Tribalism comes for pandemic science

A stopped clock is correct twice a day--we don't suddenly consider its accuracy improved.

Trying to thread needles like this is disingenuous, at best, and makes you look like an apologist, at worst.

You have a set of political leaders actively hunting for a hook that is sufficiently platable and plausible that they can get people to swallow in order to be exploited for their own power gain. Giving cover to that deserves neither praise nor quarter.

There are plausible solutions that have scientific backing. There are also plausible economic solutions. There are also degrees to those solutions--Switzerland shows this even though it is now matching the US in per capita Covid cases.

NONE of those solutions that would benefit the people have been proposed at the federal level here in the US.

The number of diagnosed cases or positive test results is only loosely correlated with the number of actual infections. Thus any calculation of R values based on cases isn't mathematically valid.

Pollen is apparently another cause of variation: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v...

Of course, there are multiple causes, and trying to pin variation in infection rates or deaths on a single factor would be silly. Hopefully we find the driving factors... Spring or vitamin D could explain why Italy doctors are opining that the disease is less deadly now than in March.

> Unfortunately, due to not understanding exponentials, many advocated for starting the lockdown later: hence the UK's delayed lockdown and therefore highest death toll in Europe.

UK's strategy was as advised by various epidemiology teams across the country, predominantly Imperial and Oxford. They understand exponentials. That's epidemiology 101.

> The people advocating for "herd immunity" never addressed the death rate; a death rate of even 0.5% in the UK would be three hundred thousand people, plus more with lingering side effects.

That was acknowledged. They were concerned that suppression was infeasible, and would cause more deaths e.g. if there is a second wave during UK winter, or if lockdown has knock on health impacts.

> As it is, we've confirmed 287k infected for 40k deaths, or 0.5% of the country infected. A very, very long way from immunity.

The number of confirmed cases is smaller than the number of actual cases, since many cases are asymptomatic and hence typically not tested.

Epidemiology and public health is a complex field, beyond armchair analysis.

> The democrats are not in control of the country, they are in control of a few states...Yes but (assuming I understand your point correctly) the U.S. federal government isn't in control of the country either in this context. They certainly could have been more cooperative with states in terms of distributing supplies and communicating new developments as they came in but, short of bringing in troops and asserting themselves by force, they lack the authority to implement a hard nation wide lockdown. Given the early panic over the virus it's hard to imagine a federal level quarantine not resulting in violence.

>No one would say NY would be better off if they hadn't cut it down a lot and shut down.I'm not sure if I phrased my first post badly or if we agree here. When I said the lockdowns were egregious compared to Rep. states I was speaking relative to the present. I agree things would have been much worse if early and cautious action hadn't been taken.

>Now look at Texas where their daily positive covid 19 detection has double in the past weeks from about 750 a day to 1500 a day. They are going to have a lot more people getting really sick, because that just following from daily exposure.This is basically the entire national debate. We've seen increasingly that just getting the corona virus isn't a death sentence for most people. Texas' infections have been rising, which will by extension lead to some amount of additional deaths, but Texas also has an extremely low death toll compared to other states in terms of deaths per million people (going by Worldometer). The significance of this is that most infected arent going to die and dying after infection, for the most part, isn't a random lottery and so whether it's wise or not to continue to force people to remain in lock-down is a value/political judgement rather than a distinctly scientific one. This holds especially true when people in need are refraining from visiting hospitals for fear of getting the virus and instances of depression and suicide have risen dramatically as a consequence of lock-down policies. You can argue fewer people might still die with heavy lock-down measures in the present but those deaths arent the same people and so what's ultimately being dicussed is whether or not it's fair to drive certain individuals to death or unnecessary physical suffering in order to save people they largrly have no relation with. And that's before discussing the small business owners who have lost their life's work due to government mandates (consumers didn't stop going out by choice after all).

My point about the parties themselves was purely meant to highlight that at this stage both sides could probably be managing their policies better (regardless of value distinctions) but neither wants to make it look like the other team was correct. The irony is that neither side would be taking the same actions since for Dem states like California this would be loosening up a little while for Rep stated it would be tightening up or at least implementing financial support for at-risk individuals and their cohabitants. From here, my broader point was that it's an election year and so, regardless of if any particular state is actually beholden to a particular plan of action, anyone who breaks too far off from the party line (in a manner that risks bad optics) is going to lose clout within their party. I'm not endorsing that as the way things should be but that's the apparent state of things going by the predominantly partisan split in terms of current lock-down action.