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Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

wsj.com

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

#291

Post by Amezarak »

acdha wrote: post #87
tinus_hn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we better destroy the economy with lockdowns while waiting for vaccines that don’t work against these new strains, and then pay the price for herd immunity as well.

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…

Where I live, people pay little attention. Restaurants, bars, gyms, and grocery stores are all packed. In the latter case most (not all) people wear masks. I think lockdowns are impacting the economy much more than the pandemic itself. Most people do not seem to be that worried in the absence of government policies.

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

#292

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Amezarak wrote: post #291
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…

Where I live, people pay little attention. Restaurants, bars, gyms, and grocery stores are all packed. In the latter case most (not all) people wear masks. I think lockdowns are impacting the economy much more than the pandemic itself. Most people do not seem to be that worried in the absence of government policies.

> I think lockdowns are impacting the economy much more than the pandemic itself.

Well of course.

The USA is at nearly 500K deaths. But we've got a population of 328 Million. The economy won't notice the loss of on 0.15% of the population. It's nothing more than a rounding error.

But isn't that a terrible way to think of it? Think about what you're implying here. How many people should we allow to die just to keep the economy afloat?

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

#293

Post by tinus_hn »

acdha wrote: post #163
tinus_hn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sorry, is South Korea in the ‘everything is going great’ list again? Last thing I remember they were in their third wave with restrictions for 3 months already. They must have forgotten how to wear their magical masks.

Again, the only people saying masks are magic are people like you who took an anti-science position and haven’t been willing to admit being wrong. They reduce cases but they’re not perfect, which is why some activities like indoor dining are inherently risky until we have widespread vaccination. Currently, South Korea is showing 9 cases per million versus hundreds in most of Europe, the US, etc. so we’re still talkin…

> They reduce cases but they’re not perfect,

Which is why the statement ‘if only we had worn the masks’ is false. And I don’t personally care but it is a sneaky way of turning people against each other and a way to avoid responsibility: If you’re a government which has wasted billions on lockdowns and it hasn’t helped, how convenient is it to shift the blame to all these silly anti-maskers.

And I mind you, I am not anti science and I am not anti masks. I am against the statement ‘if only they had worn the masks.’

About half a year ago scientific ’authorities’ here said that if you get infected you must have done something against the measures, insinuating it was your own fault. That kind of stopped now that hospital workers turn out to get infected all the time. Are they anti-maskers? Do they not know how to avoid contact? Are they careless? Or is it unavoidable? To accept that, we also have to accept that you can’t get away with simply blaming everything on anti-science noncompliance.

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

#294

Post by steveBK123 »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #286
steveBK123 wrote: post #212

WSJ Opinion page, known for such classics as “There won’t be a second wave - Mike Pence” in June (which mysteriously all the links I find to it are returning 503 now hmm)

First google result worked for me: https://www.wsj.com/articles/there-isnt-a-coronavirus-second...

Yup looks like it is up now, was a temporary blip

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

#295

Post by steveBK123 »

mellosouls wrote: post #240
steveBK123 wrote: post #212

WSJ Opinion page, known for such classics as “There won’t be a second wave - Mike Pence” in June (which mysteriously all the links I find to it are returning 503 now hmm)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/there-isnt-a-coronavirus-second... ok here

Yup looks like it is up now, was a temporary blip

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

#296

Post by Gibbon1 »

parrellel wrote: post #131
Gibbon1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of my current out of my butt theory why cases are going down is all the dummy's have partial herd immunity. The reasoning is simple. If you listen to what people that actually know what they are talking about they say in the US total cases are about 20%. Lets consider Gallant. Gallant does all the things to stay safe. Is the infection rate among Gallants 20%? Hell no. It's probably a 1/3 that or 6-7%. Consider G…

The "stupid people" demographic reaching saturation and there being a depression in transmission as a result does make a lot of sense just from observed behavior. Then we'd expect the next surge when people start to relax safety measures.

Collections of goofus's are likely important because covid tends to burn out without super spreading events. One can imagine that the collections of dummies that continued to hold large gatherings would have even higher infection rates.

Highlights an issue with a lot of thinking about this. Population profiles aren't homogeneous but people make that assumption when drawing conclusions from simple statistics.

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

#297

Post by leesalminen »

chasd00 wrote: post #247
tinus_hn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

When someone says "you didn't lockdown enough", I hear “you didn’t destroy enough people’s livelihoods”.

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

#298

Post by bhupy »

makomk wrote: post #178
bhupy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point of Op-Ed sections, at the end of the day? It's always been a way for newspapers to host what's effectively a glorified collection of Medium posts. Even the New York Times' Opinion page is consistently partisan.

I'm not sure the New York Times is a good example here. It's definitely not just their opinion page that is partisan these days, and whilst this does seem to have gotten worse I'm not sure there was exactly a golden era - they seem to have always been particularly keen on pushing narratives.

Yeah, I don't disagree. My question was targeted more at folks that specifically find the WSJ Op-Ed to be objectionable; in my experience those same people tend to consider the NYT's Op-Ed to be less objectionable (caveat: I'm operating on an N of like 4).

The most internally consistent position, IMO, is that Op-Eds are all partisan and should all be abolished, in every paper. They once served a useful purpose, but are arguably no longer necessary in a world where everyone can post an opinionated blog post on Medium/Substack/etc and broadcast it out to the world via Twitter/Mastodon/etc more or less for free.

This article we're commenting on is just an interesting (if potentially dubious) blog post by a surgeon, and nothing more than that.

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

#299

Post by leesalminen »

simonh wrote: post #183
tinus_hn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we better destroy the economy with lockdowns while waiting for vaccines that don’t work against these new strains, and then pay the price for herd immunity as well.

I give up. First it's hoax, then it's just a bad flu, then it's going to disappear like magic, then a second wave is impossible, then it's that vaccines aren't necessary and don't work. Meanwhile, people die in their thousands per day and the death toll piles up and hospitals get over-run with dying patients. As for lockdowns, we know from analysis of the Spanish Flu epidemic that cities with successful lockdowns suf…

> Spanish Flu epidemic

Trying to compare now to >100 years ago is full of all kinds of bad assumptions. Life in 1918 hardly resembles life in 2020 in any discernible way.

> China had the mother of all lockdowns and is back to robust economic growth

Believing this means you have to trust information disseminated by the Chinese Communist Party, which would be a foolish thing to do. They are 100% committed to saving face, not to saving lives.

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

#300

Post by Amezarak »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #292
Amezarak wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, people pay little attention. Restaurants, bars, gyms, and grocery stores are all packed. In the latter case most (not all) people wear masks. I think lockdowns are impacting the economy much more than the pandemic itself. Most people do not seem to be that worried in the absence of government policies.

> I think lockdowns are impacting the economy much more than the pandemic itself. Well of course. The USA is at nearly 500K deaths. But we've got a population of 328 Million. The economy won't notice the loss of on 0.15% of the population. It's nothing more than a rounding error. But isn't that a terrible way to think of it? Think about what you're implying here. How many people should we allow to die just to keep th…

I’m not implying anything, I was addressing the GP claim that the pandemic was the primary factor impacting the economy rather than lockdowns. I suspect what what I’m saying I see locally would likely end up the same nationally: eliminate restrictions and economic activity will return to near pre-pandemic levels with only a slight hit from people too worried to go out even with a mask.

My personal feelings are actually simultaneously that we worry way too much about economics rather than human factors but also that personally, I don’t feel that the measures we are taking to counter Covid are worth it for noneconomic reasons, but I can respect that other people feel differently.

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