Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true.
> Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
The hardest question is whether or not this is worth it, and nobody is asking that because politicians want to get reelected.
You are missing the point entirely. Virology experts are not the people who should be making these decisions. It's not as if covid response is free, but they aren't tasked with consdering the costs. They aren't tasked with finding out what the right amount of death is. That's the unfortunate reality and this is what the great leaders throughout history have all understood: there are no good decisions in times like this, merely least worst decisions.
Look at the excess mortality in Belgium:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic measures...
Ignoring the fact that Belgium is one of the worst affected countries, I'm not even sure what you're arguing? Yes, covid is bad and yes it kills people. Did people in Belgium die who otherwise wouldn't have? Yes. Can we move on to the real issue?
> If you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually, and no sane person wants to see that happen.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane) I'm very unclear where I suggested we shouldn't get a handle on it. Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed? What is this? You're just throwing up charts an screaming about how bad covid is. We already know this.
Belgium is the prototype for what would happen elsewhere if you're just a bit less successful at getting a handle on the pandemic.
Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be arguing for a lessening of restrictions for the general public, right now. Here in Germany, there already are a few regions where some hospitals are close to capacity, and modelling suggests that without continued restictions, the health care system might get overwhelmed by March.
Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane)
I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
...
> I realize this might come close to violating (or even cross the line of) HN guidelines, but that's how I see it.
Ok, you're wrong. And worst of all, you've decided that anyone who doesn't share your exact opinion is insane. No wonder you've got it so wrong, you've cut yourself off from any real discussion.
What I argued was that lockdowns don't work. We have done serious lockdowns across the world, and in the best case all the do is buy a little time. In the worst case, they do nothing. The US printed $4T in 2020...do you really not believe that with that money, we could have a devised a better approach that put tremendous resources into isolating the vulnerable population and accepting the stunningly low risk to the rest of the population?
It's amazing to me that people on HN, a site dedicated to the constant advancement of the human condition, looks at a failed strategy concocted during panic and says "yeah, that's as good as it gets and can't be improved".
Jesus, when it comes to covid all I hear are people asking for faster horses.
Depends on which studies you trust. I've read a few, and my conclusion back then was that they do work. However, I've not kept up with the debate once I came to that conclusion, so maybe I shouldn't have phrased things quite as strongly as I did. If you have a recommendation for a single study that makes a particularly strong case against lockdowns, feel free to link it.
Looking for more recent results just now, I found [1], analyzing the differences in response of US states. It seems to suggests that as a general rule, the stronger the restrictions, the smaller the case growth, which would have been my null hypothesis anyway. Cf. https://i.imgur.com/kLfSs6W.png
I do agree that we do not yet know the effectiveness of any particular measure. It would be nice if we knew better, but experimenting with extinguishing agents while your house is on fire is too risky for my taste.
[1] https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-12/BSG-WP-...
So the hard questions are never asked for which we sacrifice a good chunk of our population to dwindling cancer care, mental health issues and economic decline. Those scandals can be written off statistically by the next lot.
And yes I’ve had it. And yes I’ve lost three relatives to it. And quite frankly they were all circling the drain already.
I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on.
These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital.
The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.
Had we locked down 2 weeks ago when SAGE said "Lock down now or else!" we'd have fewer people in hospital and more beds for preventative cancer surgery.
Sure, you could go round with a flamethrower burning anyone over the age of 70 for using precious resources just so you could have the pub open for a few more days. Is that your solution?
(/s)
Because there's no staff to use them:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831
> "We are already 'diluting' our skilled ICU nursing staff with less-well-trained volunteers."
> As well as staffing, some have argued there is just not the equipment available to treat the sickest patients
> "In some there are not even appropriate toilet facilities. They were built in a rush because we were desperate."
Based on that info, my guess is these hospitals will only be used as a very last resort, possibly staffed with vets or NHS staff moved from elsewhere in the country for a short period... This is not a scenario that we should encourage or count on.
So yes, the economy is fine with a high infection rate.
And Reddit clapped.
And even mentioning this cost, which is becoming quite extreme (look at youth suicidality numbers, and childhood depression rates), causes you to be accused of not caring about elderly people.
The devastation that Covid lockdowns have caused will last far longer than the disease itself.
Is that vast?
Would you be surprised to learn that the 17/18 flu season resulted in more excess deaths than we are having right now? Surely you must have been freaking out then as well advocating for national lockdowns...right?
Your comparison with the '17 flu season is, honestly, stupid, and demonstrates your lack of reasoning on this. C'mon: there _wasn't_ a lockdown, and here despite a tremendous lockdown and a long way to go before herd immunity the situation is dire.
It is not hyperbolic to say that health and mental health is being traded away.
Education wise, my wife has used the opportunity to dip her toes into teaching - which is something she always wanted to try. I realise not everyone wants to be a teacher, but you never know.
The situation is what you make of it.
To change the subject slightly: Would you describe yourself as an extrovert or introvert?
As an introvert I suppose I thrive on my own / with few people around me. I wonder if extroverts suffer more mental anquish when forced into isolation?
Maybe they have asked these questions and concluded that this is the best path? Seems most countries are following similar paths.
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYK...
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-ni...
The UK Government is arresting people who film empty hospitals:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-loc...
Meanwhile less than 400 people under age 50 have died with/of COVID in the UK.
The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention.
Meanwhile in Sweden - without hard lockdown - deaths are up only 3.2% above 2018, and even then explained by mortality shifting from 2019 and 2021.
Even Ukraine without hard lockdown over Winter has had far fewer deaths per Capita than the UK and has a much more rudimentary healthcare system.
Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
Current statistics show that there's around 1'400 deaths of those under 50 with COVID-19 listed on their death registration, ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... ).
Where's your data from?
> Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
This could easily be a reversed causality, that deaths drive lockdowns... which, on the surface seems to make sense as high deaths seem to force politicians to lockdown (either for reality or perception).
The police arrested one person who walked, mask-less, though quiet public areas of a busy hospital (and was abusive when challenged by hospital workers). The vital need to spread conspiracy theories on Facebook isn't one of the "reasonable excuses" for leaving your house.
I was saying this at the start of the pandemic. The UK is approaching US -levels of obesity, but now we have "fat shaming" whereby any mention of overweight people being unhealthy is socially unacceptable; and showing skinny people in adverts on the London Undergound causes "offence". I wonder if this particular world-view will reverse in the coming years?
This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines.
EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figures certainly don't show it.
Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now.
As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now.
Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.
Yeah I know that, my best mates girlfriend is a doctor. But that's not at all proof of anything. There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture. I have the utmost respect for our NHS heroes but front line personnel are the last people you should ask. They have been put through hell over the past year and if I were in their shoes I would be ready to keel over. And that's exactly why these individuals shouldn't be calling the shots...they're just seeing one part of the puzzle.
Do you realise that in two successive comments, you have literally just claimed that hospitals are not really filling up, then claimed that reports from front-line staff working in those hospitals don't prove anything?
There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture.
A curious metaphor. There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
Um, what? That's exactly right. Hospitals are not filling up. The NHS own data shows this. The fact that doctors think the hospitals are filling up is irrelevant. People's estimates of things are notoriously incorrect, especially when they are under pressure. I'm not sure what you've taken issue with.
Are you disputing the NHS data that hospitals are not filling up?
> There is a reason for the saying that an army is run by its sergeants. All the plans made by generals aren't worth squat if you don't have boots on the ground who know what they're doing to implement those plans.
Right, Sergents run the implementation, not the planning. What we are talking about is the planning. But the bigger issue with this logic is that this isn't a medical plan. It's a social one. The people who should develop a strategy around a global pandemic are not the same people who intubate the casualties of said pandemic. It's like asking a car mechanic how we should build safer roads...they're just not the same thing.
Lockdown is just cop out and not only it doesn't help it creates tons of additional problem.
What exactly would "better managed" look like, in your opinion, and what evidence do you have that your version of events would result in better outcomes than the lockdown measures that have been used?
By implementing lockdown, now you have 2 issue : Ambulance delay and the damage from lockdown.
Why it has better outcome?
From the data we know that for vast majority of people who get infected it will be either asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms and the serious case/death is skewed towards the elderly.
Lockdown cause harm. The virus cause harm.
More people suffer from lockdown than the virus.
At the minimum doing nothing different than the government already done in the past would lead better outcome than what we currently have.
If you want to do something, then there are many ways that are not lockdown, that can be done such as:
- increasing healthcare capacity/funding when needed
- accelerate development of better treatment
- accelerate vaccine development
- do not test everyone, so much wasted resource spent on this.
- media campaign to educate people about the actual risk of covid
- increase campaign on exercise, healthy diet, outdoor activities.
That's pretty much what I would do if I'm in power.
And that's still making the implicit assumption that the greater number of people getting the virus and therefore greater number of opportunities for new mutations to develop don't make things any worse, for example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far.
And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone who does get the virus in your scenario, and that care for others with serious conditions is not compromised causing further suffering and loss of life.
I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
I didn't say that, I listed multiple measure that can be taken.
What I'm saying is, if for some reason the government refuse/unable to do those, at the minimum no lockdown is better.
>on the evidence so far, probably kill around 1 million people
1 million out of how many ? How many million people who going to suffer from lockdown?
>that we don't fully understand yet
Right, its not fully understood yet, so its not a justification to implement a measure that is harmful for million of people such as lockdown.
>or example by evolving a mutation that severely affects other demographics in the same way that the current known variations of the virus affect elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups and/or that can withstand the treatments and vaccines we have available so far
New mutation generally evolve into something that spread more easily but less deadly.
>And it's also making the obviously false assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone
I never made assumption that the NHS has the resources to offer the best possible care to everyone.
>I don't think most people would agree that such a strategy is either ethical or likely to be more effective at controlling the virus than the lockdown measures, under the present circumstances.
I acknowledge that everybody has their own preference, if you like to live in the place with lockdown then to each their own. I'm just trying my best to everybody people I know. If I can choose I would much much prefer to live where the government handling this without lockdown. I ready to move to place with less lockdown, if the government in my place decided to increase the lockdown.
That being said I think each of us lives in their own preferable place is probably only thing that going to work for both of us.
I think they are exactly the ones we should be listening to.
But you don't listen to the foot soldier when they tell you how you should position your troops. And that's exactly what you're suggesting.
If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. The solution is to fix and improve it, not lockdown.
Lockdown measures is just cop out.
Any health system has finite resources available: facilities, equipment, trained staff, the money to pay for all of it, etc.
If the NHS had already been set up to handle this once-in-a-century black swan event better, it would have been less effective at handling other conditions that have affected patients in the more than a century since the last outbreak of similar severity.
I haven't been impressed by how our national government has handled this situation, but if you stop and think about what's happened in the past year or so, it's actually pretty amazing how quickly and effectively our NHS staff, scientific community and others playing supporting roles in our society have adapted. They are fixing and improving our healthcare system, and they're doing it right before our eyes in real time.
And please don't say something like "do your own research," that doesn't help the conversation at all.
We have been. That's why the vaccine is going out to them first.
We have too many people in hospital. Even if all spreading stopped right this second, the number of people going into hospital will continue to increase for another 2 weeks. This is the busiest time of year for hospitals, and we already have more covid paitents than we did in April.
If my child needs an ICU bed, I want one available, I don't want it filled with 80 year old covid patients.
When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush.
We know that lockdowns are too blunt an instrument which is why most of Europe is having to engage in ever more draconian measures. We are mortgaging our future here, without questioning the cost.
We don't need more of the same. It's not a question of willpower. It's a question of approach, and currently nobody is asking the hard questions.
EDIT It seems downvote brigade has arrived to ensure that any contrarian opinion is snuffed out. No rebuttal with data, just downvotes.