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Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

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Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#41

Post by kungato »

joshuahughes wrote: post #30
thesizeofa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view o…

Why the extreme response? Thousands and thousands of folks here in the UK are losing their jobs and therefore their homes. I assume the same thing is happening elsewhere. We have safety nets, but payouts are often nowhere near enough to match income that’s been lost. It’s a real disappointment to me that HN has decided there’s only one right way to talk about the Covid response, and every other point of view is idiot…

Maybe the uk is not socialist enough

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#42

Post by starfallg »

marmshallow wrote: post #7

Seeing as all these terrible economic outcomes would happen whether or not the virus infected the population, I think this is a pretty solid win and a poor article title.

I agree with you but a part of the problem is seeing this as a zero-sum game which results in the labelling of winners and losers.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#43

Post by sh461 »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #36
thesizeofa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.

While there are many metrics of the pandemic's, including health, GDP, and unemployment, it's interesting to note, in light of this comment, that the UK per-capita death rate is currently about 20% higher than the US per-capita death rate from COVID-19.[0] [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

Also good to point out that the UK is about 8 times more densely populated than the US.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#44

Post by mcv »

Nextgrid wrote: post #27
saiya-jin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering various aspects like anti-vaxers, very remote tribes etc. as true eradication with 7 billions is most probably impossible. Everybody will never get them. Also, seems like every state will have their own variant with varying effectiveness (and possibly some bad side effects), I don't see things very rosy for next few years. It will be probably good enough situation eventually, but I presume it will just be…

Considering that Covid can be lethal I’d assume anti-vaxxers would be a self-resolving problem if given enough time.

The stupidity, the resistance to measures, and the conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 are also surprisingly contagious.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#45

Post by mcntsh »

thesizeofa wrote: post #28
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #22

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of trave…

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view o…

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here... that in around the world people are not suffering directly because of the quarantines, because they have "publicly accessible healthcare" and they don't "ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times"? Forgive me but you'd be wrong.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#46

Post by shadowprofile77 »

thesizeofa wrote: post #28
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #22

Awful lot of privileged software engineer types with relatively cushy lockdown-friendly jobs, good income, savings, covered healthcare and good homes that leap to criticize as selfish, greedy, irresponsible and dumb anyone who insists that economic consequences from lockdown are possibly, just maybe, for many, many hundreds of millions of people all around the world something a bit more than just going short of trave…

Do you not grasp that in most countries where lockdowns took place people had government support? Do you not fathom that most countries have publicly accessible healthcare? Do you not understand that not all countries ditch their vulnerable under the bus in such unprecedented times? Is it such an alien concept the fact that us, the high earning developers pay tax precisely to help those in need? What a strange view o…

If lockdowns only occur in highly developed countries, then by their own logic they are nearly worthless, since the thing they're trying to avoid will spread just as much in the majority part of the world that isn't highly developed. Thus, there have been strong pushes for lockdowns globally, regardless of development level. In some developing countries, they have been applied (in others no).

In these cases or many others where a developing country shied away from heavy-handed lockdown, government support of the type you mention is nearly nonexistent. That you take its existence for granted suggests to me that you yourself live in a place where there is support and simply assume it should be the case anywhere (it's not).

The same for the taxes you mention for social support. Sure, the taxes some developer pays in California, or the UK, or New York or X developed place might be used to help social benefits programs in that place. In many if not most other places in the world though, any collected taxes for social programs are mismanaged, often stolen or simply don't exist in the first place. Again, that's how much of the world actually is, most of its people very definitely don't have much access to government support or public healthcare.

I speak from experience here by the way, living in a large developing country with a famously corrupt government at all levels, and 60% of its 130 million person population living day to day, hand-to mouth. I can't even begin to image the social and even humanitarian catastrophe of full lockdown here had it been applied (fortunately it wasn't despite the pressures of COVID deaths). Even partial quarantine has been damaging enough.

I don't even understand the meaning of your last sentence. This isn't about "weakly collapsing" at the first sign of trouble, it's about the hard math of what inevitably happens if you force-stop daily outdoor economic activity in any country with a majority population that must engage in exactly such activity in order to keep from literally going hungry.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#47

Post by Pyramus »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #36
thesizeofa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuance is welcome - I for one am proud of paying the HMRC to help people pay for electricity, food and shelter. The situation is not great in the UK either, thanks to a government that ignored science, but its far better than in the US.

While there are many metrics of the pandemic's, including health, GDP, and unemployment, it's interesting to note, in light of this comment, that the UK per-capita death rate is currently about 20% higher than the US per-capita death rate from COVID-19.[0] [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

While your link compares confirmed deaths due to Covid-19, it seems that this effect remains even when you look at excess deaths [1].

However, the US is still in the midst of the pandemic, and I expect the US to catch up on this lamentable metric.

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#48

Post by bachmeier »

euudheehdy wrote: post #9
marmshallow wrote: post #7

Seeing as all these terrible economic outcomes would happen whether or not the virus infected the population, I think this is a pretty solid win and a poor article title.

Most of the terrible economic outcomes have been due to the lockdowns not the actual deaths. Losing 1% of the population isn't a massive economic blow when that 1% is predominantly composed of no and low income groups, it is however a moral blow. The difference is important however because, while early on total lock-downs made sense, the reality is that if only 1% of the population is at risk of death then the other…

Sorry, but this is a pretty confused post, and your first sentence shows a lot of the problems with it.

> Most of the terrible economic outcomes have been due to the lockdowns not the actual deaths.

First, it's not lockdowns vs deaths. The biggest factor by far in the US was the existence of the virus. https://privwww.ssrn.com/abstract=3631180

"While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 percentage points of this. Individual choices were far more important"

But you don't need a fancy study. States that didn't have lockdowns saw similar economic declines to other states, even though they should have experienced a boom on the border as people traveled in to do business if it was the lockdown.

Second, deaths are not the only cost. People get sick, too, and it's a pretty big deal for many of them even if you don't see it on TV. It's possible they'll have permanent organ damage and shorter lives. Those people call in sick, or worse, they go to work and get others sick.

Third, if you let it get out of control, you overwhelm the hospital system. It's hard to see how that helps.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#49

Post by makomk »

adrianN wrote: post #18
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is about the exit strategy. Most countries don't expect to eradicate the virus for decades, if ever, and vaccines are expected to be only partially effective. After months and potentially years of keeping the virus out, will these countries ever be able to switch and decide it's safe to let the virus in?

Partially effective vaccines are good enough to basically eradicate the virus if everybody gets them. No country will continue pandemic measures after a sufficient number of people are vaccinated.

Even putting aside the logistical impossibility and massive political difficulties of vaccinating everyone, there's a good chance it still wouldn't be enough to eradicate the virus. If herd immunity needs say 80% of people to be immune and the vaccine only protects 50% of those vaccinated - which are probably fairly realistic figures - then the vaccine can't stop it from spreading. (Note that this is also likely higher than the herd immunity threshold from people actually catching the virus naturally, since that gives immunity to people more likely to spread it but there's no way to control who gets immunity from vaccinating everyone.)

The general suspicion amongst experts seems to be that the current wave of vaccine candidates are probably not going to be effective enough to allow ending the control measures that have been put in place.

Re: Ten countries kept out Covid, but did they win?

#50

Post by sradman »

nearting wrote: post #19

The ten countries: Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga

Some of these are top scuba diving destinations. They depend on regional air hubs, all presumably closed to non-essential connecting flights.

I wonder if these ten nations, all Melanesian/Polynesian with historical ties to the Anglo sphere, represent a true COVID-19 resistant pattern or are just reporting anomalies.

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