We did that. It didn’t work. I don’t know what country you live in but the United States is a nation of people who travel more than any other country. The city that got hit hardest was also the largest city in the country and it spread.
What you’re proposing isn’t going to happen again.
We tried that. It didn’t work because people blatantly ignored it. People didn’t wear masks, people didn’t stay home, people didn’t avoid large gatherings. IIRC, according to Fauci, our country was about 50% locked down while many other countries were at something closer to 95%.
Remember those pictures from other countries with empty streets (Moscow/Red Square), canals you could see the bottom of because the silt had settled (Venice), air clearer than it’s been in decades because industrial plants were shut down (India)
We didn’t do that here. We certainly slowed things down quite a bit, but not like other countries did.
…no you didn’t. You really really didn’t.
The “America is exceptional” argument really doesn’t wash. The science doesn’t change just because you think America is magically so different. Don’t make excuses. America could bring the pandemic under control if it wanted to.
It never happened a first time. America never had a national lockdown for two months. They never paid everyone to stay home for two months. It doesn’t have an effective test/trace/isolation regime. These things that you claim have already been done didn’t happen.
Every time someone (online or IRL) mentions that we just can’t do what they did in Italy or New Zealand or Australia or Sweden etc, the Onion headline about gun control/mass shootings always pops into my head. “No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”.
Well, we got that $1200 [checks calendar] 7 months ago. Are you suggesting that $50 a week isn’t enough to live on? [<-Sarcasm, just in case someone doesn’t pick up on it].
Moderating
Let’s not personalize arguments here. Discuss the facts of the matter, not the personalities of the other poster.
Colibri
QZ Moderator
I never made that argument nor do I understand your straw man. I said we traveled more than any other country.
Well all the people who lost their jobs because of it would disagree.
Oh look, daily deaths in the United States has taken a surge upward. On October 12, the 7 day average was at 713. On November 5, it hit 905. Gee, must have been all those nursing homes having Trick or Treating.
Australians likely to spend up this Christmas with consumer confidence at seven-year high
Of course, we actually took steps to contain the pandemic - a combination of closing places where people gather, mask mandates, travel restrictions, and significant government support. All over a period of about 4-5 months.
So, here in Australia, the economy can come back, much sooner than in the US. I’ll be heading to the cinemas on Saturday. Within a few weeks almost all, if not all, restrictions on domestic travel will be down.
Unfortunately, since it’s too inconvenient for Americans to, you know, follow the science, it’s going to be a long time before I can visit my family where I was born, in the US.
In the Bay Area we have plenty of ICU beds, the infection rate is increasing but far from crisis levels, and life goes on. Why? Because we shut down pretty tight at first sign of the virus, though not as tight as Banquet_Bear’s reasonable proposal. And everyone wears masks. I went to Costco this morning - the crowds were back to normal level, and everyone in that store wore a mask, with the single exception of a guy in the process of shoving a sandwich into his mouth.
Perhaps we could consider a lockdown in the areas where the virus is raging punishment for lack of masking. If business owners want to stay open, perhaps they should refuse entry to the maskless.
…yeah you did and not a straw man. Allegedly “travelling more than any other country” doesn’t change the way you control a pandemic. You just stop travelling.. We’ve heard all the arguments before. “Population density.” “Massive land borders.” “State borders.” And now you’ve added “we travel too much” to the mix. I’m not buying it. Traveling more than any where else doesn’t prevent you from locking down, setting up a national system of test trace and isolation. Every country has unique challenges. That America has unique challenges doesn’t make you special.
That people lost their jobs just demonstrates how wrong you are. They didn’t pay people to stay home for 2 months. Perhaps if they did then not as many people would have lost their jobs.
It’s not allegedly, it’s a fact. And it’s likely how it spread faster than other countries starting with the largest city in the US. It didn’t help that people in NY were encouraged to join in on Chinese New Year festivities
“We know in China so many of our loved ones are facing the challenge of coronavirus,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said before the parade, flanked by state and local officials. “But we stand together,” he said. “No matter what’s thrown at us in this city, we are united.”
…“facts”, depending on context, and depending on application, can be subjective. The only facts that we have here are an assertion from you. If you would like to provide the numbers (in comparison to the rest of the world) then we could see how those numbers apply here, and if those numbers were actually relevant.
However we don’t need to do that. Because this right here:
Simply shows that you have forgotten what it is you were trying to prove to me. You asked me:
I replied:
It was a quick response. I was typing on my phone. I could elaborate if you wish. But you responded by telling me:
But you didn’t do that. So you can’t claim it didn’t work.
How do I know you didn’t do that?
Because you’ve literally just told me that. You said " the United States is a nation of people who travel more than any other country." Then you said " it’s a fact. And it’s likely how it spread faster than other countries starting with the largest city in the US. It didn’t help that people in NY were encouraged to join in on Chinese New Year festivities.
So here’s the thing about lockdowns.
In lockdowns you stop people travelling.
If NY were encouraging people to join in on Chinese New Year Festivities then they weren’t locked down. If state borders were open, if people were spreading Covid all over the country faster than anywhere else then you weren’t locked down.
This really isn’t rocket science. Lockdowns did happen in many parts of the US. But the goals of the lockdown dictated the stringency of the lockdowns.
In America (like many parts of the world) the goal of the lockdown was to flatten the curve in order to prevent health services being over-run. This, by and large was successful. But the strategy is problematic. Especially if the lockdowns are not particularly stringent (in comparison to how lockdowns were applied in other parts of the world).
Because (and I’m sure you would agree) lockdown fatigue is a real thing. And if the goal is to just to flatten the curve then the only way to keep the curve flat is to keep the lockdown in place.
Its one of the reasons America has struggled. when lockdown restrictions are removed the curve goes back up again. This leaves you with few options. And if you don’t have an effective test-trace-isolation regime in place when you start to lift lockdown restrictions it sets you up for disaster.
In New Zealand (where I live) and places like Victoria in Australia our lockdowns (our first and Victoria’s second) had different goals. It wasn’t just about flattening the curve. It was about breaking the chains of transmission.
What does that mean? It means giving Covid-19 nowhere to go. It means effectively starving it of hosts so that you can eliminate the virus from community spread.
What Victoria proved was that the New Zealand’s early success wan’t just an “accident of geography.” At one stage they were having hundreds of infections a day. Now they have gone 12 straight days with no new Covid cases.
The base idea is a very simple one. Covid has a life-cycle of about two weeks. If everybody remained in place for two weeks, not moving, the virus has nowhere to go and simply dies out. You’ve broken the chain of transmission.
But in the real world you can’t keep everyone in place. People need food. Hospitals need to continue to treat people. The supply chain needs to keep supermarkets topped up. So a two week lockdown wouldn’t be long enough.
In New Zealand we lockdown at the strictest levels (Level 4) for about six weeks. The government paid businesses (and the self-employed, like me) money to cover 80% of wages so that everybody would stay home. The application process for this couldn’t have been more simple. Five questions on an online form. One of those questions was “what is your bank account number.” The other was a statutory declaration to state that everything you said was true (it was.) The money was deposited in my bank account before I even got the email to tell me that my application was accepted: it was that quick, it was that pain-free.
We watched the infection rate climb. And then it began to fall. Then about a week after the rate began to fall people began to die. But at the end of that six weeks there were no new cases.
We dropped from Level 4 to Level 3 for about another three weeks, then we dropped down the levels from there to where we are now: at Level 1. And for the most part everything is back to normal. You can go to parties. You can go to sports events, go to intimate dinners, attend a conference. There is no mask mandate and almost nobody is masked up.
The only difference is at the borders. Only New Zealanders and essential workers are allowed to enter the country and they must remain in Managed Isolation Facilities (4-5 star hotels) for two weeks (unless they refuse to get tested, in which case they are required to stay for four weeks.) Everybody gets tested on day 3 and and 13. New Zealanders are free to leave the country but must go through managed isolation on return (and there is a waiting list).
Our test-trace-isolation system since the first lockdown is very effective. We had a second major outbreak in August. We ramped up testing from a few hundred tests a day to hundreds of thousands of tests in a week. The local contact tracing teams contacted 100% of all close contacts. If people got infected with Covid-19 then they (along with family) were moved into Managed Isolation facilities to better manage their care. Auckland escalated to Level 3 restrictions and the rest of the country to level 2. The outbreak was bought under control in a couple of months. Since then we’ve had about 5 “mini-outbreaks” at the borders, all of them managed early because of our systems and limited to only the people that got initially infected with no escalation in the alert levels.
So when you said that
Are you really sure that “you did that?”
Because it doesn’t look like you did that to me.
I’m realistic. Can the Divided States of America do exactly what we did here? No, I don’t think so. Its too late, America is to divided, the well has been poisoned. I think a “circuit-breaker” style lockdown might be needed after Biden is (hopefully inaugurated) to bring the infection rate under control. A two week nationwide stringent lockdown wouldn’t lead to elimination. But its chaos out there. And it might just be enough to bring a bit of clarity without being overly long. Biden might just be able to sell something like this. He won’t win over all the states, but hopefully enough to make a difference.
And hopefully by then the vaccine will have shown itself to be effective and safe and you can start distribution.
They went into lockdown after the virus hit them.
Which is why I said we’re not going back to it.
Not to be rude but New Zealand has half the population of the city of New York and 300 times area of it. More people probably travel in and out of New York than all of New Zealand. Cities like NY with subways were more likely to spread it. it was a tsunami in the making.
The horse was out of the barn before before the door was closed and the lockdowns we went through didn’t work. People still need to eat and that means people need to work to make that happen and that means interstate travel.
We’re not China and are not going to weld people’s doors shut. It’s that simple.
…and New Zealand weren’t locked down when Maynard James Keenan sang live on stage in February with Covid 19.
Except you are already there. States going into and out of various states of lockdown. Opening up then closing back down again. I know some people in America (young, healthy) who only leave the home to shop and for nothing else. It doesn’t matter if states do or don’t implement formal lockdowns. People are locking themselves down.
Not to be rude but America isn’t fucking special. We’ve heard all of this before. I’ve just talked about this. Its an excuse. Not everywhere in America is New York. Hawaii is a group of islands island, one fifth the population of New Zealand, 270,000 square kilometre to 28,000 square kilometres. Yet Hawaii has 16,000 cases (compared to our just under 2000 cases) with 221 deaths compared to our 25.
How does size and land area change the equation?
The answer is it doesn’t. Because that isn’t how it works. Covid is raging through big cities and small, through suburbs and rural areas. It doesn’t discriminate.
Stop people from moving and interacting and the virus can’t find new hosts. Do it long enough and you break the chain of transmission.
It really is that simple.
If more people probably travel in and out of New York than all of New Zealand then you stop people moving in and out of New York. Do it for long enough and you break the chain of transmission.
And its not like I’m just a random person on the internet telling you all of this. From today:
Its like he plagiarized what I just wrote here. Except he didn’t. Because Dr Osterholm is simply following the evidence, following the science.
You barely locked down, each state, each city, locked down differently. There was no national lockdown. You didn’t pay everyone to stay home for two months. You didn’t set up a national test-track-isolation system.
How hard is it for you to admit that you were wrong, America hasn’tt done what I (and now Dr Osterholm) have suggested?
The US lockdowns worked for flattening the curve. They didn’t work to break the chain of transmission. They did their job. But in order to keep the curve flat you need to keep the lockdown in place. This is the fundamental flaw in the US strategy. The lockdowns did work. But the goal of the lockdowns were wrong.
And just because the horse was out of the barn doesn’t mean you can’t put the horse back in the barn again. Which is why I cited Victoria. The door was open and the horse had bolted. But they worked their asses off and got the horse back in the barn. There isn’t anything stopping America from doing the same thing.
Just because we locked down harder than America didn’t mean people were unable to eat. And the bit about “people needing to work?” Did you see the part of the plan that said “pay people to stay home?” Do you understand how that part of the plan actually works? I’ll expand on that.
You pay people.
To stay home.
Does that clear things up? You pay people to stay home. You drastically reduce interstate travel by paying people to stay home. And before you ask: yes, essential business stay open. Supermarkets. Chemists. The supply chain where appropriate. If you want to know more you could look to what we did here, or in Victoria, or any other place where lockdowns were effective in breaking the chain of transmission.
Here is Jacinda Ardern announcing the move to Level 4 back in March.
You don’t need to weld people’s doors shut to get Covid under control. There are better, kinder, ways forward. It really is that simple.
And just to point out, while it’s true the individual continental United States can’t become hermetically sealed bubbles like NZ, they don’t need to, as long as the federal government gives a shit and grows a sufficiently large carrot. It’s not about the bubble, it’s about cutting sufficient oxygen from the transmission rates. Yes, there will be lots of people traveling and gathering, and no, there’s nothing we can reasonably do to stop or punish them, but stopping those last people is not, and was never, the point.
In comparison, North Dakota makes New Zealand look like New York. Their largest city, Fargo, is smaller than the lovely little town of Tauranga. Still, North Dakota lost more people to COVID in a single day than New Zealand has lost in total.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that New Zealand, unlike North Dakota’s next door neighbor, doesn’t have a 10 day long gathering of hundreds of thousands of non-masking individuals hanging around with each other while completely ignoring social distancing, and then returning to their surrounding home states, giving it to people, who then give it to other people, etc. Home states which are now the top 5 states in the country when you count total cases per million population. That’s not just recent comparisons either. While the virus barely existed in many of these states prior to August, they have in the past couple of months passed all of the states who have been dealing with this for almost a year now. America is special, “Go Sturgis!”
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum had to plead with his citizens to not be hostile towards mask wearers back in May and to this date still hasn’t pushed a statewide mask mandate, putting confidence in his citizens to make the right decision for themselves. He also doesn’t require a self-quarantine period for long positive contacts if both parties claim they were masked at the time of the long contact. So, what do these citizens that he so trusts look like:
James Yantzer strode into a Harbor Freight Tools store in one of North Dakota’s worst hot spots for the coronavirus, brushing off a sign telling customers to wear a face mask.
“If they kick me out, I’ll go somewhere else,” Yantzer said, calling masks about as effective at blocking the virus as “stopping sand with chicken wire.” Despite the Bismarck store’s mask requirement, the 69-year-old trucking company owner wasn’t asked to leave.
“I just don’t take B.S. from people,” Yantzer said. "I rely on my own common sense.”
Maybe America is special after all (not in a good way), but it’s not innate. We can fuck this up better than anyone. Hell, we sometimes make Sweden look like rational actors here, but it’s avoidable.
To be fair, there more or less can’t be a national lockdown. Our dual-sovereignty system doesn’t really allow the Federal government to do that sort of thing- it’s not in the Constitution explicitly, which also says that any powers not delegated to the Federal government are explicitly powers of the States or the people.
That’s the main reason that the lockdown effort was so scattershot- at a minimum, there would have been 50 political entities enacting lockdowns, and some of those further delegated it to their counties/parishes, which means that say… Harris County (where Houston is) does things slightly different than Dallas County (where Dallas is), and both do it a little differently than Travis County (where Austin is) does.
Trump would have needed two things - first, to have had the lawyers figuring out how to come up with a Constitutional justification for a national lockdown that would have stuck long enough to make a difference before the States would seek to undo it (they’re pretty jealous of their sovereignty) and second, to have cared enough in the first place. Neither was done, so we ended up with a crazy quilt of varying levels of restrictions and lockdowns.
I think someone else might have been able to work with the states through diplomacy and funding. You know, leadership. To some degree, COVID counter-measures are a great example of the problem of externalities: if half a community locks down, then the whole community gets the benefit (reduced infection rates) but the locked down people pay the full cost. The more people lock down, the more the “breakouts” benefit. So the incentives are wrong. This puts a lot of pressure on governments not to be the most locked down in an area.
Another way to think of it is banker’s hours. As long as every bank closes at 4:00 PM, none of them get hurt, because no one is sniping away customers when the others are closed. Customers will figure out how to get there during the day, because they have to. But if any of them extend their hours, they all have to, which raises the cost of operation for all of them.
What I am saying is that the states might well have welcomed the chance to have some uniform guidance, to make collective agreements–in fact, early on, some states started to do just that. But it would have taken leadership at the top (and funding to help) to make it stick. But the states might well have played ball in a different climate.
Never said it was. But you seem to be under some delusion that New Zealand gets the same passenger traffic as the US. It doesn’t. By default the US is going to get more traffic from around the world.
It should be painfully obvious that a single city with more people in it than the entire nation of New Zealand is going to be exposed to more people with the virus and will expose more people to it.
We did that. Do you have a spare 6 trillion additional dollars to repeat it?
You keep repeating the same suggestion without any basis in reailty. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
