Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

[MadGreenSon]

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What's your threshold then? How many people are you willing to watch die in the name of the economy? Are you one of them? What about your nearest and dearest? Will you sacrifice them too?

 

[OverMaster]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1252698777296797698.html

Fuck.

We had a good run. It was a pleasure, messiers and assorted ladies.

Putting people in undeveloped countries into lockdown is just sadistic. If you're a day laborer who struggles to make enough money to eat at the best of times and your government can barely find it's own ass when it's not actively malevolent going into quarantine and trusting you'll be taken care of just isn't an option. The low age of the population means those countries won't be hit as hard anyway, the vast majority of people who need hospitalization are the elderly and the sick who're killed off by more urgent problems in those countries.

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Speaking as someone living in a Third World country... NO.

'Low age of the population' is a meme, poor countries still have plenty of elders, many in positions that are vital to keep our societies as a whole running, and to 'make up' for that anyway, we have MANY more vulnerable people in the lower age ranges because we can't feed ourselves as well and we have lousier health systems to begin with. Much like with the warm weather, a younger population average has done jack, fuck, and shit of good for the likes of Ecuador.

 

[Derrandoo]

The economy is meant to be part of a productive society, not the point of one.

Right now we're aiming to reenact the Grapes of Wrath with a refusal of government to respond or do simple things to secure food/shelter/healthcare for its citizens because it ideologically conflicts with the way very wealthy people want reality to work.

There is more than enough housing and food in America and the idea that people will go hungry and "deserve" to be hungry in a pandemic where they don't have options is morally abhorrent.

"Reopening the economy" is pretty pointless, the globalized economy just got shanked by Corona and America is mainly service jobs, an economic reopening isn't going to let America manufacture its way out of a crisis. Realistically they're pressing for economic reopening so the states can start means testing unemployment again and denying money to out of work people, again for ideological reasons.

There is no real attempt to increase testing, contact tracing or support quarantined persons. Nobody in 'essential' positions is getting a raise, a union or a louder voice. All the protests by nurses and housing advocates have been ignored in favor of morons screaming to unleash a wave of death so they can get haircuts.

 

[OverMaster]

There is more than enough housing and food in America and the idea that people will go hungry and "deserve" to be hungry in a pandemic where they don't have options is morally abhorrent.

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With the caveat that most other countries in the world aren't as fortunate, and thus most of mankind actually faces a sadistic choice between succumbing to a plague and economic crisis and starvation. For America it's just a matter of their leaders' choice, but most of the rest of the world is truly fucked and the saddest part is the countries who could help aren't going to move a finger when they can't even bother to look after their own people.

 

[Aleh]

Fuck.

We had a good run. It was a pleasure, messiers and assorted ladies.

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12/addendum This Thread comes across as too pessimistic. There are ~75 vaccine candidates entering clinical trials. Hopefully some will be successful, and even if they "just" mitigate severe disease and require an annual booster that would still be a big a success

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[.We]

So someone decided to go interview whores about what impact the pandemic has had on their lives…

Turns out sex work will be the first part of economy to reopen. Apparently about a month of lockdown is enough to make customers stop give a shit about restrictions and come back.
Condoms and face masks have stay on though.
Competition is also increasing as recently laid off workers are going back to their old jobs to generate income.

In other news, remote sales of alcohol are up by a lot.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

Speaking as someone living in a Third World country... NO.

'Low age of the population' is a meme, poor countries still have plenty of elders, many in positions that are vital to keep our societies as a whole running, and to 'make up' for that anyway, we have MANY more vulnerable people in the lower age ranges because we can't feed ourselves as well and we have lousier health systems to begin with. Much like with the warm weather, a younger population average has done jack, fuck, and shit of good for the likes of Ecuador.

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The vast majority of Corona cases don't even reach a hospital or get tested, if you're in an economy where people are in literal food poverty you can't afford to overreact without a body count. Just look at the population pyramids for sub saharan africa vs a first world country like the united states. There's a genuine difference in the at risk demographics, it's not a meme. The problem of poorer nutrition definitely won't be helped by a lockdown.

What's your threshold then? How many people are you willing to watch die in the name of the economy? Are you one of them? What about your nearest and dearest? Will you sacrifice them too?

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You're seem to be thinking of this like a story, so to talk about it in those terms you are standing on top of a pile of dead bodies and human suffering that you're just refusing to account for. The consequences of a second great depression don't go away because you're focused on one problem in the world. The economic price is the starting point but it's a known one you need to address because it reflects a lot of the real problems that are going to come out of this. Granpa's pension is fucked as much as your job so he has to go into a shittier care home where he can only stare at a gray wall all day, your sister can't afford to move your nephew out of the bad neighborhood where he gets knifed, that neighborhood is far worse off than it had to have been because everyone's parents lost their jobs and welfare had to be cut to pay for the huge amount of debt the government ran up.

Once you account for the ages and conditions of the people at risk and the long term economic costs of this we can run up a cash cost of $1,000,000 per year of life saved in cash terms. Assuming this works and ends in a month. If it drags on longer, didn't work, or we cry uncle before a 100% effective vaccine or treatment appears the predictable costs get even more skewed. Then you get to have the fun of mental conditions, long term unemployment, lower incomes, lower income communities, poorer healthcare, famines or any other problems this causes that you need to account for when deciding if this is right or wrong.

Even if you refuse to even think about those problems you still need to draw your line proportionately. There's no way you get to save all the 1-2 million people at risk no matter how long you extend the lockdown, at some point you have to just admit a number is good enough. Would a 50% effective treatment program be enough? If so, why would 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths be good enough for you? What about 90%? If it took 18 months of this for a vaccine that saved everyone but there were 30 million plus worldwide dead in famine, a second great depression and 30% unemployment would you reconsider the costs then?

Personally I think most people will. The time required, if the antibody testing isn't accurate and we're not pretty much at herd immunity already, is just too long. Eventually the pain will outweigh the fear and we'll open back up and bite the bullet, making the entire expense if not worthless than far less than promised.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

To all the people who think I'm being heartless here you really need to run out the numbers we're seeing to a year or longer. A ~30% recession is a pretty standard prediction for this quarter in the US and the numbers are similar elsewhere in the world. Right now most people are predicting around a ~5% annual fall assuming the lockdown doesn't go on much longer.

Compare that to the Great Depression and the Great Recession, using the US as an example since I haven't seen handy lockdown recession worldwide figures yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States

Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP fell around 30%

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession_in_the_United_States

According to the Department of Labor, roughly 8.7 million jobs (about 7%) were shed from February 2008 to February 2010, and real GDP contracted by 4.2% between Q4 2007 and Q2 2009, making the Great Recession the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

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Dragging this out like people want would take a great recession and turn it into a great depression, which will effect people at the bottom. People won't be able to pay rent and get evicted. Their employers will give them worse pay and conditions with all the competition for years after the event even if they get jobs at all. The government will have to make cuts, probably with inflation, that'll include benefits, welfare and other social spending these people will have to depend on. A lot of the poverty and unemployment will become structural. I'm not necessarily arguing against you if you say "well we should just ban rent until this is over", "the government should give everyone jobs after" or anything like that but realistically all of those proposals are massive cultural shifts we can't possibly expect to happen when deciding "yes" or "no" to this lockdown. All we get to decide is whether we're supporting open or close with our voices, and we need to seriously think about which is better or worse for us.

 

[AllyDoodle]

Kindly drop Trump now before we bring out the hammer.

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Sorry for bringing it up in the first place. It wasn't intended to start a debate, just point how fuck stupid doing something like that would be.

 

[evildice]

To all the people who think I'm being heartless

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They seem to have been saying you're brainless, not heartless.

To make a decision about the economics, you would need to compare the economic consequences of an unmitigated plague against the consequences of a mitigated one. What you're doing is comparing a mitigated plague against last year, when there was no plague.

Removing the mitigation won't remove the plague, and an unmitigated plague tends to have worse consequences.

 

[MadGreenSon]

To all the people who think I'm being heartless

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You're not heartless, you're indoctrinated. Or maybe stupid. Despite your shallow pretense of intellectual rigor, all you're really doing is making a display of servile groveling at the feet of people who don't care if you live or die as long as you do what they want you to for ideology's sake.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

They seem to have been saying you're brainless, not heartless.

To make a decision about the economics, you would need to compare the economic consequences of an unmitigated plague against the consequences of a mitigated one. What you're doing is comparing a mitigated plague against last year, when there was no plague.

Removing the mitigation won't remove the plague, and an unmitigated plague tends to have worse consequences.

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The plague isn't what you think it is. I've said this repeatedly the 3% morality WHO figure is for confirmed tested cases which the experts admit is small percentage of the total heavily skewed to hospitalised cases. Realistically you're looking at ~1 in 200 who could die, heavily tilted to the elderly and sick, with an average life expectancy of maybe ~11 years. 95% of the population doesn't need to be concerned about this, the people at risk can be isolated for a fraction of the cost, and these are the people who die in flu season anyway. People with pre existing conditions and the retired aren't the biggest economic contributors here. You don't get to just throw them into the calculation blindly assuming they are and there are huge externalities I'm ignoring. There are huge actual consequences for the young and poor that need to be thought about, and this isn't going to do any favors for the elderly who depend on fixed incomes either. Pensions will be slashed by the economic crash, state benefits will be slashed by the coming austerity and savings will be slashed in value by inflation.

You're not heartless, you're indoctrinated. Or maybe stupid. Despite your shallow pretense of intellectual rigor, all you're really doing is making a display of servile groveling at the feet of people who don't care if you live or die as long as you do what they want you to for ideology's sake.

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You're just continuing to refuse to answer basic questions, and if people keep thinking like you it's completely random when the pain outweighs the fear. You need to decide what cost is too much? A billion dollars a life year? How many saved is enough? 80% of at risk people? Refusing to ask doesn't make you a better person it just means you never find out how big of a monster you are because you ignore the steaming pile of bodies at your feet.

Let's say 30 million people die in famine, a billion are unemployed, 100 million homeless, global living standards are down 10% and 50 million die of inferior healthcare of all ages, because of this or 40 million of the elderly die of corona. What's better? You've clearly decided already and if you just refuse to think about it it doesn't change the actual effects of your actions to anyone.

 

[wichajster]

And yes, it is possible to reach point where overall damage from continued lockdown will be greater than damage from not continuing lockdowns.

I would be interested in a decent comparison, sadly data is not clear at all. Hopefully that will clarify in a near future.

 

[MadGreenSon]

The plague isn't what you think it is. I've said this repeatedly the 3% morality WHO figure is for confirmed tested cases which the experts admit is small percentage of the total heavily skewed to hospitalised cases. Realistically you're looking at ~1 in 200 who could die, heavily tilted to the elderly and sick, with an average life expectancy of maybe ~11 years. 95% of the population doesn't need to be concerned about this, the people at risk can be isolated for a fraction of the cost, and these are the people who die in flu season anyway. People with pre existing conditions and the retired aren't the biggest economic contributors here. You don't get to just throw them into the calculation blindly assuming they are and there are huge externalities I'm ignoring. There are huge actual consequences for the young and poor that need to be thought about, and this isn't going to do any favors for the elderly who depend on fixed incomes either. Pensions will be slashed by the economic crash, state benefits will be slashed by the coming austerity and savings will be slashed in value by inflation.



You're just continuing to refuse to answer basic questions, and if people keep thinking like you it's completely random when the pain outweighs the fear. You need to decide what cost is too much? A billion dollars a life year? How many saved is enough? 80% of at risk people? Refusing to ask doesn't make you a better person it just means you never find out how big of a monster you are because you ignore the steaming pile of bodies at your feet.

Let's say 30 million people die in famine, 100 million homeless and 50 million die of inferior healthcare of all ages, because of this or 40 million of the elderly die of corona. What's better? You've clearly decided already and if you just refuse to think about it it doesn't change the actual effects of your actions to anyone.

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You're a true believer, I get it. But continuing to try and sell the same bullshit isn't going to work because all you've got is... basically just parroting other people's soundbites badly. I mean, you're not even taking into account your own bullshit numbers. You are apparently willing to watch forty million people die to "save the economy" without even taking into account what you would do with forty million dead bodies, much less all the other shit that would happen as you rack up an appalling death toll in the name of other people's profits.

Also, those forty million would actually make sure that shit would be worse because guess what? No one is just going to stand around and dispassionately watch them die, none of this shit happens in a vacuum no matter how hard you wish it to.

 

[wichajster]

You need to decide what cost is too much? A billion dollars a life year?

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More than 80 000$ / QUALY? Burt it depends heavily on opportunity costs (how this money would be used otherwise).

BTW, it is an interesting though experiment: how much I would be willing to pay to get life 1 day longer? 1 day longer in life of my mother? It calculates up to surprisingly low amount per year (or surprisingly high amount per day/hour). Anyway, practical conclusion is that I need to call my family.

As lets admit, noone cares what I think about lockdown.

How many saved is enough? 80% of at risk people?

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I would not go with % - that is pointless. For avoidable deaths I would want much higher % than for ones that are not avoidable or extremely hard to avoid.

For example any deaths caused by surgeons not following basic checklists are unacceptable. Things like operating wrong patient, operating on a wrong side (removing left lung instead of a right lung etc), not washing hands in XXI century etc are all things that still keep happening. Deaths due to random unexpected and undetectable and unpredictable and untreatable aneurysms are more acceptable.

Realistically you're looking at ~1 in 200 who could die, heavily tilted to the elderly and sick, with an average life expectancy of maybe ~11 years

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Assuming that your numbers of people saved by lockdown are correct and taking 80 000$ / QUALY, reduced to half ("elderly and sick" part).

US population: 300*1000*1000
lost years: /200*11
QUALY per lost year: 0.5*80000

300*1000*1000/200*11*0.5*80000=660 000 000 000$

So "reopen economy during COVID" would need to demonstrate 660 billion over "keep lockdown going on".

And you need to compare "normal economy + COVID + lockdown" with "normal economy + COVID" not with normal economy.

And both my QUALY and your death rate are likely to be wildly different numbers in other estimates.

 

[Evillevi]

The plague isn't what you think it is. I've said this repeatedly the 3% morality WHO figure is for confirmed tested cases which the experts admit is small percentage of the total heavily skewed to hospitalised cases. Realistically you're looking at ~1 in 200 who could die, heavily tilted to the elderly and sick, with an average life expectancy of maybe ~11 years. 95% of the population doesn't need to be concerned about this, the people at risk can be isolated for a fraction of the cost, and these are the people who die in flu season anyway. People with pre existing conditions and the retired aren't the biggest economic contributors here. You don't get to just throw them into the calculation blindly assuming they are and there are huge externalities I'm ignoring. There are huge actual consequences for the young and poor that need to be thought about, and this isn't going to do any favors for the elderly who depend on fixed incomes either. Pensions will be slashed by the economic crash, state benefits will be slashed by the coming austerity and savings will be slashed in value by inflation

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Again, the 3% Who mortality figures is before it has been reliably screened for confounding variables. Everything from the requirement to achieving immunity to the actual mortality if left out of control is not currently known or reliably verified.

What this means is that all leaders are essentially making a bet as to whether the virus would blow out of control . Those who aren't taking the risk are locking down the country and those that aren't are letting it roam free.

Note that this is the observation from Malaysia, where most the Ministry Of Health advocate for extended contact tracing in part due to your reasoning, namely that the people most at risk ccan self isolate and paying them a UBI for doing so is cheaper then locking down the country. However the PM decided, hey, I'm not taking the risk of becoming the next Italy and subsequently lockdown the country.

Admittedly even if the MOH recommended actions were followed, it would only have bought us about two weeks before the growth becomes exponential as it spreads to the idiots.

:Fake edit:
On the topic of Sweden, note that Sweden is functionally under a soft lockdown, its just that due to the farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr higher education and critical thinking levels in their populace, they can rely on their population from doing something stupid, ala our malaysian idiots.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

You're a true believer, I get it. But continuing to try and sell the same bullshit isn't going to work because all you've got is... basically just parroting other people's soundbites badly. I mean, you're not even taking into account your own bullshit numbers. You are apparently willing to watch forty million people die to "save the economy" without even taking into account what you would do with forty million dead bodies, much less all the other shit that would happen as you rack up an appalling death toll in the name of other people's profits.

Also, those forty million would actually make sure that shit would be worse because guess what? No one is just going to stand around and dispassionately watch them die, none of this shit happens in a vacuum no matter how hard you wish it to.

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You've ignored the World Food Programme's predictions of 30 million deaths from starvation due to the economic consequences.

The WFP chief - who has just recovered from Covid-19 - began his Security Council briefing by saying "excuse me for speaking bluntly." There is no blunting what could happen in a world facing - even before this global health crisis - what David Beasley called the worst humanitarian catastrophe since the Second World War.

In an interview, he also expressed fear that 30 million people, and possibly more, could die in a matter of months if the UN does not secure more funding and food. But this is also a world where donors are reeling from the steep financial cost of their own Covid-19 crises.

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You've also ignored the loss of life from poverty. Just go look for anything on the subject, if there aren't hard numbers on the cash element (because sometimes it's the same people who make bad decisions about their health and their finances) you have to admit we're dealing with a genuine issue here.

https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411

Poverty in the U.S. is often associated with deprivation, in areas including housing, employment, and education. Now a study co-authored by two MIT researchers has shown, in unprecedented geographic detail, another stark reality: Poor people live shorter lives, too.

More precisely, the study shows that in the U.S., the richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years longer on average than the poorest 1 percent of men, while among women in those wealth percentiles, the difference is 10.1 years on average.

This eye-opening gap is also growing rapidly: Over roughly the last 15 years, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women who are among the top 5 percent of income earners in America, but by just 0.32 and 0.04 years for men and women in the bottom 5 percent of the income tables.

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There are countless sources out there and the idea that a great depression wouldn't cost hundreds of millions of years of life even in the developed world is absurd to me. 'The economy' isn't something for rich people, they're the ones who'll be least effected and probably turn a big profit from all of this long term by buying in while the market is cheap. It's the poorer people who'll lose their savings, homes and jobs and have measurably worse lives.

You can go take a look at how this is hitting poorer countries if it's going to be more impactful to you. The same problems can exist in the west in lesser severity.

More than 80 000$ / QUALY? Burt it depends heavily on opportunity costs (how this money would be used otherwise).

BTW, it is an interesting though experiment: how much I would be willing to pay to get life 1 day longer? 1 day longer in life of my mother? It calculates up to surprisingly low amount per year (or surprisingly high amount per day/hour). Anyway, practical conclusion is that I need to call my family.

As lets admit, noone cares what I think about lockdown.

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There is a big marginal difference between days and years for me too when I think about it that way. It's mostly so I can have time to plan and say goodbyes though, not really because I want to live the day itself. By preference for my own sake I'd prefer to die suddenly and will probably have do not resuscitate orders put on me when I get to that age.

I would not go with % - that is pointless. For avoidable deaths I would want much higher % than for ones that are not avoidable or extremely hard to avoid.

For example any deaths caused by surgeons not following basic checklists are unacceptable. Things like operating wrong patient, operating on a wrong side (removing left lung instead of a right lung etc), not washing hands in XXI century etc are all things that still keep happening. Deaths due to random unexpected and undetectable and unpredictable and untreatable aneurysms are more acceptable.

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In this case I mean % of people slated to die of Corona, like if there was a solution that would save X% of them and doom the others at what point would the problem be small enough to tolerate. Pretty much everyone would agree to 99.9% so where would the line be? Then I would argue that proves X times the current costs is too much to spend as well if that's the proportional value.

As for medical errors there's definitely an interesting argument to be made by people involved about the trade offs between overwork and overcredentialism. If we lowered the qualification requirements, and some pay, for the field to have more hands available would that be a net benefit? I've heard of some zaney studies of just having mandatory checklists for each operations actually cutting deaths by medical errors massively too.

Assuming that your numbers of people saved by lockdown are correct and taking 80 000$ / QUALY, reduced to half ("elderly and sick" part).

US population: 300*1000*1000
lost years: /200*11
QUALY per lost year: 0.5*80000

300*1000*1000/200*11*0.5*80000=660 000 000 000$

So "reopen economy during COVID" would need to demonstrate 660 billion over "keep lockdown going on".

And you need to compare "normal economy + COVID + lockdown" with "normal economy + COVID" not with normal economy.

And both my QUALY and your death rate are likely to be wildly different numbers in other estimates.

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If you'll take 1 in 200 as a base rate for the entire population (maybe half infected and maybe 1% fatality rate with maybe 11 years life expectancy) then yeah I think we're way too high even before we try to account for other QUALY problems caused as a result.

The current federal stimulus act is costing ~2.3 Trillion. I'd assume state spending on lockdown measures will add up to some substantial fraction of that but I can't find what it would be. The US economy is ~21 Trillion. The GDP would've gone up by ~2.5% in 2020, probably, and now will go down by at least 6%. Not all of that cost is going to be upfront, since GDP doesn't leap back up immediately. It took until 2011 to get back to the 2007 peak after the recession, and a few years after that to make up for the lost growth. I've seen ~10 Trillion thrown around and ~15 Trillion wouldn't be unthinkable, but it'd be 6% of 21 Trillion for 1.3 Trillion this year and several times that in total. We could call it ~4.7 Trillion for ease of calculation.

In total I'd put ~$7 Trillion up as the total cost, assuming the effects of the stimulus are accounted for in GDP and we only need to account for the bill. Unless 90% of that was unavoidable it's significantly over 660 billion.

The reason I oppose the lockdown so strongly is because I'm not seeing any arguments that that would be the total cost to actually save those lives. A lot of them could be saved by less drastic strategies and the costs could extend to several times that if the lockdown draws on for several more months. A marginal cost over a million dollars per life year isn't unthinkable if the louder alarmist voices are listened to, and then we have the fun of trying to add up the life years lost as a result of the poverty, social isolation and stress.

Again, the 3% Who mortality figures is before it has been reliably screened for confounding variables. Everything from the requirement to achieving immunity to the actual mortality if left out of control is not currently known or reliably verified.

What this means is that all leaders are essentially making a bet as to whether the virus would blow out of control . Those who aren't taking the risk are locking down the country and those that aren't are letting it roam free.

Note that this is the observation from Malaysia, where most the Ministry Of Health advocate for extended contact tracing in part due to your reasoning, namely that the people most at risk ccan self isolate and paying them a UBI for doing so is cheaper then locking down the country. However the PM decided, hey, I'm not taking the risk of becoming the next Italy and subsequently lockdown the country.

Admittedly even if the MOH recommended actions were followed, it would only have bought us about two weeks before the growth becomes exponential as it spreads to the idiots.

:Fake edit:
On the topic of Sweden, note that Sweden is functionally under a soft lockdown, its just that due to the farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr higher education and critical thinking levels in their populace, they can rely on their population from doing something stupid, ala our malaysian idiots.

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It'll be interesting to see the results between different countries at the end of this, but one argument that might be made for social distancing is 'smaller' infections even if they do still occur. This is just from a blog post but it's an interesting idea that seems to have some evidence backing it up.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/know-when-to-fold-em.html

Many studies have found big effects of initial virus dose on many outcomes. For covid19 we know that patients with more viruses in their blood (higher "viral load") show more severe symptoms. And for other viruses we see that such patients also die more often. But in terms of the most direct sort of evidence, I've only been able to find these empirical studies connecting initial virus dose size to human death rates:

1. Deliberate infection with low doses of smallpox is reported to have cut death rates of infected from 30% to 1-2%, or from 1 in 5-6 to 1 in 50.
2. Among 126 African kids infected with measles, the first in a family to get it had a 14x lower death rate relative to other kids in the same families. Presumably that first kid gets it from outside the family, via a low dose, while other kids in the same family are infected at home, via a larger dose.
3. In a Hong Kong high-rise, one resident infected many others with SARS, possibly via aerosols, but those who lived physically closer got a higher dose, and saw 3x the death rate.
4. This New Yorker article mentions 2 more cases, but I can't yet find cites to studies.

The first case, of a deliberate low dose infection, saw effects in the range 8-30x, while the other two cases of observing a natural difference in dose saw effects of 3x and 14x, giving only lower bounds on deliberate dose effects. So while we can't at all be sure of the deliberate dose effect for Covid19, we have good reason to expect it to be at least a factor of 3. And maybe a factor of 30 or more.

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[Evillevi]

It'll be interesting to see the results between different countries at the end of this, but one argument that might be made for social distancing is 'smaller' infections even if they do still occur. This is just from a blog post but it's an interesting idea that seems to have some evidence backing it up.

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TLDR so you dont have to wonder.

1. Viral Load is not relevant to teh decision making process since it's the mutation rate that is more of a concern. In 99.999999% of all virus and bacteria that infects humans, their charecteristics is such that mutations will make it more benign and less lethal since it spreads the virus out faster if the patient was alive. Corvid 19 is the 0.001% where since the symptors occur after the infection period, there's less pressure for mutations to be benign and an unquantifiable risk of more lethal mutations. So even if the true deathrate is 1/1000 right now, the no lockdown strat incurs a real possibility of more lethal mutations or more immunity dodging variants.
1.1 This is why predicting herd immunity through doing nothing is a near full proof strat for the other "pandemics" of our time (Sars, Mers, Swine flu) as they were heavily pressured to benign mutations.

edit: 1.2 C19 can be potentially more dangerous as time goes on due to immunity dodging mutations preventing herd or actual immunity.

2. One of the big problems with implementing or not implementing lockdown is that the effect is , on paper, inversely proportional to the education* of the people. TLDR the smater your population, the less you need a lockdown
2.1 Or as my father puts it, it's not relevant to discuss other countries methods if they aren't applicable to our country **.

*Education being both knowledge and critical thinking skills.
**Being that a majority portion of Malaysian population is non-educated, extremist, loyalist, or nationalist to the point of idiocy

 

[MadGreenSon]

You've ignored the World Food Programme's predictions of 30 million deaths from starvation due to the economic consequences.

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Not really. That's also still ten million fewer deaths than you claim your preferred method will cause.

 

[TanaNari]

And you're also not considering the non-virus benefits of the lockdown.

Murder and general violent crime rates are down by double digit rates across a great majority of the western world... a trend which might actually save more lives than are being lost to Wuhan Flu.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marley...p-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic/#1d39c1e7311e

That one's also kind enough to point out, for those environmentalists out there, that this is amazing for the planet. Human-generated pollution hasn't been this low since the 1800s. It's also showing how quickly the planet can bounce back, which is great news and a massive scientific boon.

And the reduction in car accidents... in California alone it has already saved about a billion taxpayer dollars, plus all the life and suffering.

https://www.latimes.com/california/...s-cut-traffic-crashes-in-half-saved-1-billion

Then there's the as-yet impossible to calculate impact upon other diseases that cause serious harm or death. Here's a fun statistic: daylight savings time, and its impact on sleep patterns costs about half a billion dollars per year in America.

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillma...me-is-a-434m-problem-we-could-easily-fix.html

Now, just imagine how many people are catching up on their sleep during this period.


Hell, as a spitball number, I'd say we have about six months before the harm to human life caused by the economic damage outweighs the harm to human life caused by modern lifestyles, even if the outbreak never happened in the first place.

Now, after a year or so the damage would no doubt reach unacceptable levels, but we're nowhere near that point as of yet.

And that's *before* factoring in the risks of the virus, one way or another.


TL;DR? We should do this more often.

 

[evildice]

That one's also kind enough to point out, for those environmentalists out there, that this is amazing for the planet. Human-generated pollution hasn't been this low since the 1800s. It's also showing how quickly the planet can bounce back, which is great news and a massive scientific boon.

Click to shrink...

2020 - First year Earth Day actually was.

 

[Derrandoo]

South Korea actually elected their Green New Deal party, which would be nice if everyone started turning from 100% exploitation and the "infinite growth!" economic model to trying to build the future we can actually survive with.

 

[OverMaster]

Then there's the as-yet impossible to calculate impact upon other diseases that cause serious harm or death. Here's a fun statistic: daylight savings time, and its impact on sleep patterns costs about half a billion dollars per year in America.

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillma...me-is-a-434m-problem-we-could-easily-fix.html

Now, just imagine how many people are catching up on their sleep during this period.

Click to shrink...

This one I wouldn't be so sure about. Collective stress must be doing a fair number on a lot of people's sleeping patterns across the world.

I know I haven't been sleeping as well as I used to since this began. But I admit it's very difficult keeping numbers on this kind of data right now, one way or the other.

 

[evildice]

But I admit it's very difficult keeping numbers on this kind of data right now, one way or the other.

Click to shrink...

Google, Microsoft, and Apple could probably tell you if your sleep pattern changed.

That'd be an interesting study, presuming the oligarchs allowed it.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

TLDR so you dont have to wonder.

1. Viral Load is not relevant to teh decision making process since it's the mutation rate that is more of a concern. In 99.999999% of all virus and bacteria that infects humans, their charecteristics is such that mutations will make it more benign and less lethal since it spreads the virus out faster if the patient was alive. Corvid 19 is the 0.001% where since the symptors occur after the infection period, there's less pressure for mutations to be benign and an unquantifiable risk of more lethal mutations. So even if the true deathrate is 1/1000 right now, the no lockdown strat incurs a real possibility of more lethal mutations or more immunity dodging variants.
1.1 This is why predicting herd immunity through doing nothing is a near full proof strat for the other "pandemics" of our time (Sars, Mers, Swine flu) as they were heavily pressured to benign mutations.

Click to shrink...

In this case the argument would be cutting the number of deaths from immediate infection by a significant margin through controlled exposure, maybe by 2/3rds or 13/14th from the examples he offered. It wouldn't prevent mutation risks but if you think those people are going to get infected organically anyway it could help if it works, and presumably you'd pick one of the benign strains to use.

Overall I'm too pessimistic on actually containing Corona to seriously consider it an outcome. China, a nation that has the advantages of authoritarian government and a developed economy, couldn't contain it so how can we assume a democratic west or underdeveloped third world can? We're now going to be rolling ~200 times for all the countries of the world at worse odds than China and they all need to come up double sixes.

Not really. That's also still ten million fewer deaths than you claim your preferred method will cause.

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I guess now we're getting somewhere. If 40 million and 1 people starve to death because of the lockdowns would you end it then? Could you end it before they died if you knew it was going to happen, or would you have to wait until after they had died?

Would it matter if 39,999,999 people were going to starve, but they were all children under ten?

And you're also not considering the non-virus benefits of the lockdown.

Murder and general violent crime rates are down by double digit rates across a great majority of the western world... a trend which might actually save more lives than are being lost to Wuhan Flu.

Click to shrink...

That's before we see what happens after the recession and society reopening. Poorer people in deprived communities generally means more violent crime, and I can absolutely see gangs needing to reassert territories and test each other as soon as they're back on the streets.

That one's also kind enough to point out, for those environmentalists out there, that this is amazing for the planet. Human-generated pollution hasn't been this low since the 1800s. It's also showing how quickly the planet can bounce back, which is great news and a massive scientific boon.

And the reduction in car accidents... in California alone it has already saved about a billion taxpayer dollars, plus all the life and suffering.

Click to shrink...

Certainly China's had some impressive improvements in air quality. Nothing I've noticed locally but this does seem to have done a lot of good environmentally. A week off pollution a year might be a good idea if people can somehow agree on it.

Then there's the as-yet impossible to calculate impact upon other diseases that cause serious harm or death. Here's a fun statistic: daylight savings time, and its impact on sleep patterns costs about half a billion dollars per year in America.

Click to shrink...

As one of the people with a shitty body clock yes it can die in a fire.

Hell, as a spitball number, I'd say we have about six months before the harm to human life caused by the economic damage outweighs the harm to human life caused by modern lifestyles, even if the outbreak never happened in the first place.

Now, after a year or so the damage would no doubt reach unacceptable levels, but we're nowhere near that point as of yet.

And that's *before* factoring in the risks of the virus, one way or another.

TL;DR? We should do this more often.

Click to shrink...

Now that's where you lost me. There's nothing natural about not being able to see friends or family, or get out into society to do anything. The stress of the isolation is a pretty big factor to ignore here.

South Korea actually elected their Green New Deal party, which would be nice if everyone started turning from 100% exploitation and the "infinite growth!" economic model to trying to build the future we can actually survive with.

Click to shrink...

I'm afraid you need to worry more about who the other Korea elects and whether you can survive them before you start celebrating...

 

[MadGreenSon]

I guess now we're getting somewhere.

Click to shrink...

No we're not. Despite subscribing to conspiracy theories, you have actually unquestioningly swallowed the lies of your ideological masters and are regurgitating them all over the place. Hell, you're so taken in you probably don't even know that's what you've done at all. You might even believe you're an independent thinker. It's kinda sad.

 

[Evillevi]

In this case the argument would be cutting the number of deaths from immediate infection by a significant margin through controlled exposure, maybe by 2/3rds or 13/14th from the examples he offered. It wouldn't prevent mutation risks but if you think those people are going to get infected organically anyway it could help if it works, and presumably you'd pick one of the benign strains to use.

Click to shrink...

that's not how it works unfortunately. The viral load theory is only useful for keeping doctor's safe, not for public health response and historically it has largely failed to solve the diseases that are this bad since you still get unacceptably high death rates annd no guarantee that it works.

TLDR: Controlled Exposure does not work and anyone recommending it should be look at with suspicion. Largely because if it did work it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

Most public health specialist in Malaysia though that c19 simply wouldn't be a problem, initially, due to limiting factors such as weather, humidity, exposure, immunity, benign mutation, and so on. These factors are what stopped zika virus, sars, ners, h1n1, h5n1 , etc from spreading.

it'ss because c19 can overcome these factors that makes it dangerous. not that c19 is dangerous and here are some things to consider.

PS: It occurs to me that I didn't list why CONTROLLED EXPOSURE wouldn't work, but controlled exposure is so prohibitively more expensive in terms of man power that it's a non factor. It'll look like the UK do nothing approach and pretend everything is all right and hope that the dice is lucky in your favor

 

[TotalAbsolutism]

MadGreenSon, Germtheory3Z, at this point it seems like you're only going around in circles. Thus, I can only ask that you find a new line of discussion or stop.

 

[Evillevi]

Okay so here's something for context as to why malaysia + Singapore didn't really think C19 was a probllem initially, how it went wrong and what it means for REOPENING THE COUNTRY AGAIN.

Stage 1: In january all evidence and cases that occured within Malaysia + singapore showed no signs of being able to spread effectively within our climate. These patients were unable in the majority of cases to spread C19 to their family, close contacts, the people they stayed with, and so on .

Stage 2: In Mid February the virus seemed to either hit a critical mass of people, or a strain of it mutated to suit the climate, in either case the R0 went from near 0 to the 2~ that match most other countries where the virus was spreading like wildfire.

Stage 3: By March full Lockdown started to become the cheapest solution to containing the spread as contact tracing (informal localised isolation) became impractical as the virus hit the idiot population who didn't give a whit about social responsibility. Within these population we went from hundreds to thousands of cases at which point exponential growth would overwhelm both contact tracing in a few weeks localised lockdown.

Stage 4: As off April there is currently no consensus or proof that it is safe to let the disease go out of control. Without guarantee of immunity after the first infection and without evidence that mutations would make it more benign, the likely outcome is a massive increase in the true death rate of the disease. This is the biggest single thing that is stopping our PM from releasing the lockdown.

 

[Germtheory3Z]

MadGreenSon, Germtheory3Z, at this point it seems like you're only going around in circles. Thus, I can only ask that you find a new line of discussion or stop.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough. This does seem unproductive.

No we're not. Despite subscribing to conspiracy theories, you have actually unquestioningly swallowed the lies of your ideological masters and are regurgitating them all over the place. Hell, you're so taken in you probably don't even know that's what you've done at all. You might even believe you're an independent thinker. It's kinda sad.

Click to shrink...

Okay, the final word here is 'the rich losing money doesn't make being poor any better'. You can't cancel out the consequences of one because the other also happened. Otherwise I'm just letting this go.

that's not how it works unfortunately. The viral load theory is only useful for keeping doctor's safe, not for public health response and historically it has largely failed to solve the diseases that are this bad since you still get unacceptably high death rates annd no guarantee that it works.

TLDR: Controlled Exposure does not work and anyone recommending it should be look at with suspicion. Largely because if it did work it wouldn't be a problem to begin with.

Click to shrink...

PS: It occurs to me that I didn't list why CONTROLLED EXPOSURE wouldn't work, but controlled exposure is so prohibitively more expensive in terms of man power that it's a non factor. It'll look like the UK do nothing approach and pretend everything is all right and hope that the dice is lucky in your favor

Click to shrink...

It's a pretty out there idea culturally but the sources seemed solid, and I have heard that in the Chinese apartment complexes that circulate air internally the people nearest the first infected household died at higher rates. In theory if we find out with antibody studies that 50% of people already had it by the end of May then it's possible that people catching it from post to their door or whatever instead of from eights hours working next to someone infected played a role.

As a poor man's vaccination I'd take cutting the death rate to 7% like in the measles study he linked if that could be demonstrated somehow.

Most public health specialist in Malaysia though that c19 simply wouldn't be a problem, initially, due to limiting factors such as weather, humidity, exposure, immunity, benign mutation, and so on. These factors are what stopped zika virus, sars, ners, h1n1, h5n1 , etc from spreading.

it'ss because c19 can overcome these factors that makes it dangerous. not that c19 is dangerous and here are some things to consider.

Click to shrink...

I'd be surprised if warm weather had that strong an effect this year. If Flu has an easier time in winter then it makes sense the spreads happen around December in the north and around July in the south, but if no-one is resistant yet then why wouldn't it spread in warmer countries now? Equatorial countries still get it. I guess it would be interesting if the disease was as seasonal as the flu is right out the door.