London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline

Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by hn_throwaway_99 on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:31PM (#23286674)

My take is that what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique. Very high density coupled with lots of intergenerational living.

One reason Sweden's approach may work out in the end is they have the highest proportion of single person households of any country on Earth.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by kgwgk on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:58PM (#23286903)

> what happened in Northern Italy freaked out the world, but it was actually rather unique

Was it? NYC has reported more deaths than Lombardy (with less population) and NY/NJ as many deaths as Italy with half the population.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by xamuel on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:02PM (#23286944)

The high death count in NY/NJ is probably related to the fact that in both states, the governors ordered that nursing homes not be permitted to refuse coronavirus patients.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by kgwgk on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:05PM (#23286963)

Massachusetts and Connecticut are not far behind, for what it’s worth. I don’t know if the same factor applies.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by xamuel on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:07PM (#23286983)

This site lists NY, NJ, Massachusetts and California as the four states to issue such orders: https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/health/info-2020/coronavirus...

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by kgwgk on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:10PM (#23287002)

Interesting, thanks. But apparently MA didn’t really do it, according to that article.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by hn_throwaway_99 on Saturday May 23, 2020 @11:20PM (#23288808)

I made a comment in another thread, but NYC is also quite unique in the US: extreme density and extremely high usage of public transportation.

So far all the places that have had hospital systems overwhelmed (or on the verge) have had extremely high density, lots of intergenerational mixing, or both.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by riquito on Saturday May 23, 2020 @07:20PM (#23287523)

Sweden approach gave them a spot in the countries with the highest mortality rate per capita (so far ~376 deaths per million, versus 55 and 44 in the neighbour Finland and Norway [1][2]).

It may work out for them because it's a lowly populated country but I wouldn't try that model anywhere with an higher density.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/just-7-per-cen...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-per-capit...

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by majewsky on Sunday May 24, 2020 @09:01AM (#23291196)

> It may work out for them because it's a lowly populated country but I wouldn't try that model anywhere with an higher density.

Sweden has a very low population density on average, but they also have some densely packed metro areas. Just the Stockholm and Gothenburg metro areas make up over a third of the total population.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by myk9001 on Sunday May 24, 2020 @01:59AM (#23289481)

- Japan effectively had no lockdown and basically no testing[1].

- Japan is populated extremely densely[2].

- Japan is number 2 by the population's median age (for comparison, Italy is 5th)[3].

- Japan had 808(!) COVID-19 fatalities[4].

- Despite the lockdown, in New York "most new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who had been staying home"[5].

- New York had 29112(!) deaths[6].

One just has to ask, do lockdowns even have that big of an impact on the spread of the virus? Or did it just ran its natural course in each country -- in lockdown or not -- and differences in the numbers of deaths are just down to dumb chance?

"... there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities..."[7]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/did-japan...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag...

[4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/

[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocki...

[6] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/

[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-coronavirus-...

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by rigiddigit on Sunday May 24, 2020 @05:45AM (#23290401)

The problem with this kind of "constructivism" (since the beginning of time) is that it is easy to neglect other factors that play a crucial role in the development of a crisis that may or may not be exclusive to each geographical region. For example, I've lived in Sweden and I've lived in London. The amount of differences (social, economic, political) that could be contributing to Covid-19 in one way or another is immense, and so obviously are their strategies. I would imagine the same applies for a country like Japan. Want another extreme example? Cyprus initiated a lockdown far earlier than London, and they have had 17 (0.0014% of the population) deaths so far. One can not and should not simply cherrypick situations and arguments to support one's case.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by myk9001 on Sunday May 24, 2020 @01:23PM (#23293020)

I wasn't asking rhetorically and am quite open to be proven wrong.

What kind of differences do you have in mind for Japan given their population of ~126 millions, density and median age?

"One can not and should not simply cherrypick situations and arguments to support one's case."

I don't think the fallacy of cherrypicking applies here. One counter example is enough to challenge a hypothesis and ask very serious questions about it. I gave two -- Japan and people staying at home and still getting infected in NY.

Do these counterexamples immediately disporve lockdowns effectiveness? I don't think so.

Do they mean some very strong evidence is necessary to confirm the effectiveness? In my opinion, absolutely.

"Cyprus initiated a lockdown far earlier than London, and they have had 17 (0.0014% of the population) deaths so far."

I'm going to give an absurd example but consistent with this line of reasoning.

So, I claim the Sun still rises thanks to lockdown, and as a result of initiating their lockdown earlier the Sun is brighter over Cyprus. So does the Sun still rise everyday? Yes. Is it brighter over Cyprus? Yes. Hence, my claim is proven!

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by bkor on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:42PM (#23286763)

Northern Italy was repeated across various big counties. I'm also wondering where you're getting your information from Sweden from. It's not easy to get a good insight into any country. E.g. Sweden's approach is quite different than what you might read if you read/follow US based news sources.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by phatfish on Saturday May 23, 2020 @08:28PM (#23287964)

Unsure how its going to "work out in the end", unless they intend to resurrect their dead.

Who would choose to die now without a "lockdown" when the other option is die later with a lockdown, including the added bonus of there being more work done to understand the virus and how to treat it, which might mean not dying at all.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by aianus on Saturday May 23, 2020 @08:35PM (#23288009)

Nobody is choosing to die now to avoid a lockdown. They're choosing a ~0.1% chance of dying now to avoid a lockdown (I'm assuming the old and sick are in favor of the lockdown).

0.1% of the rest of my life is less than three weeks, it's not a bad gamble to avoid an 18-month lockdown if that were the choice.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by hn_throwaway_99 on Saturday May 23, 2020 @11:29PM (#23288839)

> Who would choose to die now without a "lockdown" when the other option is die later with a lockdown

Umm, lots of people? If we prohibited all vehicle traffic we would prevent 1.3 million deaths worldwide, yet lots of people appear willing to drive.

Look, I don't mean to minimize the deaths, and the lockdowns were a very rational response given what was known initially. At the same time, humans make risky choices all the time, and it's not unreasonable to ask if the cost of the lockdowns is worth the lowered risk, especially in lower-density locales.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by phatfish on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @01:59PM (#23314362)

> If we prohibited all vehicle traffic we would prevent 1.3 million deaths worldwide.

Sure, seems a bit extreme though. I suggest we remove all the safety features on cars, it costs the car companies loads in R&D to comply with all those regulations. You take a risk when you drive, and to be honest people should just be better drivers and there will be less accidents.

Far less accidents in lower-density locales as well.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by tigershark on Sunday May 24, 2020 @04:28AM (#23290085)

Covid-19 killed twice the annual car deaths in 1 month and half in US. And this with a lockdown in place.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by BurningFrog on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:55PM (#23286880)

Much of this is because any non urgent care is suspended.

There is a lot of pent up health care need building up. Some of it lethal.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by goatinaboat on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:04PM (#23286953)

There is a lot of pent up health care need building up. Some of it lethal.

The impact of the lockdown is going to be 10-100x that of coronavirus itself. No healthcare system is prepared for it.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by BurningFrog on Saturday May 23, 2020 @08:44PM (#23288059)

I agree the lockdown(s) have a real, destructive impact that has to be acknowledged and weighed.

But you blew it with those crazy numbers..

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by redisman on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:49PM (#23287299)

How would the hospital load look like in the US today without lockdowns?

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by ls612 on Saturday May 23, 2020 @07:34PM (#23287609)

In New York? They’d be fucked. In most of the rest of the country? Simply canceling sporting events, concerts, conventions, and other mass gatherings would probably have been enough. Even the CDC is now saying surface transmission is highly unlikely and that the aforementioned superspreading events were disproportionately responsible for the early exponential growth,

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by ceejayoz on Saturday May 23, 2020 @07:50PM (#23287720)

You don’t need a giant gathering to have a potential superspreading event.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/23/missouri-hai...

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by macintux on Saturday May 23, 2020 @08:05PM (#23287820)

So a disease that’s easily on its way to being the number 3 or 4 killer in the U.S. this year is going to be outweighed by...what, exactly?

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by goatinaboat on Sunday May 24, 2020 @03:06AM (#23289744)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-doctors-s...

It’s already happening

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by macintux on Sunday May 24, 2020 @06:57AM (#23290687)

75,000 potential suicides is terrible, but that’s about two orders of magnitude fewer than a reasonable worst case for the virus.

Addendum: and we have financial tools to deal with the economic stress. We don’t have much in the way of treatment for the virus yet.

The fact that we’re not throwing money at the unemployed is a crime.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by bkor on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:35PM (#23286704)

Europe is way too varied to day that. I noticed various countries whereby the healthcare is overwhelmed. Various things were done to ensure they could cooe. E.g. by delaying some of the medical care. But also by taking various actions to slow down the spread.

I'm not sure what's the basis of your idea.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by dr_dshiv on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:44PM (#23286784)

Is there any data on that?

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by marcell on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:59PM (#23286916)

Yes, lots. My county (Santa Clara) has less than 10% of beds used for Covid: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...

This is direct, primary source data, not a media report.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by bkor on Saturday May 23, 2020 @06:42PM (#23287237)

You're entirely incorrect though about 'Europe'. Though seems kind of logical if you follow US based news sources. They leave out a lot of detail and get things wrong. Various countries in Europe were heavily affected healthcare wise.

That you say it's not the case while linking to only your own county.. feels bad.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by marcell on Sunday May 24, 2020 @12:32AM (#23289093)

I’m living in America so I mainly follow the cases here. Do you have any data showing European hospitals going over capacity?

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by cm2187 on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:53PM (#23286859)

Like major hospitals furloughing employees:

https://www.foxnews.com/science/mayo-clinic-furlough-or-cut-...

All the field hospitals in the UK and US have been now closed.

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Re:London may have gone into a Covid-accelerated decline by ithkuil on Saturday May 23, 2020 @05:19PM (#23286557)

See reverse Tinkerbell effect

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