[salmon30salmon]

We. Shut. Down. Too. Early. In. Most. Places.

For the love of God. Texas didn't have an outbreak when they shutdown! Nor did Oregon, or California. That is the difference. All of Europe shut down _after the virus had already grown exponentially_ in most places. We shut down Oregon when there were fewer than 100 cases. After three months of being shut down in Oregon the curve had nowhere to go but up!

What in the hell did people expect? We shut down before there is spread, wait three months and then reopen. How is that a plan? Did anyone really expect that places where shutdowns were early and strong would somehow come out unscathed?

It has been true since day 1. You either need to shut down HARD until there is a vaccine (not possible, not sustainable, more deaths caused by this) or you deal with the surge of cases and do your best to protect the elderly/vulnerable.

What you don't do is panic, shut down too early, burn through all your money and political capital, reopen and then be all "golly gee there are cases now!". If we had waited until there was growth in cases, we could shutdown and actually flatten the curve enough to handle the shock to the system.

It is so. damn. frustrating. that this isn't more obvious to people. What materially changed between today and March 1?

Lockdowns where a bad idea from there start as there is no way to continue them until there is a vaccine.

I am very curious to see if NY and the other early hot spots avoid a resurgence like Europe has. That is what I am most interested now. If they do, perhaps the folks who are talking about cross-reactive immunity are on to something.

[perl4ever]

By and large, places that weren't hit as hard as NY and western Europe assumed that they had some inherent privilege or immunity, and many of them are being proved wrong. It's a basic human behavioral characteristic. Even if you don't understand why you are better off than someone else, the default assumption is that you are intrinsically better. It might be true! But it's dangerous to assume it when you don't know the reason why.

So I think it's more of a tragic flaw of human nature than a particularly unlucky failure of timing.

The other issue with human nature is that people need feedback, so when you have 2-4 weeks of delay in the loop, things get out of control. You have weeks of believing falsehoods before reality starts to kick in.

[craftinator]

I think the intent from the chief medical advisors (Fauci et al) was to slow the spread to the point where people would continue to get sick, but at a constant and manageable rate. But it's a very tricky thing, turning an exponential process into a linear one; especially when you don't actually know what the exponential is. Of course they couldn't come out and say this without being crucified, but I can't imagine that they simply didn't think ahead towards an outcome; doctors and researches are very much outcome-conscious. Unfortunately, our lovely politicians are, for the most part, math illiterate, and PR-conscious. So here we are.