A case for ending lockdown

Thanks, will definitely read it, but on a first glance I couldn't see any information on your background or experience in the field of epidemiology or a related science. It would definitely help to put your thoughts into context and if you have a background in this field it would give your collection of thoughts more weight.

With all the misinformation going around I resorted to mainly listen to scientists in the relevant fields directly (if you speak German, the NDR podcast with Prof. Drosten is really nice in my opinion). Therefore I think it really helpful if research institutions and researchers themselves who are in that field (!) are vocal (but reserved and competent) about studies and thoughts. For instance, today the four big research institutions in Germany (Max Planck, Helmholtz, Leibnitz, Frauenhofer) published a joint message in favor of social distancing and contact restrictions: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/29/world/europe/29re...

Edit: I only found the German press release so far: https://www.mpg.de/14759871/corona-stellungnahme

I hadn't seen the Lancet article—I was getting my latest information from the Quanta article also on the front page (https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other-coronaviruses-... I guess it's a matter of language and personal preference, but "this global pandemic will be in abeyance for a year or so" doesn't match my informal understanding of "a long time". I also believe, as sibling postpawl (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23025675) points out, that there is still at least a divergence of opinions here, and that it is dangerous to get it wrong.

(Personally, while I think voicing unpopular opinions is definitely a role we need in society, it seems to me that dismissing widely accepted opinions as due just to "talking heads on the media" puts disputants in an adversarial position that makes it more likely for people to hunker down in their existing opinions, and less likely for anyone's mind to change. Your refutation would have been more, not less, convincing to me if it had just pointed to the Lancet article.)

> Remember, flattening the curve does not reduce deaths in the long-run, except insofar as it avoids overrunning hospitals, which we have already achieved. Flattening the curve is not beneficial for its own sake; indeed, it worsens the economic damage, and thus it should only be practiced unti we know that we won’t overwhelm hospitals. The area under the curve remains the same. We strongly belief that a rational examination of the evidence will show that practicing containment “until the vaccine” (which will take years and is not guaranteed to be possible, although we personally believe that we eventually will have an effective vaccine) is a foolish policy that will lead to far more mortality than simply “biting the bullet”.

The problem with the analysis and exhortation to end the lockdown is contained in the above.

Flattening the curve is a way of maintaining hospital capacity and is an ongoing effort. Saying "we have already achieved" it is nonsensical.

What does make sense is maintaining hospital capacity and following a reopening protocol along the lines of:

1. Reopen sections of economy, relaxing stay-at-home for some workers.

2. Monitor for outbreaks.

3. Test and contact tracing.

4. In case of new outbreaks: quarantine and strengthen stay-at-home.

5. Repeat 1-4.

And continuing this until

- Advent of treatments for COVID-19

- Advent of vaccine for SARS-CoV-2

- Herd immunity has been achieved.

The essay linked in the OP refutes the simple argument that lockdown must be maintained by presenting an overwhelming number of details about COVID-19, its lethality, elective vaccination, secular superstition, and all other manner of irrelevant topics.

The reason for the lockdown is to maintain healthcare capacity in the face of a virus that is highly contagious.

A workable and moral framework for ending lockdown looks something like what I've outlined above.

The OP provides no suggestions on how lockdown might end, other than gathering an enormous amount of tangential evidence to prove "The Case for Ending Lockdown".

Oof, good observation and I should definitely clarify here.

I have no affiliation with Gitlab whatsoever.

This is my personal blog that I made when I quit my previous job a couple months ago. I ended up repurposing the blog because I couldn't figure out how to get a table of contents working on a generic markdown file (i.e. I originally was just going to link to plain markdown in my git repo), but I was able to quickly figure out how to get it working with hugo. I used Netlify / Hugo via Gitlab to do so, so the Gitlab logo just happened to be part of the default theme. I'll look into removing it for clarity later.

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 defense though, that I try to build simple mental models and take them to their logical conclusion, which is a quality that I see in people I admire, and conversely a quality that I find lacking in people that I feel don't have a lot of insight.

Many might disagree but I am a very strong believer that arguments should be evaluated on their merits, rather than credentials. Indeed having credentials makes it that much easier to fall prey to cognitive distortions.