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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 s
by 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 agoExcellent 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 agoYou 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 agoLockdowns 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.
- thefounder 6y ago>>It's not obvious which position is the responsible one. I think the responsible position would be to provide the people with a safe environment where they can work and live. Perhaps also working a bit on the inequality issue. It's clear to me that with or without the lackdowns the worst affected are the already poor people working in the front line.
- programmarchy 6y agoYes, and have different goals, hence the politics.
- gadders 6y agoIt's not definitively the case that lockdowns preserve the maximum number of human lives if the disease is not very lethal. There are plenty of stories in the UK of people having their cancer treatments postponed due to lockdown, and their cancer now being terminal.
- noahys 6y ago"(particularly since lives saved keeping the highways closed alone meets or exceeds lives saved from COVID)" Where are you getting that figure? Wikipedia lists 40k US deaths from all traffic-related causes in 2018 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...), but 200k+ from 8 months of COVID?
- erulabs 6y agoYou're correct, but I meant - lives saved due to lock-down. If the lock-down meant 0 people died from COVID, then you're totally correct. Was slightly hyperbolic I suppose :)
- cameldrv 6y agoHowever you're making the assumption that lives saved by the lockdown < lives lost even with the lockdown. If the lockdown had prevented all deaths from COVID, you'd be using this logic to say it was completely worthless. By this logic, the more effective the lockdown is, the more you argue how unnecessary it is.
- fwip 6y agoWithout lockdown, we'd be counting US deaths in millions.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoNot sure why you are being down voted, models did show 2 million deaths in the US by now.
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y agoYou could argue that traffic fatalities tend to be younger victims, at least compared to COVID victims. So the number of life-years might be a better comparison. But this still doesn't resolve fundamental questions, like how much "disability" does a young person experience in lockdown? Or how much suffering does an older COVID victim experience? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year
- hardtke 6y agoThe first wave of lockdowns had a clear goal: "flatten the curve" to prevent hospital capacity shortages, thereby preventing extra deaths that would be entirely attributable to resource shortages. In terms of meeting this goal, lockdown 1.0 was successful.
- briefcomment 6y agoIn the case of COVID, why can't individuals choose goals for themselves? It seems possible to allow those who want to take their chances with COVID in order to maintain personal liberties and/or economic viability to function as usual, while assisting those who want to prioritize virus avoidance (e.g. subsidized food delivery services for the elderly, a modest stipend for those who want to avoid the workplace for a while, etc.). Is this too complicated to implement? I would think this more nuanced approach has way more upside than going 100% one way or the other.
- thinkharderdev 6y agoI think the issue is that it is a collective action problem. No one person's actions on the margin are really making much difference to society-wide spread and assuming you don't want to completely isolate yourself indefinitely, then your personal risk of contracting COVID is very sensitive to the level of infection in the society around you. In theory, we could achieve a higher average standard of living all around if we could coordinate everyone reducing their risky behavior by 30% (a number I just made up). This is the point that I think often gets missed in the discussion around "lockdowns". I would bet that we could actually reduce the spread of COVID quite substantially without a massive change in the living standards of most people. The problem is that there is a segment of people who refuse to do anything at all to reduce the risk of transmission so we end up having to take more extreme actions to compensate.
- ghufran_syed 6y ago>The problem is that there is a segment of people who refuse to do anything at all to reduce the risk of transmission so we end up having to take more extreme actions to compensate I think you might be missing the fact that if this segment of the population does increase transmission, it can only do so by the members of that segment getting infected, and that can only happen once per person as far as we know. So over time, you would expect that group to be less and less prone to infection, and therefore less able to pass on infection to others. So the more time goes by, the weaker this argument becomes.
- revax 6y agoIMO even with those goals stated it is not clear what course of actions should be taken. Because they could be all linked together, a crumble economy might kill more people you are trying to save [1]. A right balance needs to be found. [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-downturn-excess-cancer-deaths-atun/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/economic-do...
- xipho 6y ago> If the goal is maximum human freedom, again, the choices are obvious. Really, do explain please. First I'd like to know what you mean by freedom. I assume you're also considering that a) the dead have no freedom, and b) those incapacitated in some/many ways (economic, physical etc.) are definitely going to have less freedom in the long term.I think it is anything but obvious how to maximize freedom in general, let alone with respect to a pandemic.
- nopriorarrests 6y agoFreedom is having a choice. Between, say, having fun in overcrowded bar till 3am or staying in your apartment alone, ordering delivery and watching netflix. Quite simple.
- jjnoakes 6y agoChoice is not that simple when it affects others.
- nopriorarrests 6y agoI never said it simple. Choosing between driving dodge ram or prius also affects others, because pollution. All I said that freedom is having mutiple choices.
- ryeguy_24 6y agoThis statement might be applicable to so many things in today's tumultuous world (e.g. politics). Goals are just not defined anywhere. Maybe this is the reason we argue so much. Some people want guns, others want to ban them. The reason we can't get to a consensus is that we likely all have different goals.
- mdifrgechd 6y agoExactly. That is why we have politicians - they are (or could be) our representatives to propose compromises that try to consider everybody's goals. Scientific or technical inputs should be inputs to these proposals, to identify causal effects, but they should never be directly dictating the political choices that get made. Technocracy doesn't work, precisely because the technician focuses most on their area of expertise, and not on how it interacts with our society. We need strong politicians to navigate compromises.
- Slikey 6y agoThis is a very good point, but sadly in reality it seems these goals are purposely hidden or obscured for subjective gain or unpopluar ideological reasons. Initially the pandemic response was about "not overwhelming the hospitals", but it seems some politicians disagree on the fundamental direction. I'd just be happy if my government had a clear policy on their goal. Do they want to reduce infections or do they want to prevent overwhelming emergency services? Obviously my knowledge on facts is very limitted, I simply don't have time for that, but the news still report lots of capacity in hospitals.
- mcguire 6y ago"Do they want to reduce infections or do they want to prevent overwhelming emergency services?" How do those two policies differ? Well, I mean, there's the obvious: don't treat people with COVID. But that seems sub-optimal.
- Slikey 6y agoWell there are three possibilities 1) Reduce Infections: You try to get infections down to zero. 2) Ignore Infections: Usually used for common cold. People even go to work with it. 3) Limit Infections: You dynamically scale meassures to stay at a defined limit. In this case a number derived from hospital capacity.
- mcguire 6y ago"Reduce X" doesn't necessarily mean "I will only be satisfied if X is 0."
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI think this is an excellent point, and goes to some of my frustration as to how I think the "goal posts" have been moved. I completely agree with the "flatten the curve" mindset of preventing our heath systems from being overwhelmed. But we've been far under that where I live for months now, and it seems like the view from the left (which I usually tend to agree with) is now that we should prevent any transmission and essentially be in our current state of lockdown (which, granted, where I live isn't super strict, but still very few people are going into the office and nobody I know is meeting in groups) until there is a vaccine.
- mcguire 6y agoI don't know what you mean by "lockdown" since masks, hand washing, and social distance is not really what I'd consider a "lockdown", but... What happens when you say, "flatting the curve worked!" and relax all the recommendations and requirements? The infection numbers go exponential again, right?
- nradov 6y agoFlorida relaxed all state level recommendations and requirements on September 25. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/09/25/916969969/floridas-governor-lifts-all-covid-19-restrictions-on-businesses-statewide https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0... The infection numbers didn't go exponential. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/
- yongjik 6y agoReality is rarely that clear-cut. E.g., imagine an airplane. If the goal is maximum range, we should get rid of first-class seats, life vests, and all sort of useless amenities. (Do we really need four lavatories?) If the goal is maximum comfort, we should get rid of all economy seats. No more affordable plane tickets. If the goal is maximum speed, we should retire our fleet and re-introduce supersonic flights. Those suckers living under a frequent flight path can use earplugs. If the goal is maximum safety... What I'm saying is: every time we say "our goal is X", it implies an additional condition "assuming other things stay reasonable." Of course, something like COVID is not within anyone's living memory, so it's hard to build a consensus on what's reasonable - but we can't just short-circuit it by saying "Just say what you want and stick to it!"
- argc 6y agoOur goal should be a nice balance that is preferable to me.
- aphextron 6y ago>Our goal should be a nice balance that is preferable to me. You've just described politics.
- formercoder 6y agoThe goal of airlines is to maximize shareholder returns subject to regulatory constraints and physics.
- galkk 6y agoOr we do specialized solutions for each of the goals.
- thu2111 6y agoThe reaction to COVID is not within anyone's living memory. COVID-like events definitely are. 2009 Swine Flu, predicted to be hugely deadly, WHO changed the definition of pandemic so they could declare it one. Ended up being a non-event (nb: numbers are not comparable as there was no mass testing programme like today). In many countries excess deaths are no different to previous years. For instance in Switzerland cumulative death in 2020 is by now the same as long term expectation. Fewer people died at the start of the year than average, then it went above average during COVID, then it came back to the long term average slowly over the summer. COVID is nothing more than a seasonal flu, here. In Germany it's not even that. Excess death for 2020 is smooth and flat, compared to 2018 where it saw bigger spikes. Also Swine-Flu like. Even in the UK, which has largely shut down its health care system and imposed draconian lockdowns, excess deaths matched 1999/2000 which were not notable years. Nobody noticed any unusual levels of death back then. This is why there have been so many people criticising lockdowns so strongly, for such a long time, and now people are paying attention because SCIENTISTS! but you could look at the government sourced data in perspective back in April or May, to understand that the reaction was not proportionate to the threat.
- koonsolo 6y agoI thought the initial goal was to flatten the curve. Which basically means to get an r value of 1. But I guess to reach that, you still need a pretty severe lockdown.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoYeah that's the goal, and you do need a tight lockdown to reach it, but only for a short time (4-8 weeks) if everyone commits to it. That's really not too big a sacrifice to ask to kill an epidemic. It's also clearly direly needed practice for the next, worst epidemic. We got lucky with COVID-19, it's on the mild side of the scale. In a worse case scenario, say Ebola mutates to an airborne strain, the countries and cities that essentially used COVID-19 as a practice run to develop the procedures and social knowledge to quickly shut down an epidemic, will be looking smart. We've known for decades that pandemics are coming, as the world becomes more physically connected. We've written tons of books and made tons of movies about it. Every zombie movie of the past 20yrs is about a viral outbreak. So it's insane that so many Western countries are behaving like idiot children in the face of this entirely predictable and predicted problem.
- maxerickson 6y agoA small number of infected people leads to about the same R as a larger number. It's things like contact tracing and masks and limiting large groups that reduce R without having a lockdown. (I'm talking about R when a small to moderate number of people are infected; the slope of the R vs number infected curve will vary due to many factors)
- viraptor 6y agoFairly severe, but it worked for Australia. Victoria got well defined goals for metro and regional areas. Now regional Vic is more or less open. Metro is close to threshold but lagging with just under 10 cases a day.
- MilnerRoute 6y agoIf the goal is prevent the maximum damage to the economy possible, then lock-downs should probably be extremely brief I respectfully disagree. For a while I've been thinking that's more or less a classic false choice -- this argument that those in the "saving lives" camp are somehow refusing to care about the powerful value in our economy. But I think you save the economy by beating the virus. People won't walk into a crowded and poorly ventilated restaurant until the virus is gone. Anything that prolongs the virus's presence in our country will drag down the economy. I feel like some of the "pro-economy" people aren't sufficiently recognizing that.
- JJzD 6y agoSweden tried to save the economy, but ended up with a similar hit to the economy as other European countries, at a higher cost of lives. Hopefully their second wave has less impact, with more people immune now, but it proves your point. We need to have a basic trust before we spent any money (excluding basic needs of course)
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago> In business, science, philosophy - the first objective is to define your goals. How many times have you seen someone actually write out their utility function? Or agree on a single number on which the results of an A/B test will be based, regardless of other metrics? Defining your goals is an admirable objective, but it's not commonly done to the degree you're proposing. All else equal, we want to preserve the maximum number of human lives, prevent the maximum damage to the economy possible, and provide maximum human freedom. Quantitatively defining the tradeoffs there is basically impossible. What's much more common is proposing a few options, and listing out how each options affects the metrics you care about, then deciding an option. Said more explicitly, it's easier subjectively to pick a point on a rigorously found pareto frontier than to subjectively define a utility function to be rigorously optimized.
- mcguire 6y agoI think you will find that exactly no one's goals are of the form "maximize X without regard to any other factors."
- bagacrap 6y agoWhich, based on GP's logic, would indicate extreme lockdowns are not the right answer. I'm guessing that's their point.
- grawprog 6y agoI don't understand why the goals need to be 'maximum' anything. By it's nature, maximizing for something means something else needs to be completely minimized. Life, society and the world doesn't work like that, regardless of whether there's an extreme event going on. Any goals should include balance and shouldn't just be trying to maximizing one variable. Even using something I personally can't stand as an example, models. In a model, maximizing a variable rarely leads to any desirable outcome and models tend to be a poor reflection of reality as is. Reality is far more complex, having a goal be to maximize for one specific variable means your minimizing other variables that are in many cases complete unknowns. Instead of working towards measured goals designed to minimize overall negative impacts, the reaction has been to maximize for saving as many lives as possible at the expense of all else. The problem is, there's no way to even really be sure what we've done is maximizing the amount of lives saved, but at the same time we've ignored very real negative impacts in this blind rush towards maximizing saving as many lives as possible. And to be honest, from what i've seen on the news, heard people saying, read on comments here...this seems to be the primary motivation behind this goal(or thinking like this) >“Whose grandmother and grandfather and family members are you willing to sacrifice for this stupid idea?” asked Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith, whose administration in March led the Bay Area in imposing the first U.S. lockdown in the pandemic and has since been criticized since for its slow pace of reopening. This is a logical fallacy intended to appeal to emotion. Wide sweeping policy decisions affecting the health and well being of most of society should never be based on emotional appeal.
- siilats 6y agoThe goal is to put weights on all these objectives, sum them up and maximize the sum. Normally the weights are done in $, for example one extra healthy life year is $50k. It's the concept of QALY. Does it take more than $50k of damage to the economy to save a life? If 200k old people died with average 20 years to live, the cost is $200bn. Thankfully with exponential pandemics the actions are pretty obvious, I.e. killing 200k people makes sense, 1m doesn't and 10k would be too expensive economically.