>It's basically condemning them to working nonstop for months if not years
how come? wouldn't without lockdown the herd immunity with that R0 would come in like 2-3 months (and during that period the vulnerable people would have to be locked down), while with lockdown we're already 3 months into it without reasonable lockdown based endgame in sight?
This author is asserting 5 years of lockdown but gives no reasons why specifically 5 years. They talk about the possibility of no vaccine working and herd immunity not working if the immune window is too small, etc. But how does that equate to 5 years of lockdown? Why 5 years and not just say indefinitely then? Am I missing something?
> For how long? What if there is never a vaccine? Will we hide in our homes forever? [...] Lockdowns just can't last forever
Indeed. The purpose of the lockdown was to buy us time to build e.g. contract tracing infrastructure, massively expand testing, and develop other means to allow us to reopen safely.
Instead for the most part we've sat on our hands and done very little. Thus we're saying, well, sucks to be us, I guess we have to reopen and let people die.
It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. There is plenty of evidence of this from around the world.
> Stop building this up into a strawman. Nobody is arguing that lockdowns should last forever.
But this is exactly the mindset that I'd characterize as an erosion of "respect for human rights". When the government proposes extraordinary restrictions, it's their responsibility to clearly define how long the restrictions need to last. Answers like "until it's safe" or "stop building this into a strawman" should not satisfy us, because the entire principle of human rights is that governments can't be trusted with such unlimited mandates.
(I should note to be fair that many governments have indeed limited their mandate, saying that they're going to remove all the restrictions once a vaccine is widely available. I don't necessarily agree with that from a policy perspective, but it's much better than an indefinite commitment to stop the disease from spreading.)
> First it was 14 days to slow the spread and flatten the curve and somehow they stretched that for a year into wait for the vaccine.
In the US, where it was cited, the 14-day thing referred to strict lockdowns, was always projected to be cycled on and off as needed to maintain caseload and to involve other controls (masks, social distancing, lighter commerce/gathering restrictions) outside of the strict lockdowns period, and strict lockdowns mostly didn't get extended much beyond that length until some of the new ones recently (though some did get restored, perhaps in slightly different form, months later, hence the new onrs), and in many cases were less effective than planned because they saw very poor compliance and inconsistent enforcement, and because travel with different areas that did not enforce similar controls was not curtailed. (And sometimes, those “different areas” were the next county over, with lots of crossover for shopping, work, and personal services.)
> The lockdowns went on far longer than the "flatten the curve" phase.
Did they? Is the table on wikipedia wrong? Outside of California (which I feel no desire to defend), it looks like the actual lockdowns were 0-3 months.
0-3 months doesn't sound nutty to me. Perhaps 3 months was a bit on the high side, sure, but it's also on the high side of actual policy. What does strike me as nutty was the extreme rhetoric around extremely basic Rt reduction measures. Washing hands, social distancing, wearing masks, taking temperatures, installing spit shields etc just don't deserve nearly the same level of vitriol as the lockdowns themselves, but people seem awfully keen to fudge the distinction. Next time we should start those measures out of the gate but I am worried that people will jump right back into the game of pretending that basic public health measures = extreme oppression, sending us down the exact same path as 2020.
> The reason for lockdown is to slow things down, so we don't get to the point where doctors have to decide who to help or who not.
But one must think that this can't go on indefinitely or for very long time frames. It buys time to reduce the number of "active" cases, but only to ensure that once lockdown is lifted one is able to do tracing and isolation for new cases.
Realistically, we'll have to live with this virus (and the associated risk) for quite a while. The time frames for a "cure" if it is found vary from months for drugs (if those in current trials prove to be useful) to years for a vaccine (which like the drugs may not be effective).
You can keep people holed up for a few months at best. You won't be able to do so for one or more years, unless you want to face severe consequences (and I'm not talking about the economy, I'm talking of long-term psychological effects).
> We all know that a hard lockdown brings down the new-infection numbers WEEKS after beginning the lockdown, yet there are still a lot of people on Twitter, YT and at demonstrations (at least here in Germany) where folks are angry that the lockdown doesn't work 2 DAYS after its beginning.
In the spirit of understanding, in your words what are the biggest arguments against forcing a hard lock down?
> Keeping everything locked down has a huge human cost too.
That really depends on what's your personal definition of "keeping everything locked down".
European countries like Spain and Italy showed that lockdowns work quite well in quickly halving infection rates with negligible externalities, but their lockdown focused on non-essential work and everyone was allowed to do basic provisioning things such as going to the supermarket.
Also, if I recall correctly Spain also had in place a kind of stimulus program where people could apply for a guaranteed minimum income scheme.
It boggles the mind how some people conflate a quarantine with solitary confinement under house arrest where people are left to starve to death.
That’s not a good argument - we cannot possibly get to herd immunity with the infection rates we’re seeing under lockdown. Without loosening of the restrictions and a measured return to work, we’ll be stuck in Shelter mode for years before we get to 60+%...
> I see lots of commentators arguing about 'lockdowns', but very little discussion what actually constitutes 'lockdowns'. Lockdowns in China looked very different to lockdowns in Europa or lockdowns in the US. Lockdowns in 2020, in most countries, were very different to lockdowns in 2022.
I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care about this distinction when they've all proven to be completely ineffective can-kicking at best, enormously costly interventions whose scope was extended well beyond their initial "15 days to slow the spread" mandate for precious little (if any) benefit and an accumulating roster of harms.
The people who said that lockdown needed to be limited in length because people couldn't take it for long were right.
Unfortunately, due to not understanding exponentials, many advocated for starting the lockdown later: hence the UK's delayed lockdown and therefore highest death toll in Europe.
The people advocating for "herd immunity" never addressed the death rate; a death rate of even 0.5% in the UK would be
three hundred thousand people, plus more with lingering side effects. As it is, we've confirmed 287k infected for 40k deaths, or 0.5% of the country infected. A very, very long way from immunity.
> On on end you have the idea that we should stay in "lockdown" until there is a cure or vaccine.
Is anyone saying that? Although I've heard plenty of "it's just a flu!!!" comments, I don't think I've seen anyone claim that permanent lockdown is a viable strategy.
I don't believe any country is pursuing an indefinite "until further notice" lockdown policy, although "lockdown" means different things to different people. Most European countries seem to have accepted that long-term social distancing measures are required, whilst trying to open up as much as possible.
> a vaccine that is going to take a year in the most optimistic case
The UK government is hoping for a vaccine in September. This may not be likely, but it seems to be possible.
> There is a big difference between "possible for a few months" and "possible indefinitely". A lot of what we did during the lockdowns was never going to be sustainable.
I would be interested to see an argument for this point, because I don't think it stands on its own.
The problem is you need to keep utilities running and hospitals open. Then there are slightly less strict lockdowns where people can get limited exercise outdoors, buy groceries, and food production continues. NSW tried this, and it's failing. I suspect it's a combination of delta is too contagious for lockdowns to work in practice, too many people will violate them, 14 days doesn't account for asymptomatic household spread, and 14 days is more like p95 than p999.
> And, by the way, deaths going down is doing so soooo slowly because we really didn't get the R0 much 1.0. If people had actually locked down PROPERLY, deaths would be dropping much faster.
I broadly agree with your post, but even in countries like France/Italy that have had very strict lockdowns, there's still like a three-week half-life to deaths per day.
That's a different argument. I'm saying that "lockdown until we have a vaccine or great treatment" might mean "lockdown until 2030". We already see heavy economic damages, civil unrest and riots after 4-8 weeks. Make that 40, 80 or 200 weeks and the world will be very different.
So I don't know if he is saying that lockdowns will "generally" continue on a global stage remain until 2022, or if he saying that there will be lockdowns "somewhere" in the world into 2022. Initially I take this to mean the former because of this statement in the article: "BILL Gates predicts global Covid-19 restrictions could last until 2022".
If this is the case could someone explain the reasoning here? The UK is expected to complete its vaccination program by April 2021 [1]. I can't imagine other Western countries will be very far behind them. I imagine the isolated nations such as AUS and NZ will allow travel with the necessary vaccination certificates [2].
I feel like I'm missing the link as to why lockdowns dragging on to 2022 is likely?
how come? wouldn't without lockdown the herd immunity with that R0 would come in like 2-3 months (and during that period the vulnerable people would have to be locked down), while with lockdown we're already 3 months into it without reasonable lockdown based endgame in sight?
reply