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Very true. But at some point the public discourse and public health policy must consider tradeoffs. A. Lockdowns have costs. Deficits that will take decades to

Very true. But at some point the public discourse and public health policy must consider tradeoffs. A. Lockdowns have costs. Deficits that will take decades to pay off. Lives lost to alcohol and depression. Economic hardship. A lost education year. Etc. B. The pandemic has vastly different risk profiles for different age groups. At an extreme, under 20s have 1/1000 fatality risk compared to over 70s. It is fundamentally faulty to design a blanket one size fits all policy under such circumstances.

tehwebguy 5y ago
What are some of the options?
- hn8788 5y ago
  Instead of having blanket lockdowns for everyone, reserve certain hours or days for at-risk people. A few of the stores near me, like Target and Wal-Mart, were closed from 7-9 am every day unless you were a senior citizen. That seems like a better solution than restaurants and non-essential stores being forced to close down 24/7. I went to a local mall a few days ago, and the amount of stores that went out of business because of the lockdowns is rediculous. I wouldn't be suprised if the whole mall has to close down soon, there's no way it's profitable to keep it running with 2-3 snack vendors and a couple of barber shops / nail salons being the major businesses left.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Seems like this would just make it so there would be no hospital beds available for non-covid things no? Unless maybe Canada has a few times more hospitals / beds per capita than the US?
    - BadInformatics 5y ago
      It does not, and any discussion of whether certain public health measures should've been implemented should take that into consideration. Toronto-area hospitals were literally sending ICU patients to smaller cities because their own wards were overflowing. Moreover, attrition rates among clinicians (nurses especially) has been atrocious over the past year or so. People are only willing to put up with so much shit for so long, and most provincial systems have zero slack at the moment. That said, measures like GP described were/are in play in many cities. Seniors time was a fixture in the first few months of the pandemic, especially in smaller areas that did not experience a large caseload. That's another point too: I think a lot of HN commenters are unaware of just how fragmented and regional the Canadian healthcare system is. No two provinces implemented the same restrictions or policies at the same time, and only a couple put in strict stay-at-home style lockdowns. Note how the article mentions large increases in both Ontario (lax policies, then sudden strict lockdowns) with Alberta (very few restrictions). Even in Ontario, walking outside the biggest few cities would result in an immediate drop of most of the strict measures present in, say, the GTA. I know it's hard to capture this nuance discussing with strangers on some random online forum, but it's essential if we are to properly discuss cause and effect.
gpm 5y ago
I'm not arguing against comparing different policies, I'm just pre-emptively pointing out a flawed way of interpreting the data. You can see people trying to interpret it that way elsewhere in this thread already... for example in the math in this (now flagged dead, not by me) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342601 Neither of your points A or B are at all discussed in this data, nor are they responsive to my comment. I'd classify them as largely off topic and I'm not going to respond past pointing that out. The data at hand does not discuss financial costs of either lockdowns or letting people get sick. Does not compare risks between different age groups (apart from giving number of deaths under 65). Does not discuss policy ideas. Etc.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The data points that A and B exist and are worthy of further consideration. The data is likely too noisy to draw further conclusions. Perhaps in your neck of woods things are different, but on USA West Coast there is near zero public discussion of either cost tradeoffs or age groups.

tehwebguy 5y ago

What are some of the options?

hn8788 5y ago
Instead of having blanket lockdowns for everyone, reserve certain hours or days for at-risk people. A few of the stores near me, like Target and Wal-Mart, were closed from 7-9 am every day unless you were a senior citizen. That seems like a better solution than restaurants and non-essential stores being forced to close down 24/7. I went to a local mall a few days ago, and the amount of stores that went out of business because of the lockdowns is rediculous. I wouldn't be suprised if the whole mall has to close down soon, there's no way it's profitable to keep it running with 2-3 snack vendors and a couple of barber shops / nail salons being the major businesses left.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Seems like this would just make it so there would be no hospital beds available for non-covid things no? Unless maybe Canada has a few times more hospitals / beds per capita than the US?
  - BadInformatics 5y ago
    It does not, and any discussion of whether certain public health measures should've been implemented should take that into consideration. Toronto-area hospitals were literally sending ICU patients to smaller cities because their own wards were overflowing. Moreover, attrition rates among clinicians (nurses especially) has been atrocious over the past year or so. People are only willing to put up with so much shit for so long, and most provincial systems have zero slack at the moment. That said, measures like GP described were/are in play in many cities. Seniors time was a fixture in the first few months of the pandemic, especially in smaller areas that did not experience a large caseload. That's another point too: I think a lot of HN commenters are unaware of just how fragmented and regional the Canadian healthcare system is. No two provinces implemented the same restrictions or policies at the same time, and only a couple put in strict stay-at-home style lockdowns. Note how the article mentions large increases in both Ontario (lax policies, then sudden strict lockdowns) with Alberta (very few restrictions). Even in Ontario, walking outside the biggest few cities would result in an immediate drop of most of the strict measures present in, say, the GTA. I know it's hard to capture this nuance discussing with strangers on some random online forum, but it's essential if we are to properly discuss cause and effect.

gpm 5y ago

I'm not arguing against comparing different policies, I'm just pre-emptively pointing out a flawed way of interpreting the data. You can see people trying to interpret it that way elsewhere in this thread already... for example in the math in this (now flagged dead, not by me) comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342601 Neither of your points A or B are at all discussed in this data, nor are they responsive to my comment. I'd classify them as largely off topic and I'm not going to respond past pointing that out. The data at hand does not discuss financial costs of either lockdowns or letting people get sick. Does not compare risks between different age groups (apart from giving number of deaths under 65). Does not discuss policy ideas. Etc.

angelzen 5y ago
The data points that A and B exist and are worthy of further consideration. The data is likely too noisy to draw further conclusions. Perhaps in your neck of woods things are different, but on USA West Coast there is near zero public discussion of either cost tradeoffs or age groups.