A case for ending lockdown • Hacker News Board

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#221

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #214

jedimastert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, why not have people choose themselves whether they're healthy enough to take chances and go out to work? Three reasons immediately spring to mind: 1. It's a very well established fact that C19 can transmitted by asymptomatic people. "Healthy enough" does not mean "safe" 2. Ignoring that fact, I know can personally name several people who would absolutely go to work sick. 3. I've have several employers who wou…

Legally you won't be fired for not coming in. You might be laid off with no severance, but that is different legally. When someone asks they will not give a bad reference and you will be eligible for unemployment, both of which are useful. If the above is not true for you there are many lawyers who would love to talk to you, as it is an easy buck for both of you in court.

Still don't have a job, though.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#222

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #217

ashtonkem wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, advocates of re-opening vastly overestimate their ability to make that happen. I don’t feel safe going outside, so any suggestion that for the good of the economy I should do so will be met with a string of naughty words and continued quarantine on my part. If they want me to go back out and resume regular economic activity, they need to focus on what’ll make that feel safe again.

> I don’t feel safe going outside Why? So long as you're not close to other people there's no risk in being outside.

The implied detail is “and doing the regular economic activities that ‘opening up’ would entail”. The kinds of economic activities that I have stopped doing during this pandemic are relatively hard to social distance.

I of course actually do go outside, but only to my patio, not to go back to my old gym or coffee shops.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#223

Post by lkrubner » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

kaolti wrote: post #205

Going back to the basics on this one. Has any government presented a cost benefit analysis of all the available options to address this situation? Like most things in life this isn't black and white, so where is the analysis of the pros and cons, worst case projections, etc of not doing anything / going into lockdown / other alternatives. I for one have not seen it. Shouldn't such an analysis be the basis of any deci…

"Shouldn't such an analysis be the basis of any decisions we make?"

No. We can decided to make decisions based purely on the morality of the decision. Given a death rate somewhere between 1% and 3% the question becomes whether we will accept that many deaths, without taking action. There is no need for a cost/benefit analysis, as we can decide the issue entirely on a moral basis.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#224

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #202

empath75 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You don't have to do a full lockdown if you just want to protect nursing homes; isolation of just the nursing homes/other high-risk concentrated populations would have the same effect on those inside

And their staff. And all family members of their staff. It's not "impossible", but I don't think any countries have attempted such a nursing-home-only lockdown.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#225

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #153

empath75 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK shut down too late. People at the time of the Cheltenham Festival (10-13 March) were saying it shouldn't have happened, and now: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/29/racing-ireland...

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#226

Post by dangus » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #213

ashtonkem wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you tell that to everyone, as soon as they open their mouth with a thought, or only the folks who suggest we should ease the lockdown sooner? It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

I think your parent commenter literally said “yes” to your question.

It didn’t sound like an interrogation, it sounded more like a brick wall of “this conversation is over.”

There are definitely diplomatic ways to say this to people or change the subject.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#227

Post by merpnderp » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

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…

NYC, while under pretty extreme lockdowns still likely had 25% of its population infected as of over 2 weeks ago.

If the serological surveys are correct, we know two things, it spreads rampantly even under harsh lockdowns and the IFR (infection fatality ratio) is likely I tend to think we should stay locked down to slow the spread if that's even still a thing given how fast it has spread in NYC. But on the bright side, NYC now has an upper bound of 4x the current cases before everyone is already infected and all hopefully immune.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#228

Post by __s » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #215

ausbah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My other favorite example is y2k. New Years 2000 came and went and the world didn’t end. Was y2k overblown hysteria, or did we take it seriously and do the work necessary to prevent catastrophic system failure? Probably a little hysteria involved, sure, but I don’t think anyone here would argue we should have just let systems go unpatched and hoped for the best.

An issue is when there's an issue which people with information are trying to work around, word gets out & the risk becomes exaggerated to societal collapse. Nevermind that a plague could come & kill half the population & society wouldn't collapse. So when people get the idea that we're trying to stop society from collapsing, they expect we'll still see society almost collapse. But instead we're averting a much lower risk (which is still very costly) & so the final price we pay is nowhere near "if we hadn't done X, society would've collapsed"

Basically we need to moderate both opinions which effectively work together: the "there's no problem to begin with" group feels validated by the "the world is ending" group being way off the mark

This happens with global warming too. Some people think everything's going to fall apart within the next 10 years. They're wrong. So others claim there isn't a problem, because they were wrong

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#229

Post by wegs » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #171

wegs wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I switched to working from home seamlessly. Many other people did too. There's plenty of at-home work. If I bought the assumption that getting COVID19 was relatively safe for me, I'd gladly swap jobs to keep someone else safe, especially if it meant moving up in the world. An at-risk individual could do my job, and I'd take their in-person job. While I think there are better mechanisms, free markets could take c…

What you describe would work if jobs were so commoditized that everyone could jump between them without any kind of onboarding or training. As it is, a new employee almost always provides negative value to the company for the first weeks or months, depending on the job particulars. So what would happen in many (most?) places is companies preferring to force the existing employees to come to work, rather than let them…

We're in a pandemic economy. It's an economic upheaval. Many existing employees provide negative value until businesses adjust.

If they want to survive, adjust they must.

Whichever model we take (lockdown, soft lockdown, no lockdown, or something else entirely), our goal should be to structure economic supports to allow for that restructuring as quick, painless, and job-loss-free as possible. If we don't do that, things will play out exactly as you describe, with a painful adjustment period. If we do that, they can play out better.

But play out they will. Businesses can't force people to stay. If the cost for me to pick an in-person job over an at-home one is $10,000, I'll quit my remote one as soon as I get a job offer $10,000 above my current salary. Businesses can't force me to stay. And vice-versa the other way. That's a free market. And the increased unemployment benefits right now provide some buffer to make those changes.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#230

Post by willis936 » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #215

ausbah wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My other favorite example is y2k. New Years 2000 came and went and the world didn’t end. Was y2k overblown hysteria, or did we take it seriously and do the work necessary to prevent catastrophic system failure? Probably a little hysteria involved, sure, but I don’t think anyone here would argue we should have just let systems go unpatched and hoped for the best.

Well, these types of arguments will get validated in the next few decades as GPS calendar errors break millions of field devices. If it was a big deal, then a lot of effort would be spent to fix the issue. All that will happen is that a bunch of harmless, somewhat useful stuff will turn into harmless, useless stuff. See [0] “Third GPS Rollover”, except know that many cheap GPS receivers made today do not implement the fix.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_formatting_and_storage_bu...