[mtgp1000]

>Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.

No no no no no. It's high time we stop treating everything as black and white in this country. It's not just callously disregarding the dead - it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus. And the signal/noise ratio right now is absolutely tiny, especially considering how much damage the media has done by unambiguously turning this into an opportunity to bash Trump. Regardless of how you feel about the presidency, if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests (both left and right) began; and while I do believe it is shameful that we were caught with our pants down, scrambling to gather supplies nearly 3 months late, I'll remind you that so was everyone else.

Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine. We also shouldn't be applying the same policies to urban and rural areas.

You know what would really answer this question to me? What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR? That's pretty much worst case exposure and seeing as I haven't heard of doctors dying in droves, I'm inclined to start believing that people do have and/or develop immunity and the fatality/complication rate really is extremely low, for whatever reason. But I need data to be sure.

[ihumanable]

> countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine.

Interesting, Sweden suffered more deaths than their neighbors and does not appear to be any better off economically.

Sweden Has Become the World's Cautionary Tale - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-c...

Sweden had no lockdown but its economy is expected to suffer just as badly as its European neighbors - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-t...

Sweden's economy likely won't benefit from its decision to avoid a lockdown, according to analysts - https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-economy-likely-wont-b...

Sweden's controversial anti-lockdown strategy resulted in high death toll and no real economic gain, data shows - https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-strategy-...

Sweden Has Avoided a Coronavirus Lockdown. Its Economy Is Hurting Anyway. - https://www.wsj.com/articles/sweden-has-avoided-a-coronaviru...

Now either this strategy isn't as good as you claim it to be or NYT, CNBC, Business Insider, and the WSJ and all the analysts and experts they cite are working together to cook up a conspiracy.

[isthispermanent]

Except for your NYT article, these are all pieces from more than 2 months ago. And the NYT has been exceptionally poor at reporting on covid with an even hand. What it fails to mention is that though Sweden's economy will contract by the same amount as it's Scandanavian neighbors, about -8%, it's a huge win compared to UK/Italy/France which will contract by 22-30%.

src: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-16/one-econo...

It's irresponsible to believe that journalists and editorial organizations are able to cut through their own emotions and biases during what is one of the most tense times in recent history. Everyone has an opinion. The only thing without an opinion are the data.

For Sweden that data is pretty great: - 15 deaths in the past 7 days - ~1200 cases

src: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

If you only want to compare Sweden to its neighbors you're cherry-picking what you want your argument to say. Sweden's strategy divorced them from their neighbors and put them in the boat with us. We are apples to apples. Sweden to Norway, when they took up the strategy, became apples to oranges. Since we are both of the same strategy it's entirely reasonable to point to Sweden and say "hey, it's about as bad there as it is here and they didn't go hard lockdown and kids are still in school".

It's not like we can go back in time and follow New Zealand. That ship sailed five months ago.

To get a real look at the data I strongly recommend people get on Twitter and follow any of these accounts to get a good grasp on the overall situation as told by the numbers and as a bonus you'll get: - how deaths are reported and what that means for the narrative - cases and their level of significance - hospital census, dwell, and coding

@ethicalskeptic @aginnt @boriquagato @natesilver538 (we don't agree on how to handle this, but he's been fair in reporting data as it should be understood) @MLevitt_NP2013 (Nobel laureate) @AlexBerenson

[aggie]

> Sweden to Norway, when they took up the strategy, became apples to oranges.

Your logic is simply wrong here. If you want to assess the effect of the lockdown, you compare effects between similar countries that did and didn't have a lockdown. Apple trees with fertilizer vs apple trees without fertilizer. You don't learn about the effect of fertilizer by comparing apple trees with fertilizer vs orange trees with fertilizer.

[isthispermanent]

I don't think anyone is arguing that Sweden's outcome is better than Norway's. I'm certainly not.

What I'm saying is that you can go without a lockdown and avoid the doomsday scenario that was so proffered about. Everyone was pointing to Sweden as though they were a cautionary tale of a state that was about to wipe out 10% of its population.

Yet here we are and that didn't play out. So the narrative switched to "but against its neighbors!". Yeah Sweden did worse, but they also showed you didn't need to go into hiding to get the same result the rest of the quasi-lockdown camp got.

What you're implying is that if the United States went full no-lockdown strategy our outcome would be different than Sweden. Whereas logically a virus does not care whether the host is Swedish, Ugandan, or American. A human is a human.

[tremon]

UK/Italy/France which will contract by 22-30%

Not sure where they got those numbers, France is projected to see a 10% decline, not 30%.

https://publications.banque-france.fr/en/macroeconomic-proje...

[sfteus]

> if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations

Not true, we're squarely between several 2nd and 3rd world countries: https://www.statista.com/chart/21176/covid-19-infection-dens...

> until the recent protests (both left and right) began

Not true, current research does not link any outbreaks to protests (BLM protests at least), mostly due to the fact that protesters were wearing masks and were outside: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/07/01/research-d...

> Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine.

Not true, Sweden is sitting about 150 deaths / million higher than the US right now: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data?country=USA~SWE#...

> What percent of nurses and doctors in COVID wards have gotten sick? And what is their CFR?

Largely irrelevant, because nurses and doctors should be wearing PPE, are trained to work in infectious environments, work in buildings designed to prevent disease vectors, and places that are sanitized regularly. You should see significantly less cases in healthcare than you would elsewhere.

And just in general, the economic impact of letting the virus run rampant would be astronomical. Even outside of deaths, those with severe cases are ending up with likely permanent damage to their hearts, lungs, or kidneys, which will require increased medical costs and likely people who can no longer work.

[isthispermanent]

1. All sorts of problems with that Statista chart. Just for starters it doesn't take into account number of tests being performed per 1m/pp.

2. Would it be astronomical? Total speculation. That's just a hysterical statement that doesn't point to a problem or a solution.

There is some anecdotal evidence that a small fraction of those that develop symptoms but do not become fatal can have lasting effects from the virus. There is no evidence that this is widespread. However, it's a favorite place for people to point to when they want to move the goal posts when deaths aren't going up.

[sfteus]

1) Chile, Kuwait, and Singapore have similar rates of testing to the US [1]

2) Current studies show roughly somewhere between 10-20% of hospitalized patients ending up with heart damage, increasing their future risks of heart attacks and strokes.[2][3] Up to 36% of hospitalized patients are displaying neurological symptoms, with possible damage.[4] Up to 60% are ending up with ARDS which may be permanent.[5]

Extracting that with current numbers, assuming we had a 50% infection rate, 15% hospitalization rate [6][7], and a 1% death rate, we'd have ~1.5 million dead, ~22.5 million hospitalized, ~3.375 million with heart damage, ~8 million with neurological issues, ~13.5 million with ARDS.

Obviously many of these would overlap, but it sounds pretty devastating to me.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing#the-scale-of-...

[2]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...

[3]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[4]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...

[5]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

[6]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...

[7]: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

[isthispermanent]

Tests per 1mm/pop: US - 140k Chile - 71k Kuwait - 106k Singapore - 172k (most definitely not a 2nd or 3rd world country. HDI 7th in the world and GDP/pc 8th in the world. Both higher than the U.S.)

src: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

You're stacking your numbers and assuming a worst and numerically impossible scenario. When you take into account asymptomatic cases that are extrapolated via serology samples and not just the positive PCR tests you get a fatality rate of 0.24% (and falling) with a huge age gradient down to less than 0.008% for those under 40.

At most it's 1%. That is the highest of any estimate I've seen. Here are a few dozen https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01738-2

Knowing that the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic dramatically lowers the scary numbers you just threw out. And you must know by now the prevalence of asymptomatic cases.

Also [5] has a sample size of 36 from May, can't tell if it's peer reviewed.

[6] is a mish-mash of CDC numbers so not sure what you're pointing to.

[2] Though worth noting, I don't think 19.7% is indicative of anything out of the range of ordinary when you consider the at-risk group for covid. You would need to control this by age and all-cause mortality. Same for [4] and [5]

The question of "with" vs "from" covid is very real. Now, I'm not saying that covid is benign. It can do damage. What I'm saying that it is significantly less dangerous than people that want to remain in lock down would lead you to believe.

[bjustin]

The sheer number of people likely to come out of this with disabilities or serious-but-not-disabled level chronic problems is really depressing. Just the lung issues (didn't know the term ARDS, thanks for that) will be terrible.

[thomasahle]

> Let's also not forget that a number of other countries like Sweden didn't lock down at all and are doing fine.

Sweden did a voluntary lock down, which was in practice pretty comprehensive. Even then they still had a death rate per capita many times higher than its neighbours, and it was economically hit just as hard.

Perhaps it was worth a try, but it didn't pan out. Their government even formed a commission to figure out why it went so bad.

[hn_check]

This is the critical aspect of the Sweden example: the people of Sweden are rational and everything isn't hyper politicized. Even though they tried a different approach, many still took reasonable precautions. There still were significant restrictions on operations like bars and restaurants.

Sweden was never like the "COVID denier" communities in the United States.

And still its results are relatively terrible compared to its neighbours and peers.

[flukus]

It also wasn't completely voluntary, they closed high schools, they banned gatherings with more than 50 people, they limited how many people could visit bars and restaurants and made them sit at a table. The government didn't sit back and do nothing like many people seem to think.

These restrictions with some give or take are what the world will have to adopt until it's either eliminated or we get a vaccine.

[jimbokun]

> it's about determining whether the literal and figurative loss of life caused by a lockdown is worth the loss of life caused by the virus.

oramit said:

"The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!"

[jacksnipe]

Lives are only lost in a lockdown scenario because of god awful policy. Pay people to stay home. Feed the poor.

[rayiner]

How do you think food gets made and distributed?

[gowld]

See way it is now, by essential workers wearing masks. Not by packing halls with protesters holding coughing parties.

[lostapathy]

That only works when we have food to feed everyone ... which requires a surprising amount of people to stay at work. Besides the obvious people working in the fields/farms, there's a lot of support businesses that need to stay open. The people who repairs the tractors, the people who make parts for the feeders in the barns, etc, which need support for their own manufacturing equipment.

We can't just "shut it all down" worldwide and not run out of food.

[gowld]

No one is saying to shut down essential workers. Just to push pause on the silly luxuries we've come to expect.

[oramit]

You've been downvoted quite a bit but I think your post is a good example of the problem at hand.

Yes, we have to make choices about costs and we can't save everyone. Yes, the data is super noisy and its hard to tell what is happening. Yes, the media loves bashing Trump.

But none of that is important because then you go right into downplaying things and saying that "if you compare per capital rates ours were actually on par with most other first world nations until the recent protests". The tone-deafness of this sentence is astounding to me. People are scared, telling them that actually we only failed as badly as other countries, is, wow.