4 ms·

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/n

by 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.
    - nl 6y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what evidence would satisfy you. Are you rejecting epidemiological models as a reasonable representation of reality? That's a pretty bold take - all models have limits, but epidemiological modelling is a pretty well established science that makes good predictions that repeatedly hold up. There are mechanical reasons to think a lockdown should work (reduced contact means reduced transmission), good explanations for circumstances where they fail (exponential spread from any leakage means it doesn't take long to erase the gains from reduced transmission) and multiple locations where they have worked.
      - clairity 6y ago
        it’s empirical skepticism, not a bold take. even if you can get the math to line up with reality in this instance, at the very least an epidemiological model isn’t going to tell you why, with any certainty. your reasonings are about why something should work to buttress your beliefs, but you haven’t yet enumerated why any alternative explanation (especially the simpler ones) should or shouldn’t work. that would differentiate your reasoning from popular zealotry. the term ‘science’ has lost meaning in popular/political discussions because it tries to elide uncertainty in just this way.
rhino369 6y ago
It took Victoria 3+ months to go from 700 case to 0. How long do you think it would take America to go from 70,000 cases to 0? The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be. Supply chains don't have 4-5 months of leeway. People aren't going to avoid their friends and family for that long. I think there is a point of no-return where there are too many infected people in too many corners of a given population to ever really contain it again.
- flukus 6y ago
  > It took Victoria 3+ months to go from 700 case to 0 The first 6 weeks or so weren't strict enough and cases were still growing at the half way point, we squandered the first 6 weeks with ineffective half measures. > How long do you think it would take America to go from 70,000 cases to 0? Roughly the same time, cases were roughly halving every couple of weeks or so. Much like searching a binary tree doubling the size of the tree does not double the search time. > The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be Victoria and several other places learned that this is not true, a less severe lockdown had cases growing or stagnating and delivered the worst of both worlds. Hard lockdowns offer a way back to normality.

by nl 6y ago

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.
  - nl 6y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what evidence would satisfy you. Are you rejecting epidemiological models as a reasonable representation of reality? That's a pretty bold take - all models have limits, but epidemiological modelling is a pretty well established science that makes good predictions that repeatedly hold up. There are mechanical reasons to think a lockdown should work (reduced contact means reduced transmission), good explanations for circumstances where they fail (exponential spread from any leakage means it doesn't take long to erase the gains from reduced transmission) and multiple locations where they have worked.
    - clairity 6y ago
      it’s empirical skepticism, not a bold take. even if you can get the math to line up with reality in this instance, at the very least an epidemiological model isn’t going to tell you why, with any certainty. your reasonings are about why something should work to buttress your beliefs, but you haven’t yet enumerated why any alternative explanation (especially the simpler ones) should or shouldn’t work. that would differentiate your reasoning from popular zealotry. the term ‘science’ has lost meaning in popular/political discussions because it tries to elide uncertainty in just this way.

rhino369 6y ago

It took Victoria 3+ months to go from 700 case to 0. How long do you think it would take America to go from 70,000 cases to 0? The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be. Supply chains don't have 4-5 months of leeway. People aren't going to avoid their friends and family for that long. I think there is a point of no-return where there are too many infected people in too many corners of a given population to ever really contain it again.

flukus 6y ago
> It took Victoria 3+ months to go from 700 case to 0 The first 6 weeks or so weren't strict enough and cases were still growing at the half way point, we squandered the first 6 weeks with ineffective half measures. > How long do you think it would take America to go from 70,000 cases to 0? Roughly the same time, cases were roughly halving every couple of weeks or so. Much like searching a binary tree doubling the size of the tree does not double the search time. > The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be Victoria and several other places learned that this is not true, a less severe lockdown had cases growing or stagnating and delivered the worst of both worlds. Hard lockdowns offer a way back to normality.