". Well, those ideals have come home for many parts of the world. Imperialism and disregard for human welfare will now serve "the economy", as we are seeing now in the United States. I find it ethically abhorrent, but humans are humans.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  "The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), at whose meeting the declaration was launched, has been described as a libertarian thinktank that has received funding from the Koch Foundation and has previously supported climate change denial.[8][7]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrington_Declaration
• glasss 6y ago
  No one is denying the negative effects (economic, educational, mental) of such serious lockdowns. It seems that this group is making a claim that if we just take extra caution with the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, the rest of us can get back to relatively normal. I think this claim is reasonable and I would normally agree. The issue is that it is very clear, at least in the US, this just is not reality. We would absolutely screw this up and kill way more people if we didn't have these training wheels on.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    > We would absolutely screw this up and kill way more people if we didn't have these training wheels on. Who is this "we" you speak of? Do you include yourself in this group of people that need training wheels? Or do you think you yourself are perfectly capable of doing it right but those other deplorables are not? I don't need training wheels, and I don't expect any adult citizen of a free country to need them either. I think the majority of people have far more common sense and desire not to hurt others than they are being given credit for. Unfortunately, the media focuses on the outliers that don't have those qualities and makes everyone think everyone else is like that. That is doing our society a serious disservice.
    • glasss 6y ago
      Oh yea I absolutely need these training wheels. I am fully aware that if all of the restaurants, bars, or other activities that I love going to were open and operating that I probably wouldn't be able to resist going "just this once". The issue is not people's common sense or desire to not hurt others. The nature of this issue doesn't lend itself to being stopped just through common sense - you can transmit this disease for days without realizing it. Common sense says don't play with fire. It doesn't say maybe you shouldn't go see grandma after the pumpkin patch for 7 days.
      • pdonis 6y ago
        > Oh yea I absolutely need these training wheels. Well, I don't, so please don't say "we" need them. > The nature of this issue doesn't lend itself to being stopped just through common sense Maybe I should have said "common sense and discipline". Apparently you are aware that you shouldn't do certain things, but you don't have the discipline to not do them. This is going to sound harsh, but discipline is part of being an adult just as much as common sense is. If it is really true (I'm not sure it is, but let's assume it is here for the sake of argument) that most people in the US are more like you than like me, unable to exercise the required discipline in a situation like this, then that is a very, very bad thing for the US, because you can't have a free society if its citizens lack the discipline to do what they know is the right thing to do. And that puts all of us at the mercy of whatever the idiots in positions of power want to do to us in the name of "protecting our safety". I don't want to live in that kind of country. Do you? Think carefully.
• dekhn 6y ago
  What will ultimately hurt the establishment (by which I mean mainstream scientists and public health leaders) is this attitude: """“Whose grandmother and grandfather and family members are you willing to sacrifice for this stupid idea?” asked Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith, """ That's not an acceptable way to engage with good-faith scientists at major institutions. It's an appeal to emotion as well as an implication of stupidity on your opponent. I've noticed this behavior among a wide range of mainstream scientists and public health leaders too- literally mocking people who disagree with their policies. This will hurt the credibility of these scientists, especially if, in retrospect (when we have the time and luxury to study the public health response to COVID in detail), we find out that decisions led to suboptimal outcomes. It's far better to project humility, stand by your decision, but be willing to admit when you're wrong, and adapt.
  • wonnage 6y ago
    They're not good-faith scientists. Bhattacharya is a co-author of the widely debunked Stanford seroprevalence study. Kulldorff doesn't believe in child-to-adult transmission. I think this is an appropriate response.
    • dekhn 6y ago
      I do agree their scientific positions are tenuous, but having worked in a few scientific fields where the mainstream ultimately was proved completely and totally wrong (RNA can be an enzyme, the ribosome is an RNA machine) I've learned that even scientists who appear to be "not good faith" may be as ethical and as intelligent as the people they were disagreeing with. I wouldn't classify Bhattacharya in the same bin as Peter Deusberg (well known virologist who insisteted that HIV transmission did not cause AIDS).
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• cm2187 6y ago
  I am surprised there isn’t a discussion on the effectiveness of lockdowns. For instance there is a surprising result coming from large serology studies in Spain and Italy, that outside of health workers, people who were locked down have been infected at the same rate than essential workers who were not locked down. Also the shape and timing of the Swedish infections is very similar to other european countries, suggesting the peak was due to the natural evolution of the epidemic rather than lockdowns. I don’t think this data is compatible with lockdowns being effective, which should be a key issue given all the consequences of lockdowns.
  • lbeltrame 6y ago
    The serology studies in Italy are unfortunately underpowered because of a dumb decision: any person positive with IgG (which appear after or very close to the end of the infectious period) would have to quarantine then wait for a double negative PCR test. Thanks to this, only half of the expected people participated.
    • cm2187 6y ago
      But surely that would affect both populations (locked down/not locked down) equally
  • atemerev 6y ago
    Well, lockdowns definitely worked, as there was significant decrease in the number of cases afterwards. Yes, it was a brute force solution that nobody liked. Yes, epidemiologists and politicians still retain it as the last possible resort. But rest assured everything else will be tried before that. Nobody likes lockdowns. We medical researchers had to stay home like everybody else, and we didn't like that a bit.
    • akvadrako 6y ago
      Sorry, but your logic is not complete. There were reductions of cases in places without lockdowns, as much as that existed. You can’t just say I used anti-shark spray after I was bit; since I didn’t get bit again it must have worked.
• coding123 6y ago
  I've had 2 panic attacks (literally couldn't move my fingers and arms thought I was dying - went to the ER for this), and probably 20 mild to severe anxiety attacks since April. Before Covid, I have never experienced anxiety or panic, in my life, ever. The anxiety attacks are pretty much: My nose is clogged, I might have covid, can I breath, oh my god, my breathing is constricted a little. Are my fingers turning blue? Can you look at my face and tell me if my face is drooping? Can I still smell things? (pulls out super strength Oregano Oil - OMG it's not as strong any more - am I losing my smell). I'm a man. I'm 40 years old (soon 41). All my life I've been super healthy - no problems. I would never have predicted I would be this scared of something in my life. My wife and I are planning on trying to go back to normal soon. We're going to start getting take-out food to start, still washing hands. I don't want to live the rest of my life like this, and I think now is the time to go closer to how life was before - just with some modifications. Just not as many modifications as we're under now. If I don't change, the anxiety may kill me.
  • graeme 6y ago
    A few things might help you deal with the anxiety: * There seems to be basically no fomite risk, at least in a home setting * A small number of specific spaces are especially prone to spread. The japanese warn of the three c’s: closed spaces, crowds, close contact. So like don’t go to a bar, but do go to a library where everybody has masks. Or do do go a park where everything is ventilated * Lots of cases may be asymptomatic. But if you get an asymptomatic infection, who cares? People aren’t reporting their smell is a bit diminished. They’re reporting it is temporarily gone. It’ll be pretty bloody obvious. To be frank, it sounds like you have inaccurately weighed up symptoms and transmission methods. This has led to a lot of behaviours in the physical world which reinforce your anxiety, but give you a reinforced inaccurate view of the state of the world. I’ve read lots of covid papers. Have not heard of drooping face as a common sign. I live in a completely locked down area with a surging virus count. And I’m pretty cautious....about a small set of activities which are highly risky. I’m not however worried in general, as the transmission vectors seem pretty known and there’s a whole swath of things I can do that are basically zero risk. To give an analogy, it’s like you’re worried about a frame crushing car crash while driving in a school zone. Or fiddling with your seatbelt tightness and worried it may not be optimal for safety, when the main determinants of car safety are actually personal alertness, time of day, etc. But if you adopted a whole bunch of wrong behaviours while driving a car it would absolutely reinforce anxiety! To some extent anxiety is an irrational process. But I do think it has some basis in the physical world and by really going over what risks are and what risks aren’t you can tame it and reason with it somewhat. Good luck!
• immmmmm 6y ago
  Am I the only person shocked there is absolutely no reference to scientific work in their text? For instance, a question: what do we do of people without preexisting conditions that recover very badly from the infection: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/brain-fog-the-people-struggling-to-think-clearly-months-after-covid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/brain-fog-the-...
• oblib 6y ago
  We're heading into the cool/cold season when people will be gathering more indoors and the infection rate will likely rise, and potentially just months away from being able to mass produce an effective vaccine. It seems clear to me this is not the time to relax precautionary measures.
  • oblib 6y ago
    I know this is a couple days old and buried but for those who down voted my take on this subject, this is one of the headlines on AP today:"More masks, less play: Europe tightens rules as virus surges" Since this pandemic began this surge has been predicted by most all of those who've studied pandemics and they've been pretty much spot on with what we should expect. https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-geneva-france-europe-40521fb6080e35bc4aae4144bf3652bc https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pandemics-geneva-f...
• jimnotgym 6y ago
  What a bunch of nobodies. Dr Person Fakename and Dr Johnny Fartpants also made a declaration. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-herd-immunity-great-barrington-declaration-scientists-signatures-fake-names-b912778.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-...
• carapace 6y ago
  Item: I don't want my 81-year old mother to die in agony drowning in her own dissolving lungs. Item: This isn't the last time a nasty virus will appear and spread. Item: The economy isn't crashing. Things are open, people can buy stuff, etc. You can buy toilet paper. Item: For most of human history (millions of years) you would have been in a small band of maybe twelve to twenty-five people. You would have encountered other bands only rarely. Crowds are abnormal, "isolation" is highly relative. What am I saying? I don't really know, exactly. I am pretty sure that things are not going back to "normal" any time soon, and they may never go back. Mass international travel is the kind of thing that just may not work with the reality of human infectious agents like viruses. If we keep flying all over the place, and encroaching on more and more places where these viruses hang out (not to mention new old viruses thawing out of melting permafrost), we are going to have more global epidemics and pandemics. This isn't Star Trek where the transporter beam magically whisks away the bad germs. There's a reason why you're made of lots of tiny cells rather than one big bag of goo, eh?
  • throwmeaway_pls 6y ago
    The eugenic impulse to eliminate disease has lead us down many a dark path.
    • carapace 6y ago
      Has it? You're not being very clear.
      • throwmeaway_pls 6y ago
        Yes. Look up the “Declaration of Helsinki.”
        • carapace 6y ago
          > The Declaration of Helsinki (DoH, Finnish: Helsingin julistus, Swedish: Helsingforsdeklarationen) is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed for the medical community by the World Medical Association (WMA).[1] It is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Helsinki That one? You'll have to be more specific. I didn't read the whole article but it doesn't sound like any "dark path" to me.
• dqpb 6y ago
  This pandemic is a good case study for why we need a new model of governance. Consider this hypothetical system: 1. Data is collected 2. Dynamics are modeled (population health, hospital capacity, economic output, etc.) 3. Problem constraints are well posed 4. Computational resources are allocated to solve for the constraints In my mind, this would be the rational approach to solving this problem. Steps 1, 2, and 4 should be apolitical. Only step 3 is political since many people would disagree on what should be optimized. Step 3 is what people should debate. Steps 1, 2, 4 should be transparently managed by public+private working groups of experts. Instead, the public and political discourse around lockdown and data collection are proxies for an informal debate around whether population health or economy is more important, which is not a well-posed problem, nor is it an effective way to engineer a solution.
• tinus_hn 6y ago
  Unfortunately the mere mention of herd immunity is a faux pas that will lead to censure.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  Given the number of covid denial replies I've had here, its EITHER the case that people really think the majority of EXPERTS world wide are conspiring against them OR were being AstroTurfed Either is very concerning.
• PupPrints 6y ago
  > …reaching herd immunity… I'm gonna stop you right there, because it's looking less and less likely that there will be such a thing. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/06/flurry-of-coronavirus-reinfections-leaves-scientists-puzzled https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/06/flurry-of-coro...
• unabst 6y ago
  How is herd immunity viable? The policy literally would translate to "let the careless infect themselves, and with enough of them infected the virus would go away." So if we were all careful, herd immunity would be delayed. And if the careless are out and about, the vulnerable become especially vulnerable in public, and anyone who might come in contact with someone vulnerable, and anyone who didn't know they were vulnerable. And we'd all suffer from the prolonged effects of the disease which may include breathing issues and even mental health issues. If herd immunity truly was viable it should be made policy and the answer would be to deliberately infect everyone deemed "safe" and get it over with. Yet the argument is "for mental health" or "for the economy" and never "because it's the right path". No one is 100% "safe" and deliberate infection is unethical even in a medical academic context. Until these two facts change, herd immunity is out of the picture, and so should be these doctors. I'd be interested to know if these doctors were ever infected and if not willing to infect themselves. Otherwise, they're putting themselves in a special class as non-participating beneficiaries only.
• o_class_star 6y ago
  I've been studying this since March, and the main issue is that lockdowns, in a capitalist economy, don't work nearly as well as one might expect. That's why, as the article notes, Brazil and Peru had lockdowns but still got ravaged by the virus... and the US and UK did poorly as well. The problem isn't "lockdowns bad". It's poverty. Sweden is a bit of an outlier. They're a socialist country (by 2020 standards) that screwed up for non-economic reasons. They just got it wrong. What most people who are middle-class or higher don't understand is hustle. People fetishize that word in Silicon Valley, but hustle is the principle of needing money to live and doing whatever it takes to get it. It isn't pretty, but it's how the other half lives. These people don't have savings because their wages are too low, so when they have an unexpected expense, it fucks them up. Hustle is: Pawning possessions. Odd jobs. Short cons. Gig labor. Petty crime. Panhandling. Whatever it takes, in truth. These people aren't morally worse than us middle-class salarymen and -women. They just have shittier options. Hustle is a force that governments can't really control (unless they go hard core, like China) because these people are usually quite good at evading authorities. Hustle keeps afloat the people the system has failed. It keeps them from dying. It also, in a pandemic, spreads disease. It's why compliance has been so atrocious in the US and UK and Peru. Do you need to "lock down" sufficient to get R below 1? Unless you want a humanitarian catastrophe, the answer is yes. Unfortunately, if your economic system runs on the "don't work, don't eat" model, you are going to see so much hustle (noncompliance, to use a more distant bourgeois word) that even your most ardent efforts are likely to have only moderate results. That doesn't mean they aren't working, and it doesn't mean you don't need them. It's still better to have R at 1.1 than at 2.5. But the fact is that an economic system like US-style extreme capitalism isn't built to handle anything out-of-context like a pandemic.
  • nradov 6y ago
    Sweden is not a socialist country by any reasonable standard. The workers generally don't own the means of production. It is a capitalist country with a fairly strong safety net.
• xenocyon 6y ago
  The article doesn't mention that this is a project sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch Foundation. Bhattacharya himself, while a legitimate doctor and medical researcher, was also formerly affiliated with the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank. Also: > More than 100 medical and health experts at Stanford signed a letter condemning their colleague’s “falsehoods and misrepresentations,” saying they “undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy.” (source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/herd-immunity-bhattacharya-atlas-barrington https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/herd-immu...)
• zby 6y ago
  The problem with the plan proposed here is the same as with the plan we have now (in most Western countries) - it requires disciplined compliance from the population. The East Asian examples show that with some discipline the conventional plan can also work. The isolation of vulnerable individuals is not an easy task - there are lots of them, and the isolation would require a lot of cooperation from a huge part of the whole population. If we cannot follow the conventional plan - then we cannot follow this plan, at least if we are serious about the part of isolating the vulnerable part of the population. I don't understand why the Western civilization fails so profoundly at this task - even when we have good examples showing that it can be done. But it is a subject for another discussion (also why the antigen tests have been used so far in such a limited fashion? https://medium.com/@zby/it-is-9-months-now-why-we-have-no-mass-testing-for-sars-cov-2-yet-27b5f409c7d2 https://medium.com/@zby/it-is-9-months-now-why-we-have-no-ma...) - for now we need a plan that would be adjusted to the individualism of the Western world. I believe that it needs to be more bottom up, we should give people more power to self organize and devise new arrangements. For that we need one crucial technology - rapid at home tests (like those proposed at: https://www.rapidtests.org/ https://www.rapidtests.org/, though I am a bigger pessimist at using them in grand top down schemes). In the spring there were ideas about building 'safe bubbles' - by limiting contacts to a few, who would also limit their contacts. This can work much better than it seems - because most of the contacts that can bring us the virus, the long and close contacts, come from our stable social network. These are the people with whom we can negotiate rules and procedures. There were examples of this being done - but the only successful cases were of whole teams who totally isolated themselves. Now with rapid tests this can work for less strict isolation measures - as any intrusions of the virus inside the bubble could be quickly detected.
• eriktrautman 6y ago
  Any article citing Sweden as a failure today indicates they haven’t done their homework. After a brief surge, that country is doing far better than much of Europe and didn’t sacrifice nearly so much of its economy and its peoples’ mental health to do so. That may not be repeatable due to cultural differences, though.
  • atemerev 6y ago
    No, they did not. Right now, Swedish authorities are reconsidering their approach and opting for more strict measures. See https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/it-s-been-so-so-surreal-critics-sweden-s-lax-pandemic-policies-face-fierce-backlash https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/it-s-been-so-so-surr... for the review of what happened there.
    • kevinak 6y ago
      This article doesn’t match with reality. Pretty much none of the restrictions put in place here in Sweden have changed since they were put in place. Swedish authorities haven’t given any sign of wanting to adjust things other than letting the elderly ho outside more. Number of infections have gone up since most people came back from vacation, yet it hasn’t resulted in an increased death rate, see https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/ https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
• atemerev 6y ago
  Okay. An epidemic modeler here. Have to say something about this declaration. First of all, its principal authors are legitimate medical specialists, who happen to hold a contrarian opinion. This is fine. Science doesn't work without discussions and clashes of contradicting point of view. However, the declaration is written in very political, not scientific language. The mention of "herd immunity" doesn't give it any good points, too. Regardless of what anybody might think, most epidemiologists are quite aware that full lockdown is a nuclear option, that will be tried only after all other means have failed. We hate lockdowns just like everybody else. As the nuclear option, it works, but all of us are currently busy trying to figure out anything, really anything, that could bring the reproduction rate below 1 without resorting to a full lockdown. We work long days and weekends for that. So it is quite unfair to blame researchers and politicians for this. Nobody wants it. And just in case — no, you wouldn't want to leave the virus with the reproduction rate > 1 unchecked. With that, sooner or later (but in quite a short time, several months top) medical systems everywhere will be catastrophically overloaded. Then, all the hell breaks loose.
  • kevin_b_er 6y ago
    Because it is a libertarian think tank that gathered these people, is running their website, and likely established the whole thing. The mansion-looking building on the website where these scientist appear to be posing in front of is the HQ of institute. So it is driven by political interests rather than lives. This is just a careful gathering of contrarian scientists so they can make a political declaration. American Institute for Economic Research. They own the website, they hosted and sponsored the scientists, and they're the ones driving this. Likely backed by political interests.
• mcguire 6y ago
  "Great Barrington Declaration" https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ "As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity." Have we established that herd immunity is possible? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00451-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00451-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7 I cannot currently find the link on the (at least) one confirmed case of re-infection. "Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home.* When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.*" I would like to see this "comprehensive and detailed list of measures" before I make up my mind, but the suggestion for retired people does not sound exceptionally feasible. (There are over 50,000,000 people over the age of 65.)
  • lprd 6y ago
    There was an interesting study on the herd immunity threshold, as well as pre-existing immunity posted here about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24504716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24504716 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
• thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
  I'm in Melbourne, Victoria. It feels like we've been unable to visit anybody for about 7 months now. It's hard enough to keep your sanity in check, the major problem is everyone else that has been locked up with you are also having wild mood swings. Some body needs to make a documentary about this experiment going on down here.
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• christkv 6y ago
  I think there is a lot of confusion about what lockdown means. In Spain it meant full stay in your home only one person can go shopping. I don’t think that is what Americans means with lockdown or what other countries define it as.
• Mandatum 6y ago
  I just attended a stadium with 30,000 people - many of which don't wear masks. I had the ability to visit and see my grandma in hospice before her death because visitor restrictions were lifted. The US can allow a quarter of a million people to die alone surrounded by faceless health workers in PPE, but I'm happy to be in a country which doesn't because we went for eradication. And we have much, much less money per capita or social spending than the US - but we still managed to pull it off with the help of our government, military and existing healthcare workers.
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