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Do you really imagine a USA that didn't lock down doing as well as South Korea and Taiwan? Look at our numbers with the lockdowns. The Asian countries were onl

by tobasq 6y ago

Do you really imagine a USA that didn't lock down doing as well as South Korea and Taiwan? Look at our numbers with the lockdowns. The Asian countries were only able to do what they did because they were prepared, culturally and logistically, for a viral epidemic before one arrived.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
It certainly DOES appear that when lockdowns go in place in a state or country, the new cases start to go down - usually dramatically. At this point, we probably have well over 100 examples of this. I'm interested if there are any counter examples. Are there? But on the same hand, there's not any controlled experiments going on. Has this actually been statistically proven? For example, major populations centers in Florida and Texas had lockdowns for different parts of their spikes. But the states in general were much more lax. And yet, they seemed to have fared similarly to California and New York - which had much more strict local and state-wide measures.
- nl 6y ago
  Exponential spread means small mistakes in containment are difficult to distinguish from an endemic infection - except in the time dimension. You can see the difference pretty clearly looking at the time series. But as soon as you open up again infections go up unless you have suppressed the virus completely. Countries that took it seriously did this.
- logicchains 6y ago
  There have already been studies that found lockdowns don't help with mortality (which is what matters, not cases), like https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full#SM6 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.6043...
- rhino369 6y ago
  I don't think you need much evidence to believe that lockdowns are temporarily effective. But I'd be curious to see evidence on whether they are effective at reducing overall infections over a longer period. Because it seems like they just delay (for only a matter of weeks) what is going to happen anyway. Most of the United States really had two significant waves. NY and other early hotspots never had the summer peak. The summer peak states never had a huge outbreak in spring because they locked down two months. The states that managed to not have several outbreaks until fall (California and the Planes states) all got hit much worse. It all seemed to even out.
  - chii 6y ago
    it evened out because people who were not in lockdown states got infected, and those got transmitted to the states/cities that had been in lockdown but subsequently opened up. In other words, the lockdowns are half-assed.
JSavageOne 6y ago
> Do you really imagine a USA that didn't lock down doing as well as South Korea and Taiwan? No, the U.S. was relatively unprepared, but that doesn't invalidate anything I said.

by tobasq 6y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

It certainly DOES appear that when lockdowns go in place in a state or country, the new cases start to go down - usually dramatically. At this point, we probably have well over 100 examples of this. I'm interested if there are any counter examples. Are there? But on the same hand, there's not any controlled experiments going on. Has this actually been statistically proven? For example, major populations centers in Florida and Texas had lockdowns for different parts of their spikes. But the states in general were much more lax. And yet, they seemed to have fared similarly to California and New York - which had much more strict local and state-wide measures.

nl 6y ago
Exponential spread means small mistakes in containment are difficult to distinguish from an endemic infection - except in the time dimension. You can see the difference pretty clearly looking at the time series. But as soon as you open up again infections go up unless you have suppressed the virus completely. Countries that took it seriously did this.
logicchains 6y ago
There have already been studies that found lockdowns don't help with mortality (which is what matters, not cases), like https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full#SM6 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.6043...
rhino369 6y ago
I don't think you need much evidence to believe that lockdowns are temporarily effective. But I'd be curious to see evidence on whether they are effective at reducing overall infections over a longer period. Because it seems like they just delay (for only a matter of weeks) what is going to happen anyway. Most of the United States really had two significant waves. NY and other early hotspots never had the summer peak. The summer peak states never had a huge outbreak in spring because they locked down two months. The states that managed to not have several outbreaks until fall (California and the Planes states) all got hit much worse. It all seemed to even out.
- chii 6y ago
  it evened out because people who were not in lockdown states got infected, and those got transmitted to the states/cities that had been in lockdown but subsequently opened up. In other words, the lockdowns are half-assed.

JSavageOne 6y ago

> Do you really imagine a USA that didn't lock down doing as well as South Korea and Taiwan? No, the U.S. was relatively unprepared, but that doesn't invalidate anything I said.