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I understand the sentiment, but I think it's pretty clear in retrospect hard lockdowns were the correct way to address this. This half-assed "wear a mask and

by sidibe 6y ago

I understand the sentiment, but I think it's pretty clear in retrospect hard lockdowns were the correct way to address this. This half-assed "wear a mask and social distance if you want" stance just made the economy sputter for a whole a year. I've seen this in France twice, where they've oscillated between doing nothing and doing a lot, a couple brief lockdowns can reverse things quickly even after things have gotten worse than they ever gotten in the USA. In Asia they managed to control the whole thing by trying to squelch it.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
In Asia hard lockdowns aren’t seen as a silver bullet, and some countries like Korea never really had one. Centralized quarantine and mandatory symptom checks are believed to be comparably important.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jusonchan81 6y ago
  South Korea did have a near perfect compliance in wearing masks outside of your home. I think that’s what helped them keep it fairly under control for such a populous country. Just to be clear - it was near perfect and not 100%
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Saw this headline on NPR today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'"
    - solveit 6y ago
      Seoul, a city of 10+ million, had 214 new cases today. The health minister's rhetoric only serves to show how well South Korea dealt with the first wave.
      - dehrmann 6y ago
        True, but they haven't been able to control it entirely; cases are definitely rising. Either their measures were effectively enough for summer, but not winter, or people are getting lax in their behavior because of lockdown fatigue.
jeffbee 6y ago
That's exactly right. The harm to the economy is not caused by the countermeasures, it is caused by the disease. If you don't beat the disease, you wreck the economy.
- txsoftwaredev 6y ago
  "Roughly 30,000 restaurants have already closed for good across the country, with more than 110,000 expected to shutter in the next month, according to estimates by the National Restaurant Association. ". How did a virus cause businesses to close permanently? This doesn't happen during flu season or even with the h1n1 pandemic.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    H1N1 2009 only killed 12000 Americans. COVID-19 killed 12000 Americans last week. People are avoiding restaurants because their own self-interest keeps them away. They don't want to get a fatal disease that's already killed 1‰ of the country. This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives.
    - trhway 6y ago
      >People are avoiding restaurants not in Bay Area. These new nice outdoor areas with heaters etc. have been packed all these months. > This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives. the businesses closure is direct result of the government orders. It is evidenced by how people flocked back to businesses when they [partially] opened. A well beyond middle age neighbor drove to San Mateo county for a gym and only 1 hour long line prevented her from going there more. In Russia they came up with a new word - Coronoia, ie. "Corona + Paranoia", and your post is typical Coronoia style in that it ignores the straight reality and facts which are staring right into the face.
      - atweiden 6y ago
        This is simply illustrative of the fact people are driven by self-interest, and virtually never take group outcomes into consideration when making choices unless forced to under the threat of violence.
matz1 6y ago
What do you mean by "correct" ? It is correct if you assume the hard lockdown doesn't have any downside. The lockdown is not necessary in the first place. In most places, hospital are not overloaded. Even in the event of overload, the correct measure should be to increase capacity, do not admit people with mild symptoms, etc. Case number are misleading, vast majority of the case are not actually sick or only have mild symptoms. Better test needed to be identify people who actually sick and need intervention. If anything the lockdown could cause hospital overloaded due to delayed treatment and nurses being furloughed.
- mike_d 6y ago
  > In most places, hospital are not overloaded If you speak to any doctor or nurse they will disagree with you. While we might not be at a breaking point for number of beds, the staff that have to put themselves in harms way do have the option to just quit. When that starts happening in mass we are all screwed.
  - matz1 6y ago
    Yes I do have couple of nurse friend and doctor, they all thought lockdown measure is way overkill and all this has been greatly overblown. Not to mention the excessive ppe measure/protocol they now have to adopt, its only made their job harder.
    - simonbarker87 6y ago
      I know many doctors and nurses and they are exhausted, over worked and thankful it didn’t get worse than it was To say that lock down was needless because the worst case scenario isn’t proof the lock down wasn’t needed. It is evidence (not proof mind) that the lockdowns worked. It’s like saying you didn’t need to save money because you never ran out of money so you didn’t need the savings in the first place
      - matz1 6y ago
        If the healthcare worker is overworked, then the hospital should hire more worker. Its not like there is not enough healthcare worker looking for employment all over the country. The lockdown was needless because it is worse than the risk if covid.
paganel 6y ago
The Czech Republic and Bulgaria had harder/more restrictive lockdowns during the entire year compared to my country (Romania) and yet they have a death-rate higher than ours. Indeed, they managed to ride the first wave pretty much unscathed, but the second one looks like it hit both of them comparatively harder than it hit us.
- trhway 6y ago
  it may as well happen that lockdowns put selective pressure on the virus for higher virulence. Anyway, the government bureaucrats are naturally go for simple short-term game like lockdowns without doing any complex long-term thinking (which for example would be the things like efficient preparation for the second wave and achieving herd immunity with minimal losses and minimizing the total losses).
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    Do you have any evidence for your first graph, or is it something that you contributed in order to add more zest to your internet comment?
    - trhway 6y ago
      Unfortunately i'm about 160 years too late - the zest was added by Darwin. Covid itself is a result of such accelerated selection performed in that Wuhan lab - what is called "gain of function" experiments. A natural example of a global virus evolution phenomenon was observed in the 2nd wave of Spanish flu - that strain was mostly killing by causing hyper-reaction of immune system and especially in the healthy 20-50 years old individuals, as the strains normally killable by immune system were cleaned in the first wave. While all that is obvious, if you need a reference to authority there is a virus evolution discussion by a Harward guy: https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/04/evolution-of-virulence-and-the-ethical-dilemma-raised-by-covid-19/ https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/04/evolution-of-virulence-a... "Let’s assume that every propagule generated from the quarantined individuals has a very small chance of escaping isolation and infecting someone. Just because the virulent ones can make more propagules, they have a higher chance of surviving than the milder varieties. This means we are giving a selective advantage to the more virulent ones over the milder ones and as a result virus will evolve for increased virulence."
dehrmann 6y ago
Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. You mentioned Asia. I saw this headline today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'" By US standards, their case count is still incredibly low. The point is they haven't actually been able to contain it, either; they're just acting sooner and more aggressively for the second wave. Apparently New Zealand still has single digit cases most days. If "half-assed 'wear a mask and social distance if you want'" kept the r0 below 1, lockdown or not, new cases would drop. What's scarier is that the Bay Area, with ubiquitous masks, good-ish weather, partial closures, and lower population wasn't even able to keep new cases down.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  >> Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. Well yeah, after the first wave people threw all caution to the wind and decided to go back to their old habits. So of course cases are surging again. This isn’t rocket science. Not sure why everyone is pretending there’s some sort of huge mystery. We know how the virus spreads.
  - huac 6y ago
    summer travel to countries like Croatia helped spread the disease among travelers who brought it back to their home countries, as well.
  - d23 6y ago
    This virus has put on bare display just how selfish, unintelligent, and tribalistic we are as a species. Like you say, there is no mystery at this point. We have to face the cold, depressing truth about who we are.
- grecy 6y ago
  Melbourne in Australia was seeing 600-700 new cases per day in late July/early August. They went into EXTREMELY hard lockdown for 6-8 weeks, and now they haven't had a single case in four weeks. https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-australia-covid-19-cases-lockdown https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-au...

by sidibe 6y ago

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

In Asia hard lockdowns aren’t seen as a silver bullet, and some countries like Korea never really had one. Centralized quarantine and mandatory symptom checks are believed to be comparably important.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jusonchan81 6y ago
South Korea did have a near perfect compliance in wearing masks outside of your home. I think that’s what helped them keep it fairly under control for such a populous country. Just to be clear - it was near perfect and not 100%
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Saw this headline on NPR today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'"
  - solveit 6y ago
    Seoul, a city of 10+ million, had 214 new cases today. The health minister's rhetoric only serves to show how well South Korea dealt with the first wave.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      True, but they haven't been able to control it entirely; cases are definitely rising. Either their measures were effectively enough for summer, but not winter, or people are getting lax in their behavior because of lockdown fatigue.

jeffbee 6y ago

That's exactly right. The harm to the economy is not caused by the countermeasures, it is caused by the disease. If you don't beat the disease, you wreck the economy.

txsoftwaredev 6y ago
"Roughly 30,000 restaurants have already closed for good across the country, with more than 110,000 expected to shutter in the next month, according to estimates by the National Restaurant Association. ". How did a virus cause businesses to close permanently? This doesn't happen during flu season or even with the h1n1 pandemic.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  H1N1 2009 only killed 12000 Americans. COVID-19 killed 12000 Americans last week. People are avoiding restaurants because their own self-interest keeps them away. They don't want to get a fatal disease that's already killed 1‰ of the country. This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives.
  - trhway 6y ago
    >People are avoiding restaurants not in Bay Area. These new nice outdoor areas with heaters etc. have been packed all these months. > This aversion has little or nothing to do with government directives. the businesses closure is direct result of the government orders. It is evidenced by how people flocked back to businesses when they [partially] opened. A well beyond middle age neighbor drove to San Mateo county for a gym and only 1 hour long line prevented her from going there more. In Russia they came up with a new word - Coronoia, ie. "Corona + Paranoia", and your post is typical Coronoia style in that it ignores the straight reality and facts which are staring right into the face.
    - atweiden 6y ago
      This is simply illustrative of the fact people are driven by self-interest, and virtually never take group outcomes into consideration when making choices unless forced to under the threat of violence.

matz1 6y ago

What do you mean by "correct" ? It is correct if you assume the hard lockdown doesn't have any downside. The lockdown is not necessary in the first place. In most places, hospital are not overloaded. Even in the event of overload, the correct measure should be to increase capacity, do not admit people with mild symptoms, etc. Case number are misleading, vast majority of the case are not actually sick or only have mild symptoms. Better test needed to be identify people who actually sick and need intervention. If anything the lockdown could cause hospital overloaded due to delayed treatment and nurses being furloughed.

mike_d 6y ago
> In most places, hospital are not overloaded If you speak to any doctor or nurse they will disagree with you. While we might not be at a breaking point for number of beds, the staff that have to put themselves in harms way do have the option to just quit. When that starts happening in mass we are all screwed.
- matz1 6y ago
  Yes I do have couple of nurse friend and doctor, they all thought lockdown measure is way overkill and all this has been greatly overblown. Not to mention the excessive ppe measure/protocol they now have to adopt, its only made their job harder.
  - simonbarker87 6y ago
    I know many doctors and nurses and they are exhausted, over worked and thankful it didn’t get worse than it was To say that lock down was needless because the worst case scenario isn’t proof the lock down wasn’t needed. It is evidence (not proof mind) that the lockdowns worked. It’s like saying you didn’t need to save money because you never ran out of money so you didn’t need the savings in the first place
    - matz1 6y ago
      If the healthcare worker is overworked, then the hospital should hire more worker. Its not like there is not enough healthcare worker looking for employment all over the country. The lockdown was needless because it is worse than the risk if covid.

paganel 6y ago

The Czech Republic and Bulgaria had harder/more restrictive lockdowns during the entire year compared to my country (Romania) and yet they have a death-rate higher than ours. Indeed, they managed to ride the first wave pretty much unscathed, but the second one looks like it hit both of them comparatively harder than it hit us.

trhway 6y ago
it may as well happen that lockdowns put selective pressure on the virus for higher virulence. Anyway, the government bureaucrats are naturally go for simple short-term game like lockdowns without doing any complex long-term thinking (which for example would be the things like efficient preparation for the second wave and achieving herd immunity with minimal losses and minimizing the total losses).
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  Do you have any evidence for your first graph, or is it something that you contributed in order to add more zest to your internet comment?
  - trhway 6y ago
    Unfortunately i'm about 160 years too late - the zest was added by Darwin. Covid itself is a result of such accelerated selection performed in that Wuhan lab - what is called "gain of function" experiments. A natural example of a global virus evolution phenomenon was observed in the 2nd wave of Spanish flu - that strain was mostly killing by causing hyper-reaction of immune system and especially in the healthy 20-50 years old individuals, as the strains normally killable by immune system were cleaned in the first wave. While all that is obvious, if you need a reference to authority there is a virus evolution discussion by a Harward guy: https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/04/evolution-of-virulence-and-the-ethical-dilemma-raised-by-covid-19/ https://myvoice.opindia.com/2020/04/evolution-of-virulence-a... "Let’s assume that every propagule generated from the quarantined individuals has a very small chance of escaping isolation and infecting someone. Just because the virulent ones can make more propagules, they have a higher chance of surviving than the milder varieties. This means we are giving a selective advantage to the more virulent ones over the milder ones and as a result virus will evolve for increased virulence."

dehrmann 6y ago

Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. You mentioned Asia. I saw this headline today: "South Korea's Health Minister Describes Seoul As A 'COVID-19 War Zone'" By US standards, their case count is still incredibly low. The point is they haven't actually been able to contain it, either; they're just acting sooner and more aggressively for the second wave. Apparently New Zealand still has single digit cases most days. If "half-assed 'wear a mask and social distance if you want'" kept the r0 below 1, lockdown or not, new cases would drop. What's scarier is that the Bay Area, with ubiquitous masks, good-ish weather, partial closures, and lower population wasn't even able to keep new cases down.

enraged_camel 6y ago
>> Europe had hard lockdowns. Not China-hard, but pretty hard. Cases surged again. Well yeah, after the first wave people threw all caution to the wind and decided to go back to their old habits. So of course cases are surging again. This isn’t rocket science. Not sure why everyone is pretending there’s some sort of huge mystery. We know how the virus spreads.
- huac 6y ago
  summer travel to countries like Croatia helped spread the disease among travelers who brought it back to their home countries, as well.
- d23 6y ago
  This virus has put on bare display just how selfish, unintelligent, and tribalistic we are as a species. Like you say, there is no mystery at this point. We have to face the cold, depressing truth about who we are.
grecy 6y ago
Melbourne in Australia was seeing 600-700 new cases per day in late July/early August. They went into EXTREMELY hard lockdown for 6-8 weeks, and now they haven't had a single case in four weeks. https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-australia-covid-19-cases-lockdown https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-au...