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don't give up. there's plenty of us who actually have assessed the risks and weighed them apropriately, using our own brains rather than relying on others to as

don't give up. there's plenty of us who actually have assessed the risks and weighed them apropriately, using our own brains rather than relying on others to assuage our fears. almost none of the publicly pronounced mitigations have much mitigative effect. the most reasonable mitigation is sensible distancing when you're going to spend extended time with non-household members in tight quarters, but that's not big enough or visible enough for many, so we get the extended security theater to deal with the fear externalized onto the rest of us. combined with light masking in situations where prolonged indoor closeness (not incidental closeness, like in a grocery aisle, but rather among friends hanging out) is unavoidable, we could have kept most businesses and institutions open and had essentially the same results. we didn't need lockdowns, school/office closures, curfews, outdoor masking, incessant handwashing/disinfecting, or any of that other stuff that didn't really have any substantive effect.

chii 6y ago
> didn't really have any substantive effect it did, but the effort was not sustained, nor done consistently enough in the USA to have had return on the investment/cost. I would argue that a bigger, more stringent lockdown, for at least 1-2 months, would have produced vastly better results. It's not like you can half-mitigate the pandemic with a half-lockdown.
- tjs8rj 6y ago
  I mean, that’s life? Sure, doubling my money in every investment is great, but unrealistic. Plenty of strategies work as long as every does it and everything works perfectly. The problem is finding a strategy that works in the real world. Lockdowns failed because they weren’t the right solution, because reality is what it is and they weren’t calibrated for the reality that locking down everyone’s lives for a month simply isn’t realistic at all. I think this was obvious to everyone on some level even early in the pandemic, but the politicization of the pandemic meant safety theater and then blaming the noncompliant was the play, when a winning strategy was probably more like: protect the vulnerable, be completely transparent with the people about the dangers, make accommodations to minimize unnecessary risks (no sit in dining, close non essentials, sanitize often), then let people make their own risk calculations based on the available evidence and their own situation, taking steps to ensure their decisions don’t affect others as much as possible. A realistic strategy should have been the go-to, not some ideal strategy that only works in dreams.
  - chii 6y ago
    > let people make their own risk calculations based on the available evidence and their own situation and there-in lies the heart of the issue - the assumption that most people are able to make a good assessment, and that the assessment takes into account the impact on a societal level, rather than an individual level. This simply does not happen. People are selfish. People only look out for themselves. Therefore, it is required that in a pandemic, authoritarian rules and strict adherence to public safety be applied. Even if some individuals believe they can remain safe, even if they can take precautions. Unfortunately, this mindset does not exist in america - not everyone would follow this sort of authoritarian rule. And thus, the lockdown is half-assed and ineffective. And not to mention that there's been misinformation being spread, leading to people to believe that they shouldn't be locked down or wear masks.
    - jhanschoo 6y ago
      Small quibble, without expressing opinion on the substance of your comment: you mean totalitarian, not authoritarian: in the latter, the despotic power is primarily concerned with political power, whereas the totalitarian seeks to regulate the citizen's entire life.
    - tjs8rj 6y ago
      The problem I have with this thinking is: why do you stop at covid then? Isn’t deciding the national budget, or when to go to war, or public policy just as difficult an assessment and the public just as incapable of making it? The president has incredibly power over others lives, can cause just as many deaths as covid, should the people be deciding that in their selfishness and stupidity? Your argument is just against democracy in general because so much of public policy is far more “dangerous” than covid. Not to mention: the lockdown route didn’t work still didn’t work because it’s still unrealistic! We tried lockdowns, and they failed because Americans didn’t like them. That was completely predictable, and if our goal is results, and have to consider the fact that humans are some simple system that follow plans to the tee. We can’t make policy based on what works in frictionless vacuums, the real world is messier than that.
- icedchai 6y ago
  Yep. The US never had “real” lockdowns, except for a few weeks last March and April.
- rhino369 6y ago
  Lockdowns will only work long term if they are used to reduce the level of infection to a level that can be controlled by other means (testing, tracking, quarantine, and social distancing). US and European public health agencies don't seem up to that task. You could lockdown until US numbers are literally 0 and we'd just grow exponentially again after we got the first case from incoming visitor. And I don't think a 2 month stringent lockdown would be enough to totally eliminate the virus once its in every county in all 50 states. There aren't enough federal agents in the world to weld rural Kentuckians into their houses like was done in Wuhan. Other than Wuhan, have lockdowns ever really stopped--over the long run--a large outbreak?
  - chii 6y ago
    because you specified large - that's a self defeating condition. You lock down before it gets large - otherwise, being large means you can no longer trace/track and quarantine. Australia had an outbreak in melbourne that came from a leak in hotel quarantine, and sydney had a similar leak. There was large scale lockdown in melb (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia#cite_ref-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia...) which lasted 4 months - it was brutal for everyone, but it kept the outbreak from spreading from around 7000 cases. You can make similar observations for sydney. Therefore, the question of whether lockdowns work for large outbreaks has the implied assumption that you only lockdown after the outbreak is large, and thus is a loaded question. The lockdown needs to look like an overreaction after the fact, or it would not have helped.
- clairity 6y ago
  you could argue that, but you’ve yet to make a substantive and persuasive argument in that regard. besides stating your beliefs on the matter, you’d need to show how other sets of mitigations aren’t nearly as effective, and why we’d need coercive force, given the real danger that poses to the existing balance of power. it isn’t just about whether we can stop this pandemic through technocratic means (sure, in theory, we could), but whether it makes sense for such a relatively weak pandemic (we shouldn’t). you can’t consider just the technocratic arena, but must also consider the inextricably-intertwined sociopolitical consequences as well.
nl 6y ago
Lockdowns work, but they have to be hard and you can't stop until you have suppressed the virus. Victoria, Australia was a great example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646 Opening up before suppression without strong contact tracing (or vaccine) just seems like the worst of both worlds: you have the horrible effects of a lockdown, and the knowledge it's just going to come back.
- clairity 6y ago
  there’s no concrete evidence that lockdowns themselves were the principle mitigative effect, because so many different mitigations were thrown at it in hopes at least one of them worked. more likely is the general reduction in social contact brought on by uncertainty and amorphous (and media-fueled) fear and anxiety, i.e., social distancing. perhaps in an ideal world, your scenario may have proven effective, but we don’t live in that world. this pandemic wasn’t severe enough to warrant such drastic measures in our imperfect world (as opposed to something akin to the bubonic plague, where nearly everyone would have voluntarily locked down).
  - nl 6y ago
    The mathematical models of a lockdown migration perfectly matches what what happened in Victoria. It's almost a perfect natural experiment in that regard. Parameterize an epidemic model with the leakage we saw measured in the Victorian lockdown and you get the same pattern.
    - clairity 6y ago
      a broken clock is right twice a day too, and we like to see what we want to see in data. even if what you believe were true, you’d have to show it wasn’t mere random coincidence. mathematical models are no match for human behavior. it’s easy to find a model that seems to match reality once or twice on a short time scale. it’s likely impossible (the P=NP problem) to find a reliable model long-term (see: trading algorithms, and economics in general). even more unlikely is that lockdown is the principle force behind any perceived matches. if you look at the wealth of information we have with a skeptical eye, you’d see there isn’t much support for lockdowns for this pandemic (which is different from mitigations like context-sensitive distancing). what is quite evident is that a lot of people are scared out of their wits even a year on (e.g., people wearing 2 masks outside) and cynical about other people (trying to kill grandma with their selfishness), and as a result want to believe in technofascist panaceas with all their might.

chii 6y ago

> didn't really have any substantive effect it did, but the effort was not sustained, nor done consistently enough in the USA to have had return on the investment/cost. I would argue that a bigger, more stringent lockdown, for at least 1-2 months, would have produced vastly better results. It's not like you can half-mitigate the pandemic with a half-lockdown.

tjs8rj 6y ago
I mean, that’s life? Sure, doubling my money in every investment is great, but unrealistic. Plenty of strategies work as long as every does it and everything works perfectly. The problem is finding a strategy that works in the real world. Lockdowns failed because they weren’t the right solution, because reality is what it is and they weren’t calibrated for the reality that locking down everyone’s lives for a month simply isn’t realistic at all. I think this was obvious to everyone on some level even early in the pandemic, but the politicization of the pandemic meant safety theater and then blaming the noncompliant was the play, when a winning strategy was probably more like: protect the vulnerable, be completely transparent with the people about the dangers, make accommodations to minimize unnecessary risks (no sit in dining, close non essentials, sanitize often), then let people make their own risk calculations based on the available evidence and their own situation, taking steps to ensure their decisions don’t affect others as much as possible. A realistic strategy should have been the go-to, not some ideal strategy that only works in dreams.
- chii 6y ago
  > let people make their own risk calculations based on the available evidence and their own situation and there-in lies the heart of the issue - the assumption that most people are able to make a good assessment, and that the assessment takes into account the impact on a societal level, rather than an individual level. This simply does not happen. People are selfish. People only look out for themselves. Therefore, it is required that in a pandemic, authoritarian rules and strict adherence to public safety be applied. Even if some individuals believe they can remain safe, even if they can take precautions. Unfortunately, this mindset does not exist in america - not everyone would follow this sort of authoritarian rule. And thus, the lockdown is half-assed and ineffective. And not to mention that there's been misinformation being spread, leading to people to believe that they shouldn't be locked down or wear masks.
  - jhanschoo 6y ago
    Small quibble, without expressing opinion on the substance of your comment: you mean totalitarian, not authoritarian: in the latter, the despotic power is primarily concerned with political power, whereas the totalitarian seeks to regulate the citizen's entire life.
  - tjs8rj 6y ago
    The problem I have with this thinking is: why do you stop at covid then? Isn’t deciding the national budget, or when to go to war, or public policy just as difficult an assessment and the public just as incapable of making it? The president has incredibly power over others lives, can cause just as many deaths as covid, should the people be deciding that in their selfishness and stupidity? Your argument is just against democracy in general because so much of public policy is far more “dangerous” than covid. Not to mention: the lockdown route didn’t work still didn’t work because it’s still unrealistic! We tried lockdowns, and they failed because Americans didn’t like them. That was completely predictable, and if our goal is results, and have to consider the fact that humans are some simple system that follow plans to the tee. We can’t make policy based on what works in frictionless vacuums, the real world is messier than that.
icedchai 6y ago
Yep. The US never had “real” lockdowns, except for a few weeks last March and April.
rhino369 6y ago
Lockdowns will only work long term if they are used to reduce the level of infection to a level that can be controlled by other means (testing, tracking, quarantine, and social distancing). US and European public health agencies don't seem up to that task. You could lockdown until US numbers are literally 0 and we'd just grow exponentially again after we got the first case from incoming visitor. And I don't think a 2 month stringent lockdown would be enough to totally eliminate the virus once its in every county in all 50 states. There aren't enough federal agents in the world to weld rural Kentuckians into their houses like was done in Wuhan. Other than Wuhan, have lockdowns ever really stopped--over the long run--a large outbreak?
- chii 6y ago
  because you specified large - that's a self defeating condition. You lock down before it gets large - otherwise, being large means you can no longer trace/track and quarantine. Australia had an outbreak in melbourne that came from a leak in hotel quarantine, and sydney had a similar leak. There was large scale lockdown in melb (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia#cite_ref-11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia...) which lasted 4 months - it was brutal for everyone, but it kept the outbreak from spreading from around 7000 cases. You can make similar observations for sydney. Therefore, the question of whether lockdowns work for large outbreaks has the implied assumption that you only lockdown after the outbreak is large, and thus is a loaded question. The lockdown needs to look like an overreaction after the fact, or it would not have helped.
clairity 6y ago
you could argue that, but you’ve yet to make a substantive and persuasive argument in that regard. besides stating your beliefs on the matter, you’d need to show how other sets of mitigations aren’t nearly as effective, and why we’d need coercive force, given the real danger that poses to the existing balance of power. it isn’t just about whether we can stop this pandemic through technocratic means (sure, in theory, we could), but whether it makes sense for such a relatively weak pandemic (we shouldn’t). you can’t consider just the technocratic arena, but must also consider the inextricably-intertwined sociopolitical consequences as well.

nl 6y ago

Lockdowns work, but they have to be hard and you can't stop until you have suppressed the virus. Victoria, Australia was a great example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646 Opening up before suppression without strong contact tracing (or vaccine) just seems like the worst of both worlds: you have the horrible effects of a lockdown, and the knowledge it's just going to come back.

clairity 6y ago
there’s no concrete evidence that lockdowns themselves were the principle mitigative effect, because so many different mitigations were thrown at it in hopes at least one of them worked. more likely is the general reduction in social contact brought on by uncertainty and amorphous (and media-fueled) fear and anxiety, i.e., social distancing. perhaps in an ideal world, your scenario may have proven effective, but we don’t live in that world. this pandemic wasn’t severe enough to warrant such drastic measures in our imperfect world (as opposed to something akin to the bubonic plague, where nearly everyone would have voluntarily locked down).
- nl 6y ago
  The mathematical models of a lockdown migration perfectly matches what what happened in Victoria. It's almost a perfect natural experiment in that regard. Parameterize an epidemic model with the leakage we saw measured in the Victorian lockdown and you get the same pattern.
  - clairity 6y ago
    a broken clock is right twice a day too, and we like to see what we want to see in data. even if what you believe were true, you’d have to show it wasn’t mere random coincidence. mathematical models are no match for human behavior. it’s easy to find a model that seems to match reality once or twice on a short time scale. it’s likely impossible (the P=NP problem) to find a reliable model long-term (see: trading algorithms, and economics in general). even more unlikely is that lockdown is the principle force behind any perceived matches. if you look at the wealth of information we have with a skeptical eye, you’d see there isn’t much support for lockdowns for this pandemic (which is different from mitigations like context-sensitive distancing). what is quite evident is that a lot of people are scared out of their wits even a year on (e.g., people wearing 2 masks outside) and cynical about other people (trying to kill grandma with their selfishness), and as a result want to believe in technofascist panaceas with all their might.