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A case for ending lockdown

ryankemper.io

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Re: A case for ending lockdown

#341

Post by ryankemper »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #200
ryankemper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no directly relevant credentials whatsoever and don't claim to. (I actually considered saying as such in the writeup but it's already so verbose that I felt it wasn't worth it). I'm just a dude that likes to read research papers. As an aside, there is totally an archetype of the software engineer that thinks they're equipped to dive into unrelated fields, and I definitely match that trope. I will say in my def…

I have no directly relevant credentials whatsoever and don't claim to. (I actually considered saying as such in the writeup but it's already so verbose that I felt it wasn't worth it). This doesn't really pass the sniff test. You wrote 7500 words on this topic, but felt that including "I have zero experience in any relevant fields" would be overly verbose? Are you sure there wasn't another reason? arguments should be…

> This doesn't really pass the sniff test. You wrote 7500 words on this topic, but felt that including "I have zero experience in any relevant fields" would be overly verbose? Are you sure there wasn't another reason?

https://gitlab.com/ryankemper/writings/-/commit /05b4b616c5e0017b0f80682533399c8696d897b5

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#342

Post by ryankemper »

shkkmo wrote: post #259
ryankemper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no directly relevant credentials whatsoever and don't claim to. (I actually considered saying as such in the writeup but it's already so verbose that I felt it wasn't worth it). I'm just a dude that likes to read research papers. As an aside, there is totally an archetype of the software engineer that thinks they're equipped to dive into unrelated fields, and I definitely match that trope. I will say in my def…

When have some expertise, you should absolutely evaluate ideas on their merits. When you lack the expertise to do that effectively, you should listen to the experts (ideally those that demonstrate that they are evaluating ideas based on their merits). The trick is determine which questions you have the expertise to evaluate for yourself and which you are better of relying on experts to evaluate. Unfortunately, this i…

> Credentials are not the only way to acquire or demonstrate expertise. You say you are a "dude that likes to read research papers", how many epidemiological research papers have you read? How much time have you spent discussing those papers with epidemiological experts? Did you reach out to any of those experts to have them take a first pass as fixing any mistakes you made before you decided to post it publicly

> Instead you decided to broadcast your ignorance with confidence about an area already ripe with misinformation that is costing people their lives.

This is not a fair characterization; I was very clear that this represented my "first draft" and that I was looking for feedback specifically to have people poke holes in it.

Fortunately, a lot of people did have substantive contributions that pointed out errors or places where the arguments were weak, as opposed to merely engaging in sanctimonious gatekeeping as you are doing.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#343

Post by ryankemper »

shkkmo wrote: post #319
quotemstr wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely wrong. Analysis done by informed laymen is essential in breaking intellectual logjams in established fields. These situations happen over and over again in history. It's increasingly looking like we have one of these logjams in public health right now. Ideas need to be evaluated on their merits in all cases, especially in times of controversy.

> Analysis done by informed laymen is essential in breaking intellectual logjams in established fields. Which is why it is important that people with the expertise evaluate those ideas on their merits. What doesn't help is when less informed laymen think they can accurately judge the validity of ideas put forward by slightly more informed laymen. What active hurts is when those less informed laymen start spreading th…

> without making an effort to get their ideas validated by people

Me posting this is literally me doing that, so your visible irritation is very oddly placed.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#344

Post by ryankemper »

areyousure wrote: post #320
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you defining lockdown? Schools were cancelled on March 15, but that was after days of pressure. Many private schools had already closed at that point, and many workplaces had switched to WFH already. The official statewide lockdown started later, but authorities and businesses had been gradually locking down for weeks prior to that.

In the context of this discussion (ending lockdown), it seems that the relevant definition of "lockdown" is action specifically from the authorities. The New York state governor announced the statewide lockdown on March 20 (to begin two days later, as indicated above). The statewide lockdown is not causally responsible for social distancing before then. The same is true for the announcement of closing New York City p…

Precisely this, I define lockdown as the forced closure of businesses, public parks, beaches, etc.

Telling people "we recommend physically distancing and wearing masks" does not qualify as lockdown. I hope that I made that clear in my writeup.

Thanks for jumping in here, I think you made the point far better than I could have.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#345

Post by meheleventyone »

ryankemper wrote: post #340
meheleventyone wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no directly relevant credentials whatsoever and don't claim to. IMO this should be a disclaimer in bold right at the very top of the article.

Done. https://gitlab.com/ryankemper/writings/-/commit/05b4b616c5e0...

Thanks, it’s a good commitment to representing your argument clearly and does you credit.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#346

Post by ryankemper »

dangus wrote: post #212

> About me > I’m a software / site reliability engineer based out of Santa Barbara, California. People need to stop chiming in on subjects on which they are not experts. Ryan, as a site reliability engineer, I know you’re annoyed annoyed when people on the street talk to you about your job and misinterpret just about everything about how technology works. I had a potential customer of my employer express interest (ba…

As you can tell, I read everyone's feedback.

I don't share your views on this matter. I think, particularly given that public policy is relevant to all of us, that it does make sense for even a layperson to engage in the conversation. This is not merely a scientific issue. Rather, we need to don our scientist caps to try to figure out what is likely to happen under different scenarios from an epidemiological standpoint, and then we need to think like economists when analyzing the economic impacts of proposed policies, etc. It's very much an intersectional discipline.

While I am very transparently trying to shift peoples' opinions, I am also inviting them to try to shift my opinion.

Rather than sink 200 hours into this in order to make it picture-perfect, I wrote a first draft that I feel covers some important points, and shared it to get feedback. As you have seen, some parts were completely wrong, some parts were completely right, and a lot of parts were/are in between.

By doing so, I've exposed myself to viewpoints that I would not have otherwise heard, and vice versa.

We all get frustrated when people make statements that expose an ignorance on a subject that we are well versed in. But how we choose to respond to it is very telling. So personally, if someone makes a ridiculous statement about my field, but their statement was made in good faith and they are seeking feedback, I will absolutely take the time to try to tell them where I think they got it wrong. Even if I think they got, well, everything wrong.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#347

Post by diehunde »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #234
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

Some people are saying that. Others are asking if the response could have been more focused and surgical. For example, in New Jersey (USA), where I live, 40% of deaths are of people at extended care facilities (i.e., retirement homes). We locked down everything and everybody (i.e., no focus) and those deaths still happened; because we failed to "harden" the sites (and people) most in danger. If this is a war, that's…

Yeah that's called Hindsight bias

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#348

Post by chiefalchemist »

diehunde wrote: post #347
chiefalchemist wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are saying that. Others are asking if the response could have been more focused and surgical. For example, in New Jersey (USA), where I live, 40% of deaths are of people at extended care facilities (i.e., retirement homes). We locked down everything and everybody (i.e., no focus) and those deaths still happened; because we failed to "harden" the sites (and people) most in danger. If this is a war, that's…

Yeah that's called Hindsight bias

Not at all. We knew from Italy that pre-existing conditions were a significant co-conspirator. We knew the elderly were more susceptible.

Yet, the extended care facilities _to this day_ remain a major contributor to the death toll.

Even if you call it hindsight bias, what do you call the current refusal to step back and ask what we've learned so far? To stay the course, with a lack of data to support it? What do we call that?

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#349

Post by Balgair »

ryankemper wrote: post #333
Balgair wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Washington Post had a good article a while ago on the issues with estimating death rates. The math is a bit complex, so I'll let them explain it to you (instead of a HN comment box). It's nuanced, as these pandemic things tend to be. TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/cov...

So, I've read the article, and it seems to not support this assertion of yours: > TLDR: We're undercounting deaths due to covid-19 by ~60% nationally, and 40% in NYC. What it does say is this: > “Thus I would probably add about 15% or so to the known death toll,” she wrote to two city officials. “However — no city or state will be factoring this in or reporting it, so I don’t think we should either. We should just as…

See Figure 3.

I was off, Nationally were underreporting ~47%, NYC is at ~60%.

We can argue the pictures and stats in the Washington Post all day long. But either way, we're likely to be underreporting.

Also, though not directly due to the virus itself, the 'avoidable' deaths are kinda due to the pandemic and an over-response-ish factor.

This thing is going to take decades to sort out. Kinda like how people that die from digging up bombs from WW1 are counted in stats as WW1 collateral deaths, still.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#350

Post by grumple »

bagacrap wrote: post #329
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…

the intent of the lockdown measures was to reduce peak need to just below hospital capacity and no more . Reducing it further only increases the duration of lockdown and all its deleterious effects on public health . We did not come anywhere close to healthcare capacity, and what now? We just stay locked down forever? Your argument for lockdown is unfalsifiable. Any good outcome is attributable to lockdown, and any b…

> Your argument for lockdown is unfalsifiable.

If you want to get down to epistemological arguments, then we should be clear: we can't know ANYTHING about the real world for certain and all no claim about the natural world is falsifiable; the only claims we can make are those that are tautological or conceptual only. The scientific method itself does not stand on anything more than epistemological sand.

Obviously, that's a ridiculous way to think about the world and not helpful. What we CAN do is see the changes in trajectory of the virus growth rate caused by the lockdown; and extrapolate based on the data that we've seen about how it would grow without the lockdown. This is what a large number of domain experts (including data scientists with domain knowledge) have been doing, and they believe the lockdown has been necessary (and will continue to be, at least in part).

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