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In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

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Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#61

Post by pengaru »

mcpackieh wrote: post #7

Besides the economic harm and potential developmental harm induced by closing schools for kids, I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. It gave huge swaths of the population a grudge against the system, a chip on their shoulder that won't go away anytime soon. It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.) And coupling this…

In the thick of it I felt like the lock-downs were probably necessary in the beginning of "flattening the curve".

Many around my parts were being outright belligerent asshats when all we had was asking nicely that people distance and wear masks. A substantial subset of the population did the exact opposite, and caused all sorts of trouble being antagonistic even to people just trying to buy groceries.

Then the lockdowns happened and it was like a light switch. I rarely saw the same kind of troublemakers acting out that way in public. Apparently once the US starts gutting its own economy to deal with an invisible threat, people start taking it more seriously. Until then it was like they thought it was all fake news, running around mocking the gullible masked suckers.

But why they didn't end far sooner, like maybe once food supply chains were recovering and our shelves weren't empty anymore, is totally beyond my comprehension. It evolved from "flattening the curve" to "prevent as many deaths as possible at all costs", which IMNSHO is where it went all wrong.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#62

Post by mcpackieh »

esotericimpl wrote: post #35
mcpackieh wrote: post #7

Besides the economic harm and potential developmental harm induced by closing schools for kids, I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. It gave huge swaths of the population a grudge against the system, a chip on their shoulder that won't go away anytime soon. It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.) And coupling this…

Counterpoint, there were no lockdowns. There was like the initial 6 weeks to stop the spread. I still went to the grocery store, not locked down, i still went to the park, not locked down. What lockdowns? please be specific. When people say lockdown, they mean: "I was forced to wear a mask when i went to the grocery store and i felt like a loser" Thats the whole issue.

Businesses were closed, schools were closed. I had to stop my weekly routine of spending Saturdays in the public library because the doors were locked and books were only being lended through the website. The only way to meet and socialize with people was online. Even city parks were "capacity limited", they put police tape around the duck pond because ducks became an attractive nuisance. I had to queue up around the block to buy bread like it was the damn Soviet Union because the grocery store was only letting 10 people inside at a time.

Call it what you like. You're arguing semantics when you say it wasn't a lock-down, but whatever you call it, it harmed people socially and psychologically. Humans aren't meant to be socially isolated.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#63

Post by knodi123 »

somewhat_drunk wrote: post #17

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I…

[flagged]

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#64

Post by dyates »

I think the lockdown concept as implemented in 2020 was a great illustration of the problem of scale. It's trivially true that if you as an individual avoid all contact with others during a flu season, you won't catch the flu. You can probably extend that to your family, maybe a bit further, but at a certain scale it just becomes impossible (and undesirable) because of individual variations in occupation, lifestyle, risk and infinitely many other factors. And because someone has keep the wheels of society turning. There was no lockdown for supermarket cashiers.

My own government got very excited by the prospect of dictatorial central planning that lockdown mania created an enabling environment for and immediately set about writing all kinds of complicated rules about what food and clothing people were allowed to buy, as well as putting a prohibition on alcohol & cigarettes and imposing a curfew. Pandemic response immediately became a vehicle for imposing by fiat whatever pet policies ministers could vaguely link to it. Years later, they've all been rolled back, but the damage was done, and everyone still caught Covid.[1]

[1]: https://www.groundup.org.za/article/nearly-everyone-in-south...

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#65

Post by mcpackieh »

pengaru wrote: post #61
mcpackieh wrote: post #7

Besides the economic harm and potential developmental harm induced by closing schools for kids, I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. It gave huge swaths of the population a grudge against the system, a chip on their shoulder that won't go away anytime soon. It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.) And coupling this…

In the thick of it I felt like the lock-downs were probably necessary in the beginning of "flattening the curve". Many around my parts were being outright belligerent asshats when all we had was asking nicely that people distance and wear masks. A substantial subset of the population did the exact opposite, and caused all sorts of trouble being antagonistic even to people just trying to buy groceries. Then the lockdo…

Yeah, I was onboard for two weeks of "flatten the curve" but once it continued for months and beyond they lost me.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#66

Post by knodi123 »

kelnos wrote: post #14
jklinger410 wrote: post #5

> The American Institute for Economic Research educates people on the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government, and sound money Saved some of you a click hopefully

Big surprise that an organization like this would adopt an anti-lockdown stance. Not saying they're ultimately wrong, but it's good to know what their biases are in order to put things in context.

> Not saying they're ultimately wrong

... but if they were, it wouldn't be the first time. These guys are also global warming denialists, covid deniers, and they even vociferously defend third world sweatshops.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#67

Post by RansomStark »

meaningjoj wrote: post #41

For the mathematically-minded, it is worth noting that the Asian flu had an R naught of 1.7 while Covid had an R naught of a bit more than 2. Keeping in mind these are fat-tailed distributions. So an R naught of 2 is a estimate of a true R naught, and because using sample averages to estimate means (true R naught is a mean) is unstable (the fatter the tail, the less moments of the distribution there are), once the re…

For those that are interest in the nuances of modelling infections, I'm going to leave a Wikipedia extract here.

"R_{0} is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population.

R_{0} values are usually estimated from mathematical models, and the estimated values are dependent on the model used and values of other parameters. Thus values given in the literature only make sense in the given context and it is recommended not to use obsolete values or compare values based on different models. R_{0} does not by itself give an estimate of how fast an infection spreads in the population".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#68

Post by [deleted] »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #55
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. I don't know about society, but this was the straw the broke the camels back for me. I have not been the same since, I don't think I ever will be. The first lockdown in my province was when things really started to go wrong for me mental health wise in a major way and it only got worse as they continued. What's really been maddening is that people get angry…

And yet some of us actually liked that period of time where we were at home more, had more time to do things like bake bread, cook actual meals, read, etc. I think in my case my mental health declined for different reasons: As someone with health anxiety in the best of times, it started to dial up to 11. This was not even related to "lockdowns" - I had no desire to go anywhere where people congregated. The fact that…

[deleted]

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#69

Post by w______roy »

elcritch wrote: post #42
toomanyrichies wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Wouldn't that apply to epidemiologists as well?

For a barber, more haircuts = more money. Trying to imagine what kind of relationship you think epidemiologists have with money? It's not like they get a nickel for every person they save from getting sick.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#70

Post by Manuel_D »

somewhat_drunk wrote: post #17

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false. In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I…

So Ebola virus is not as deadly as COVID because fewer people have died from it? "Deadlier" can mean a whole host of things: infection fatality rate of a disease can be far higher even if the total deatg toll is lower, if fewer people contract the disease.
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