Cyclist0108

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Oldairhead 

Lockdowns do help flatten the curve, but they also extend the pandemic. And, once a lockdown is lifted the pandemic will return. Hindsight will be the best judge of what we did right and what we did wrong. Even our brightest experts have gotten it horribly wrong, In this case the esteemed Dr. Fauci.


There will be a new phrase that we'll be hearing much more of, "Covid fatigue."

Seattle Forrest

Just like individual people only last decades and humanity needs to keep making babies constantly to stick around. Individual virus particles aren't long for this world, the disease needs people to keep continually making copies, and people either die or get over it, so it needs to spread. If it were possible to 100% prevent it from spreading, that would be the end of that virus species. (But similar coronaviruses would still be circulating in bats and might jump into humans again.) But it isn't realistically possible for humans to do a complete and total lockdown. I only mentioned it to point out the irony.

Anthrax is a bacteria, its spores can last indefinitely in the world, even if nobody had it for years it can still exist and be infectious. Viruses aren't like that.

The common cold isn't just one thing, there are a number of different viruses and maybe bacteria too that all cause similar symptoms and we call all of them "the common cold."

Seattle Forrest

The best approach is to already have the vaccine ready when the pandemic begins. Like with the flu. We got it half right on this one. I'll start a new thread about it.

livedarklions

That's not necessarily true. Lockdowns can end a pandemic if enforced effectively. Also, if the pandemic is going to be ended by a vaccination program either way, the duration of the pandemic will be the same, just with fewer cases and deaths with the lockdown.

Stadjer

Some countries have done quite hard lockdowns, other countries haven't and I don't see a pattern that proves lockdowns work at all.

The effect seems logical but there's most likely a bit more to it. People locked down with eachother in a house will contaminate eachother, much more than in shops and restaurants because of the duration and ventilation. Another issue is the regular immune system, which is helped by some exercise and probalby fresh air too. Especially in Northern- Europe lots of people have a lack of vitamine D because of the lack of sunlight this time of year, there appears to be a strong correlation between lack of vitamine D and hospitalization for covid. Certainly people with an immigrant background are heavily overrepresented in the hospitals in Northern-Europe. Not all immigrants have a lot of melanine and there might be other factors, but darker skins simply need more exposure to daylight for the same vitamine D.

So there's a chance it's actually counterproductive.

Rage

Well, what was the alternative?

79pmooney

"Were lockdowns the best approach?"

I think the answer is - the best approach is an approach. A unified approach is something this country never tried. Masks work, Social distancing works. Contact tracing and quarantines work. Cpmplete hit or miss doesn't.

Unca_Sam

"Look at this loony guy out in the wilderness! He's preaching cooperation and mutual benefit!"

Quiet you! Insinuating that a coordinated response of any kind would be better than what we did is passé!

Unca_Sam

Please tell me which countries instituted hard lockdowns that don't have their pandemic managed, or limited to foreign arrivals.

Your vitamin D correlation reach is more easily explained by the tendency for recent immigrants to be overrepresented in 'essential' services, resulting in more opportunities for exposure to the virus.

Oldairhead 

"Enforced effectively" is the key phrase, along with "enforced equitably." There cannot be a coordinated national plan in the US since the physical response to a pandemic is the responsibility of each States Public Health Departments, along with county and local officials. As they have already demonstrated, each state may go by the ever changing CDC recommendations or do something else entirely. We have gotten 50 different responses so far. As for the state and local officials well we have already seen that the elite leadership does not feel that they are required to comply at all! Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom are two that come to mind immediately for their behavior as well as many New York State officials who were/are in Florida while telling their constituents to stay home.

The vaccine itself, even if one is found that is effective may not end the pandemic either. Many people have stated that they will not take a vaccine once it becomes widely available, and you cannot force them to! Many groups that are considered "essential workers' are among them. A recent survey of the FDNY indicates that more than half of their union members will not take a vaccine once it become available. I don't think that you are going to be able to ask them to stay home if they don't!

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coro...gests/2764027/

DrIsotope

People like to throw the word "lockdown" around, presumably because the word is incendiary. We never had anything that could be defined as such here in the US. What we had, and continue to have, are feeble half-measures. If planes are still flying and interstate travel is still allowed, ain't nobody locked down. The local govt. picks and chooses, because they continue to cater to special interests, and will institute whatever "measures" they see fit to damage whatever segment of the city/county/state they're out to squeeze at that given moment. Saving lives is not now, nor has it ever really been of paramount concern. And there you have it-- most places (and I'm only speaking to the US) are "fighting" the virus politically, and no physical problem in the history of man has ever been solved through political process.

New Zealand has done a great job of it-- but at the same time, they have the population density of Maine, the population of Alabama, and they're an island in the corner Pacific Ocean, down near Antarctica. The inland metro area I live in in SoCal has more people in it than the entire nation of New Zealand. So it's not so clear cut as just "do what they do." I've said it before-- around 2,100 in ICU for COVID in California right now. We've seen about 20,000 deaths. There's 39.5 million people here. In terms of infections, 96.4% of Californians haven't gotten it. In terms of preventable deaths, I kinda think that a 99.9995% survival rate is pretty good.

Seattle Forrest

Are you saying that if people weren't locked up at home, roommates would go to restaurants and stores together and that would protect them? If not, how is it relevant to compare these things?

1979schwinn 

The Virus is what it is.
In the beginning we were told to stay home for 2 weeks that turned into nine months. We even got a Federal check.
Most of us complied and schools shut down. The initial warning was, if we do not, 2 Million people would die, (flatten the curve).
The virus is what it is. I beat the Grim Reaper out of another day.

mstateglfr 

Ok...but you didnt actually answer the initial question.
I can guess that you dont think 'the lockdown' was the best approach, but you dont actually say one way or the other.

1979schwinn 

No body knows, we did flatten the curve.
There is no guide book for this. It was Dr. Fauci advise at the time.
Maybe we can learn from this. The virus is what it is, we are all in this together.
These are the cards we were dealt.

1979schwinn 

Federal guide lines, Bush Admin., called for Contact Testing and Tracing and in the beginning we were not prepared (still not on tracing).
Our hospital infrastructure was already crowed and un prepared. The lockdown allowed us a time to try to try to catch up. We are still learning on this.

Stadjer

Spain, France and Italy are examples of countries that have doen pretty tough lockdowns but they don't do better than countries with soft approaches. Air travel always gets a special treatment and is a very big factor in spreading the virus again to countries who had little left of ti.

Maybe, but I don't know why we should look for easy explanations. You could also argue that people with immigration background are more often without a job and therefore should be less exposed. Both are besides the issue because it's matter of managing risks, both known and unknown risks. When you're relying on people's regular immune system for not having the health care system flooded 'stay home' seems a dumb advice. Work from home but go for a walk in the daylight seems much more sensible.

There's the number of exposure to potentially contagious people but there's also the degree of exposure. If everybody stays home all time it's almost a guarantee all roommates or members of the family will get it, and people still have to get groceries and still have some exposure moments to infect other. But that's only a speculative explanation why hard lockdowns don't seem to do very much.

I believe whe should start accepting that it's not like government control over peoples lives equals control over the virus. Maybe governments just have little unfluence over the spread despite and variations in spread are much more down to factors outside government control?

noisebeam

'Lock-downs' work best with government support, not with just government control. In the US we got neither.

Hypno Toad

Do the lockdowns work? Yes! And they are only needed because some people fail to understand the issue and follow expert guidance.

Check out Minnesota stats, the two lines on the right show increasing levels of shutting down actives and business.

Seattle Forrest

You didn't answer the question. Do you think people are safer eating at restaurants than being at home as you implied? Where do you suppose people go after the restaurant?

Seattle Forrest

For the most part hospital infrastructure is for profit. There are a lot of not for profit hospitals but they're still on a budget. The way to maximize profits or to maximize the impact of donor funds is to reduce expenses like empty beds and idle nurses. This isn't going to be an easy thing to fix given the paradigm they operate under.

Stadjer

The pub? I get your point but the idea that the spread stops by locking people in their houses has to be wrong judged by the results. Also in other measure, there's hardly a reasonably expected effect. That doesn't mean it doesn't help but it's not control.

Trevtassie

Oh for FFS, what drugs are you yanks on**********?? The results clearly show that lockdowns work very, very, very effectively to stop the spread when properly done, backed by contact tracing. What you call lockdowns in the USA are some half arsed window dressing, mostly because half the population seems to have lost their minds and can't keep it in their pants, metaphorically speaking. Proper lockdowns can reduce caseload to zero very quickly, and it turns out the economy recovers quite quickly because people get their confidence back fast once they realise they aren't gonna die or get really sick. The state of Victoria in Australia has controlled exponential growth twice so far (after outbreaks spread by workers from quarantine hotels- yeah, there you go, that's how you control a pandemic, nobody gets into the country without going through testing and quarantine)..

Stadjer

[QUOTE=Trevtassie;21827158]Oh for FFS, what drugs are you yanks on**********?? I'm not a yank and I only smoke red hashish that was harvested by sending naked virgins running through the fields at full moon and scraping it from their sweaty bodies with an ebony spatula, and only on some weekends, thank you.
Besides the way Australia has enforced it, there are examples of lock downs that seemed to work as well as non lock downs that seemed to work. If positive tests decrease steeply after a lockdown it works and if it doesn't the lockdown wasn't hard enough, same with other measures. It's a bit like feeling your way in the dark because there are so many other (possible) factors like the weather and not just the seasonal temperature, behaviour on the unavoidable contact occasions, social isolation behaviour, ventilation, air pollution and the regular immune system. All over Europe you see governments operating a control panel of measures like they have control on the spread, but it turns out they haven't. Sometimes they get lucky, sometimes they don't and often they overreach.by just beeing tougher because nothing else worked.

I believe governments should try different things from the perspective that they have influence but not control, and not every increase or decrease is down to their measures taken.