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Indeed this is the case. The timing was unfortunate in that the pandemic hit during the absolute lowest point in trust of public institutions and bad faith acto

• _delirium 3y ago
  It’s a bit more than them starting with a random default playbook for serious disease outbreaks. They started with the playbook for this specific virus family! “Covid” is a synonym for SARS-CoV-2. It’s not that surprising that experts would start with the set of procedures that had successfully contained and eliminated SARS-CoV-1. It didn’t work in the case of v2, but I have trouble seeing why it’s a bad starting point to start with what actually worked in practice to stop v1. It’s sort of interesting to me that the partisan politics on this have flipped from the early days though. Early on, Bill DeBlasio (at the time, NYC’s left-ish mayor) was against cancelling anything or imposing any travel restrictions, even telling people it was racist to avoid Chinese New Year or St Patrick’s Day celebrations, and xenophobic to ask for restrictions on travel. The NY conservative media were very critical of his decisions to let those events move forward and called for travel bans and event cancellations to stop the virus. Fast-forward a bit and they had each adopted the other side’s positions.
  • jack_pp 3y ago
    Early on it made sense and we were told the lock-down would be a couple of weeks. Those couple of weeks stretched for years and that's why there was a switch when it was obvious lock-downs didn't work but were still imposed.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • jmopp 3y ago
      It's an interesting game-theory problem. If everyone locked down, the virus would have been contained. But global cooperation is pretty much impossible, and every choice had its cost.
      • abwizz 3y ago
        locking everything down is impossible because ppl would start to starve within a week or so. specialisation and compartmentalisation of labor has a price
        • josephg 3y ago
          For a lockdown to be effective, it didn't need to shut down the city completely. Just do enough to get R0 (the avg number of people who each person infects) below 1. This causes the case numbers to drop exponentially. And when case numbers are small enough, contact tracing can be used.
          • spookthesunset 3y ago
            You assume that lockdowns actually work. We have three years of evidence to suggest otherwise. And if that isn’t enough there is this gem of a study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ Turns out that even after seventeen weeks of complete isolation in Antarctica you can still catch the common cold… So yeah… you can’t stop Mother Nature no matter how hard you try.
            • josephg 3y ago
              Do we? Case numbers in Melbourne seemed to go down a few weeks after we went into hard lockdown, each and every time we did it. It could have been a coincidence each time, but I’d need some good studies to convince me.
              • mike_hearn 3y ago
                It was a coincidence each time. The problem is that epidemic waves last a certain amount of time, and politicians tend to enact lockdown after a certain amount of delay because they want to be sure it's really going up and have to wait a few days for the announcements to propagate etc, and then you have to wait a short period before you expect any impact anyway. And then that's when the epidemic naturally goes into decline. It's trivial to prove this because waves last roughly the same amount of time everywhere, so you can just compare places that went into lockdown with places that didn't and see what happens. The answer is that the waves are the same size and shape regardless of what governments do. You can also do a regression analysis on "strictness indexes" and case counts, which also yields no correlation. There are such studies: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.6043... "Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate" https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1.-LANCET-LOCKDOWN-NO-MORTALITY-BENEFIT-A-country-level-analysis-measuring-the-impact-of-government-actions.pdf https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1.-LANC... "Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people" But you don't need studies. The fact that Sweden didn't lock down and yet has some of the lowest COVID mortality in Europe is decisive. Claims about the effects and necessity of lockdowns were universal and made no exception for Sweden, so the existence of even a single counter-example disproves the theories.
    • DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
      A fair number of countries did have lockdowns that successfully eliminated (as in: completely eliminated the virus within their borders) the virus within weeks. China is the elephant in the room (local elimination by about April 2020), but there are several other countries that did the same thing (such as New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan). On the assumption that you're an American, your country was not organized enough to couple a lockdown with effective contact tracing and mass testing, which is what other countries did to eliminate the virus.
      • josephg 3y ago
        Yep. Australian here. We successfully brought our case numbers down a number of times through expensive, city wide lockdowns. Each time we succeeded and then opened back up, the virus unfortunately found a new route in the country and case numbers went up again. If the whole world had adopted this strategy, covid would have been eliminated from the planet entirely. Lots of lives were still saved by our strategy because almost everyone had a chance to get vaccinated before getting covid. Even with the benefit of hindsight, its still controversial whether the lockdowns were worth it overall. But they were definitely effective at containing covid.
        • DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
          It's also with noting that there were other zero-CoVID countries that were able to maintain control of the virus with less significant lockdowns. The key was early detection of new outbreaks and effective, rapid contact tracing. Between the initial outbreak and Omicron (roughly, April 2020 - March 2022), most people in China never experienced a lockdown, because each new outbreak was controlled locally before it could spread to the rest of the country.
        • dontknowwhyihn 3y ago
          Australia became a full on prison colony. They didn’t contain covid, they imprisoned their entire population.
          • 3y ago
    • bryananderson 3y ago
      What lockdown? Not a single jurisdiction in the US did a true lockdown like New Zealand, Italy, etc. Not even for two weeks. I also can’t think of anywhere in the US where anything was still mandated closed a single year after it started, let alone multiple years. I’m struggling to think of anywhere that even came close to a full year. The revisionism around Covid has gotten wild. Certain businesses had to close for a few months (with government aid), capacity limits came and went for a while after that, and some places required you to wear a mask for longer. But somehow the narrative has become “the government would not let me leave my house for multiple years”.
      • base698 3y ago
        In California during December 2020 after allowing outside dining they shutdown all restaurants. I don't remember when they relented and allowed outside dining again but it was into 2021. Most schools were closed for almost 2 years. Most offices and theme parks were much much longer. People conflate China style lockdown with massively disruptive policies we had in California. While I wasn't boarded in my home, I was turned away while outside dining to use the restroom in a restaurant and got threatened by the police by the beach when beaches and parks were still closed. The narrative is more, if anyone advocates for anything like that again they are the enemy.
        • ericfr11 3y ago
          A policy is not meant to be fun. Paying tax and taxes wearing seatbelt are policies geared towards living together as a society
          • spookthesunset 3y ago
            Seatbelts and taxes vs. covid lockdowns are not even close to comparable.
        • bryananderson 3y ago
          Restaurants closed for about 6 weeks in some regions in December-January, and ICUs statewide were at 0% capacity in late December so I’d say that was a really good idea. That still doesn’t reach a year after the first shutdowns, and anyway they had been open for months prior, so not even close to a year of total closure. Most schools definitely were not closed for almost two years either. IIRC the only district that even came close to 2 years was San Francisco (due to seismic levels of school board incompetence, ending in a recall). If you live in SF that could be why it feels like most schools were closed that long—but in fact that length was so abnormal, even in “harsh” California, that it got a generally pro-covid-restrictions city to recall the school board. > People conflate China style lockdown with massively disruptive policies we had in California. Ok and they’re wrong since they aren’t even close. People conflate all kinds of things. I’m sorry a police officer threatened you—as a country we definitely have a problem with power-tripping cops. Still doesn’t mean we did a China-style lockdown policy. > The narrative is more, if anyone advocates for anything like that again they are the enemy. Yeah see this is what I mean about how this discourse has gotten utterly deranged. Yes, if there’s a respiratory illness straining the ICU system to the breaking point again in the future, I think the government should close restaurants etc. for a few months (with aid for small businesses and individuals). So what does it mean that I am “the enemy”? Are you going to do something to me in that scenario?
    • account42 3y ago
      There was also a switch in narrative - early lockdowns were meant to contain the virus while it was changed to "flatten the curve" for the longe lockdowns. Its not unreasonable to be in favor of the former but not the latter.
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    Ultimately, the key learning was the CDC and other federal agencies will propagate misinformation knowingly and intentionally for their perceived public health reasons. I'm no stranger to massive state restrictions of individual rights when fighting infectious diseases. DOTS and friends are an effective means of fighting TB. But intentionally misinforming crosses a line since it makes the organization untrustworthy. Irrespective of whether masks work or not, the state apparatus chose to go with the message that they don't for the reason that they wanted to preserve supply for healthcare workers. I had a supply of N95 masks from earlier preparation for forest fires that I gave to healthcare workers here in SF. In future, I shall not donate like this. It is clear that every man is an island and the agencies set up to inform us believe they must control us through deceit instead.
    • seanp2k2 3y ago
      “For the greater good” For us personally, a quick thought experiment with 4 quadrants: - wear a mask vs don’t wear - mask helps vs mask doesn’t help The balance of inconvenience in the “wear mask, mask doesn’t help” vs possible avoidable death in the “don’t wear, mask helps” made it a very easy decision.
      • strken 3y ago
        Without the actual numbers this is just a more complicated Pascal's wager. The same argument can justify wearing a helmet because you might be hit in the head by falling meteorites, or wearing a life vest to work in case you slip and fall into a pond. Not to say wearing a mask is bad! It's just that it needs justification by actual or estimated data, not a fuzzy thought experiment.
        • mcny 3y ago
          It isn't rocket surgery. If you have a cold, wear a mask. Or at the very least cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze. Do you also need a hundred year weather analysis if someone suggests carrying an umbrella because it is cloudy?
  • themitigating 3y ago
    Who is "They"? Science is a practice not an organization. There's no pope or single church that has rules. It's crazy your criticizing people for changing if new information comes out. That's the basis of science and why it's not like religon
    • MrPatan 3y ago
      If you don't let some information out in case it changes The Science, what then?
      • themitigating 3y ago
        What does that mean to let some information out in case it changes? Science doesn't change it's a process, a way of understanding the world.
        • MrPatan 3y ago
          Ok. I'll explain because there seems to be a genuine misunderstanding. Of course the scientific method is great, and the only tool we have to understand the world. Of course. Very true. "The Science", on the other hand, is a sales tool. Something to be invoked to push a product, a policy, whatever. Science, the scientific method, the sum total of humanity's knowledge and wisdom, can't be stopped. It may be delayed, but truth wins because truth predicts the future, and lies don't. But "The Science", that's different. Pay off a few key people at the right time, and you can get yourself a nice handy "The Science" to sell whatever it is you want to sell. It won't work forever, but it doesn't need to. By then they've already cashed out their shares, won the election, whatever.
          • themitigating 3y ago
            "But "The Science", that's different. Pay off a few key people at the right time, and you can get yourself a nice handy" If it's accurate how is this is a bad way to sell something? What's better? You're claiming that it can be corrupted, that applies to many things in life.
  • jandrewrogers 3y ago
    An issue I had, having been previously quite familiar with the literature on the 2003 variant of COVID, is that the government manifestly ignored many of the scientific findings of that earlier outbreak for political reasons. It would have been great if they leaned on the science from the 2003 version of the disease, but they didn’t and some of the policies made no sense in light of that prior literature.
    • RandomLensman 3y ago
      Perhaps, but are you familiar with the practice of the 2003 version, too? I don't mean that facetiously, but my experience is that practice and literature are two very different things in medical sciences (and others, too). There is a social component to epidemics, for example, that you don't just get to ignore.
  • nradov 3y ago
    The public health measures used against the original SARS were not effective. They did almost nothing. The disease burned out largely on its own.
  • mistermann 3y ago
    That is weird, just one of many weird things around the whole COVID spectacle. Also weird: that we don't do any serious post-incident analysis so we can harden procedures and institutions in case a really big problem knocks on our door someday. There's something suspicious about this planet if you ask me.
• manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > That turned out to be the direct opposite course of action needed. I wonder, in hindsight, what would have been the better course of action. Taiwan did that and their mortality and contagion rate is orders of magnitude lower than in the US. Same goes for Japan. Hell, even most European countries have a lower mortality rate than the US. All of these countries have also a higher population density than the US.
  • spookthesunset 3y ago
    > Taiwan did that and their mortality and contagion rate is orders of magnitude lower than in the US. Same goes for Japan. This is simply not true. I don’t care how much the data gets massaged to align with the narrative. It’s a lie. Misinformation, really. Which is par for course when it comes to covid.
    • manuelabeledo 3y ago
      > This is simply not true. I don’t care how much the data gets massaged to align with the narrative Long story short, you wouldn’t take anything that would not align with your narrative. A religious zealot.
• tensor 3y ago
  The countries the tried to contain it until we had vaccines to protect vulnerable populations had far lower mortality rates than those that opened up, including the US. Seems to me the containment strategy was exactly the action that was needed. Countries that followed the experts advice did far far better.
• dm319 3y ago
  Disagree. COVID was high mortality at 1% before the vaccine with an especially high contagiousness. Hospitals were overwhelmed in areas that couldn't control the spread, which meant shortages of beds and oxygen for those who could be saved.
• account42 3y ago
  Oh no, those poor innocent institutions having to suffer from low public confidence. How could this have happened to them.