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Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

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Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#241

Post by xhedley »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #85
rawfan wrote: post #13

The author, Marty Makary, is a surgon. He does not have any expertise regarding viruses or epidemiology. He's completely ignoring all other reasons why infection might go down, the most important one being effective countermeasures, like wearing masks and social distancing. He's also ignoring that the case rates are stagnating due to the British variant. Germany is in that phase now. Cases of the British variant are…

Cases of the British variant are in exponential growth, current lockdown measures are not effective against it. Not in Britain. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk

The daily growth in Britain is -6% to -3% with current British lockdown measures which I believe are stronger than average worldwide. Certainly stronger than pre-Christmas 2020 British measures.

In England (Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland have similar but different rules because of devolution): * All schools are closed bar vulnerable children and children of key workers. * All non-essential retail, hospitality and leisure is closed. * Everyone should stay at home except for allowed exceptions like work, medical appointments or local exercise. * You can meet one person from another household for local exercise outside if you stay 2 metres apart.

Variant B1.1.7 surged in Kent (South East England) in December 2020 despite "UK Tier 4" lockdown. The transmission increasing by 70% from the initial variant overwhelmed the reduction from reduced social mingling given that rule set.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#242

Post by chasd00 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #155
EricE wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Having lockdowns can get you back to the point where businesses can safely operate with community spread control measures (see e.g. Australia or Taiwan)." How do you explain Florida, not locked down, vs. California with some of the strictest lock downs in the country having similar rates of death/infection? It's even more of a puzzler for those pushing lockdowns since Florida has a population tilted way more in the…

What this seems to hint at is that doing the absolute laziest possible, mostly-voluntary "lockdown" (ala the "lockdowns" we've seen in America) does not accomplish very much. It's like claiming a brand of toothpaste isn't very effective because you brushed your teeth once a week and still experienced the same level of tooth decay as somebody who never brushed at all. Is it the toothpaste's fault, or your fault becaus…

laughable or not, the American lockdowns certainly destroyed plenty of livelihoods and devastated a thriving economy where wages were finally rising for the majority.

what would a proper lockdown look like to you anyway? I uniformed officer at your front door forcing you to remain inside?

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#243

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

anoonmoose wrote: post #238
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If lockdown explains most of the variance between Australia's 1k deaths and America's 500k deaths, then the difference between 10% and 20% lockdown should still be very visible.

That's a big "if" at the beginning of your sentence.

I'm not sure what you mean. That was the "if" that started this comment thread - an assertion that the US would be back to normal already if only it had done what Australia did.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#244

Post by jdminhbg »

acdha wrote: post #169
EricE wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Having lockdowns can get you back to the point where businesses can safely operate with community spread control measures (see e.g. Australia or Taiwan)." How do you explain Florida, not locked down, vs. California with some of the strictest lock downs in the country having similar rates of death/infection? It's even more of a puzzler for those pushing lockdowns since Florida has a population tilted way more in the…

The US hasn’t tried anything like a strict lockdown anywhere in the country – we came close for a few weeks last spring but relaxed several weeks too soon – so I think what we’re showing is that this works as well as cutting a course of antibiotics early. In particular, we didn’t have a good economic plan for people who couldn’t work from home. Absent some alternative, economic necessity will force people to leave th…

At this rate, the No True Scotsman fallacy is going to be renamed to No True Lockdown.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#245

Post by cwhiz »

chimprich wrote: post #99
cwhiz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns were never going to work, and any strategy that relied on them was doomed to fail. A strategy that involves convincing every country, and every little province, to destroy their local economies, all at the same time. I can’t believe it didn’t work! Maybe if we just keep trying.

Lockdowns have been extremely successful in a great many countries. Some examples include: * China bringing their initial outbreak down to near-zero * Italy arresting their early surge that overwhelmed health systems * New Zealand bringing their infection rate low enough to essentially return to normal life (apart from international travel) * The UK stopping a dramatic winter uptick involving the B 1.7.1 variant from…

This whole comment chain is about global covid. Any course of action that relies upon global cooperation is pointless. We can't even get country wide cooperation in the United States. If we try to stop the global spread of covid with lockdowns, we'll all die of old age in lockdown.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#246

Post by mcguire »

tinus_hn wrote: post #104
acdha wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic damage is being done by the pandemic: people aren’t going to congregate when it’s risky and many businesses can’t survive without high in-person volume. Having lockdowns can get you back to the point where businesses can safely operate with community spread control measures (see e.g. Australia or Taiwan). What won’t work is attacking medical precautions or dissembling about vaccine effectiveness — and on…

Ah. The ‘it works on an isolated island with 5 million people’ fantasy. Except it doesn’t work on continents with billions of people with multiple governments. And then the magical mask fairytale. If only people had worn masks this would all be over. Except now it turns out people have to wear three masks on top of each other. How could that be if masks had solved all the problems? The answer is clear: they don’t. Th…

"Also it is 100% clear that tons of people can’t wait to be allowed to visit each other. Claiming ‘people aren’t going to congregate’ is simply a lie. In the Netherlands we had one test event with 1500 tickets and over 100000 people applied for a ticket. They can’t wait to congregate."

I'm not up to date on the situation in the Netherlands. Is it that you can do anything you want if you have a negative test? Because otherwise, I don't think that anecdote means what you want it to mean.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#247

Post by chasd00 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #126
sudosysgen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is China an isolated island? How about Vietnam? And no, land borders don't matter that much. They aren't a strong infection vector. You can just close the borders. The vast majority of infections come from air travel, not land travel that is essentially zero. Were also not taking about the EU here, the Article is American, and there aren't a billion people neither in Europe nor in North America. Incidentally, the mod…

I presume you have never been in Europe. There barely any borders to close and a lot of people live in one country and work in another. You can’t block that for a year. In Baarle Nassau in the Netherlands there is a store, and half of it is in the Netherlands and half of it is in Belgium. By the way, air travel has been ~0 for a year now. Unfortunately it has not in fact stopped the pandemic. Must be the no true lock…

i don't know why you're being downvoted.

This statement is true "Must be the no true lockdown: if it doesn’t work we just say it wasn’t strict enough."

any criticism of the lockdowns is met with "you didn't lockdown enough".

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#248

Post by armagon »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #102
praestigiare wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns do not destroy the economy. Anti-maskers destroy the economy, by decreasing the effectiveness of lockdowns, and making them a chronic rather than acute necessity.

The relationship between COVID and the local economy is highly country-dependent. For example, several Balkan countries’ economies are very dependent on their diasporas (and the occasional tourists) driving/flying back and spending loads of money earned in the West. This is why even now they have remained open to travelers and avoided hard lockdowns, even if COVID deaths might result. And then there are countries whe…

I live in Alberta, Canada, which is heavily reliant on resource extraction -- namely, oil. With all the lockdowns (and people voluntarily staying at home), demand for oil has tanked.

If there weren't lockdowns (and people were travelling again), our economy would be doing much better.

[With all that said, and while I dearly missing socializing, it isn't obvious to me that removing the lockdowns would improve things; on the other hand, it isn't obvious to me that letting the disease run rampant would be worse than the mental and emotional toll the lockdowns are taking on people and the economy. So many poorly understood trade-offs.]

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#249

Post by mcguire »

tinus_hn wrote: post #138
helge9210 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is not a good example. Lockdown application here is very uneven. They have nothing to do with the virus and are mainly used by politicians in power to suppress secular way of life and to redistribute business opportunities.

Ah, so the no true lockdown isn’t strict enough.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
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