U.S. to close..

[HeinSdL]

Masks: solves one problem creates another. They're frigging everywhere already: wear them once and then dump them wherever it suits, what do we care.

So yes, mankind is better off, but yet again at the expense of our environment.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

State of the science: More and more actual studies are showing, or at least hinting, that masking helps reduce trasnmission. The question is not settled, but most reasonable people who have been keeping up with the science are thinking that masking is probably a good thing.

"When you cough, or sneeze, or sniff...
Do it in a handkerchief!"

- my granddad, to a 4 year old me.

Just about every child is taught to cover their mouth when sneezing etc, including the advice to do it into your elbow when a tissue isn't handy. One shouldn't need a study to understand the idea that reducing the emission of contaminants at the source (pollution, viruses, whatever) is much more efficient than equipping every susceptible input with a filter.

Anyone denying the utility of simple masks for reducing spread is just talking out their ass... which implies at least one layer of filtering, I suppose.

Ditto for putting down people for wearing masks outdoors, while driving, etc. If you hope for 60% compliance, you ask for 90%. Again, no studies required.

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Masks: solves one problem creates another. They're frigging everywhere already: wear them once and then dump them wherever it suits, what do we care.

... yet another argument for reusable cloth masks. Have a few, so you have one to wear while the other(s) dry after a wash.

[clockwork orange]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Masks: solves one problem creates another. They're frigging everywhere already: wear them once and then dump them wherever it suits, what do we care.

So yes, mankind is better off, but yet again at the expense of our environment.

I must say I am absolutely not seeing masks everywhere surprisingly, still lots of cigarette butts unfortunately.

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Hand-holding is definitely a bad idea. As is singing -- singing is a major vector of transmission. As is gathering in groups in circles. So you might not want to do that, KMac.

But wearing masks -- while this will not stop the pandemic, there is good reason to believe, even if it's not totally proven by science yet, that wearing masks will take a good bite out of the R0 number.

I sure as hell wear mine. Although I am almost certainly immune (positive antibody test a few weeks ago, although I was sick 11 months ago), and therefore can neither infect nor get infected by anyone. I do it as an example to others, and to make others feel comfortable.

But there's statistical fact to prove their effectivity. It's the same as with other methods recommended for the public, social distancing, reduced contacts and exposure time with possibly infectous individuals and masking. They all reduce the amount of exposure and the chance to catch the disease. None of these, and even all together, will not protect even close to 100% but together they (hopefully) reduce the 1<R0. If not, and that is if people don't follow these recommendations stricly enough, there will be lock downs in various forms..

[GordMay]

The Great Barrington Declaration is less a genuinely independent scientific enterprise, than it is a propaganda project.

The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard (Martin Kulldorff, PhD), Stanford (Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD), and Oxford (Sunetra Gupta, PhD), encourages governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people, while focusing protection measures on the elderly. The declaration offers no details on how it would protect the vulnerable.
The declaration begins with the false premise that governments intend to completely lock down society, and cherry-picks facts (for example, that COVID-19 infections are mild in healthy people).
The declaration rhetoric offers a false choice between a wholesale return to our pre-pandemic lives (which is objectively dangerous), versus a total lockdown (which no one advocates).

Science misinformation has a long history of parading lists of seeming experts, rejecting the scientific consensus, including the misleading technique of “magnified minority”, promoting a list of names to convey the impression of scientific support when the vast bulk of relevant scientific experts says differently.
Science denial employs the same rhetorical techniques, whether on the topics of smoking, climate change, or COVID-19.
The Great Barrington Declaration fits this pattern of vested economic interests, promoting fringe pseudoscientific theories, and contrarian science, to downplay public health and safety risks.

The declaration was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian, free-market think tank, funded by Charles Koch (a far right-wing billionaire, known for promoting climate change denial, and opposing regulations on business).*
The Great Barrington Declaration has over 30 original co-signers from around the globe, some with listed expertise in epidemiology, and others with medical or science specializations unrelated to an infectious virus, like the novel coronavirus.

The Great Barrington declaration lists a number of interesting (exhaulted?) names among its expert signatories, including “Dr Johnny Bananas” and “Professor Cominic Dummings”, “Professor Ita Rôle Italy Pudding and dessert expert”, “Dr Brian Blessed Doctor in Winged Flight, Z-Cars and Booming Laughter”, “Dr Johnny Fartpants”, and “Professor Notaf Uckingclue”, among others.
The declaration’s website allows anyone to add their name to the list, if they provide an email address, home city, postcode and name.
Signatories also tell the site whether they are medical and public health scientists, medical practitioners or members of the general public. There appears to be no vetting process to verify the medical and scientific credentials of signatories.

Experts in epidemiology, infectious disease, public health, and related disciplines support the mainstream rejection of the natural herd immunity approach to COVID-19, and have issued counter statements to the Great Barrington Declaration.
One, called the John Snow Memorandum, named after one of the founders of modern epidemiology.
Sates: “... “Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed ...
... a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence ...”
“Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now”
➥ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...153-X/fulltext
“THE JOHN SNOW MEMORANDUM”
➥ https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/

The Infectious Diseases Society of America issued a statement, denouncing the Great Barrington Declaration, calling the herd immunity strategy to COVID-19 “... inappropriate, irresponsible, and ill-informed.”
“Herd Immunity” is Not an Answer to a Pandemic ...”
➥ https://www.idsociety.org/news--publ...to-a-pandemic/

"20 Public Health Organizations Condemn Herd Immunity Scheme for Controlling Spread of SARS-Cov-2"
"... The Great Barrington Declaration is not grounded in science and is dangerous ..."
➥ https://www.bigcitieshealth.org/medi...on-declaration

* AIER operates a program called the Bastiat Society that promotes its free-market, anti-government ideology and partners with other Koch-funded think tanks, networks, and organizations that are some of the most prominent disseminators of disinformation on climate science and climate policies. These include the Atlas Network, State Policy Network, Manhattan Institute, Cato Institute, Charles Koch Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others.

[GordMay]

Marketplace tested over 20 different masks.
Here's what will best protect you and others during the pandemic.
I’m not going to summarize this consumer article, because I think everyone should read the original, in it’s entirety.
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marke...test-1.5795481

As Marketplace's research has found that consumer masks protect the wearer in addition to others, public health agencies recently updated their guidelines to include that messaging.

Last week, Health Canada [1] quietly updated its mask-wearing guidelines, adding "to protect yourself and others."
1. ➥ https://www.canada.ca/en/public-heal...coverings.html

On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [2] went further, updating its recommendations in favour of masking by outlining a number of studies that point to masking as drastically reducing transmission of the disease for both the wearer and others.
2. ➥ https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...sars-cov2.html


1. ➥ https://www.canada.ca/en/public-heal...coverings.html
2. ➥ https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...sars-cov2.html

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The Great Barrington Declaration is less a genuinely independent scientific enterprise, than it is a propaganda project.

The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard (Martin Kulldorff, PhD), Stanford (Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD), and Oxford (Sunetra Gupta, PhD), encourages governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people, while focusing protection measures on the elderly. The declaration offers no details on how it would protect the vulnerable.
The declaration begins with the false premise that governments intend to completely lock down society, and cherry-picks facts (for example, that COVID-19 infections are mild in healthy people).
The declaration rhetoric offers a false choice between a wholesale return to our pre-pandemic lives (which is objectively dangerous), versus a total lockdown (which no one advocates).

...well, exactly. Where's the specifics of that protection for the most vulnerable that they advocate?

There is a need to very carefully weigh the impact of lockdown vs other measures, but the GBD at its heart is just a front for business as usual. Too bad about the poors, sh1t happens, thanks for your service, herd immunity, whatever... as long as our wealth and power remain untouched.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The Great Barrington Declaration is less a genuinely independent scientific enterprise, than it is a propaganda project.

The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement written by three public health experts from Harvard (Martin Kulldorff, PhD), Stanford (Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD), and Oxford (Sunetra Gupta, PhD), encourages governments to lift lockdown restrictions on young and healthy people, while focusing protection measures on the elderly. The declaration offers no details on how it would protect the vulnerable.
The declaration begins with the false premise that governments intend to completely lock down society, and cherry-picks facts (for example, that COVID-19 infections are mild in healthy people).
The declaration rhetoric offers a false choice between a wholesale return to our pre-pandemic lives (which is objectively dangerous), versus a total lockdown (which no one advocates).

Science misinformation has a long history of parading lists of seeming experts, rejecting the scientific consensus, including the misleading technique of “magnified minority”, promoting a list of names to convey the impression of scientific support when the vast bulk of relevant scientific experts says differently.
Science denial employs the same rhetorical techniques, whether on the topics of smoking, climate change, or COVID-19.
The Great Barrington Declaration fits this pattern of vested economic interests, promoting fringe pseudoscientific theories, and contrarian science, to downplay public health and safety risks.

The declaration was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian, free-market think tank, funded by Charles Koch (a far right-wing billionaire, known for promoting climate change denial, and opposing regulations on business).*
The Great Barrington Declaration has over 30 original co-signers from around the globe, some with listed expertise in epidemiology, and others with medical or science specializations unrelated to an infectious virus, like the novel coronavirus.

The Great Barrington declaration lists a number of interesting (exhaulted?) names among its expert signatories, including “Dr Johnny Bananas” and “Professor Cominic Dummings”, “Professor Ita Rôle Italy Pudding and dessert expert”, “Dr Brian Blessed Doctor in Winged Flight, Z-Cars and Booming Laughter”, “Dr Johnny Fartpants”, and “Professor Notaf Uckingclue”, among others.
The declaration’s website allows anyone to add their name to the list, if they provide an email address, home city, postcode and name.
Signatories also tell the site whether they are medical and public health scientists, medical practitioners or members of the general public. There appears to be no vetting process to verify the medical and scientific credentials of signatories.

Experts in epidemiology, infectious disease, public health, and related disciplines support the mainstream rejection of the natural herd immunity approach to COVID-19, and have issued counter statements to the Great Barrington Declaration.
One, called the John Snow Memorandum, named after one of the founders of modern epidemiology.
Sates: “... “Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed ...
... a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence ...”
“Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now”
➥ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...153-X/fulltext
“THE JOHN SNOW MEMORANDUM”
➥ https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/

The Infectious Diseases Society of America issued a statement, denouncing the Great Barrington Declaration, calling the herd immunity strategy to COVID-19 “... inappropriate, irresponsible, and ill-informed.”
“Herd Immunity” is Not an Answer to a Pandemic ...”
➥ https://www.idsociety.org/news--publ...to-a-pandemic/

"20 Public Health Organizations Condemn Herd Immunity Scheme for Controlling Spread of SARS-Cov-2"
"... The Great Barrington Declaration is not grounded in science and is dangerous ..."
➥ https://www.bigcitieshealth.org/medi...on-declaration

* AIER operates a program called the Bastiat Society that promotes its free-market, anti-government ideology and partners with other Koch-funded think tanks, networks, and organizations that are some of the most prominent disseminators of disinformation on climate science and climate policies. These include the Atlas Network, State Policy Network, Manhattan Institute, Cato Institute, Charles Koch Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and others.

I don't agree with the conclusions of the Great Barrington Declaration, but it is highly worthy of respect, and study. Those are really eminent epidemiologists who signed it, and the arguments are sound, even if we don't agree with the conclusions.

Just as an illustration of how deeply unserious this attack piece is, it goes on and on about the troll signatures of people who vandalized the site, as if that someone characterizes the site itself. Bah!

I'm surprised you would post this, Gord -- this attack on it is typical of the harmful politicization of the pandemic. Propaganda? That's what this is, not the GBD. Impugning GBD by association, impugning it because it doesn't have answers to all the questions, claiming a "scientific consensus" which doesn't exist -- bah! This is sewage.

The Great Barrington Declaration, on the contrary, is a serious thing worth studying. In fact the GBD reflects the very position of Biden's chief advisor on the pandemic, at the time, as we've been discussing in this thread.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Pot, meet kettle.

I was playing devil's advocate with KM inducing him to recite effectiveness of an intervention that superficially had equal "uselessness" to his earlier proposition.

A re-read of threads here sees this same repetitive pattern...a complicated half-truth is offered, it gets picked apart and clarified by those who know better, where the half-truther goes on again with propositions that have to be picked apart.

So I recognize that this is just how some people learn. They don't go take formal coursework for months or years, or immerse themselves into something for a thousand hours or three. They read the pamphlet, show up to the big game, cause a ruckus. So I'm not calling names when I say sophist, I'm describing behavior. I suppose lawyers figured out how to get paid by the hour to learn, while others of us get paid by the hour to teach. Funny how that works.

So there's no question that a mask usage reduces transmission rates. Zero.

Indeed there is question of how much extra risk a person might take owing to a sense of security, or let their guard down elsewhere, etc, etc, etc. But specifically in seatbelt use (as I use the seatbelt example routinely in this type of risk discussion), this was found to not be the case, while my last post including link to a study finding substantial reduction in community infection in mask-mandated countries. Indeed one could pick apart that study if one was so wired, but you've demonstrated no understanding of the nuances that would be at play there, such that all the gizzards would have to be explained to you after you started the dissection.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

...well, exactly. Where's the specifics of that protection for the most vulnerable that they advocate?

There is a need to very carefully weigh the impact of lockdown vs other measures, but the GBD at its heart is just a front for business as usual. Too bad about the poors, sh1t happens, thanks for your service, herd immunity, whatever... as long as our wealth and power remain untouched.

I suggest you study it and think about it. You are certainly smart enough to understand the arguments.

The idea is that the virus is not so dangerous for most people as to justify destructive and costly measures to keep it away from those who are not in risk groups. This is backed up by CDC estimates of age sorted IFR. The argument is that it is more effective and efficient to shield the vulnerable rather than try to shield the entire population.

This is a fairly straightforward and conventional epidemiological approach. They might even be right -- I don't think anyone knows for sure.

The fact that they don't specify in detail the measures needed to shield the vulnerable does not invalidate what they say. They do not claim to be providing a complete pandemic plan. If we agreed with them, we would study and figure that out.

I personally do NOT think they are right, however, for these reasons:

1. In many countries, like the U.S., there are a great number of people of all ages with co-morbidities, making a large portion of the population vulnerable. This altogether undermines this approach. Some other countries (like the Nordic countries) may be very different.

2. There are measures to protect the population short of the hugely destructive full lockdown which seem to be highly effective in protecting the whole population, if they are employed in time. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Nordic countries are examples of countries which successfully protected the whole population without any lockdown.

HOWEVER, it is probably too early to feel too confident in any of these conclusions. If we get a devastating third wave in countries like South Korea, Japan, or Finland which have been almost completely protected from the virus so far (and which are thus still highly vulnerable), these strategies might not look as good, as they look today. If it turns out like that, then we might regret we didn't achieve greater community immunity by doing something more like what is recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration. I don't think so, but we don't know yet.


And this: "Too bad about the poors, sh1t happens, thanks for your service, herd immunity, whatever... as long as our wealth and power remain untouched." Is just uncalled for. The price of lockdown falls overwhelmingly on the "poors". The Great Barrington Declaration approach, whether it's right or wrong from the point of view of the collective interests of the whole population, is most certainly better for the poor. Wealthy people don't care so much about lockdown, particularly not white, wealthy, retired people like on this forum, and agitating to lock down out of terror for one's own health, is tantamount, on the contrary, to throwing the poor under the bus.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

What a joy that would be. "First world problems", as they say

I am so tired of this horrible pandemic. It seems like one long nightmare. I have know two, and probably four people who have died so far, and I know one person who attempted suicide because his business was bankrupted by lockdown. I know countless other people who are unemployed or on the verge of bankruptcy, countless still others who have had their family and romantic lives shredded, and it just goes on and on. Honestly -- please just let it be over.

Light at the end of the tunnel:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2...n-the-pandemic

https://www.economist.com/leaders/20...ine-is-immense

Just out of touch, truly.

The elephant in the room that you don't seem to recognize is that the (US more than most) economy has been sick for the longest time with no rational hope for recovery. So it's like your patient has Covid and BadEconomy disease together, but you don't even understand BadEconomy disease (somehow apparently believing that when his EKG shows low unemployment, and his EEG shows high stock market numbers, that this rules out BadEconomy).

So it's though you can only see that Covid is killing the patient, blind to other diseases present. But this isn't a one train hides another deal...the dying/stagnation/world is flat economic problem has been written about in major journals with increasing frequency for the past 20 years (major = The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, etc) many books on the subject where current and former economic leaders are all saying the same thing. As a post-industrial inevitability, it's been written about for over 100 years.

Just yesterday US Fed opined that there's no going back to the old economy after Covid. If one doesn't know better...the essence of real economy...then one can only blame the economic problems on Covid. But Covid is just the sledge hammer striking a camel who'd already listed over the tipping point and was falling anyway.

So if your rich friends (and yes, they are rich by global standards, and yes, we are in a global economy Dorothy) get depressed or suicidal, understand that this has been the case for an ever-increasing swaths of the population for decades, and you never appreciated it from your reference frame. Now that it's just percolating up to your level in the presence of Covid...apparently, given blindness to economic problems in the first place, all you've got to explain your depressed/suicidal friends problems on is Covid. But they've had UnsustainableEconomy disease for a long, long time.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I suggest you study it and think about it. You are certainly smart enough to understand the arguments.

The idea is that the virus is not so dangerous for most people as to justify destructive and costly measures to keep it away from those who are not in risk groups. This is backed up by CDC estimates of age sorted IFR. The argument is that it is more effective and efficient to shield the vulnerable rather than try to shield the entire population.

This is a fairly straightforward and conventional epidemiological approach. They might even be right -- I don't think anyone knows for sure.

The fact that they don't specify in detail the measures needed to shield the vulnerable does not invalidate what they say. They do not claim to be providing a complete pandemic plan. If we agreed with them, we would study and figure that out.

I have heard the arguments listing the possible impacts, effects and cost of substantially locking down populations in order to control a pandemic. They are important and worthy of consideration.

I'm just against special interests whipping up a scientific 'front' (or an entire institution) every time they dislike the conclusions or advice of actual scientists. It's funny/sad how people who level accusations at media and science for being biased or worse, have pledged their uncritical faith in the GBD and similar, where the bias (which may even be sincere) is the whole point of their being.

Even you have to admit that short, sharp lockdowns are effective to break the back of pandemic spread. In turn, I agree with you that an ill-considered, drawn-out, porous, yet still punishing lockdown... or an effective lockdown followed by bad behaviour... are possibly more damaging than the illness and deaths they prevented.

Given that there are some serious people who have contributed to the GBD, maybe it is a useful reference for anti-lockdown arguments. But it is by no means a complete or balanced analysis; they simply want just enough to back their own position. As I linked to yesterday, there are findings that actually catching and recovering from COVID-19 seems to carry more risk of future mental difficulties or illness than the lockdowns.

Any proclamation that seeks to put down one avenue of control without proposing and justifying an alternate is incomplete... and telling. Whatever, let'er rip, they seem to be saying. Just don't impose lockdowns and then make us cough up for it. Ah, they're olds anyway...

And they're too friggin' lazy to clean out the junk signatures? Or they're satisfied that not alot of their fanbase cares, as long as they can claim 175,000+ signatures? What is the point of collecting the signatures of the great unwashed, anyway?

The Great Barrington Declaration approach, whether it's right or wrong from the point of view of the collective interests of the whole population, is most certainly better for the poor. Wealthy people don't care so much about lockdown, particularly not white, wealthy, retired people like on this forum, and agitating to lock down out of terror for one's own health, is tantamount, on the contrary, to throwing the poor under the bus.

Ha ha. The poor are going under the bus in all your scenarios. Absent is the scenario where we tap a little of our societies' great wealth to support those economically hurt the most by a lockdown. Why is that?

I believe, but I'm not up to the task of proving, that when there's uncontrollable community spread, a carefully-structured and applied lockdown, WITH provisions for supporting those hurt by it, TOGETHER with continued post-lockdown good behaviour, contact-tracing, etc, is the most efficient and least damaging way to minimise both economic and human harm. But there's so many ifs there... and so much evidence of poor compliance and resistance in some places... that it wouldn' be a successful strategy everywhere (likewise, the Swedish light hand won't work everywhere)

Nonetheless, it's still theoretically possible (and affordable) that a 4 week sharp national lockdown followed by vigilant post-lockdown behaviour could break the spread in the US, for the half year before wider vaccine rollout. If anyone actually wanted to. I don't think that many do.

[TeddyDiver]

In the early stage of the pandemic the Barrington Declarations strategy could have been a good solution. Remember in that stage nobody had enough tests or masks to protect themselves. There was only a small problem considering western world as the constitutions in most countries prevents us to lock down a big part (as up to 35%) of the population so even arguing about it is a waste of time..

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I have heard the arguments listing the possible impacts, effects and cost of substantially locking down populations in order to control a pandemic. They are important and worthy of consideration.

I'm just against special interests whipping up a scientific 'front' (or an entire institution) every time they dislike the conclusions or advice of actual scientists. It's funny/sad how people who level accusations at media and science for being biased or worse, have pledged their uncritical faith in the GBD and similar, where the bias (which may even be sincere) is the whole point of their being.

On what basis do you call this a "scientific front"? So any scientist whose ideas you don't like, is corrupted? And whose "uncritical faith"? Why this point of view, and not the other? This seems to me polarized and politicized thinking.


There are a variety of views among serious people about how to approach the pandemic. You don't need to agree with this view, or that view, to respect it and even learn something from it. Just dismissing it like this is not worthy of you.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

. . . Even you have to admit that short, sharp lockdowns are effective to break the back of pandemic spread. In turn, I agree with you that an ill-considered, drawn-out, porous, yet still punishing lockdown... or an effective lockdown followed by bad behaviour... are possibly more damaging than the illness and deaths they prevented.

I've said numerous times that I really don't know, and don't think anyone really knows. Probably different combinations of measures are appropriate at different stages and in different countries. Lockdown is a brutal and blunt instrument (as the WHO has been saying) but even that might be worth it, under some circumstances -- particularly if done sharp and short at a very early stage when you just don't have time and don't know enough yet to work a more nuanced approach.



What I consistently argue against is any blanket statements and sweeping denunciations of this or that approach which assumes the stupidity of people one disagrees with. This assumption inevitably leads to error.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Given that there are some serious people who have contributed to the GBD, maybe it is a useful reference for anti-lockdown arguments. But it is by no means a complete or balanced analysis

And what is? Why is this the standard? This is just one argument for one position.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

; they simply want just enough to back their own position.

What? Like everyone arguing anything.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

As I linked to yesterday, there are findings that actually catching and recovering from COVID-19 seems to carry more risk of future mental difficulties or illness than the lockdowns.

Meaningless without quantifying it. 1000 unemployed worth 1 less COVID case? Or even one less COVID death? I doubt it.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Any proclamation that seeks to put down one avenue of control without proposing and justifying an alternate is incomplete... and telling. Whatever, let'er rip, they seem to be saying. Just don't impose lockdowns and then make us cough up for it. Ah, they're olds anyway...

Really unfair characterization of the GBD approach. Did you read it? The GBD simply warns of the destructiveness of lockdowns (accurately), and proposes a different approach. You may agree or disagree.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Ha ha. The poor are going under the bus in all your scenarios. Absent is the scenario where we tap a little of our societies' great wealth to support those economically hurt the most by a lockdown. Why is that?

As I've repeatedly said -- "tapping our society's great wealth", even if you supposed we can do it, does not relieve us of the necessity of choosing the least destructive and most efficient means to control the pandemic. There is only so much of that supposed "great wealth" -- if we waste it on the useless or inefficient measures, then it's not available for something else. And good luck tapping it, by the way. What really happens in practice is the poor get thrown under the bus. Because even the most generous "great wealth tapping" measures make the poor whole only to a fraction of their actual damage. Do GBD, and they mostly keep their jobs -- most definitely "the poors" come out ahead this way, even if we don't think this is the optimum approach for the whole of society (and I don't).

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I believe, but I'm not up to the task of proving, that a carefully-structured and applied lockdown, WITH provisions for supporting those hurt by it, TOGETHER with continued post-lockdown good behaviour, is the most efficient and least damaging way to minimise both economic and human damage. But there's so many ifs there... and so much evidence of poor compliance and resistance in some places... that it wouldn' be a successful strategy everywhere (likewise, the Swedish light hand won't work everywhere)

Well no one is up to that task -- it can't be proven -- we don't know enough yet.



Just guessing here, but gut tells me a very sharp and very short lockdown applied at a very early stage like in Hubei Province, with support for the victims of lockdown, as you say, might very well be a good approach. In China it was relatively easy because the whole nation of 1.5 billion people could be tapped to support the 1% of the population locked down. But by the time you have community spread through most of a country, it's probably too late for this. Once that happens, I guess you need to be resigned to living with the virus until the vaccine is widely distributed. And I guess that for most countries and situations a set of targetted and nuanced and sustainable measures like those taken in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the Nordic countries is probably the optimum approach, controlling the virus to a tolerable level while causing relatively little secondary harm. I guess the lockdowns in the U.S. simply came too late to do much of use and might have been dispensed with altogether. Worse, the U.S. lockdowns, which could never have been sustained for the long term, ended up being most of what was done and might have prevented more sustainable measures from being worked out.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Nonetheless, it's still theoretically possible (and affordable) that a 4 week sharp national lockdown followed by vigilant post-lockdown behaviour could break the spread in the US, for the half year before wider vaccine rollout. If anyone actually wanted to. I don't think that many do.

I don't know. Isn't it far too late to "break the spread"? I'm glad I'm not in charge of that policy. I'm skeptical, but I don't claim to have any answers.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

On what basis do you call this a "scientific front"? So any scientist whose ideas you don't like, is corrupted? And whose "uncritical faith"? Why this point of view, and not the other? This seems to me polarized and politicized thinking.

There are a variety of views among serious people about how to approach the pandemic. You don't need to agree with this view, or that view, to respect it and even learn something from it. Just dismissing it like this is not worthy of you.

That's very kind of you. But yeah, when a scientific argument needs the backing of powerful interests that stand to benefit from it... it becomes suspicious. It's like doing an end run straight to the court of public opinion is easier than fighting the merits within the institutions and bodies most capable of intelligently resolving the issue.

1000 unemployed worth 1 less COVID case? Or even one less COVID death? I doubt it.

No-one (here) seems willing to do the heavy lifting to price out all the options. The unemployed can be supported, retrained, rehired. Those with lasting effects from COVID-19, like death or permanent disability...

I don't think that you have considered the cost of mostly-uncontrolled COVID-19 spread. Particularly the short-term demands on healthcare that are and will continue to be placed on it.

(but if the reaction to 235k+ deaths is still "meh", there's probably not much sympathy for practitioner burnout and short-term loss of other medical services, either. Those with means won't likely feel those effects, of course.)