Oso planning to go pro
I'm going to be super callous and provocative in this post for the purpose of advancing the conversation on risk/reward of policy making but please note I'm not advocating a particular approach nor am I a monster(I don't think).If I told you the max deaths from this outbreak in the US were 80,000....would you still go lock down if it could prevent half of them?If I told you the max deaths from this outbreak in the US were 800,000....would you still go lock down if it could prevent half of them?If I told you the max deaths from this outbreak in the US were 2 Million....would you still go lock down if you could prevent 75% of them(500,000 dead instead)How do you balance that against putting over 50% of the countries jobs at risk and depriving its children of at least 3 months of education all while drawing on yet more debt to the national treasury to float the economy. Meanwhile, China is the first to recover from this and is already tooling up to take over more of the global economy.We let people die every day for entirely preventable reasons because as a society we've either willfully or ignorantly decided it would be too difficult to bother saving them. Coronavirus is that calculus on a severe time compression.There are no easy answers as a society, the answers are only easy when an individual looks at it with their own perspective and lens.....trying to balance the needs of an extremely diverse and large populace is f#cking impossible so how would you do it?
If you knew that 5-10 people would lose their jobs and end up homeless for every life you saved with the lockdown, wouldn't that make the choice to implement a mass lockdown pretty hard?
Anyone entering the Seattle VA is automatically tested.
I think you're misunderstanding why people have concerns over the economic impacts of a mass lockdown. Think about all the people living paycheck to paycheck right now who would likely end up missing work. What happens to them if the lockdown goes on for 2 months? What is the ripple effect going forward for the businesses they work for? How will their children eat?It seems reasonable that a lockdown could results in a large increase in homelessness, bankruptcies, even suicides. If you knew that 5-10 people would lose their jobs and end up homeless for every life you saved with the lockdown, wouldn't that make the choice to implement a mass lockdown pretty hard? Someone also posted a link about divorce rates going up in China recently. That certainly affects people's lives and well-being. Add into all this the dollars you referenced earlier, and what you might see are businesses closing, job openings becoming more scare, retirees struggling to pay their bills or needing to find an additional source of income, older workers not being able to retire as planned. The economic impacts carry a massive social impact as well. To choose what could potentially be 10,000 lives over the livelihood of likely millions or tens of millions isn't always such a straightforward decision.It seems certain that more lives will be harmed than lost in this crisis. Balancing the final outcome is incredibly difficult.Edit - I'll add to this too that there haven't been very many deaths globally from this. I know there is concern that the US will be hit harder than other countries due to our delayed response, but even in Italy, they have "only" had 2,100 deaths. To me, that makes the decision even harder. And the ratios of those who are impacted financially vs. potential deaths could easily be greater than 1,000:1.
I think you missed the most likely scenarios here, though. What if the max deaths is really only 2,000 or 4,000? They didn't even have 4,000 deaths in Hubei. So really, we may need to be thinking more along the lines of: - What ratio of bankruptcies to lives saved are you willing to accept? Is 25:1 acceptable? Is 100:1 the cutoff?- How many business closures are we willing to risk? Would 1,000 be OK? Would we balk at 15,000? - How many new homeless can we accept? Is 5,000 too many? What if it were 20,000?Would these things be acceptable tradeoffs to save 1,000 lives? What if that number is only 200?It's not as simple as we want it to be. That's for sure.
Generational war over the virus. Younger people views on virus will make it more difficult to contain.https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-generational-war-is-brewing-over-coronavirus-11584437401This is an interesting juxtaposition considering younger people tend to care more about the environment, social wellness, and equality but when it comes to this virus that is not the case.
I think you missed the most likely scenarios here, though. What if the max deaths is really only 2,000 or 4,000? They didn't even have 4,000 deaths in Hubei. So really, we may need to be thinking more along the lines of:
Just some random question...For folks who catch COVID-19 and remain asymptotic, or have very mild symptoms, but are never tested, will a future test be available from a healthcare professional to say...yeah you had it, who knows when...but ya had it.
The lockdown won't go on for two months. My guess is that by the end of next week, people are going to gradually do what they normally do. And in four weeks or so, even the 50+ gathering will be largely ignored.This is all about "flattening the curve" for the next ten days. Preventing the spike that Italy and others saw.A lot of people are going to die from this. But even then those stories will be on the back burner as life ramps up again.
It's behind a paywall, but most of the people I have come into contact with that are over 60 are not taking it seriously, either.
For those advocating a no-lockdown scenario in the US: how is business doing right now?At the moment, there are only a very small number of isolated lockdowns in place (the bay area). Other than that, we only have common sense recommendations and limitations in place (social distancing, avoiding large gatherings and such). Despite that, from what I see, business seems to be suffering greatly anyhow.If you think a short–term (two or three week) lockdown would ruin the economy, what would you think about another six months of these continued half measures?
New Rochelle, NY is in lockdown.
The article mentions scientists and govt officials frustration with younger people feeling immune and ignoring practices that will help to flatten the curve. Middle age and older generations may be skeptical, but more prone to doing what is asked.
IF we knew that, yes it could very likely change the calculus. Unfortunately, we are working with projections, possibilities, educated guesses. The economies and socioeconomic demographics in China and Italy are very different from those in the US, so while we can learn a little from their jobless/homeless/divorce numbers, we have to take it with a big grain of salt.It sure would have been nice if the pandemic response office had been around the last two years to give us some structured modeling to use based on the US economy and social structure, so we didn't have to make these projections in the dark.