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The sad reality is that broad, indiscriminate lockdowns are the only real tool available to some "world powers". We know we can manage the covid pandemic with u

by mrkurt 6y ago

The sad reality is that broad, indiscriminate lockdowns are the only real tool available to some "world powers". We know we can manage the covid pandemic with ubiquitous testing and targeted temporary lockdowns. But there is no testing capacity. Which means ... it's not really possible to rethink the lockdown strategies. Given a choice between a thing that directly kills people, and something that more people die from in indirect ways, people are always going to default to preventing the direct deaths.

logicchains 6y ago
It's not even clear that lockdowns prevent deaths. A recent peer-reviewed study found lockdowns aren't associated with a statistically significant decrease in the number of deaths; what matters is social distancing: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/social-distancing-more-important-than-lockdowns-in-covid-19-fight-tau-644754 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/social-distancing-more-imp...
rich_sasha 6y ago
It feels to me in some cases there is a bit of a point of principle here: "look, we're inflicting so much pain on everyone, just to make sure you're safe". If an evil alien race came and threatened to kill everyone unless we isolate everyone over 45, I'm sure humanity could do it. If we can't be smart about fighting the pandemic, that's a super sad statement about humanity's ingenuity.
dx87 6y ago
We could do age-based lockdowns. Stores near me have ~2 hour periods in the day where you can only shop if you're 65+, I don't see why they can't make that the only time 65+ people are allowed to enter.
makomk 6y ago
One of the more... interesting things about Covid-19 is that the countries everyone thinks are stuck with indiscriminate lockdown as their only tool due to lack of testing capacity actually have the most testing capacity, and the one everyone points to as a mass testing success story has about an order of magnitude less in per capita terms and is likely severely limited in their ability to actually detect cases as a result. It's the result of cached facts from like 6 months ago that have never been refeshed because the media have carefully avoided drawing attention to the new information in order to preserve their narrative, whilst using language that leads people to think it's still true.
- mrkurt 6y ago
  Do you have details? A quick glance here shows low positive test rates in the countries that seem to be doing the best. Low positive test rates seem like adequate testing. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing
  - makomk 6y ago
    Low positive rates are an indicator that a country is having to do more testing to locate their cases than a country with a similar amount of cases, but higher positive rates. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, it indicates that the country has a relatively low infection rate (which is why countries that are doing better have low positive test rates), at worst it's because they're testing the wrong people. Think about it this way. Currently, countries like the US or much of Europe tend to offer testing to anyone with mild potential symptoms that are caused by many common diseases. If they ever reach the point where Covid-19 cases make up such a substantial proportion of people with those generic symptoms as to affect the number of tests required, the country is in really deep, Lombardy-level trouble. The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days. (Note also that South Korea doesn't routinely offer testing to people with mild symptoms. Anyone can get tested if they pay out of pocket for it, but it's discouraged and at a tenth of the testing capacity of most Western nations I don't think they could handle many people demanding it. Which means they can't reliably detect cases not linked to ones they already know about, and of course those unlinked cases grow exponentially... Makes meaningful comparison of case figures and test positivity figures hard.)
    - mrkurt 6y ago
      I understand that low infection rates don't follow testing. But low infections rates _also_ means there are adequate tests for infections. What I was after was any kind detail about these countries being test constrained. Links, etc. Anything like that? > The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days.

by mrkurt 6y ago

logicchains 6y ago

It's not even clear that lockdowns prevent deaths. A recent peer-reviewed study found lockdowns aren't associated with a statistically significant decrease in the number of deaths; what matters is social distancing: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/social-distancing-more-important-than-lockdowns-in-covid-19-fight-tau-644754 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/social-distancing-more-imp...

rich_sasha 6y ago

It feels to me in some cases there is a bit of a point of principle here: "look, we're inflicting so much pain on everyone, just to make sure you're safe". If an evil alien race came and threatened to kill everyone unless we isolate everyone over 45, I'm sure humanity could do it. If we can't be smart about fighting the pandemic, that's a super sad statement about humanity's ingenuity.

dx87 6y ago

We could do age-based lockdowns. Stores near me have ~2 hour periods in the day where you can only shop if you're 65+, I don't see why they can't make that the only time 65+ people are allowed to enter.

makomk 6y ago

One of the more... interesting things about Covid-19 is that the countries everyone thinks are stuck with indiscriminate lockdown as their only tool due to lack of testing capacity actually have the most testing capacity, and the one everyone points to as a mass testing success story has about an order of magnitude less in per capita terms and is likely severely limited in their ability to actually detect cases as a result. It's the result of cached facts from like 6 months ago that have never been refeshed because the media have carefully avoided drawing attention to the new information in order to preserve their narrative, whilst using language that leads people to think it's still true.

mrkurt 6y ago
Do you have details? A quick glance here shows low positive test rates in the countries that seem to be doing the best. Low positive test rates seem like adequate testing. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing
- makomk 6y ago
  Low positive rates are an indicator that a country is having to do more testing to locate their cases than a country with a similar amount of cases, but higher positive rates. Nothing more, nothing less. At best, it indicates that the country has a relatively low infection rate (which is why countries that are doing better have low positive test rates), at worst it's because they're testing the wrong people. Think about it this way. Currently, countries like the US or much of Europe tend to offer testing to anyone with mild potential symptoms that are caused by many common diseases. If they ever reach the point where Covid-19 cases make up such a substantial proportion of people with those generic symptoms as to affect the number of tests required, the country is in really deep, Lombardy-level trouble. The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days. (Note also that South Korea doesn't routinely offer testing to people with mild symptoms. Anyone can get tested if they pay out of pocket for it, but it's discouraged and at a tenth of the testing capacity of most Western nations I don't think they could handle many people demanding it. Which means they can't reliably detect cases not linked to ones they already know about, and of course those unlinked cases grow exponentially... Makes meaningful comparison of case figures and test positivity figures hard.)
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    I understand that low infection rates don't follow testing. But low infections rates _also_ means there are adequate tests for infections. What I was after was any kind detail about these countries being test constrained. Links, etc. Anything like that? > The idea that the level of testing required depends on the size of the outbreak is nonsense created to continue the narrative that Western countries like the UK and US are still failing on testing and that's why we have so many cases well past the point it should've been put to bed. It made sense as a metric of testing aggressiveness in February when everyone was looking for cases linked to travel from China, since it tended to indicate how wide a net countries were casting when doing this, and a little bit back in March and April when many countries were only testing people with serious and obvious symptoms. Not so much these days.