Remember how the scientific method works: if you make a hypothesis, it's the most fragile thing in the universe -- a single falsification is all it takes to send you packing.
So, every time someone trots out "the plural of anecdote is not data" when presented with a refutation, this tells us something important... Like it or not, that's just how it works.
A group's CFR is almost the only thing that matters to that specific group. If the CFR is low, it literally does not matter at all how, or how fast you got infected -- the statistical outcomes are now known! The "continuous exposure" vs. "casual interactions" thing? That R-0; interesting, but almost irrelevant vs. CFR. In fact, once low group-CFR has been ascertained, the "normal behavior case" R-0 defines the societal infection/immunity rate required to achieve their group's contribution to societal herd immunity, but otherwise is of little interest: the average group participant just wants to gain immunity, as quickly as possible, to provide protection for the high-risk groups.
So, the fact that multiple independent instances of (accidentally measured, statistically significant) high rates of group infection without demise, leading to a low group CFR are extremely surprising, and that should have led to a "stop work, tools down" moment for those engineering our societal response. But, it did not.
That is disappointing.
I think the most disappointing thing, to me, is how many in our society are more than ready and willing to throw the innocent, high-risk elderly and those with co-morbidities "under the bus", just to avoid their own (very low) CFR.
Take it like a man/woman.
Except that you don't know what defines a group.
We know what makes someone at risk. That does NOT imply the reverse--that we know what makes someone NOT at risk.
Sure, maybe 18-30 year olds by and large don't drop dead. That doesn't mean they don't wind up with stroke risk or a damaged lifespan. And, maybe some 2-3% subgroup of them drops dead because they have a particular receptor--oops, sucks to be you but we can't undo it now that we let the pandemic loose.
You don't just shove a disease through a population when you don't know what the effects are. That is unethical and immoral at the level of eugenics. Good God, man.
We actually did this sort of thing with chicken pox and now those children get the joy of shingles possibly blinding them in their adult life. Oops.
And, by the way, you know what disease we achieved herd immunity to before vaccines? Oh, yeah, NONE. This one will be no different.
Nobody is "shoving a disease"; the disease is naturally progressing, that's what diseases do. Most moral systems distinguish between actively causing harm and not doing something that could prevent harm.
Not only that, but while we may not know exactly what the effects of the disease are, we know exactly what the effects of the lockdown are, and it's causing immense misery to many many people. So it's a case of weighing up something of unknown badness (the disease passing through the population) against something with known, definite badness (the lockdowns). So we need to be reasonably sure that the unknown badness of the disease is sufficiently bad to outweigh the known badness of the lockdown.
You've now left the realm of science and entered the realm of politics.
The "badness of the lockdowns", however, is not a given and varies depending upon the competence of your government and the idiocy of the people.
Yes, everybody locked WAY down at the beginning. However, governments that had universal healthcare and actually paid unemployment benefits to their people had far less "lockdown badness". People in those conditions weren't forced back to work in order to get food or healthcare.
In addition, those who actually locked down (R0 < 0.8) had cases that dropped substantially and can now reopen with contact tracing and efforts that aren't quite so invasive.
This is opposed to those who really just "sorta" locked down , whine about wearing a mask, etc. (R0 about 1.0)--see: Santa Cruz county being able to trace more than half of their cases to two Mother's Day gatherings.
"Lockdown badness" is something that is the result of poor government policy and actually has solutions--it is not immutable scientific fact.
Whether political leaders will implement those solutions is a different question.
All badness is the realm of morality and politics, not science. Science can predict how many people will die, it can't weigh this up against other consequences. Science can't make moral judgements, only inform them.
>"Lockdown badness" is something that is the result of poor government policy and actually has solutions--it is not immutable scientific fact.
A big part of the lockdown badness is the economic damage. This is an immutable economic fact: stopping most people working will mean fewer things are produced, and more of the existing things and infrastructure will be consumed. This translates into worse standard of living and quality of life for people. Weighing this against the health damage from the virus is a matter of politics/ethics, not of science.
What we can see clearly is countries with no widespread forced closure of businesses, like Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Sweden, are having much better economic outcomes compared to countries with strong lockdowns like the US, France and Italy (expected yearly GDP growth of ~0%, vs ~-5% for the lockdown countries).
As did Taiwan after Wuhan. Taiwan also rationed emergency supplies. Here's what Taiwan did: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taiwan-covid-19-lessons-1.5...
See any of those dividers in the US? Yeah, no, you can't even get people to put masks on.
Japan seems to be cooking the books because of the Olympics even though that's simply not going to happen.
Sweden is about to pass the US in cases and deaths per capita and is right about the same economics as the other European countries (which are all benefiting from their social safety net). Not sure that's counts as better than the rest of the EU--we'll see if it continues.
Your economic claims are dubious.
The primary difference is how fast a country reacted, not how hard. The problem is that if a country didn't react fast enough, it is then required that you react harder and longer.
>As did Taiwan after Wuhan. Taiwan also rationed emergency supplies. Here's what Taiwan did: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taiwan-covid-19-lessons-1.5....
But they didn't mass-close businesses. That's what causes the economic damage.
>the same economics as the other European countries (which are all benefiting from their social safety net
You sure about that? https://www.dw.com/en/as-coronavirus-lockdown-eases-italians... , https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/23/unrest-hunger-and-hardsh... .
> The problem is that if a country didn't react fast enough, it is then required that you react harder and longer.
Required by what? Sweden hasn't "reacted" harder and the spread of the virus is already slowing there: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Brazil&location=Ca...
There are no words for the level of incompetence displayed in the handling of these HCQ studies.
You are deeply into "Not even wrong" territory.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Did you forget HCQ already? Lots of "positive reports" and yet controlled studies shows that it kills more Covid patients than leaving them untreated.
We have data and hypotheses showing that it's mostly continuous exposure that matters (which means that nongroup workers are better off than we expected and casual interactions to buy groceries and such are safer than expected), and yet everybody wants to get back into groups--which is known wrong. Two Mother's Day gatherings account for more than 50% of the Covid cases in Santa Cruz county.
Data by itself is meaningless. Data leads to a "falsifiable hypothesis" which can then be tested. AFTER the test passes or fails, you modify your Bayesian priors and your working tasks. Lather, rinse, repeat.