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A case for ending lockdown

ryankemper.io

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Re: A case for ending lockdown

#31

Post by ryankemper »

nostromo wrote: post #7
ryankemper wrote: post #2

If it's not obvious, I wrote this. The intent is to be a fairly comprehensive coverage of what we know about COVID-19 and what it means for our policy. Note that the article is written from a US-based perspective although I suspect it's relevant to a broader audience. In general, I believe that the case against lockdown has been highly stigmatized and thus many people have not been exposed to a convincing argument of…

I wish you the best. This debate has taken on all the fervor of a holy war, and putting out an contrarian position has been hugely unpopular. One thing I'd add: employment and health insurance are tied together in the US. The lock down dramatically increased unemployment, the majority of whom will not pay expensive Cobra costs, and will soon be uninsured. The opposite of what was intended may happen: we are now less…

Thanks. That point about health insurance is great and I think I should weave that into the part that talks about furloughing medical workers.

I'll see about doing so after I take a break to eat some food. (As an aside, I'm pretty comfortable writing and can write pretty quickly but as you can imagine just getting to this first draft took a lot out of me.)

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#32

Post by ryankemper »

mistersquid wrote: post #16

> 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 exam…

I'm not going to dive into your full post, but suffice to say that you are advocating a policy of capital-c Containment. Your implicit assumption is that we can avoid infection sufficiently long enough such that the future utility of vaccines and as-of-yet-undiscovered treatments outweighs the cost.

My position is that the cost of lockdown massively outweighs the cost of COVID-19 itself, and furthermore I am suspicious of the belief that we can effectively contain it without boarding people in their houses.

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

And yet the lockdown has, overall, scaled _down_ our healthcare capacity amidst the most serious pandemic in a century. Why is that? I can already foresee an argument of "oh well, the lockdown is fine, we just need to pass government regulations that pays hospitals to maintain this extra capacity". And my argument to that is, beyond a general distrust of government incompetence, paying somebody to sit around will not maintain their skills in the same way as paying them to actually perform the preventative care that we hired them for in the first place.

> The OP provides no suggestions on how lockdown might end

But I literally provided a proposal. The proposal is to have at-risk members of population - and yes, we can identify who is at risk really quite easily with the data we now have - quarantine as we've all been doing. Meanwhile, the rest of society is no longer forbidden from transacting and producing value.

Again, if you look at the fatality rate data, you will see that if we can just protect everyone over 60 - and especially everyone over 70 - we will mitigate probably 80% of the deaths. Unfortunately, even _with_ the lockdown, we have utterly failed to do so thus far in many parts of the country.

In particular, I strongly oppose the moral panic around people going to the beach, public parks, etc. Unlike our politicians, I strongly believe that these activities can be done safely and that there is insufficient evidence to show that they were ever a serious transmission vector in the first place.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#33

Post by ryankemper »

mrfusion wrote: post #30
ryankemper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement was the source of widespread criticism and I in fact criticized it myself in the writeup. I considered going for a deeper debunking but held off for the initial draft. I might circle back if people feel it's valuable. Let me take a quick stab though: When we talk about immunity we need to realize the term is used imprecisely by laypeople (btw I'm totally a layman if it's not already clear). I think of…

Great write up. It’s so strange the WHO would release a statement like that.

Very strange. If you haven't seen it, they did say why they did it here: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...

Specifically this part:

> People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice.

So, first of all, I think the concern is on its face totally unwarranted because people likely do have immunity to reinfection for several months, but regardless the presence of the immunological memory (provided they avoid getting infected with Measles which causes immunological amnesia) means that the second infection will be really not very bad and unlikely to transmit easily.

But more importantly:

Our public health organizations (and the media) have adopted the following belief: It is worth it to either mislead the public or to outright lie in order to achieve compliance. If it's not clear from the article, I find such a position detestable, not only on ideological grounds but also because functionally it causes people to endanger their health by engaging in superstition.

This is my theory on why we've seen so many articles from previously-respectable organizations like CNN that seem to focus on the narrative that young people are dropping like flies from this. Why? Because they believe that if young people are not scared shitless for their personal health, that they will not comply with the lockdown measures.

So, the WHO is really not trying to hide their motivation here.

Now the irony is I oppose immunity passports on ideological grounds, at least when used _within_ a society. As far as being used as a literal passport, that's fine by me. If the rest of the world wants to practice containment, it's welcome to do so, but I think from an evidence-based perspective, containment seems like an incredibly dangerous proposition.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#35

Post by mrfusion »

ryankemper wrote: post #33
mrfusion wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great write up. It’s so strange the WHO would release a statement like that.

Very strange. If you haven't seen it, they did say why they did it here: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p... Specifically this part: > People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice. So, first of all, I think the concern is on its face totally unwarranted because people likely do have immunity t…

Yeah that makes total sense. I can’t believe how few people buy the media’s stuff so easily. I have relatives forwarding me the corana causes strokes in young people articles. Normally intelligent people.

This whole thing has really shaken my understanding of people.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#36

Post by ryankemper »

mdasen wrote: post #4
ryankemper wrote: post #2

If it's not obvious, I wrote this. The intent is to be a fairly comprehensive coverage of what we know about COVID-19 and what it means for our policy. Note that the article is written from a US-based perspective although I suspect it's relevant to a broader audience. In general, I believe that the case against lockdown has been highly stigmatized and thus many people have not been exposed to a convincing argument of…

I'm a bit confused by the Gitlab logo on your site. Do you work for Gitlab? Is Gitlab endorsing your article?

Circling back: https://gitlab.com/ryankemper/nfhugo/-/commit/1a8ead81ff65d7...

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#37

Post by ryankemper »

sethc2 wrote: post #22

Why was this flagged? I don’t even necessarily agree with the author’s arguments and conclusion, and honestly I have no clue what to think with all the information I hear that is constantly changing from the various tribes. But when something gets flagged simply because he advocates for ending the lockdown, I go from thinking the lockdown is probably necessary and trust the decision is made for reasons I don’t unders…

Out of curiosity, do you know if it being flagged means it's now invisible to others? Or is "flagged" the intermediate state between a normal submission and a dead one?

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#38

Post by sethc2 »

ryankemper wrote: post #37
sethc2 wrote: post #22

Why was this flagged? I don’t even necessarily agree with the author’s arguments and conclusion, and honestly I have no clue what to think with all the information I hear that is constantly changing from the various tribes. But when something gets flagged simply because he advocates for ending the lockdown, I go from thinking the lockdown is probably necessary and trust the decision is made for reasons I don’t unders…

Out of curiosity, do you know if it being flagged means it's now invisible to others? Or is "flagged" the intermediate state between a normal submission and a dead one?

Not sure. All I know is I saw the article on the main page, navigated away and when I came back it was gone. I searched for the title and then found it but it was flagged.

I was thinking of sharing on Facebook but I'd probably get banned, even if i still feel we should probably keep the lockdown for a little bit longer, because apparently the moral authorities have decided it is off limits to suggest we should end the lockdown or even discuss whether we should.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#39

Post by cy_hauser »

I just hate these blogs saying this virus is akin to the the flu. Does the flu leave bodies in trucks, apartments, and bagged on the streets? Does the flu kill dozens of workers in meat processing plants every year. Does the flu take more than ten years of life from the average person it kills?

Also, suicide death rates are still wildly unknown but deaths by traffic fatalities are way down. We need to get help to people feeling suicidal. Before the virus and now especially.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#40

Post by Fuzzwah »

> SARS-CoV-2 is a virus that can make you sick. Some people don’t feel sick at all, some people feel a little bit sick, and a very small group of people, especially old people, get very sick and might die.

Maybe mention something about the long term issues that it appears could be a reality for even those who "don’t feel sick at all, some people feel a little bit sick"?

Also, while the the goal of flattening the curve was focused on lowering the impact on health care, as seen in Australia and New Zealand it can also result in stopping nearly all local transmission.

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