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Fascinating - I always had a hunch that the Covid lockdowns would save more lives from reductions in pollution than covid itself, I hope studies (like this one)

Fascinating - I always had a hunch that the Covid lockdowns would save more lives from reductions in pollution than covid itself, I hope studies (like this one) can explore that topic.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Are you saying that you believe more lives were saved due to reduced pollution than were saved due to keeping the pandemic restrained? I find that very hard to believe, considering the massive excess deaths that would result from overloaded hospitals, if the pandemic were allowed to rage on unstopped.
- parametrizept 4y ago
  Sweden
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    Powerful argument.
    - fieldcny 4y ago
      Not really, It was just a word. Assuming they were making mention of Swedens recommendations only approach, it’s still not a good argument because there are plenty of countries that tried similar methods and failed miserably (e.g. Brazil). There are a lot of confounding factors not controlled for or properly studied.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        I was obviously being sarcastic.
        pc86 4y ago
        Might I suggest you read: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        I have, but when people argue in bad faith like the "Sweden" comment or other hyperbolic ones in this thread, I only have so much patience. I'm not going to go read 15 news articles and wiki pages to find out the most charitable interpretation of namedropping Sweden. If the person wanted to make an argument they should actually provide one. Instead I think it's perfectly reasonable to call out their bad faith argument, because it's not like they're gonna provide a serious response if I make one anyway. Edit: I want to add something here. Had they replied to my sarcasm with a more cogent reply, I would thank them for it and reply accordingly. I may have a bit of a temper and impulsivity at times, leading to snark. But if you look at most of my comments I'm here to share interesting ideas and conversations with people, and I try my best to discuss in good faith and to be humble when I make mistakes. But at some point arguing like that with someone who is never gonna reciprocate is just being a doormat, and a waste of time.
        JohnBooty 4y ago
        Agree completely. There's no possible "assume best intentions" attitude that can be taken toward a zero effort comment like that. Although, we can probably also agree it would have been best to ignore that "Sweden" comment entirely since such comments tend to be downvoted swiftly. Now, you may be wondering: do I reliably follow my own advice and avoid responding to trollish replies like that? No. No I do not.
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        My general rule of thumb is one snarky response per trollish reply at most. Don't keep engaging with them if they do, because then it's just a pissing contest.
  - belorn 4y ago
    Sweden had the exact same prioritization in the health care system, with a very similar patient backlog from non-covid cases. The work-at-home mandate was similar to other nations, with a similar reduction in seasonal respiratory illnesses. Sweden had different approaches mostly in terms of no mask mandates, they did not close down schools, and early in the pandemic there were not as strong border lockdowns (not that it mattered much when all the neighboring countries locked their borders). In term of traffic congestion there seems to have been similar reductions during covid as in other countries, through by default Swedish roads are not as congested more populated countries.
- katkatkatkatket 4y ago
  Instead what happened (at least where I live - UK), is that hospitals stopped treating many other conditions for ~2 years, creating a huge patient backlog, and set "Covid Safety" policies that continue to make diagnosis and treatment slower than normal, causing the backlog to continue to grow at a record-breaking rate. To give you an idea of what that looks like, I currently have two options to get healthcare. I can try to get a GP appointment. The only way is to phone, and the phone system of my local surgery is overloaded as soon as it opens at 8am. You have to ring repeatedly until you can even get a place in the phone queue, then you stay on hold until you get through to a very stressed receptionist who will see if there are any appointments left. They run out quick, and if there aren't any, you have to try again tomorrow at 8am when the next batch are released. The other option is to go to A+E. Calling an ambulance is out of the question, because there's a good chance you'll die before one turns up (if you actually have a life-threatening emergency). Good job we saved the NHS, eh? Covid won't kill granny, good ol' neglect will.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    So you're saying NHS was overloaded due to the pandemic. Not sure how you're disagreeing with me, unless you're claiming that letting the pandemic run wild would somehow lead to less overload, which on the face of it seems absurd.
    - katkatkatkatket 4y ago
      No, I'm saying that the NHS stopped treating other conditions. Whether it was actually overloaded from March 2020 onwards is another question - the publicly-available patient data shows that the total patient occupancy was at about 70% of normal levels during the Covid years. It was also found (and relatively quickly) that Covid patients didn't need complex care - bed rest and low-flow oxygen was the best treatment, for those who didn't need forced ventilation (and there's a whole lot of discussion about how much damage that may to do a Covid patient anyway). The argument that follows is that "we couldn't treat other conditions because that would have caused Covid to spread more widely", with the assumption that it's better to have this many untreated patients than for Covid to have spread more rapidly. Time will tell, but I strongly believe that it will show that, like many other aspects of our response to Covid, the cure will be much worse than the disease.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  There is no single scientific evidence that lockdowns save lives. Instead, they increase: educational gaps domestic abuse unemployment alcohol & drug abuse suicides & self-harm depression & anxiety cardiac & cancer deaths
  - stevehawk 4y ago
    actually that 'domestic abuse' one may be false. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-really-spike-during-the-pandemic/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-reall...
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      Also worth noting that incidences of other infectious disease also went down, which has to be included in the math here.
  - pyronite 4y ago
    > There is no single scientific evidence that lockdowns save lives. I'm all for science, but are you implying China's strict COVID lockdown strategy didn't save any lives?
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Of course it extended some specific lives. It also shortened others. The question is what the net effect was and I don’t think we’ll ever have reliable data on the net effect of the lockdowns in China.
      - pc86 4y ago
        You say that as if the only measure of a government is the net number of lives saved at the end of that government. I would argue that's largely irrelevant. Whether extremely strict lockdowns like those seen in China and Singapore save lives or not is completely irrelevant as they are wrong, at the most basic level. Whether other countries went too far or didn't go far enough can be debated, but having police lock people inside their own homes isn't really something you can argue that good government does.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  I wasn't detailed in what I said - it would not surprise me if more years of life were preserved from the pollution reductions. But pollution is usually, but not always, a gradual killer so I wouldn't necessarily expect a rapid drop in deaths.
prasadjoglekar 4y ago
It's a good hunch. Another good hunch is that delayed diagnostic testing will take more lives in the coming years because cancers and heart ailments went uncured. These hunches are usually not proven or disproven until much later when the initial dust-up has settled and more excess mortality data is available.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  More live than what?
  - DavidPeiffer 4y ago
    Covid
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      That seems very unlikely.
letmeinhere 4y ago
Global excess deaths (meaning the increase from normal) since Jan 2020 are [now estimated](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#estimated-excess-mortality-from-the-economist https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#estimated-...) at about 22 million people. If we were getting a commensurate or greater decrease in pollution deaths, this number would be negative, so I think we can pretty confidently dismiss this hypothesis.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  You’re probably correct, but going forward, since remote work seems to have become more generally accepted, we might start getting these benefits in the coming years, once the noise from these shorter term causes settles down.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Anecdotally, remote work must be a pretty small slice. Rush hour (and general overall) traffic in the Boston area anyway seems to be at pretty much pre-pandemic levels. My expectation is that we'll probably see a bit more flexibility for office jobs overall going forward. But it's not going to be the sea change that some expected/hoped for.
    - CalRobert 4y ago
      That's another topic meriting study - in cities, car miles traveled generally increase until they reach congestion (induced demand), so is this traffic just people going back to work or other people taking advantage of emptier roads?
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I'm talking about normal morning rush hour, which is to say starting in around 6:30am or so (to avoid the very worst of it). It still can take almost two hours for a drive that takes about an hour in light traffic. I don't think that's significantly contributed to by people taking advantage of emptier roads. I will say that the couple of times I've taken the train or subway over the past six months, they've seemed relatively underutilized compared to pre-pandemic. So there may be some degree of switching to cars from transit options.

Fascinating - I always had a hunch that the Covid lockdowns would save more lives from reductions in pollution than covid itself, I hope studies (like this one) can explore that topic.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Are you saying that you believe more lives were saved due to reduced pollution than were saved due to keeping the pandemic restrained? I find that very hard to believe, considering the massive excess deaths that would result from overloaded hospitals, if the pandemic were allowed to rage on unstopped.

parametrizept 4y ago
Sweden
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Powerful argument.
  - fieldcny 4y ago
    Not really, It was just a word. Assuming they were making mention of Swedens recommendations only approach, it’s still not a good argument because there are plenty of countries that tried similar methods and failed miserably (e.g. Brazil). There are a lot of confounding factors not controlled for or properly studied.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      I was obviously being sarcastic.
      - pc86 4y ago
        Might I suggest you read: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        I have, but when people argue in bad faith like the "Sweden" comment or other hyperbolic ones in this thread, I only have so much patience. I'm not going to go read 15 news articles and wiki pages to find out the most charitable interpretation of namedropping Sweden. If the person wanted to make an argument they should actually provide one. Instead I think it's perfectly reasonable to call out their bad faith argument, because it's not like they're gonna provide a serious response if I make one anyway. Edit: I want to add something here. Had they replied to my sarcasm with a more cogent reply, I would thank them for it and reply accordingly. I may have a bit of a temper and impulsivity at times, leading to snark. But if you look at most of my comments I'm here to share interesting ideas and conversations with people, and I try my best to discuss in good faith and to be humble when I make mistakes. But at some point arguing like that with someone who is never gonna reciprocate is just being a doormat, and a waste of time.
        JohnBooty 4y ago
        Agree completely. There's no possible "assume best intentions" attitude that can be taken toward a zero effort comment like that. Although, we can probably also agree it would have been best to ignore that "Sweden" comment entirely since such comments tend to be downvoted swiftly. Now, you may be wondering: do I reliably follow my own advice and avoid responding to trollish replies like that? No. No I do not.
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        My general rule of thumb is one snarky response per trollish reply at most. Don't keep engaging with them if they do, because then it's just a pissing contest.
- belorn 4y ago
  Sweden had the exact same prioritization in the health care system, with a very similar patient backlog from non-covid cases. The work-at-home mandate was similar to other nations, with a similar reduction in seasonal respiratory illnesses. Sweden had different approaches mostly in terms of no mask mandates, they did not close down schools, and early in the pandemic there were not as strong border lockdowns (not that it mattered much when all the neighboring countries locked their borders). In term of traffic congestion there seems to have been similar reductions during covid as in other countries, through by default Swedish roads are not as congested more populated countries.
katkatkatkatket 4y ago
Instead what happened (at least where I live - UK), is that hospitals stopped treating many other conditions for ~2 years, creating a huge patient backlog, and set "Covid Safety" policies that continue to make diagnosis and treatment slower than normal, causing the backlog to continue to grow at a record-breaking rate. To give you an idea of what that looks like, I currently have two options to get healthcare. I can try to get a GP appointment. The only way is to phone, and the phone system of my local surgery is overloaded as soon as it opens at 8am. You have to ring repeatedly until you can even get a place in the phone queue, then you stay on hold until you get through to a very stressed receptionist who will see if there are any appointments left. They run out quick, and if there aren't any, you have to try again tomorrow at 8am when the next batch are released. The other option is to go to A+E. Calling an ambulance is out of the question, because there's a good chance you'll die before one turns up (if you actually have a life-threatening emergency). Good job we saved the NHS, eh? Covid won't kill granny, good ol' neglect will.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  So you're saying NHS was overloaded due to the pandemic. Not sure how you're disagreeing with me, unless you're claiming that letting the pandemic run wild would somehow lead to less overload, which on the face of it seems absurd.
  - katkatkatkatket 4y ago
    No, I'm saying that the NHS stopped treating other conditions. Whether it was actually overloaded from March 2020 onwards is another question - the publicly-available patient data shows that the total patient occupancy was at about 70% of normal levels during the Covid years. It was also found (and relatively quickly) that Covid patients didn't need complex care - bed rest and low-flow oxygen was the best treatment, for those who didn't need forced ventilation (and there's a whole lot of discussion about how much damage that may to do a Covid patient anyway). The argument that follows is that "we couldn't treat other conditions because that would have caused Covid to spread more widely", with the assumption that it's better to have this many untreated patients than for Covid to have spread more rapidly. Time will tell, but I strongly believe that it will show that, like many other aspects of our response to Covid, the cure will be much worse than the disease.
bilsbie 4y ago
There is no single scientific evidence that lockdowns save lives. Instead, they increase: educational gaps domestic abuse unemployment alcohol & drug abuse suicides & self-harm depression & anxiety cardiac & cancer deaths
- stevehawk 4y ago
  actually that 'domestic abuse' one may be false. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-really-spike-during-the-pandemic/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/did-domestic-violence-reall...
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    Also worth noting that incidences of other infectious disease also went down, which has to be included in the math here.
- pyronite 4y ago
  > There is no single scientific evidence that lockdowns save lives. I'm all for science, but are you implying China's strict COVID lockdown strategy didn't save any lives?
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Of course it extended some specific lives. It also shortened others. The question is what the net effect was and I don’t think we’ll ever have reliable data on the net effect of the lockdowns in China.
    - pc86 4y ago
      You say that as if the only measure of a government is the net number of lives saved at the end of that government. I would argue that's largely irrelevant. Whether extremely strict lockdowns like those seen in China and Singapore save lives or not is completely irrelevant as they are wrong, at the most basic level. Whether other countries went too far or didn't go far enough can be debated, but having police lock people inside their own homes isn't really something you can argue that good government does.
CalRobert 4y ago
I wasn't detailed in what I said - it would not surprise me if more years of life were preserved from the pollution reductions. But pollution is usually, but not always, a gradual killer so I wouldn't necessarily expect a rapid drop in deaths.

prasadjoglekar 4y ago

It's a good hunch. Another good hunch is that delayed diagnostic testing will take more lives in the coming years because cancers and heart ailments went uncured. These hunches are usually not proven or disproven until much later when the initial dust-up has settled and more excess mortality data is available.

oneoff786 4y ago
More live than what?
- DavidPeiffer 4y ago
  Covid
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    That seems very unlikely.

letmeinhere 4y ago

Global excess deaths (meaning the increase from normal) since Jan 2020 are [now estimated](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#estimated-excess-mortality-from-the-economist https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#estimated-...) at about 22 million people. If we were getting a commensurate or greater decrease in pollution deaths, this number would be negative, so I think we can pretty confidently dismiss this hypothesis.

LadyCailin 4y ago
You’re probably correct, but going forward, since remote work seems to have become more generally accepted, we might start getting these benefits in the coming years, once the noise from these shorter term causes settles down.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Anecdotally, remote work must be a pretty small slice. Rush hour (and general overall) traffic in the Boston area anyway seems to be at pretty much pre-pandemic levels. My expectation is that we'll probably see a bit more flexibility for office jobs overall going forward. But it's not going to be the sea change that some expected/hoped for.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    That's another topic meriting study - in cities, car miles traveled generally increase until they reach congestion (induced demand), so is this traffic just people going back to work or other people taking advantage of emptier roads?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I'm talking about normal morning rush hour, which is to say starting in around 6:30am or so (to avoid the very worst of it). It still can take almost two hours for a drive that takes about an hour in light traffic. I don't think that's significantly contributed to by people taking advantage of emptier roads. I will say that the couple of times I've taken the train or subway over the past six months, they've seemed relatively underutilized compared to pre-pandemic. So there may be some degree of switching to cars from transit options.