[rayiner]

But we’re talking about Wisconsin, not New York. The death rate in Wisconsin is 1 in 14,000. Flu is about 1 in 4,000-5,000 in a typical year. New York is such an outlier in terms of death rates that it should be a totally separate conversation.

[djannzjkzxn]

It spread much faster in New York so we got to see the devastation it can cause. Same will eventually happen everywhere else if the measures to slow the spread are lifted. I don’t get why you’d want to exclude the data from New York when it’s our best example of what a full-scale outbreak looks like in the US.

[rayiner]

Even with restrictions, the virus will eventually spread to most of the population. The question is time scale. In New York—thanks to its density and reliance on public transportation—even a full lock down couldn’t avoid a brush fire that left the hospital system overwhelmed. That hasn’t been true in the rest of the country. In nearly states, the death rate is elevated less than 10% from normal levels. In 14 states, the death rate is lower than normal levels. That means that less restrictive measures could be implemented in those states while keeping the excess death rate to some acceptable level.

South Dakota never fully locked down, and the COVID-19 death rate there 4.5 per 100,000. That’s 1/3 the average for the country minus NYC and 1/30th the rate for NYC. And that’s a 5% increase over what the baseline death rate would have been in the state over that time period.

It’s also worth pointing out that nowhere has really “locked down.” Most people are still going to work and leaving the house. Minnesota has found that the stay at home orders reduced contact only by 55%: https://www.minnpost.com/health/2020/05/minnesota-has-update.... Under various scenarios, Minnesota projected a “do nothing” scenario at 57,000 deaths over the course of the pandemic, versus 26,000 deaths if the stay at home order were extended to September. But lifting the order on May 18 results in only a few thousand extra deaths compared to leaving it in place until September.

[asabjorn]

> couldn’t avoid a brush fire that left the hospital system overwhelmed

Agree with most of what you say. However, the hospitals were not overwhelmed as evidenced by USNS Comfort leaving NYC after only treating 182 patients [1]. Similarly, Javits center temporary hospital had many spare beds [2]. The governor thought the hospitals would be overwhelmed which is a very different thing.

People that should have used the spare hospital beds and seen doctors didn't due to the lockdown, which makes this fact extra relevant. An overwhelming percentage of people that died from coronavirus in NYC had one or more other serious health conditions. Question is how many people that was classified as also having covid died of other underlying conditions and did not seek proper medical care due to fear of coronavirus.

[1] https://news.usni.org/2020/04/27/hospital-ship-comfort-ends-...

[2] https://abc7ny.com/javits-center-usns-comfort-coronavirus-ny...

[bagacrap]

No other city in this country is anywhere close to NYC in terms of density. The R0 for NY is going to be naturally much, much higher. It's absolute lunacy to apply the same measures in Wisconsin as NY.

[djannzjkzxn]

The higher R0 means it spread throughout the city in two months, with a lower R0 it will take more months to reach the same level in other areas. Same devastation, it just takes longer to get there. Why is that acceptable?

[claytongulick]

There's a lot more to it than that. Dig.

[CathedralBorrow]

With such vague directions, it's easy to state anything. For example:

You are actually wrong and there is ironclad proof out there. Dig.

[asabjorn]

Suggestion to parent from someone that agree: find some evidence to counter claim or support another story.

Share this evidence and direction to better path, and then each individual will choose if they want to put together the evidence to form their own opinion.

“Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” 1 John 2:6

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” Buddha

“If he comes to me walking, I come to him running” the Hadith

“Human beings should walk the right path humbly” rig Veda

Show a direction to a path and whom will walk walks. Where each individual will walk is not for us to choose.

As shown on my first parent in this thread you will still risk being downvoted with no argument in the virtual or real sense, but that doesn’t matter as those are at any rate not useful opponents in truth seeking so ignore them.

Don’t argue with anything but a person as you would then throw pearls to swine. The loving father did not join his son in the pig pen after his fall, he waited until the son walked away from the pig pen and welcomed him with open arms.

[unclebucknasty]

I get that the geography, density, etc. are different, but isn't the point to avoid anything approaching the New York scenario?

[bagacrap]

No. New York did not run out of hospital capacity. The goal is to approach but not exceed hospital capacity.

[unclebucknasty]

I don't know what you're responding to. I said nothing about hospital capacity.

[asabjorn]

He is responding to your comment about the New York scenario. The original justification for the shutdown was that we would run out of hospital capacity.

New York always had ample capacity in hospitals, and the USNS comfort and Javits center hospital were almost empty. Governor projected a lack of capacity which certainly caused fear, but it’s a very different thing.

In terms on NYC deaths there has been many stories of incompetence and mismanagement. Almost all that died had other serious health conditions, so it’s a question if lack of proper care for a non covid preexisting condition or they not seeking care out of fear is often the true cause of death.

Normally death cause is well investigated. However, CDC issued highly unusual guidelines that said doctors should classify all deaths as covid if they have been diagnosed to have covid instead of doing doing the normal extensive look into each case. This may mask people dying from other serious health conditions due to lockdown.

[unclebucknasty]

It's still unrelated to my comment. In fact, to the extent that you're trying to tie them together, it proves the opposite of the claims you're making.

My original parent was contrasting the two states, with the following:

>New York is such an outlier in terms of death rates that it should be a totally separate conversation.

My point was that NY shouldn't be a "totally different conversation", but that we should look to NY as a cautionary tale WRT potential outcomes without sufficient mitigation. The fact that hospital capacity was not overrun in either state underscores the validity of the comparison.

>many stories of incompetence and mismanagement...it’s a question if lack of proper care for a non covid preexisting condition...not seeking care out of fear is often the true cause of death".

This and the rest of your comment are, frankly, pure conjecture that seems to start with your conclusion. However, we know the virus is deadly and that COVID would likely be a serious contributing factor to deaths, even in the presence of pre-existing conditions. It's no secret that pre-existing conditions are a prime COVID risk factor and, as it happens, this country has a high incidence of pre-existing conditions. This was an openly stated primary force in our mitigation efforts. But, here you seem to be presenting it as some previously hidden revelation over which we should dismiss these deaths.

In sum, it's disingenuous to parse out all of the knowns and unknowns into an overall conclusion that lockdowns were somehow unnecessary. We know enough to know that stopping the spread of the virus prevents large numbers of unnecessary deaths--even (and especially) among at-risk populations.

[Gibbon1]

> The fact that hospital capacity was not overrun in either state underscores the validity of the comparison.

Just a tidbit: One UCSF doctor that went to help out in New York reported the hospital he was in converted their cafeteria to a ventilator ward.

And New York was relying on a lot of doctors and nurses from other parts of the country. Not to mention pressing doctors and nurses from other specialties.

I just say this because the covid19 deniers are trying hard to normalize things like what happened in New York.

[asabjorn]

> My point was that NY shouldn't be a "totally different conversation", but that we should look to NY as a cautionary tale WRT potential outcomes without sufficient mitigation. The fact that hospital capacity was not overrun in either state underscores the validity of the comparison.

We definitely agree there. However, why do you think NYC is not an example of lockdowns not working and that we should instead isolate the vulnerable populations? Its both the most severe lockdowned place and the place with the highest coronavirus death rate.

Also, most states are now open or are reopening. We are not seeing spikes in coronavirus cases or deaths, and we are instead seeing huge drops in deaths per week directly undermining the heavy handed lockdowns [3]. Also, despite each worker of Wallmart, Target, Whole Foods, Safeways, Wallgreens etc being exposed to thousands a day not a single store was closed due to covid outbreaks. How come that is the case?

Locking down non-vulnerable populations is what I think is unjustified, and the evidence I present show that the heavy handed lockdown doesn't reliably reduce deaths and that targeted isolations of vulnerable populations does reliably reduce deaths. One shared component of sweden and NYC [1,2] is that they didn't properly mitigate for vulnerable populations. Sweden is mitigating by isolating vulnerable populations while NYC isn't [1]. However, NYC somehow managed to have the most severe lockdown and by far the highest death rate.

TLDR; If you have to isolate the vulnerable to significantly reduce deaths in both lockdown and non-lockdown, and lockdown doesn't reliably make a difference. Why not just go with the more effective targeted mitigations and drop the ineffective isolation of all?

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sent-recovering-corona... [2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/sweden/2020-05-12/sw... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm