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‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

washingtonpost.com

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Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#21

Post by thu2111 »

lm28469 wrote: post #15
amluto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also unclear whether the lockdown is accomplishing anything. We have enormous economic damage, lots of boredom, no dramatic decrease of cases in most places, an unimpressive amount of progress toward herd immunity, and no meaningful increase in testing, prevention, treatment ability, or clever policies from any level of US leadership. In other words, what have we accomplished by locking everything down? Delaying…

> no dramatic decrease of cases in most places What does that even mean ? It's slowly going down everywhere with serious lockdowns instead of going exponentially up. Anything less than exponential is a _dramatic_ decrease.

Exponential growth for a short period is seen in every epidemic, even small ones, because they all follow the same bell-curveish sort of shapes. Having observed that by itself doesn't mean anything - all epidemics grow slowly, then quickly, then slowly again as they approach their natural saturation point, then go into decline.

The idea that COVID-19 would grow exponentially starting from zero until a saturation of 100% was reached was only ever the outcome assumed by simulations, which have - as far as I can tell - a perfect track record of total failure. At least the sort of models created by universities in the modern era do.

To make this clear, the UW model driving much US policy response was updated several times in real time yet despite that managed to make wrong predictions for the exact same day it was updated.

https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1247010068148731904?...

And not just wrong, but reality fell far outside this models own uncertainty bounds too, so according to the modellers observed reality was not just unlikely but almost completely impossible.

https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1246465515704463360?...

(note how wide the uncertainty bounds are, yet that it's still wrong)

More commentary:

https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1245416486879051778?...

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1248640413835108355

The Imperial model that drove the UK ignored the possibility of hospital capacity increases entirely, and comes from a team that has (as far as I could find out) never successfully predicted an epidemic.

Real diseases don't play out like unending exponential growth until the whole world is infected - they go into decline far before that.

Quite why this is so is unknown. The dark secret of epidemiology is nobody really understands viral spread. Every model is wrong and nobody can explain why. Germ theory must have a major gap, so what is it? My guess is a combination of much higher asymptomatic spread than currently understood (asymptomatic infection not being a phenomenon that's really been investigated much as only academic modellers care about it), and perhaps some forms of natural immunity to viruses that aren't based on antibodies.

Whatever the cause, it'd be wrong to compare the observed outcomes vs the predictions from models that are known to be completely useless and say, there's been a decrease.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#22

Post by jakeogh »

Retric wrote: post #16
jakeogh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which professional pre-peak predictions were surprisingly accurate?

Those underpinning the ‘flatten the curve’ projections and causing everything to shutdown for one. With exponential growth before a shutdown and flat growth during it. There where plenty of different models based on different government responses, and they generally hold up well.

Like this one?

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html

Is 1.1M is "holding up well"?

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#23

Post by Retric »

jakeogh wrote: post #22
Retric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those underpinning the ‘flatten the curve’ projections and causing everything to shutdown for one. With exponential growth before a shutdown and flat growth during it. There where plenty of different models based on different government responses, and they generally hold up well.

Like this one? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html Is 1.1M is "holding up well"?

Yep, I suggest you read it.

Suppression. Here the aim is to reduce the reproduction number (the average number of secondary cases each case generates), R, to below 1 and hence to reduce case numbers to low levels or (as for SARS or Ebola) eliminate human-to-human transmission. The main challenge of this approach is that NPIs (and drugs, if available) need to be maintained – at least intermittently - for as long as the virus is circulating in the human population, or until a vaccine becomes available. In the 3 case of COVID-19, it will be at least a 12-18 months before a vaccine is available . Furthermore, there is no guarantee that initial vaccines will have high efficacy.

That’s the current UK strategy and they don’t have exponential growth.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#24

Post by jakeogh »

Retric wrote: post #23
jakeogh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this one? https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html Is 1.1M is "holding up well"?

Yep, I suggest you read it. Suppression. Here the aim is to reduce the reproduction number (the average number of secondary cases each case generates), R, to below 1 and hence to reduce case numbers to low levels or (as for SARS or Ebola) eliminate human-to-human transmission. The main challenge of this approach is that NPIs (and drugs, if available) need to be maintained – at least intermittently - for as long as th…

Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? It would be more useful than cheap shots. The paragraph you quoted is unrelated to the prediction.

p16: "In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US."

We achieved better results than the best case estimate for the US in that paper, and not by a little.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#25

Post by Retric »

jakeogh wrote: post #24
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I suggest you read it. Suppression. Here the aim is to reduce the reproduction number (the average number of secondary cases each case generates), R, to below 1 and hence to reduce case numbers to low levels or (as for SARS or Ebola) eliminate human-to-human transmission. The main challenge of this approach is that NPIs (and drugs, if available) need to be maintained – at least intermittently - for as long as th…

Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? It would be more useful than cheap shots. The paragraph you quoted is unrelated to the prediction. p16: "In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold…

The prediction is not based on suppression but mitigation, thus we are outside the model.

But for now suppression is holding steady in the US and UK. With current rates projected out for 18 months being lower than the predicted mitigation strategy.

That said, there seems to be significant pressure to reopen, so we are likely to experience the mitigation strategy starting in a few months.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#26

Post by wegs »

CameronNemo wrote: post #19
wegs wrote: post #14

This seems like nonsense. People in big cities rarely go less than a mile. Many are now starting to venture out into forests and similar safe areas for the first time. On the other hand, a one-mile track in Wisconsin or Montana might be an evening drive.

>forests or similar safe areas Unfortunately walking trails were not built for social distancing.

Which is a great reason to stay off the beaten trail.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#27

Post by jakeogh »

Retric wrote: post #25
jakeogh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? It would be more useful than cheap shots. The paragraph you quoted is unrelated to the prediction. p16: "In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold…

The prediction is not based on suppression but mitigation, thus we are outside the model. But for now suppression is holding steady in the US and UK. With current rates projected out for 18 months being lower than the predicted mitigation strategy. That said, there seems to be significant pressure to reopen, so we are likely to experience the mitigation strategy starting in a few months.

Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? Which professional pre-peak US prediction did you find suprisingly accurate? Clearly it's not this one.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#28

Post by Retric »

jakeogh wrote: post #27
Retric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prediction is not based on suppression but mitigation, thus we are outside the model. But for now suppression is holding steady in the US and UK. With current rates projected out for 18 months being lower than the predicted mitigation strategy. That said, there seems to be significant pressure to reopen, so we are likely to experience the mitigation strategy starting in a few months.

Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? Which professional pre-peak US prediction did you find suprisingly accurate? Clearly it's not this one.

Suppression can limit spread to an arbitrarily small number depending on when it’s implemented. They correctly stated it’s capable of stopping exponential growth and that each mitigation or suppression strategy’s effectiveness depends on when it’s implemented. So, if we started a week earlier the daily death toll would be ~1/10th as large.

That prediction exactly matches observed outcomes. Do you expect them to predict our public policy and it’s date of implication?

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#29

Post by starlingforge »

wegs wrote: post #26
CameronNemo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>forests or similar safe areas Unfortunately walking trails were not built for social distancing.

Which is a great reason to stay off the beaten trail.

It really isn't though... Leave some nature for everyone else and stay on the trail.

Re: ‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders

#30

Post by ecf »

amluto wrote: post #9
miscPerson wrote: post #3

Why is anyone surprised? Quarantine is harmful, and only useful if we’re preventing something worse. That’s probably the case, broadly — but the policies in other countries raise questions about US policies. This is compounded by the arbitrary nature of closures, eg public construction and landscaping can continue but private can’t. People resent politicians arbitrarily (and self-servingly) picking winners and losers…

It’s also unclear whether the lockdown is accomplishing anything. We have enormous economic damage, lots of boredom, no dramatic decrease of cases in most places, an unimpressive amount of progress toward herd immunity, and no meaningful increase in testing, prevention, treatment ability, or clever policies from any level of US leadership. In other words, what have we accomplished by locking everything down? Delaying…

The answer is that the current US administration wants to draw this out until November when they can blame the economic toll of this disaster on the opposing party
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