6 ms·

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 Mar

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...
- Alupis 6y ago
  > 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. Until the next airplane or ship or whatever arrives from any country in the world and has one infected person on it. Then we start all this madness again. The cure cannot be worse than the disease.
  - ragnese 6y ago
    If you read the next sentence you would see that I was obviously not imagining such a thing was possible. I was just talking about the technical/theoretical way the logic works.
easytiger 6y ago
> suffocate the virus completely. Literally impossible
- nkozyra 6y ago
  This is obviously not meant literally, if that's what you're contesting. If your argument is that we cannot remove the vector for viral spread, while technically true, we can have a large enough suppression of spread through isolation that the virus would not have enough human infections to propagate. Animal vectors are a different story, of course, and often are the impetus for larger human infections.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    It is much easier to use pharmacological means for that. You don't fight bacterial pneumonia with good discipline and stern words, you use antibiotics. What will ultimately get out of this problem are drugs (and vaccines). All these non pharmacological interventions are just bandaids.
    - nkozyra 6y ago
      I don't think anyone disputes that vaccines are better but as of today we don't have one.
      - lbeltrame 6y ago
        I didn't say just vaccines. I said pharmacological interventions, which are more than just vaccines. No one worries about a disease if it can be treated. There are two approved drugs so far, with a third under emergency use authorization review right now. These are the way out (with an eventual vaccine afterwards).
        nkozyra 6y ago
        But again, nobody is arguing against that ideal scenario. You compared lockdowns to a bandaid, and I agree. We need bandaids sometimes until we get proper treatment.
rriepe 6y ago
If two weeks lasts for eight months, how long is "brief"?
hourislate 6y ago
Great podcast with a Swedish Emergency Room Doctor. According to the data they reference, Lock downs don't work and there is evidence that this virus is becoming more like the other 4 Corona Viruses in circulation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6IeN6sgJ3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6IeN6sgJ3g
OminousWeapons 6y ago
The question isn't whether lockdowns could work or how to make them work. We know lockdowns can work because China successfully pulled one off at the beginning of this debacle and people there were largely going about their normal lives after about 6 weeks. The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls to actually prosecute a successful lockdown in the Chinese style (no leaving the house more than X times per week and only to perform essential activities, checkpoints, non-voluntary temperature checks, forced quarantines, forced mask usage, arrests for non-compliance, shutdown of every non-essential business, etc). The answer to that is a resounding no.
- JacksonGariety 6y ago
  > The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls... Exactly. Authoritarianism works really well during a pandemic. But it isn't the American "way," so we're stuck with coronavirus.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  What China managed to learn in Wuhan within a matter of weeks was that even a tight lockdown wasn't enough. R was still hovering around 1. Most of the transmission was happening inside homes. The solution was to to implement a central quarantine. If you tested positive, you were not sent home, you were sent to a quarantine facility to get better. This reduced R to about 0.3, and they were able to eradicate the virus in Wuhan. There have been fits and starts for this using empty hotel rooms, but nothing universal. In San Francisco, they offer hotel rooms to the homeless under the idea that they are more likely to catch the virus on the street, but they offer nothing to people who are actually confirmed to be infected. Those people go home and spread it to their family/roommates.
- fma 6y ago
  Even if we don't go extreme to a lockdown, a mandatory mask policy would be more helpful than the situation we are in now.
newcomputer 6y ago
Even if you do dramatically reduce the spread of the virus, that doesn't do anything to solve the problem of lack of immunity. Worse yet with nobody getting exposed to the virus, it will be significantly more difficult to test a vaccine. Overall, this strategy does not seem plausible. It would require participation of every single country in the world otherwise illegal immigrants from Mexico/Cuba/elsewhere could just re-introduce the virus.
asdff 6y ago
We wouldn't even have to do that. PCR test the entire population daily, along with highly enforced quarantine for positive cases until they test negative. If we adopted this approach today, the virus would be eliminated from the U.S. population by Christmas.
thamer 6y ago
It might not even need to be that intense. Dr Fauci recently said in an interview that the U.S. would be in much better shape if everyone wore a mask for 6 weeks to dramatically reduce the spread.

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...
Alupis 6y ago
> 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. Until the next airplane or ship or whatever arrives from any country in the world and has one infected person on it. Then we start all this madness again. The cure cannot be worse than the disease.
- ragnese 6y ago
  If you read the next sentence you would see that I was obviously not imagining such a thing was possible. I was just talking about the technical/theoretical way the logic works.

easytiger 6y ago

> suffocate the virus completely. Literally impossible

nkozyra 6y ago
This is obviously not meant literally, if that's what you're contesting. If your argument is that we cannot remove the vector for viral spread, while technically true, we can have a large enough suppression of spread through isolation that the virus would not have enough human infections to propagate. Animal vectors are a different story, of course, and often are the impetus for larger human infections.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  It is much easier to use pharmacological means for that. You don't fight bacterial pneumonia with good discipline and stern words, you use antibiotics. What will ultimately get out of this problem are drugs (and vaccines). All these non pharmacological interventions are just bandaids.
  - nkozyra 6y ago
    I don't think anyone disputes that vaccines are better but as of today we don't have one.
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      I didn't say just vaccines. I said pharmacological interventions, which are more than just vaccines. No one worries about a disease if it can be treated. There are two approved drugs so far, with a third under emergency use authorization review right now. These are the way out (with an eventual vaccine afterwards).
      - nkozyra 6y ago
        But again, nobody is arguing against that ideal scenario. You compared lockdowns to a bandaid, and I agree. We need bandaids sometimes until we get proper treatment.

rriepe 6y ago

If two weeks lasts for eight months, how long is "brief"?

hourislate 6y ago

Great podcast with a Swedish Emergency Room Doctor. According to the data they reference, Lock downs don't work and there is evidence that this virus is becoming more like the other 4 Corona Viruses in circulation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6IeN6sgJ3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6IeN6sgJ3g

OminousWeapons 6y ago

The question isn't whether lockdowns could work or how to make them work. We know lockdowns can work because China successfully pulled one off at the beginning of this debacle and people there were largely going about their normal lives after about 6 weeks. The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls to actually prosecute a successful lockdown in the Chinese style (no leaving the house more than X times per week and only to perform essential activities, checkpoints, non-voluntary temperature checks, forced quarantines, forced mask usage, arrests for non-compliance, shutdown of every non-essential business, etc). The answer to that is a resounding no.

JacksonGariety 6y ago
> The question is really do politicians in the US have the balls... Exactly. Authoritarianism works really well during a pandemic. But it isn't the American "way," so we're stuck with coronavirus.
cameldrv 6y ago
What China managed to learn in Wuhan within a matter of weeks was that even a tight lockdown wasn't enough. R was still hovering around 1. Most of the transmission was happening inside homes. The solution was to to implement a central quarantine. If you tested positive, you were not sent home, you were sent to a quarantine facility to get better. This reduced R to about 0.3, and they were able to eradicate the virus in Wuhan. There have been fits and starts for this using empty hotel rooms, but nothing universal. In San Francisco, they offer hotel rooms to the homeless under the idea that they are more likely to catch the virus on the street, but they offer nothing to people who are actually confirmed to be infected. Those people go home and spread it to their family/roommates.
fma 6y ago
Even if we don't go extreme to a lockdown, a mandatory mask policy would be more helpful than the situation we are in now.

newcomputer 6y ago

Even if you do dramatically reduce the spread of the virus, that doesn't do anything to solve the problem of lack of immunity. Worse yet with nobody getting exposed to the virus, it will be significantly more difficult to test a vaccine. Overall, this strategy does not seem plausible. It would require participation of every single country in the world otherwise illegal immigrants from Mexico/Cuba/elsewhere could just re-introduce the virus.

asdff 6y ago

We wouldn't even have to do that. PCR test the entire population daily, along with highly enforced quarantine for positive cases until they test negative. If we adopted this approach today, the virus would be eliminated from the U.S. population by Christmas.

thamer 6y ago

It might not even need to be that intense. Dr Fauci recently said in an interview that the U.S. would be in much better shape if everyone wore a mask for 6 weeks to dramatically reduce the spread.