Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows • Hacker News Board

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#81

Post by clairity » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #33

eric_b wrote: post #9

Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die, etc. What staggers me is that huge groups of people are…

> We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die I find this sentiment as funny as I do frustrating. This thing has been around ~8 months. We know some about this virus. We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects. And we're continuously finding troubling signs about it. It's looking like even mild cases can result in long-term brain, heart, and lung damage [1]. T…

> "We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects."

news media likes to harp on this now that the initial novelty has worn off, with stories about extreme cases of serious complications to keep the fear train going and the ad bucks rolling in.

but bodies are complex. every ailment has a long tail of odd residuals. in fact, just living has a long tail of odd residuals. there's little evidence so far that this ailment has any special long-term effect.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#82

Post by qubex » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

tdfx wrote: post #37

cirgue wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate…

A metaphor, if I may: think by analogy to the other famously exponential process, nuclear fission. When neutron flux gets too frisky, you have to throttle the reaction or face a catastrophe. You don’t need to disassemble the reactor to shut it down, it suffices to slam in the control rods and mop up those neutrons so they don’t trigger further fissions. Social Distancing is the “explosive dissassembly” of epidemiology: if the nuclei get too far apart (because the reactor has detonated) the reaction ceases because most neutrons “go wide” and don’t hit another nucleus. We’ve had to rely on the latter because as of yet we don’t have suitably effective control rods to scram the core. Lockdown is all about keeping the fuel elements sufficiently far apart so that the reaction goes sub-critical and eventually peters out (or reaches some background level).

(“Argument by analogy is very powerful and entirely fallacious”, so make of my words what you may.)

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#83

Post by zaroth » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #65

zaroth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is No true Scotsman applied to “lockdowns”. Semantics aside, there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment, while it’s also inarguably true that other personality types find it highly detrimental. I doubt the answer can be found in anecdotes, nor will the true impact be fully felt or known for some time. However claiming that wellbeing levels improved seems to me to be…

> The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true However, a lot of those unemployed service workers were making more money on unemployment than they did in their previous jobs. Add in the $1200 check and that certainly helped in that April-July period. > there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment Yes, for sure. Introvert here. Loved it. I guess th…

The unemployment benefits go away faster than the jobs come back. And in the meantime the States go bankrupt and Federal debt balloons on the order of $10 trillion.

A wonder if a lot of people argue for lockdowns not just because they think it might be a worthy socioeconomic trade-off, but because they actually enjoy life better that way and aren’t personally being devastated by it. Similarly, people against lockdown could have just not been personally effected by COVID, or know anyone who has been.

Humans are particularly bad at balancing very large impact events (we tend to underestimate the big stuff and overestimate the small). I think it still very much remains to be seen which was the lesser evil — COVID or the response thereto.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#84

Post by qubex » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

Johnjonjoan wrote: post #76

qubex wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this begs the question: how were we meant to live? In the savanna in social groups of about fifty or less related individuals leading a hunger-gatherer lifestyle. I doubt the OP is going to argue that we all head back to that state, though, so I’m going politely disregard their absolutist and ex cattedra remarks.

Why not also tropical rainforest? (I'm assuming you're saying we are meant to live how we did at our inception) IMO using the word meant implies a purpose and I don't think there is one here.

I was just giving a quick & dirty reply, and my knowledge of anthropology is quite limited. As I understand it we evolved out of the African savanna. If there are other niches we evolved in (rather than expanded to), those would also be a valid response.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#85

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #38

cirgue wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

+1 million. I find it so frustrating the myopic nature of how so many people look at this. We could (and should) have treated this with some respect, worn masks, and stayed mostly inside for ~6 weeks. If we'd done that, we'd still have to practice some precaution, but it would likely be a significantly better reality than we're in today, and will be for the foreseeable future thanks to that fantastic individualism th…

Staying inside is wholly unnecessary, especially in low density areas. It's the congregation on beaches etc that is problematic, not just "outside".

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#86

Post by the_gastropod » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #81

the_gastropod wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die I find this sentiment as funny as I do frustrating. This thing has been around ~8 months. We know some about this virus. We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects. And we're continuously finding troubling signs about it. It's looking like even mild cases can result in long-term brain, heart, and lung damage [1]. T…

> "We are still completely ignorant about the long-term effects." news media likes to harp on this now that the initial novelty has worn off, with stories about extreme cases of serious complications to keep the fear train going and the ad bucks rolling in. but bodies are complex. every ailment has a long tail of odd residuals. in fact, just living has a long tail of odd residuals. there's little evidence so far that…

We all know news outlets profit from fear, outrage, and general negative emotions. We get it. But that doesn't mean you get to just chalk up any bad news as "Well, that's just the media for you!".

If you didn't find the article I posted above compelling, I'd love to hear why. Here's another [1] BBC article suggesting approximately 50% of covid cases result in brain damage. Why should we not take this seriously?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#87

Post by vict00ms » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 6:02 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #39

UncleOxidant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling what we did in most of the US a "lockdown" seems like a misnomer. Wuhan did an actual lockdown where people sometimes had their apartment door welded shut and police were arresting people who went outside - that's a lockdown. In the US it was more of a shelter-in-place order. Now that we know more about how the virus spreads we can make those more targeted - forbidding people from going outside at all, for ex…

This is No true Scotsman applied to “lockdowns”. Semantics aside, there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment, while it’s also inarguably true that other personality types find it highly detrimental. I doubt the answer can be found in anecdotes, nor will the true impact be fully felt or known for some time. However claiming that wellbeing levels improved seems to me to be…

I don't believe this is a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy: the person was replying to someone claiming lockdowns were equivalent to incarceration, but the US-style "lockdown" was much, much less severe than that.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#88

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

partyboat1586 wrote: post #71

chaostheory wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let's throw out all the data just because it disagrees with our personal beliefs

If I do a sum and it comes out as something I don't expect I let my intuition guide me to check the sum to ensure no mistakes were made, I don't just accept the answer.

I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is when data is disregarded without any analysis just because it doesn't match arbitrary expectations.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#89

Post by UncleOxidant » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #83

UncleOxidant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The unemployment levels alone are overwhelming evidence that isn’t true However, a lot of those unemployed service workers were making more money on unemployment than they did in their previous jobs. Add in the $1200 check and that certainly helped in that April-July period. > there is no question that certain personality types might even favor such an environment Yes, for sure. Introvert here. Loved it. I guess th…

The unemployment benefits go away faster than the jobs come back. And in the meantime the States go bankrupt and Federal debt balloons on the order of $10 trillion. A wonder if a lot of people argue for lockdowns not just because they think it might be a worthy socioeconomic trade-off, but because they actually enjoy life better that way and aren’t personally being devastated by it. Similarly, people against lockdown…

> The unemployment benefits go away faster than the jobs come back

Sure, but it looks like the Democratic House and even the President want them to continue at least till year end.

> I think it still very much remains to be seen which was the lesser evil — COVID or the response thereto.

As an epidemiologist said months back (paraphrasing): "success in dealing with a pandemic will always be seen as having been an over-reaction after the fact."

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#90

Post by mistermann » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #89

zaroth wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unemployment benefits go away faster than the jobs come back. And in the meantime the States go bankrupt and Federal debt balloons on the order of $10 trillion. A wonder if a lot of people argue for lockdowns not just because they think it might be a worthy socioeconomic trade-off, but because they actually enjoy life better that way and aren’t personally being devastated by it. Similarly, people against lockdown…

> The unemployment benefits go away faster than the jobs come back Sure, but it looks like the Democratic House and even the President want them to continue at least till year end. > I think it still very much remains to be seen which was the lesser evil — COVID or the response thereto. As an epidemiologist said months back (paraphrasing): "success in dealing with a pandemic will always be seen as having been an over…

The problem with counterfactuals is, it very well may have been an overreaction. The truth is often not knowable.

If the above is the logic someone is using to sell me on an idea, my suspicion level increases.