[mikekchar]

Interestingly (to me anyway ;-) ) I recall when I heard about the Japanese government's plans (where I live). They had a whole special about what the plan was, what the rationale was, how they thought it would go, etc, etc. I thought they were bonkers. "This is going to go down badly", I thought.

But, looking back on it, I'm pretty impressed with the results. Good foresight? Luck? Not really sure, but you can't really argue with results. As time goes on, you can see that it's a bit like surfing those huge 50 foot waves. If you can manage it, everything will be fine. If not, you are crushed. Fingers crossed.

[em500]

Yes, it's a bit of a puzzle. From most accounts Japan had some of the loosest government restrictions in the world, with relatively little contact tracing or testing, and their outcomes so far has not been bad at all (fewer death than most Western countries, more than most Asian).

The reality is that nobody really knows why, and there's a long list of potential confounded explanations (https://anond.hatelabo.jp/20200518004632 in Japanese).

It's really shocking to me to see to see that in 2020 humanity is so technically advanced (space probes at the edge of the solar system, chips at 7nm), yet so ignorant (how much do face masks, school closures, or climate differences affect the virus spread?)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/did-japan...

[alkonaut]

> how much do face masks, school closures, or climate differences affect the virus spread

Shows how hard this is to actually find out. We have an enormous set of natural experiments and still each result is giving rise to more questions than answers. Are smokers better off? Does malaria drug X really help? How much do masks help? Do kids spread it a lot? Why are men more affected? We have no clue. We probably never will either, for many of the questions!

[nostromo]

The problem in some of the states is that when it was becoming clear this wasn’t anything near the apocalypse that was promised, they refused to adjust course and relax restrictions.

Changing course in the US is seen as weak and politicians hate to do it, even when it’s the right thing to do.

Also: US media is in a bad place. They have lost their sense of civic responsibility and are blatant fear mongers now. It’s lead to a lot of hysterics in the US.

[tsimionescu]

The disease turned out to be the worst pandemic in 50 years, and is continuing to get worse. How is it a good idea to relax restrictions when you have cemeteries overwhelmed with the huge death toll?

Sure, it wasn't the apocalypse, and not one serious person claimed it to be. Everyone could see from the IFR that even with the highest estimates it wouldn't kill the human race or anything; but even with the lowest estimates, letting it run amok would kill millions of people.

[posix_me_less]

> How is it a good idea to relax restrictions when you have cemeteries overwhelmed with the huge death toll?

Big restrictions severely harm the poorest people. Most people are poor. They also damage economy and civil rights. Governments spend like crazy to make up for the damage and few dubious interest groups benefit the most. And politicians enjoy their power trips and erode civil rights. That's a huge toll.

If cemeteries in your place can't keep up, maybe its exceptionally bad there, but this is not the general situation. Also, if somebody dies there, there is no societal need for his body to be put in those cemeteries.

Some relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions can make a lot of sense even if millions of people are going to die as a result. So far 4500 Swedes are dead due to COVID-19 [1]. In recent years, over 50 million people die each year [2]. I'd say the Swedish model is doing fine, except for the most vulnerable group of people - old or sick people. The state response should focus on how to help that group, not to shut down whole country.

Of course, the proper local action depends on the local situation, how bad the outbreak is there, cost/benefit analysis.

[1] https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/06/04/swede...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

[tsimionescu]

Disease also tends to hurt the poor the most. Most things tend to hurt the poor the most.

And especially for poor people, being forced to work will mean a much higher chance of catching and spreading the disease, since poor people tend to work directly with other people, and companies rarely invest in protecting "interchangeable" workers.

I do agree that the proper measures may depend on the specifics of the situation. But I think that the spectrum in most of the world should have been between "close down schools and tourism" and "close down everything". "Recommend social distancing" or "hold massive rallies" are not good enough IF you care about human life.

And comparing the number of people who died in Sweden in 2 months to the number who die in the world every year is not very useful. More useful would be to see how many more people died in Sweden compared to normal - just from Covid19, they have ~2000 more deaths/month, compared to a baseline of ~7500 deaths/month in recent years. That is not an insignificant number however you think about it.

[posix_me_less]

> Disease also tends to hurt the poor the most.

You're right for U.S, but not in Sweden or other social democracies where healthcare does not correlate with how much you have. Disease hurts the already sick and the elderly the most, but it does not care about your wallet.

> And especially for poor people, being forced to work will mean a much higher chance of catching and spreading the disease, since poor people tend to work directly with other people, and companies rarely invest in protecting "interchangeable" workers.

That's true, I do not advocate for forcing anybody to work.

> ...not good enough IF you care about human life.

I care, but with some reasonable proportionality. Saving everyone is not possible. Saving almost everyone by hard isolation rules is very expensive and unsustainable. Helping the vulnerable via smart specific restrictions is enough.

> And comparing the number of people who died in Sweden in 2 months to the number who die in the world every year is not very useful. More useful would be to see how many more people died in Sweden compared to normal - just from Covid19

You're right it wasn't a good comparison. I just meant "let's get some perspective".

> More useful would be to see how many more people died in Sweden compared to normal - just from Covid19, they have ~2000 more deaths/month, compared to a baseline of ~7500 deaths/month in recent years. That is not an insignificant number however you think about it.

We are not doing that comparison, because even with tighter restrictions deaths would be increased. We do not know how many people would have been saved if hard U.S. like restrictions were used. I think not many, because most of the deaths happenned in nursing homes where restrictions on public places would have not have much of an effect.

Another substantial fact is that Sweden has greater birth rate than death rate and was projected to increase its population in next years. Their COVID policy will be responsible for curbing that population growth, but no disaster is happenning.

[rob74]

First, it was not "promised" as an apocalypse (for an apocalypse, the death rate would have to be much higher) - the intention behind the restrictions was simply to not overwhelm the medical system, so that everyone that needs treatment should be able to get it. Second, the restrictions are the reason why the situation didn't turn out (even) worse than it did, but some people just fail to see that (or intentionally ignore it)...

[nostromo]

> the intention behind the restrictions was simply to not overwhelm the medical system

This is my point. When the medical system wasn’t overwhelmed, the restrictions should have been eased, but weren’t in many places. The goal posts were moved dramatically.

[thomasz]

The window between an overwhelmed health care system and a suppressed epidemic is extremely thin. We simply cannot dial in exactly the right reproduction number to get this over with in a reasonable time frame without overloading the available hospitals. Even the Swedish approach has caused massive economic damages, and even then they are still in the early stages of their epidemic.

[xorfish]

Who exactly promised an apocalypse?

The early estimates for the IFR from February turned ouf to be quite accurate.

[nostromo]

Everything I was seeing in February for IFR was wildly inflated based on undercounting of infections from lack of testing. I’m curious what you saw that turned out to be correct.

[xorfish]

Scientists and the WHO estimated the IFR to be around 1% in February. Most models that estimate fatalities use that number as well.

That estimate has hardly changed.

[thu2111]

1%?!

CDC current estimate is around 0.2% and that's certainly still too high, for various reasons.

[xorfish]

Seems highly unlikely, excess mortality is nearly 0.3% of NYC. You would need 150% of NYC to be infected to get to 0.2%.

Many seroprevalence studies with prevalence >5% also show that the IFR is in the region of 1%.