A case for ending lockdown • Hacker News Board

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#41

Post by dang » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

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?

It's the latter. It's possible for a submission to get so many flags that it also gets killed, but the software doesn't do that once there are lots of comments.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#42

Post by ryankemper » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

cy_hauser wrote: post #39

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 peo…

> I just hate these blogs saying this virus is akin to the the flu

Author here. That's a mischaracterization of what I said. But yes it is true that overall mortality is similar to the flu. I settled on COVID-19 being 3x as deadly, but that figure is up to debate.

The important thing to understand is the varying risk profiles. The flu kills the very young and very old, whereas COVID-19 primarily kills the very old.

> Does the flu leave bodies in trucks, apartments, and bagged on the streets?

Yes, pandemic flu absolutely does.

> Does the flu kill dozens of workers in meat processing plants every year

Yup. Pandemic flu absolutely would.

> Does the flu take more than ten years of life from the average person it kills?

Could you clarify this point? I don't quite understand what you're saying. The flu takes away more wellbeing-years per death because it kills infants and young children whereas COVID-19 almost never does.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#43

Post by uniqueid » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

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…

This is not a great place to start...

    > I’m a software / site reliability engineer 
    > based out of Santa Barbara, California.

Given the stakes, we should have a preference for Coronavirus articles written by experts. It's fine for authors to trash the WHO or to disagree with the government, but they should have the chops if the rest of us are going to upvote them.

I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few weeks, most of the medical articles to hit the front page have been written by dabblers.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#44

Post by cjhopman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

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 sorry but I can't take serious something that claims to take an impartial look at all the evidence related to the lockdown but then tries its damnedest to present all possible negatives it could without doing the same for positives. For example, there's clear evidence that the lockdown has decreased lives lost to traffic accidents but that appears nowhere here.

And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented.

Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives. Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated".

This thing is so littered with bias and lack of facts that it is not useful for any serious consideration of this. I'm sure it's great for people who already have their mind set in one direction, though.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#45

Post by cjhopman » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

uniqueid wrote: post #43

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…

This is not a great place to start... > I’m a software / site reliability engineer > based out of Santa Barbara, California. Given the stakes, we should have a preference for Coronavirus articles written by experts. It's fine for authors to trash the WHO or to disagree with the government, but they should have the chops if the rest of us are going to upvote them. I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few w…

> I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few weeks, most of the medical articles to hit the front page have been written by dabblers.

Honestly, that shouldn't be surprising. AFAICT, the only way in which the HN community exceeds some random subreddit is in thinking highly of itself.

HN itself combined with hckrnews.com provides an okay enough ui and mix of random interesting articles that makes it still beat out reddit for me.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#46

Post by ryankemper » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

uniqueid wrote: post #43

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…

This is not a great place to start... > I’m a software / site reliability engineer > based out of Santa Barbara, California. Given the stakes, we should have a preference for Coronavirus articles written by experts. It's fine for authors to trash the WHO or to disagree with the government, but they should have the chops if the rest of us are going to upvote them. I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few w…

Do you see any substantive issues with the content or are your objections primarily around the authorship?

I'm looking for people to poke holes. And so far I've just heard a lot of, well, that.

Which I agree with, I am not an expert, and have not (I hope) pretended to be one.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#47

Post by mistersquid » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

ryankemper wrote: post #32

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 suspicio…

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I am not arguing for containment but for graduated exposure while maintaining health care capacity.

While it is true that some health care providers are experiencing a decline in demand due to, for example, people no longer seeking medical attention for (e.g.) coronary problems and other non-respiratory ailments, this is not the health care capacity that matters with regard to coronavirus infections.

Non-coronavirus medical problems are important, but the widespread increase YOY in mortality across the entire United States is evidence that such medical demand is eclipsed by the demand for treatment related to coronavirus infections. [0]

Second, and I mean this with all due respect, your suggestion "to have at-risk members of population […] quarantine as we've all been doing. Meanwhile, the rest of society is no longer forbidden from transacting and producing value" is not so much a proposal as a flight of fantasy.

The idea of cordoning off the vulnerable when those who are most vulnerable are essential workers in groceries, transit, delivery not to mention the non-essential service workers, hospitality staff, janitors, teachers, etc. What you are proposing can have no basis in reality.

Finally, those less-vulnerable members of the population you are imagining actually end up hospitalized at a rate between 2.5% and 7.4%. [1] While the number of infections required to overwhelm hospital capacity is hard to pin down (i.e. forecast), ProPublica 17 Mar 2020 page offers a few different projections. [2] One of those projections forecasts that if 40% of US adults are infected over 12 months, hospitals across the country would experience demand at 100% to 200%+ current capacity.

Those less-vulnerable members of the population who "only" need hospitalization at a rate between 2.5% and 7.4% would be left without medical recourse and would die at a much higher rate than what you are imagining.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/us/coronaviru...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm

[2] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#48

Post by uniqueid » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

ryankemper wrote: post #46

uniqueid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a great place to start... > I’m a software / site reliability engineer > based out of Santa Barbara, California. Given the stakes, we should have a preference for Coronavirus articles written by experts. It's fine for authors to trash the WHO or to disagree with the government, but they should have the chops if the rest of us are going to upvote them. I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few w…

Do you see any substantive issues with the content or are your objections primarily around the authorship? I'm looking for people to poke holes. And so far I've just heard a lot of, well, that. Which I agree with, I am not an expert, and have not (I hope) pretended to be one.

    > Do you see any substantive issues with the content

I'm a programmer. An article about epidemiology could be riddled with substantive issues, and I would know none the better.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#49

Post by ryankemper » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

cjhopman wrote: post #44

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 sorry but I can't take serious something that claims to take an impartial look at all the evidence related to the lockdown but then tries its damnedest to present all possible negatives it could without doing the same for positives. For example, there's clear evidence that the lockdown has decreased lives lost to traffic accidents but that appears nowhere here. And then when actually looking at it, it's full of p…

The positive externalities is not a bad point. Where I'm having trouble is, it seems that if we wouldn't pass a law ordering people to not drive around in normal times, then it feels wrong to point to it as a positive when it's induced by people not being able to do anything.

That being said, I think it does make sense to account for positive externalities. Can you think of others that are lockdown-specific? The classic ones right now are pollution.

> Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives.

I'm not sure if that is a great example of only looking at the negatives. This is one dimension where the effects of the lockdown are basically exclusively negative as opposed to being a mixed bag. So this feels like something that absolutely _should_ be mentioned. Particularly when factoring in the irony of it increasing mortality from other non-COVID-19 infectious diseases.

> Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated".

I don't think this is at all fair either, but I must admit I chuckled a bit. It is a funny thought.

> And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented.

So, this is the biggest hole that I personally see in my argument, so I very much agree here. The trouble I ran into is, this is such an unprecedented situation that it would have felt ridiculous if I just started making up mortality predictions. So it felt like a good balance to highlight the _potential_ for increased mortality. I do think that means I likely need to soften the language around lockdown causing more mortality to accentuate the fact that it's merely _likely_ that it does.

--

Is there anything else you can think of? Thanks for the feedback.

Re: A case for ending lockdown

#50

Post by uniqueid » Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

cjhopman wrote: post #45

uniqueid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a great place to start... > I’m a software / site reliability engineer > based out of Santa Barbara, California. Given the stakes, we should have a preference for Coronavirus articles written by experts. It's fine for authors to trash the WHO or to disagree with the government, but they should have the chops if the rest of us are going to upvote them. I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few w…

> I'm disappointed with the HN community. The past few weeks, most of the medical articles to hit the front page have been written by dabblers. Honestly, that shouldn't be surprising. AFAICT, the only way in which the HN community exceeds some random subreddit is in thinking highly of itself. HN itself combined with hckrnews.com provides an okay enough ui and mix of random interesting articles that makes it still bea…

I still trust HN content more than other sites. The average age here is probably a decade older than Reddit, and people here value rationality, even if we sometimes fail to exhibit it.