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A case for ending lockdown

ryankemper.io

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Re: A case for ending lockdown

#181

Post by TeMPOraL »

icebraining wrote: post #159
orborde wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the probability that my guess is going to be right?

I did some little thinking and modelling of my own late Feb, and reached the correct conclusions by following a simple exponential model, having very basic understanding of epidemiology, and being mindful of error bars (mostly ones created by me being a layman in the field).

On the other hand, I trusted WHO and CDC on masks around February; even posted things to HN to that extent. I now regret it and consider it a failure of not doing enough first-principles reasoning, and not digging into the feeling of confusion I had when reading the official advice.

What I got blindsided by was supply chain impacts. I read the daily updates on /r/supplychain with fascination; while I realized things are interconnected, I didn't realize just how much and in what non-obvious ways.

Bottomline, the lesson I draw from the pandemic is to trust myself a bit more, and attempt to carefully reason from first principles more often.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#182

Post by seemslegit »

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...

Alternatively - Sweden's per-capita covid19 mortality rates are about 125% those of the US, and bellow those of UK,France,Italy,Spain,Netherlands,Belgium all of which are locked down.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#183

Post by ausbah »

grumple wrote: post #165

The premise of this post is extremely flawed: > Weeks and months later, facts on the ground show that the purported collapse of the healthcare system did not occur. Yes, because we locked down population centers quickly. That's the whole point. ICUs have still been over capacity though. Without the lockdowns, it's obvious we'd have a lot more dead people the past month. > Moreover, this was not due to success in seri…

this is a good example of people saying the response was overblown, because the response had its intended effect

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#184

Post by sadalienvulcan »

In the "Debunking the claim that it’s “just the economy”" section of the original post [0], the author is arguing that "economic damage leads to lives lost". But the kind of economic damage this causes doesn't have to. The reason it does is a result of the policy decisions our governments make.

The author references a study from LSE [1a], saying:

> Their analysis focuses on the UK, but they conclude that maintaining lockdown in the UK beyond June 1 will lead to a net reduction in wellbeing-years.

The referenced paper weighs up the benefits of lifting the lockdown at a particular point in time vs the costs of extending it. They do this using a metric called wellbeing-years. They list the possible positive and negative outcomes of lifting the lockdown then convert these into wellbeing-years. These are used to calculate the total value of lifting the lockdown at the start of May, June, July and September. They summarise these findings in Table 4 of the paper [1b]. It shows that there will be negative total value to maintaining the lockdown beyond 1st June, as the original post says.

Table 4 suggests the highest cost of lockdown is reduced incomes and the reduction in wellbeing it brings [1b]. But surely the UK government could increase their income support so that there is no loss in wellbeing? This would change the balance of the cost-benefit analysis considerably (and maybe saving lives is worth the money).

So how much would this cost then? In Appendix 2 [1c], they calculate that £750,000 of lost income is worth 7.5 wellbeing-years (one year of a persons life at the average wellbeing of 7.5/10). This implies that a single wellbeing-year is worth £100,000 of lost income. Looking at Table 4, lifting the lockdown in September instead of May would cause reductions in income equivalent to (48+66+86+103)10,000 = 303,000 wellbeing-years. That represents £100,000 303,000 = £30.3 billion in lost income we'd need to make up.

Luckily, the 6 wealthiest people in the UK are worth a combined £39.4 billion [2]. Repatriating that wealth and distributing it as income relief would completely remove the negative impact of lost income. Doing so would tip the balance in favour of extending lockdown to 1st September. This is important because lifting the lockdown in September rather than May would result in 145,000 fewer COVID-19 deaths [1d].

Using that papers analysis to justify ending the UKs lockdown early is akin to saying: I value preserving the private wealth of 6 people over the lives of 145,000 others.

[0]: https://www.ryankemper.io/post/2020-04-29-the_case_for_endin... [1a]: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/op049.pdf [1b]: Results, Table 4, http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/op049.pdf#page... [1c]: Appendix 2, "The monetary value of Life-Years", http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/op049.pdf#page... [1d]: Section 3.6, "COVID-19 Deaths", http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/op049.pdf#page... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/03/uk-six-richest-...: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/03/uk-six-richest-...

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#185

Post by imglorp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #168
cies wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

"Encourage" is different from "enforce", but very similar to "doesn't work". Once isolation becomes voluntary, the job market will make sure that people won't isolate even if they wanted to. A common thread of the current pandemic measures is that people get to protect themselves in ways that would destroy their careers if they weren't mandated top-down by the government.

I wonder if it becomes an EEO issue (in the US).

They can't compel a vulnerable WFH person to rejoin an open plan sardine office, nor can they fire them for not rejoining without attracting attention for discrimination. I know a tech worker who used to wheel an oxygen tank to the office: I imagine that person is more than a little concerned right now.

It also implies that a partly WFH workforce cannot be sidelined: once one person is remote the whole culture needs to be organized around remote process.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#186

Post by mchusma »

ryankemper wrote: post #51
ryankemper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/we/I I chose to use "we" both because it fits with the semi-formal tone better, but more importantly because I want to give others a chance to open PRs if they choose to do so, so I was basically future-proofing for a possible scenario where I wasn't the only contributor.

FWIW, I will probably circle back here and switch to "I", since I think it's probably worth it to avoid confusion.

I may submit a PR then it would become "we".

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#187

Post by lbeltrame »

wheelerwj wrote: post #176

> I’m a software / site reliability engineer okay, thanks. Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights. I'm not saying we shouldn't do our own research and arrive at our own conclusion, but if you arrive at a different conclusion, you're almost certainly the one whose…

> Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights.

Scientists and organizations are made up of people, and thus they can make errors like everyone else. Our expert panel yesterday in Italy pulled out catastrophic scenarios (150K people requiring ICU) that were heavily criticized, not only by "regular" commentators but also scientists.

I don't mean that experts can't be trusted. quite the opposite. They play an important role in advising for a proper public policy to manage the current epidemic, but with such a large number of unknowns, mistakes can and will happen. And when they occur, they must be pointed out regardless of where they come from.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#188

Post by ashtonkem »

wheelerwj wrote: post #176

> I’m a software / site reliability engineer okay, thanks. Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights. I'm not saying we shouldn't do our own research and arrive at our own conclusion, but if you arrive at a different conclusion, you're almost certainly the one whose…

I’ve started explicitly telling people in my life that I’m not interested in their non-expert opinions when they weigh in on when we should open up.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#189

Post by giantDinosaur »

danesparza wrote: post #141
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.

So are you arguing those numbers are acceptable because of the size of nursing homes in Sweden? Or am I missing something in your 2 sentences?

Come on. He's pointing out both an explanatory factor, i.e. larger groups of vulnerable clustered together, and also saying that the total deaths may end up being very similar between countries and that it is too early to tell. Without a vaccine or effective treatment, there's no long term alternative to something akin to the Swedish strategy.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#190

Post by hkai »

wheelerwj wrote: post #176

> I’m a software / site reliability engineer okay, thanks. Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights. I'm not saying we shouldn't do our own research and arrive at our own conclusion, but if you arrive at a different conclusion, you're almost certainly the one whose…

That seems to be classical ad hominem.

For example, I also don't have medical education, yet I am entitled to analyze information and insist that homeopathy, Chinese medicine and chlorine necklaces absolutely do not help against the virus, unlike the educated medical professionals who disagree with me.

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