A case for ending lockdown • Hacker News Board

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#151

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #146

dxsh wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has much larger nursing homes than, for example, Norway, and most deaths in Sweden are from nursing homes. The time integral of the curve over 1 year will tell the real story.

Most deaths in most countries are in nursing homes. Do we not care if older people die?

We care, but we care less than if people with their whole life ahead of them die.

That's the whole point of YPLL and other age adjusted metric that the scientist and academics who study disease, pollution, etc. use.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#152

Post by tonetheman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC

I feel like this is misguided. At least he did not tell everyone to drink bleach or inject light into your body.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#153

Post by jacobush » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #146

dxsh wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has much larger nursing homes than, for example, Norway, and most deaths in Sweden are from nursing homes. The time integral of the curve over 1 year will tell the real story.

Most deaths in most countries are in nursing homes. Do we not care if older people die?

UK also shut down fairly hard and that still didn't stop the spread in nursing homes. So lockdown does not automatically seem to stop the contagion from coming into nursing homes.

Makes sense really. Maybe a focused effort should be made to protect nursing homes.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#154

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

orborde wrote: post #147

pbourke wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should learn to never read anything from random people working in areas they don't have any expertise in. This is one clear lesson that can be drawn from the pandemic.

I don't think so. Consider that many governments with professional public health departments, including those of the richest countries in the world, downplayed the unfolding disaster, completely blew it on containment as a result, and are now reduced to using _extremely_ expensive lockdown measures to try to buy time until someone can come up with a better idea. Meanwhile, plenty of randos on the internet did the str…

>Consider that many governments with professional public health departments, including those of the richest countries in the world, downplayed the unfolding disaster, completely blew it on containment as a result

Governments are ultimately run on a day to day basis by politicians. Proactive measures to prevent a crisis are a much tougher action to justify, especially if they negatively affect people in a way more direct than just spending their tax dollars, than reacting to a crisis. If anything I think this crisis should teach us something about how governments make choices.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#155

Post by hkai » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

katktv wrote: post #123

stupidcar wrote: post #121

What about the situation in northern Italy? In the absence of a lockdown, the healthcare system did collapse, or came very close to doing so and this was only averted when the government implemented draconian quarantine policies. The article claims that the survival of the healthcare system in places that implemented a lockdown has nothing to do with the lockdown, but then gives no evidence at all to back up that ass…

I also just have to point out that Sweden, the country that didn't implement lockdown, has 6 times higher amount of COVID-19 cases than other Scandinavian countries when adjusted. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-fatality-r...

That seems to be a point frequently cited in the media, but it seems quite random to compare Sweden to two selected countries, and it makes it look like you are trying to twist facts to prove a point.

Besides, the circumstances of the deaths are vastly different: deaths at retirement homes vs deaths in general population. Indeed, merely locking down Swedish retirement homes would have made your pro-lockdown argument meaningless.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#156

Post by nraynaud » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

does that mean that China was right to try to ignore the issue for a few days at the beginning?

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#157

Post by pwpwp » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

stupidcar wrote: post #121

What about the situation in northern Italy? In the absence of a lockdown, the healthcare system did collapse, or came very close to doing so and this was only averted when the government implemented draconian quarantine policies. The article claims that the survival of the healthcare system in places that implemented a lockdown has nothing to do with the lockdown, but then gives no evidence at all to back up that ass…

Northern Italy's health system also collapsed in 2018 (and probably other years, too) from the flu:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&u=https%3...

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#158

Post by cies » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

docdeek wrote: post #128

> Encourage at-risk groups to self quarantine, and utilize testing to protect them...Those with obesity and COPD Author suggests self-quarantine for the obese instead of quarantine/lockdown for everyone. The CDC suggests that +42% of the US adult population is obese [0]. Are we really going to isolate or quarantine 4 out of 10 US adults and imagine the economy can get back on track? [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/d…

> Are we really going to isolate or quarantine 4 out of 10 US adults and imagine the economy can get back on track?

It's a good start. Also "encourage" is different from "enforce".

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#159

Post by icebraining » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

orborde wrote: post #147

pbourke wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should learn to never read anything from random people working in areas they don't have any expertise in. This is one clear lesson that can be drawn from the pandemic.

I don't think so. Consider that many governments with professional public health departments, including those of the richest countries in the world, downplayed the unfolding disaster, completely blew it on containment as a result, and are now reduced to using _extremely_ expensive lockdown measures to try to buy time until someone can come up with a better idea. Meanwhile, plenty of randos on the internet did the str…

When you have enough people throwing guesses around, inevitably some are bound to get it right.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#160

Post by mchusma » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 11:35 AM UTC

Thank you for the time and effort in the write up as well as your engagement, it is what we need.

2 points: while I sort of get your "order of magnitude lik a flu" point I think it undermines your argument because you get lumped in with crazies. In your comments you also seem to conflate pandemic flu with seasonal flu, so I would suggest using "seasonal flu" if that is what you mean to avoid confusion. I think there are compelling arguments for ending the lockdown while still believing it is 10x worse than the flu. I don't like conflating the points myself, and rather prefer to just look at the actual IFR/R0 numbers.

I don't know if this warrants a section, but I will say that I believe that the issue you discuss in this article is the lockdown, which is a political discussion. You have a lot of people on here asking for your credentials, or asking if you are an epidemiologist or virologist. While scientists can help inform us as a society on things like the IFR and R0, at the end of the day the core item under discussion here is a societal choice. In the US as a society appear to make a decision that infectious disease deaths up to about 70,000 people annually (a bad seasonal flu) do not warrant any official lockdown measures. The question of the threshold for various political responses is in fact a political question, not a question for virologists, therefore is the domain of all citizens. The author is as much an expert on this particular question as really anyone else.

There has been a troubling severe censorship going on across platforms, including YouTube which would presumably not allow you to post this as a speech as it contradicts WHO guidelines, and our own "Hacker news" which ironically celebrates the culture of people building things of their own merit, not tied to past credentials, yet for a while has flagged this open and reasonable attempt to understand a political question.