If people are scared and won't go to restaurants and bars then why continue to keep them closed? You are saying that patronage is already down so why even restrict them?
Give people and businesses a choice in the matter.
This is about letting individuals and businesses make their own decisions without the government forcing them to close.
That would be fine and dandy if the decision to engage in risky behaviour only affects the individuals and businesses making them. However, this is not the case in reality.
This isn’t about people making decisions for themselves. It’s about preventing the spread of infectious disease.
You might be fine, but if you are asymptomatic, you can directly harm or kill others and not even know it.
That being said, I’m not sure what the best policy is. It doesn’t seem feasible to have a complete lockdown that extends for many months. So we have to be clever, keep learning, and find good solutions. We can minimize the risks and prioritize health while allowing society to function in an altered fashion.
> This isn’t about people making decisions for themselves
Making decisions for ones self is exactly the principal that the USA was founded on.
> You might be fine, but if you are asymptomatic, you can directly harm or kill others and not even know it.
See also: Drinking, condom-less sex, smoking, and junk food. All of these things directly or indirectly harm others and if this is about public safety then it's time yourself and others start movements to ban them.
The "you may be hurting people indirectly" argument never worked and it's getting more brittle with time.
Have you considered that your favored interventions are, in addition to being extremely harmful to society in every measurable way, probably also completely ineffective in altering the outcomes? Sweden didn't do a thing and is basically done with this nonsense, presumably for all time from the looks of the plots; Massachusetts is still mostly locked down and has 4x the death rate. Lockdown fetishists should be greeted with "citations needed."
The correct numbers are 5743 (2020-08-01) ? 5865 (2020-09-21), i.e. 122 or a growth of only about 2%, which is indeed very good. Only Ireland, Italy, China, Belgium are better (and 18 outlier countries adding zero to one deaths only because they each have less than 83 deaths absolute). So, following that definition of "done", I agree Sweden meets it.
But at what cost? Its deaths per capita quotient is horrendous! The thirteen worst countries are:
|deaths 2020-09-21|pop in million|deaths/1000 capita
San Marino 42 0.0339 1.24
Peru 31369 32.5105 0.96
Belgium 9950 11.5393 0.86
Andorra 53 0.0771 0.69
Bolivia 7654 11.5131 0.66
Spain 30663 46.7368 0.66
Chile 12379 18.952 0.65
Brazil 137285 211.0495 0.65
Ecuador 11095 17.3737 0.64
United Kingdom 41877 67.5302 0.62
US 199862 329.0649 0.61
Italy 35724 60.5501 0.59
Sweden 5865 10.0364 0.58
The average for that column is 0.12 and the median is 0.04. It's a really bad trade-off for Sweden to let five to sixteen times more people die than usual just to achieve a small growth rate a couple of months into the pandemic; this does not make any sense. For comparison, Germany's growth in deaths in that time frame was also quite small, namely 2.5%, but they have an under average death quotient of only 0.11.
Did you read my parent comment right above? I don't claim to know exactly what the policies should be. And I explicitly stated that hardcore lockdowns that extend for months don't seem like a good idea.
I was just trying to push and get some clarity into how just-juan-post thinks about it, as clearly there is some obvious disagreement and I wondered what circumstances they think justify different interventions.
The point of a lockdown is to stop people who think like you from hurting others. If we could trust people to act responsibly we wouldn't need to lockdown so strictly, but in example after example someone who thinks like you will ruin it for everyone.
Regardless, the US has largely already decided to be on your side and let you make your own decision about how to act during a pandemic, and the results speak for themselves. A wholesale failure. Good job, you win, 200,000 people are dead, is that enough patriotism for you?
Drink driving is banned, smoking is banned in many situations and only thanks to tobacco lobbies and tax income is it not entirely banned. Having sex doesn't affect passers by, just the active participants. Junk food you choose to eat yourself, you don't hurt others with it. It can cost taxpayer dollars in medical funding though, if you want to take that angle. There are hundreds of laws to stop people from making choices that hurt others, so even if your examples weren't so flimsy they would still be moot.
This is a once in a lifetime pandemic, it will pass, take it on the chin and accept that you might have to do something to help others. You will get your choice back soon enough. The choice to be a carrier during a pandemic affects everyone. Why is it individual liberty to choose to spread disease but public will when people die from it?
Please don't explicitly state things like this, it only leads to more polarisation. Keep people guessing at your personal political preferences, they should not have any impact on whether what you say is deemed 'acceptable' or not.
I realise this but the solution is not to wave the don't shoot, I'm with you flag. The real solution is to get the discussion to revolve around the message instead of the messenger. This is a culture change and as such it takes time and you'll have to suffer the (no so) occasional downvote-into-oblivion experience but so be it.
Here comes some ethically questionable but effective advice to stay alive in the HN jungle: if you're low on karma points you just post a few karma-whoring replies to top up the counter. Once you can breathe again you can state your mind freely until that karma counter goes down towards the red zone again after which you need to top it up again. It is very unfortunate that this is needed to stay alive here for those who have not yet built up a sufficient buffer of points but things being the way they are there is no other way for those who like to speak their mind on the edge of the sometimes very narrow Overton window.
- Journalists and individuals need to use FOIA actions against their state and local governments to see e-mails to see what the true numbers are. That Nashville situation is absurd and we all know it's happening at a bunch of other places.
- Middle class / "regular people" need to start speaking openly and questioning and discussing the lifestyle restrictions and closures.
- A message of safety indirectly spreads a message of fear. Stop with all of the unnecessary post-Covid new normal "safety" things.
I mean, the alternative is to only post on technical topics, where there's a lot less need for the "right" opinions (unless you hate Rust, I guess ;) ).
If only that were true, but political issues have crept into many technical topics in such a way that it is hard to avoid them altogether. Maybe a 'political' flag on politicised (sub)threads can help, together with an option to hide such threads. On some days it will be very quiet here for those who have chosen to hide politics but that only makes them more productive.
If mask usage was strictly mandated then lockdowns would be unnecessary. Instead, the topic of masks has been pulled into a ridiculous debate.
I suspect most lockdown supporters live in a comfortable and spacious environment where they work from home. The cost of lockdown is huge for business owners, domestic abuse victims and those with mental illness. There is increasing research that points to the cost of lockdowns being greater than the benefit.
Widespread spread mask usage in Japan and South Korea has proven very effective as well at controlling the virus and allowing life to go back to normal
I agree with you, however it is connected to the original argument because people have demonstrated they won't wear masks, so you need lockdown instead. If people would wear masks, business could go on.
The cost of lockdown is high, I don't think anyone is disputing that. It's a tradeoff, but we don't really know what's going to be best long term. It's hard to measure without all the data, and who gets to choose the metric for success? Is it economic damage, or social damage, or damage to public health that we're aiming to minimize? I think the answer is that they are all competing goals, and everyone is going to be using a different metric to measure success.
I thought the point of the lockdown was to flatten the curve? “Just 14 days to flatten the curve,” if I remember correctly.
How could anyone, including the government, have planned for or implemented a social safety net or bailout for something that has gone on literally 12 times longer than anyone said it would?
I'm all in for banning smoking, but unfortunately drug addicts tend to become violent if they're cut off. It's much less damaging to society to do that one slowly over time.
To be fair, the US is in kindof a weird position with respect to Covid 19. It's a perfect storm of 1) good testing (at least better than the developing world) and 2) inconsistent and ineffective responses to Covid.
I don't dispute that the US has performed poorly here, but the 25%/5% stat needs to be contextualised by the fact that other countries who have done really poorly (e.g. Brazil), have much less testing than the US has.
"We can observe trends from the number of deaths reported each year, on a weekly basis. When we see large deviations in the numbers for a time period, we call that excess deaths. Looking at 2020 since March, the raw number of excess deaths is 200,000 more people than a normal year. When we try to understand that, COVID-19 is the most rational and likely explanation. If you don't believe it's COVID-19, try to pinpoint why this year has been so different than any other. Why would a new disease that kills people not be the cause?"
Excess mortality has nothing to do with testing, you are entirely correct there.
However, most Covid deaths are counted as deaths post a positive test. Therefore, the tests provide the denominator for potential deaths.
The US has lots of testing (though probably not enough) and an overall poor response to the pandemic, causing the 25%/5% statistic, and hence my point.
There is a lot of things that can indirectly harm others. Unless you can show that opening up is much more dangerous to others than those other things, it makes no sense to selectively ban opening up. Given bars and restaurants are already open in other states (and other countries) without any significant increase in deaths compared to California and New York, where's the data showing opening up bars and restaurants is dangerous?
Once SARS2 is history it will be interesting to compare the approach in places like NYC to those in e.g. Florida. I suspect the latter will come out on top when it comes to efficacy of the approach while the former will end up both bankrupt as well as looking for a new mayor and governor. Especially given the number of retirees living in Florida these results are remarkable, when the epidemic (as in 'local version of the pandemic') began I suspected FL would end up topping the mortality lists. A number of bad decisions were made in the beginning - e.g. allowing infected elderly people to be sent into care homes where they infected others - which have been haunting state and local government ever since and probably gave rise to the continued lockdown measures - a classical example of someone closing the barn doors after the horses escaped.
I live in Sweden where similar mistakes were made in the beginning, in this case mostly caused by personnel in care facilities not following the mandated personal protection measures which caused them to spread the infection between infected and 'clean' departments, facilities and people. In contrast to NYC this has not led to more draconic lockdown measures, probably because the problems in those care facilities were recognised. Unfortunately they were not dealt with in time which has led to a large number of vulnerable people getting infected. Apart from these (grave) mistakes it now looks like the Swedish approach might start to show its merits given the low infection rates here compared to surrounding countries. Things can still change but currently the number of new infections in Sweden is lower than that in surrounding countries.
You might be fine, but if you are asymptomatic, you can directly harm or kill others and not even know it.
No, this is a rumour that was long since debunked.
Asymptomatic transmission does not exist. Basically no cases have been traced back to that and the WHO no longer supports the concept. WHO officials months ago pointed out this was "very rare" (read: doesn't happen, considering how noisy testing and contact tracing are). This story summarises:
They (the WHO) distinguish this from "pre-symptomatic transmission" which means you will develop symptoms in a day or two, but are infectious a bit before that happens. This happens with many viruses. It's entirely normal. In the UK right now flu is twice as deadly as COVID, same is true of many other places.
So you have a choice. You can never go out again in case you are about to come down with flu and un-knowingly, via a long and complex chain of events, kill a disabled child. Or you can accept that there's nothing unusual currently happening beyond media and government hysteria, and go to a restaurant before they're all gone.
> If people are responsible and won't go to restaurants
See here's the thing: Just because you and others like you have a certain definition of "responsible" doesn't mean it should or does apply to everyone.
Should we ban skydiving because it's irresponsible? Condom-less sex?
This is about choice. Re-open and let people and businesses choose.
If it were possible to ensure everyone who would potentially be exposed to covid-19 as a result of your decision to engage in high-risk activities had given informed consent, I'd be fine with letting people decide for themselves.
Since that isn't the case, your comparison is patently absurd. Skydiving isn't contagious.
No, this is about the common good, where personal choices might have a disproportionate impact unto others.
I don't care if you don't care about getting infected or not, I do care if you get infected and spread that to others that don't hold your values.
Society and populations don't work well with personal responsibility when their actions' impacts are too far removed from their personal sphere, if you kill someone 3rd hand because you infected someone who worked in a care facility: how are you going to know and act accordingly?
This bullshit about personal freedoms and responsibility in the middle of a pandemic tells me more about the people who don't have a holistic view of society but this ideologue monologue about personal freedom, this is your value, this isn't how society work yet.
This is a story about the ability of human kind to work together to defeat a common enemy.
So far we have failed. The reasons for that failure are many, but it has become clear over this 6+ months that a coordinated top-down plan is what we’re lacking.
The “libertarian” approach like you mentioned has been tried- every relaxation of covid restrictions has been followed by acceleration in the case count. Turns out prayers and positive thinking were unsuccessful in limiting virus transmission.
Be honest Juan, when was the last time you really made your own decision anyhow?
Epidemiology is not accomplished by allowing people to make personal choices, because your average guy has no understanding of either epidemiology or statistics.
As we have already seen, what actually happens is that a small number of people with vocal delusional beliefs do wildly risky things that endangers everyone else.
Ignoring the whole "we should open/we should close" debate (I'm not an expert in economics or virology) it's perfectly possible for the vast majority of people to not want to go to bars/restaurants and to need to chose, as a group instead of individual, to close them to lower spread. I.e. >50% doesn't always have the same outcome as 100%
People do get a choice in the matter but part of that is people get a choice whether they want to act independently or enforce a choice (to some level) as a group.
Most people advocating for reopening would kick restaurant employees off of unemployment. Those employees are the people in the equation with the least power, and the most exposed to the risk.
I see no reason to believe this. Restaurants are pretty packed in the places that reopened, and they were pretty packed in NYC until literally the day the lockdowns started.
> Restaurants are pretty packed in the places that reopened
Not true of where I live in San Francisco
> they were pretty packed in NYC until literally the day the lockdowns started
That's before people got scared because NYC was literally the first place for this to happen and most people had no idea what was going on. You can see how restaurants performed in countries that remained open, like Sweden, where you can find lots of people talking about how their sales dropped 80% despite no lockdown. For a low margin business, that kills.
Even without these laws, personal decisions would have decimated the business regardless. Even in places didn't shut down, patronage plummeted.
reply