[primeradical]

To anyone reading the comment above, it is extremely poor advice and should not be followed.

Stay at home and shelter in place orders are not solely for the purpose of protecting ones-self from contracting the virus. They also serve to limit the spread from unsuspecting carriers. You can carry and spread the virus unknowingly and this will result in susceptible people contracting it and dying.

The only way we know that shelter in place orders worked is if they feel like an overreaction after this is all over with.

We're all scared and desperately seeking answers and relief. We all want this to be over as soon as possible.

But we must put the public health above all else. This is not the time for egocentric defiance of the recommendations from our leaders.

[CPLX]

> The only way we know that shelter in place orders worked is if they feel like an overreaction after this is all over with.

That's the only way to know? You think it's reasonable to take away the civil liberties of seven million people indefinitely without at least trying to come up with a better performance metric than that?

You have literally no interest in setting up any kind of plan to assess how the policy is working?

[primeradical]

The only people losing civil liberties are the people that die after contracting the virus because we failed to social distance for the necessary amount of time.

The "performance metric" you're looking for is the number of tests we conduct. Unless we're testing hundreds of thousands every day, we have no choice but to continue to shelter in place or stay at home. We are not even close to the amount of testing we need to know who does and doesn't have the virus.

[CPLX]

OK I'll take your bait. What if we have enough tests, then what's the rule?

[primeradical]

When you have enough tests, you know who has the virus and who doesn't. All those infected (and all the people they've contacted) can quarantine or seek the care they need, and those who aren't infected can all go get haircuts.

[CPLX]

So the shelter in place order should be in effect until we have conducted approximately seven million tests, after which we will institute a voluntary program where people who test positive are asked to quarantine and seek care?

[arblify]

I think you're right, we do need a plan, but we need trained epidemiologists and other public health figures to define that plan. Many features of disease spread are counterintuitive and we need people with training to help us, the public, understand the problem and reasonable solutions. When people like Michael Osterholm tell me that it is possible one or two million people will die in the United States, I believe him and I'm willing to go along with the plan. That said, I would like to see more clear definition of where the risk lies, how we can take small chances that have a low chance of going catastrophically wrong, and how we can responsibly try to revert to some kind of normality.

[CPLX]

I mean, it's not like this crisis started an hour ago. What's their plan? Like can someone write it down and post in on a government website?

We're all commenting on what appears to be an official government press release that is announcing an entire month of some of the most serious restrictions on the public ever put in place, that does not appear to even try to take any kind of quantitative approach to explaining why that policy was put in to place, and how its effectiveness is being assessed.

Broad, destructive public policy not tied to success metrics is fucking insane and I think the strong negative reactions to it are completely warranted.

[arblify]

Once you commit to some success metric, you're going to be stuck with it even it proves to be a bad metric. Let's say we all agree the "2 weeks with decreasing number of deaths" is a good target. Then we go back to work, and we discover that going back triggers a rapid spread and kills a bunch of people and starts to overwhelm hospitals. Now we need a new metric.

This is a novel scientific problem. Caution and study are warranted. People's lives are at stake.

[CPLX]

People's lives are always at stake. That's how public policy works. Like 100% of the time. Try painting lines on the highway or administering a school lunch program without putting people's lives at stake.

The only thing novel here is completely abandoning the concept of public policy goals. There's nothing scientific about setting your public policy without any metrics at all. This is kind of the opposite of a scientific approach.

[arblify]

I'm not suggesting having no metrics, I'm talking about hard targets. Acknowledging that there are things we don't know about the problem and that we're not overcommitting to a course of action based on some specific target is reasonable.

At the same time, to your point, I would like to see clear explanations of "these are the aspects of the disease we are trying to understand (virality, mortality, etc)," these are the constraints on our healthcare system, these are the economic effects, here are the tradeoffs we're trying to make. All of that stuff is good, but it's a complex problem and assuming that we know enough at this point to set a clear numerical goal seems wrong to me. Describing general parameters for our data gathering and decision-making is good, though, and I agree that I'd like to see more of it.

[cobookman]

So when do you lift the stay in place? When there's 0 cases? If so, what if that never happens?

[tptacek]

Nearly uniform testing levels among the states sufficient to indicate that we're getting a real sample of the population, and not the biased sick sample we're getting with PCR testing, would be a start. If you want to be angry about something, be angry that we can't get our act together to get this data collected.

It's going to be a lot easier to win arguments about lockdown when we're confident in our testing data. Right now, nobody is.

[MrGando]

You start doing it when you can gather enough information, fast enough to prevent new spikes from happening. The number of "known cases" becomes very low, and then ideally one can react fast enough when new clusters start forming.

[jstarfish]

When someone comes up with a sane, sensible and actionable plan.

Waiting it out for a vaccine. Even/odd days. Provisioning of masks for everybody. Enough toilet paper to ensure basic sanitation. Enough COVID tests to effectively gauge progress or regress. Rationing. Put all unemployed Americans on the military payroll and make them take turns delivering supplies.

We could look at what any other country who has made even nominal progress with this epidemic have done, pick any single step at random and it would be one made in the right direction.

Instead we've all been told to stay home just long enough to lose our jobs, file some papers and (maybe) receive a paltry stipend, we don't even have the testing infrastructure to know how bad this really is (confirmed cases aren't increasing if the supply of tests isn't keeping up with demand!), and that isn't stopping our syphilitic warlock from telling everybody to take anti-parasitics, drink Lysol and get back out there before it affects his re-election campaign.

There is no leadership. There is no plan. There's a reason this isn't getting better, but letting nature take its course is not the solution.

[mindslight]

So much this. Mine is a trite comment, but I can't put it any better than you have.

[xsmasher]

I've heard some mention of "two weeks of decline in the number of new cases." That sounds reasonable to me.

[jshevek]

> This is not the time for egocentric defiance of the recommendations from our leaders.

This is not a fair representation of the alternative and contrary viewpoints.

[primeradical]

I understand you feel my characterization is unfair. But the focus on our own personal interaction with the virus without acknowledging how ignoring shelter at home orders can spread the virus to others, is selfish and egocentric.

I do not believe there is room for an alternative viewpoint to that.

[forgotmylogin2]

Your focus on the virus spread while ignoring the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs because of this is selfish and egocentric.

I do not believe there is room for an alternative viewpoint to that.

[primeradical]

I don't understand your statement. Could you clarify?

[jshevek]

They are illustrating the problems intrinsic to your justification for your extremist and narrow minded position.

[jshevek]

No, I'm not expressing my emotions, I'm pointing out the lack of intellectual integrity in the statement.

[primeradical]

We'll make it through this man. It's gonna be okay.

[jshevek]

Your substance-free comment is a non sequitur.

[glofish]

> The only way we know that shelter in place orders worked is if they feel like an overreaction after this is all over with.

That makes no sense whatsoever. Millions of children are not vaccinated because of the lockdown. Will the mayor take responsibility for his share of deaths that will occur? Will there be a counter for that, that ticks up every day? And for all the pain and suffering of those that can't afford gratuitous shutdowns?

[chasd00]

"forget it Jake, it's Chinatown"