4 ms·

I really don't think lockdowns have helped a ton in the US. Look at Florida's winter wave of Covid cases vs Massachusetts. The curves are basically identical,

I really don't think lockdowns have helped a ton in the US. Look at Florida's winter wave of Covid cases vs Massachusetts. The curves are basically identical, despite vastly different pandemic policies. In other countries yes, but in the USA, are there any real data points that can argue that states with strong lockdowns did better than states without? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/massachusetts-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/massachusetts-co... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/florida-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/florida-coronavi...

ngokevin 6y ago
I don't think we should be giving hot takes on the pandemic with cherry-picked news articles. I knew someone that said COVID wasn't a big deal in March 2020 because 5% of people died on an isolated cruise ship. The curve may be similar, but unclear to conclude that lockdowns didn't affect absolute numbers. Compare Oregon and Washington vs Arizona and Utah. Also account for rural vs urban counties. Is it that controversial that staying away from each other during a pandemic prevents spread?
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Individual actions make a huge difference for an individual's risk level. The lockdowns that each state imposed were largely ineffective at a macro level in my opinion.
NovaJehovah 6y ago
Lockdowns in the US are theater. Because government can't do much to stop the main driver of the epidemic--people meeting friends and relatives behind closed doors--they ban a bunch of stuff that makes very little difference.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  I agree with this 100%. The US flavor of lockdowns are just pointless when there is zero enforcement and even in the most locked down places, indoor gatherings are allowed if they're small.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Plus, in the places in the world where they did do lockdowns, lo and behold, they tended to work. Nothing that was done in the USA could even remotely be described as a lockdown. And none of the so-called orders came close to being effective. Without enforcement, you might as well call your "Stay at home Order" a "Stay at home Suggestion". Currently, in the state of California, 99.8% of the population is in the purple (aka Widespread) tier [1]. Yet if you go out of your house and look around, you'll see people carrying on, horsing around, and not taking anything seriously. It's like "back to normal but with masks." And this is reportedly one of the more "locked down" states! It's a total farce, and the result of a cowardly government that makes rules for show but is unwilling to enforce them. 1: https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/ https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/
    - thehappypm 6y ago
      It's definitely the worst-of-both-worlds. You can't go to restaurants, so unemployemnt is sky high. But you can go to a house party with almost zero risk of consequences.
violetgarden 6y ago
Shoot, I’m so grateful to be in a state that was loose with the lockdowns. A friend in another state was frustrated that even the large parks where he lived were locked down. Even in our strictest phase, you could still go to the park and get a little relief from the confines of your home. I cannot imagine how other states are coping where things are much stricter. I am just shocked at the mental component of all this. It’s hard to articulate the way it makes you feel living through all this.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  That was definitely a knee-jerk reaction a lot of places did. I don't think very many places in the US have closed down parks at this point.
verytrivial 6y ago
Yep, it turns out the last 5-10% of compliance and classifications of valid exceptions to policy actually DOES matter for high-R respitory infections. That has always been true, but before SARS-Cov-2 it didn't matter as much. And if, say, the US just happens to have a permanant 10% of the population who bristle as anything related to "compliance", you simply can not contain these respitory infections, at best only slow them a bit.
efficax 6y ago
There hasn't been a genuine 'lockdown' anywhere in the united states with the possible exception of NYC in the first month of the pandemic. Otherwise we've basically done the bare minimum and even in places with strict policies you have people working retail, no real travel restrictions, etc.
helen___keller 6y ago
Which policies in particular are the ineffective one(s), may I ask? We say "lockdowns" colloquially but it's really a package of policies, such as capacity limits for restaurants, schools potentially closing down, etc. Which ones are the ineffective ones that Massachusetts subscribed to but Florida did not?
dorkwood 6y ago
Two months ago, Los Angeles was apparently going into a second lockdown -- this is what the news outlets were reporting. If you went to the beach on any day of the week, however, you would have seen throngs of unmasked people milling about together.

ngokevin 6y ago

I don't think we should be giving hot takes on the pandemic with cherry-picked news articles. I knew someone that said COVID wasn't a big deal in March 2020 because 5% of people died on an isolated cruise ship. The curve may be similar, but unclear to conclude that lockdowns didn't affect absolute numbers. Compare Oregon and Washington vs Arizona and Utah. Also account for rural vs urban counties. Is it that controversial that staying away from each other during a pandemic prevents spread?

thehappypm 6y ago
Individual actions make a huge difference for an individual's risk level. The lockdowns that each state imposed were largely ineffective at a macro level in my opinion.

NovaJehovah 6y ago

Lockdowns in the US are theater. Because government can't do much to stop the main driver of the epidemic--people meeting friends and relatives behind closed doors--they ban a bunch of stuff that makes very little difference.

thehappypm 6y ago
I agree with this 100%. The US flavor of lockdowns are just pointless when there is zero enforcement and even in the most locked down places, indoor gatherings are allowed if they're small.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Plus, in the places in the world where they did do lockdowns, lo and behold, they tended to work. Nothing that was done in the USA could even remotely be described as a lockdown. And none of the so-called orders came close to being effective. Without enforcement, you might as well call your "Stay at home Order" a "Stay at home Suggestion". Currently, in the state of California, 99.8% of the population is in the purple (aka Widespread) tier [1]. Yet if you go out of your house and look around, you'll see people carrying on, horsing around, and not taking anything seriously. It's like "back to normal but with masks." And this is reportedly one of the more "locked down" states! It's a total farce, and the result of a cowardly government that makes rules for show but is unwilling to enforce them. 1: https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/ https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    It's definitely the worst-of-both-worlds. You can't go to restaurants, so unemployemnt is sky high. But you can go to a house party with almost zero risk of consequences.

violetgarden 6y ago

Shoot, I’m so grateful to be in a state that was loose with the lockdowns. A friend in another state was frustrated that even the large parks where he lived were locked down. Even in our strictest phase, you could still go to the park and get a little relief from the confines of your home. I cannot imagine how other states are coping where things are much stricter. I am just shocked at the mental component of all this. It’s hard to articulate the way it makes you feel living through all this.

thehappypm 6y ago
That was definitely a knee-jerk reaction a lot of places did. I don't think very many places in the US have closed down parks at this point.

verytrivial 6y ago

Yep, it turns out the last 5-10% of compliance and classifications of valid exceptions to policy actually DOES matter for high-R respitory infections. That has always been true, but before SARS-Cov-2 it didn't matter as much. And if, say, the US just happens to have a permanant 10% of the population who bristle as anything related to "compliance", you simply can not contain these respitory infections, at best only slow them a bit.

efficax 6y ago

There hasn't been a genuine 'lockdown' anywhere in the united states with the possible exception of NYC in the first month of the pandemic. Otherwise we've basically done the bare minimum and even in places with strict policies you have people working retail, no real travel restrictions, etc.

helen___keller 6y ago

Which policies in particular are the ineffective one(s), may I ask? We say "lockdowns" colloquially but it's really a package of policies, such as capacity limits for restaurants, schools potentially closing down, etc. Which ones are the ineffective ones that Massachusetts subscribed to but Florida did not?

dorkwood 6y ago

Two months ago, Los Angeles was apparently going into a second lockdown -- this is what the news outlets were reporting. If you went to the beach on any day of the week, however, you would have seen throngs of unmasked people milling about together.