Interesting take on that, I guess. You are saying the likelihood of not being able to develop a vaccine has the same chance as a rat king rise up, the laws of physics being wrong, unicorns curing us all.
You really want to stand by that?
"There’s no guarantee any of the vaccine candidates will work.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty with vaccine development,” Lee said. “Naturally, you have to make sure the vaccine is safe. But you also have to make sure the vaccine will elicit enough of an immune response.”"
NEJM says it is unlikely a vaccine won’t be developed before pandemic ends, but I guess they just didn’t want to use your colorful descriptions of rat king, laws of physics and unicorns.
“Though it’s unlikely, if the pandemic appears to abruptly end before vaccines are ready, we should continue developing the most promising candidates to a point at which they can be stockpiled and ready for trials and emergency authorization should an outbreak recur.”
Nope, remember this is a forum where others read too, just clarifying to me and others since you though it was so important for your point. In reality we could had been at peace in 1918 and the example from the cities that locked and prevented things like public gatherings comes as valid as ever.
Cite for that? The overall point was that not having lock downs, social distancing, masks, quarantines and contact tracings would lead to the the overrun of medical systems.
I’m not going to show you, again, how wrong you are. If you really think you didn’t associate “dealing with a world war” and “being invaded” I do not have the time or energy to prove it to you. Again.
Again everyone can check that the one that mentioned the war (as it was important for the discussion on USA cities locking down) was you.
The only mention of lockdown there:
Where is that part about “epidemiologists that said we will be overrunning medical systems even if we put full lockdowns in place” What they conclude is that:
Of course, if testing is not there, like in the USA, the lockdown was used since we did not had a chance to identify who needed to be quarantined.
Is english your first language? Because I can excuse a comprehension failure of that magnitude if you’re having translation issues. God knows I can barely translate Russian/Japanese, let alone do it accurately, so I tip my hat to anyone who can hold a conversation at this level in a foreign language. If that’s the case, feel free to disregard the following
…But if not, then you are purposefully misreading what I have said, and that kills any possibility we might have of discussing together. :dubious:
Nowhere did I say that a list of obviously and exaggeratedly implausible things has “equal” probability to anything. I said hypothetical “maybe” scenarios don’t carry any weight against facts and data. You cannot appeal to a hypothetical trend reversal in lieu of presenting or refuting data, especially when you have absolutely no way to calculate the probability of your hypothetical future data trend reversal.
Quite frankly, I have watched your mental gymnastics on this thread and tried with this simple line of argumentation to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you have grossly mischaracterized everyone who has tried to speak with you to maintain your mental fiction and are now using strawmen so absurd as to be comical.
If you want a real discussion, I’m all for it, but I wont tolerate that degree of mischaracterization and gymnastics.
Yes, I said dealing with a war is one very significant difference between what was happening back then vs. now. You said you were unaware those towns were being invaded. You’ll have to do better to squirm out of that.
See the graph on page 8. It shows several curves of the number of required ICU beds vs. capacity. Every curve is well above capacity. The smallest of which is nearly 12x capacity.
I see. You took exception to “Maybe the impact will be to mortality and/or economics” (paraphrasing what I said).
You are correct, then, I did misread it. I thought you were saying “maybe a vaccine won’t be developed.”
I understand. It isn’t an unreasonable stand, at all. Yours, I mean.
There is a lot of push back to the approach Sweden is taking. The lead epidemiologist there is claiming this is the best approach for his country. 80% of the people there agree. There are internal disagreements as to whether this is the best approach or not, and certainly many external ones. It is definitively not settled what happens with a 2nd wave. I’m not sure it is even settled whether a 2nd wave will happen.
As you’ve indicated, you seem to feel some of the possible outcomes are as likely as a rat king uprising.
So we are clear, if you could enumerate which parts of this you feel are wildly unlikely I’d appreciate it.
A 2nd wave
Sweden suffering less of an impact if there is a 2nd wave
Sweden suffering less of an impact economically after the 1st wave
Sweden suffering fewer deaths/million in 1 year
Sweden having fewer deaths/million in 2 years
A 3rd wave
I’m truly trying to have a discussion here and appreciate you explaining how I missed your point about the “maybe” portion above. None of those look as unlikely as a rat king uprising to me.
Yes, they were reconfigured: QUOTE: “We’ve had to adjust what we do and how we do it, and reconfigure the ship accordingly,” he added. “But I’m very confident that we’ve taken all the requisite steps to do so and mitigated what risks we have incurred to the maximum degree possible.”
No, I didn’t advocate a massive movement. I advocated using the assets available to move patients to hospitals available as needed.
I did however cite a military cargo plane flown in to NYC during the pandemic from the Army’s 531st Hospital Center along with a video of aC-17 being converted for medical airlift. the same plane bringing in doctors could have transported patients. It wasn’t a theoretical plane.
And I believe someone else has already mentioned that they did exactly what I was talking about in this thread. They moved patients via airlift to other hospitals in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York.
In this paragraph you both assert that"you did answer the question" and then admit that “you didn’t.” A position that is entirely consistent with the rest of this thread to be sure, but I’m still unsure whether or not you are willing to sacrifice your dad to avoid bankruptcy. Its a yes or a no question: an answer outside of the binary constraints of the question are not an answer at all. So was this a “yes” or a “no?”
And of course it was a loaded question. You had just finished asking me a succession of loaded questions. Reminding you that you failed to answer my binary loaded question was entirely appropriate.
When you actually do answer my loaded binary question I will consider answering your binary loaded question.
You avoided my “binary” question about your dad because it is inconvenient for you and you keep sidestepping it because it is making my point entirely.
Do you concede that a binary approach to combating the coronavirus would lead to poor decision making and poorer outcomes for nearly everybody?
Do you understand what the word “nuanced” means, and that both this question and your entire position you’ve taken in this thread is based on a simplistic interpretation on how the world actually works?
Earlier in the thread you lamented it was “unfair to call (your) position binary.” Do you now concede that the position you hold in this thread is a binary one, and that you are unable to process what is happening with Covid-19 around the world in any other way?
Just as a point of interest: have you noticed how many people in this thread have engaged with you for a while then declared that “there is no point to continue to engage you, this conversation is over” then left the thread?
Do you think that is typical of Great Debates? Have you taken the time to look at the arguments you are presenting in this thread to see if maybe they don’t stack up?
…you literally didn’t answer my question. It was a yes or no question. This was the entirety of your post in response my post asking you that question:
What part of that response answered my question? Was it the “That is awesome” part? Or the “Lets hope it holds” bit?
You can answer it now. Is that a yes or a no?
I would completely understand if you decided to (yet again) side step my question about your dad because you feel it was a loaded question, that “no matter what I answered to that you were going to throw it back at me one way or another.” I want to assure you that I wouldn’t have done that and if you did answer the question I’m assuring you that I won’t.
But do you or do you not understand that the questions you threw at me, heck, the entire premise of the OP, is built around loaded binary questions designed so that no matter what we answer you can (and have) “throw it back at us one way or another?” For example the question:
“Would you want your family to go bankrupt to pay for your healthcare?”
How is that materially different from:
“Are you are willing to sacrifice your dad to avoid bankruptcy?”
I could give you a nuanced answer to that question (as I have already in this thread) but you would dismiss it (as you have already.) My family won’t go bankrupt to pay for my healthcare. I live in a place with socialised medicine, with social safety nets, if I lost all my income I could get the job-seekers allowance. We are a very long way away from the social safety net in our country from collapsing and if we ever got to the point where this was something to worry about then bankruptcy would be the last thing I would worry about.
So that takes your question away from the realms of reality and into the scope of a binary hypothetical with no real basis in reality. And I really have no interest in indulging you in this game-playing. I live in a place where we’ve managed to eliminate (using the term “eliminate” in a way that is accepted and used by epidemiologists) the virus from our shores, our economy is starting to open up again and we’ve done it without having to ensure the horrifying rates of death that are being experienced in the US and the UK.
So how the fuck would answering the question “Would you want your family to go bankrupt to pay for your healthcare” contribute to this debate?
Our experiences here in New Zealand should answer the questions posed by the OP. Follow the science and it will lead you to a path that will get the lockdown finished faster and the economy opened up. But this seems to be of no interest to you. Why is that?
You gave a pretty thoughtful answer to a lot of this, so I’ll try to reciprocate.
I did answer your question by saying my dad is 90 and he himself doesn’t wish to be resuscitated or any extraordinary measures taken. You later threw that back at me. Your comment clearly means you saw my answer and were intelligent enough (which isn’t a surprise, you clearly are an intelligent guy) to realize it means, no, I would not bankrupt myself to save him.
So with that out of the way, I hope you will now answer the questions I asked. If you need me to repeat them, I will.
Except, you know, you did.
So, please, kind sir, tell me how that DOESN’T indicate you knew full well what my answer was and isn’t throwing it back in my face?
Honestly, I’m not sidestepping this but in the interest of avoiding a rabbit hole and trying to keep this wall of text smaller, let’s just move on from this.
In exactly the same way you asking me about it would. You started with the question. Again, we should move on from this. Not because I find it inconvenient, but because I think it was a pointless discussion to start with. You asked, I answered (see above) and now we can move on.
The OP was about the trading of money for lives. You claimed, and still claim that is a false binary choice because it doesn’t have to be that way. You told me you’d answer my questions if I answered yours, and now I’ve answered yours. Multiple times. Now will you do me the courtesy of answering mine?
Are you asserting that there will not be a single additional life lost as a result of New Zealand moving to lower levels?
If someone in New Zealand were to say that you must stay on level 4 forever, until a vaccine is available and there is no longer any risk to anyone’s life from the virus, would you say that is a reasonable choice?
There is an old joke about Churchill at a party. He walks up to a woman and asks if she will sleep with him for 1,000,000 pounds. She says yes. He asks if she would for 100 pounds. She says, “No, what kind of girl do you think I am?” He says, “We’ve established that. Now we are just haggling over the price.”
At this point, New Zealand is haggling over the price.
Every indication is that New Zealand has done a phenomenal job in dealing with this. It is amazing. I really wish the US had the same leadership and courage to do what you’ve done. But it isn’t perfect. People are going to die in New Zealand because of the choice to lower the level. It is a sound choice and one that must be made. It isn’t a binary choice, as you say. It is a choice based on cost and benefit.
I really do understand why you and many others (everyone???) thinks the OP is a false dichotomy. I see the logic in why people are viewing it that way. There are a shit ton of better ways to be dealing with this than what the US is presently doing.
I did. Sorry about that. I looked at the tables and those indicate there can be an 81% improvement in the beds needed and 19% of ~250 > 8, so I assumed the graphs showed similar information. I can’t get the tables to match the graphs, but I only spent about 15 minutes looking at it.
Mea culpa. I screwed that one up.
On the other hand, I seem to recall IHME posting that many states would be overrun by now, and except for NY, I don’t think any where actually have been. But I can’t prove that and I’ve run out of energy to go dig it out and I’m probably wrong anyway.
So I’ll just cop to saying I was wrong that epidemiologists were predicting systems would be overrun even with lockdowns.
Sorry. I’ll try to bring better info to further discussions.
We’ve committed to a course of action. We knew we were going to get to this point because it was spelled out to us at the start of the process, which was:
-Lockdown to stop community spread
-Close the borders
-Ramp up testing and reinforce our contact tracing regime
-Begin surveillance testing in the community to look out for new outbreaks and clusters
-Lockdown through 2 incubation periods to “stamp out” community spread
-Stand down in alert levels for an additional incubation and ramp up surveillance testing
Its only after we’ve done all of that that we drop to Level 2.
The reality on the ground is that we probably did enough a couple of weeks ago to stamp out the possibility of community spread but we’ve continued with the lockdown “just to be sure”. And the overwhelming majority of NZer’s are absolutely fine with that.
You state with confidence that “People are going to die in New Zealand because of the choice to lower the level.” But I think that we’ve done everything that we possibly could have to mitigate that possibility. What more is it you would suggest that we do?
I cannot promise you that we won’t lose a life to Covid 19 once we move to a lower level. But we’ve got a process in place to identify, locate and isolate a region in the event of a new outbreak. The only new cases that we are getting (we had one new case today) are new arrivals to the country (returning citizens) that are being held in quarantine at hotels in Auckland.
So with this process in place: what leads you to believe that dropping in levels will cause people to die (I’m assuming from Covid-19)? I don’t discount the possibility and we can’t be complacent. But what sort of scenario are you imagining?
You compare us to Sweden. You say we have to wait a year, even longer, to see which approach was best.
But Sweden has something that we don’t. A massive death toll. And the science says that those people that died during the outbreak are not coming back. And the science suggests that unless Sweden changes their approach people are going to continue to die from Covid-19. I have no reason to believe that the rate of death from Covid-19 will do anything but remain relatively constant for the next few months at least. They are a million miles away from herd immunity. While we are opening up our economy Sweden will continue to exist in a “lets pretend we are open but everyone is too scared to go out anyway” zone. And eventually they will probably have to lockdown anyway. Because it will be the only way to break down the chains of community transmission.
124 people died yesterday in Sweden from Covid-19. On our worst day we lost 5 and I remember when that was announced on the live briefing I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. There is no comparison here.
So no: we aren’t haggling over the price. We’ve already paid the bill. And all I had to do was sit in my ass for six weeks.
You make a lot of really compelling arguments. Seriously. I see your points entirely. I’m an idiot, but not an utter imbecile.
You have a long way to go yet, but the progress made to date is amazing. It would certainly seem New Zealand proved a far better approach.
I won’t go so far as to declare it a complete victory yet, though. All indications are that this was a far better path, but time will have to judge that. Forests which have small burns over extended period tend to avoid major fires. New Zealand decided to quash every small burn. Perhaps they will avoid a major fire, too.
80% of Swedes think they are on the right path. Maybe they judge it differently than what New Zealand would. Their country, their choice. In the end, I guess that is what each country will need to do.
I don’t know if we can agree there are tradeoffs that are being made in each country. Each country is weighing those tradeoffs differently. Perhaps, in time, we will all agree New Zealand was the gold standard we all should have employed. Or maybe some countries will view the path they took as the best one for their situation.
There’s a very myopic view of the situation shown in this thread, the consequences of lock-downs shutting down large parts of the economy are global.
[“We need prevention, as the forecasts for food security in 2020 look bleak,” he said, emphasizing that conflicts, extreme weather, desert locusts, economic shocks and the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to push more people into acute food insecurity.
With the onset of COVID-19, an additional 130 million could be pushed into starvation by the end of 2020
“There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself,” he warned, pressing the global community to come together to defeat the disease and protect most vulnerable countries from its devastating effects. Stressing that lockdowns and economic recessions are expected to result in major income loss among working poor, he said overseas remittances will also drop sharply, hurting such countries as Haiti, Nepal and Somalia, while falling tourist receipts will damage Ethiopia, where they account for 47 per cent of total exports. Collapsing oil prices will significantly impact lower-income countries, like South Sudan, where oil accounts for 98.8 per cent of total exports.
Miguel Octavio Vargas Maldonado, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Dominican Republic and Council President for April, spoke in his national capacity, saying that food insecurity is a breeding ground for conflict
China’s representative said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the breakdown of the global industrial chain have affected Member States’ economies and food security.](https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/sc14164.doc.htm)
That’s just about food, poverty is a leading cause of death throughout the world.
What’s the point of saving X number of people with lockdowns if the knock-on effects kill many more? The point I’ve been making is that nobody, at least here, has any idea of how that will play out, but skyrocketing unemployment rates are going to increase poverty, scratch that, are increasing poverty.
…we are only talking about New Zealand because I happen to come from New Zealand. If you want to talk about “gold standard” then look at what South Korea has done with 248 deaths (but the virus is essentially eliminated) Taiwan, with six deaths, or Vietnam with zero deaths. We all did the same thing: we hit it hard and we hit it early. New Zealand gets the attention because we are a “western country.” But we really haven’t done much different from South Korea, Taiwan or Vietnam and there are plenty of things they have done better than us. And we’ve all taken a very different approach to Sweden. The evidence is clear which approach will both 1) save the most amount of lives and 2) enable the economy to start back up again quickly.
I don’t know what the obsession with Sweden is. They haven’t done well at all. Not in terms of infection rate or the death toll. And they aren’t looking that great in terms of the economyeither. This ultimately isn’t a competition. This should be about what lessons you can learn.
This thread on Twitter by Pro Publica is a great distillation on what America needs to do to “open up.” It basically repeats the same points I’ve mentioned in this thread.
I’ve snipped that that quote significantly to conform to fair use. But its well worth it to click through to read the whole thing. In New Zealand our government really excelled at point seven. They communicated clearly and constantly and I credit the communication strategy more than anything for the success we’ve had here. It compensated for some of the thing we weren’t ready for. They prepared us for Level 4 by bringing us to Level 2, then explaining what Level 3 and Level 4 would be. They told us right at the start how long things were going to last, the reason why they were going to last that long (periods of incubation) and what we needed to do to make it successful. (Stay at home as much as possible).
On the evening before we went to Level 4 the Prime Minister went on Facebook Live in her pajamas after putting her toddler to bed and answered questions as they popped up on her live feed. And she had answers for the questions. There was no deflection like you see from the politicians in America or the UK. I can’t tell you how much confidence that gave us in the process.
And then we saw the process working, in real time. By March the 20th America only had 154 deaths and we were a few days from Level 4 lockdown. Six weeks later we had 19 deaths: America is at 63,000 deaths and no sign of it slowing down. We’ve watched in real time as our curve flattened then took a nose-dive. We watched in real time our daily briefings, the “Jacinda and Ashley” show full of timely, helpful, accurate and often inspiring information whilst at the same time the President of the United States was suggesting that people drink bleach.
The lockdown is a blunt tool. We used it here to break the chains of transmission, giving us time to ramp up the testing and contact tracing. And it was an effective tool for that job because we used it early. In America much of it simply locked down too late. Locking down worked to help flatten the curve but it was a purely defensive manoeuvre because it was too late to do anything else, where as here we used it as an offensive one. But locking down on its own isn’t enough to safely start “opening up.”
And ultimately this is the biggest problem facing America. It isn’t a dichotomy between “remaining locked down” or “reopening the economy.” Its the lack of a cohesive nationwide strategy. The States had to scramble when they realized (about a couple of weeks into the crisis) that not only were the Federal government not going to play the role they normally did in a national emergency, but the Feds would take an active role in spreading disinformation and propaganda, would essentially break the normal supply chain of the national reserve, **and **they were intercepting supplies legitimately sourced and paid for by the states and passing them off to commercial operations to sell at inflated prices. You can’t look at the lockdown in isolation. Its part of a much bigger picture. States are going to remain locked down because they have few other tools to fight the pandemic.
Sweden: Early indications are definitely against them. I think it is too early to definitively say it was the wrong choice, but certainly any realistic measurement we use now would say so. The obsession with Sweden hinges on the concept of whether or not we really will need to get to 70% infection rate before this ends. If that is true, New Zealand will not be spared that and the death toll will rise there, too. But even if 70% infection rate is where we’ll need to get to, New Zealand will likely still saved lives because of better treatment options and protocols, as has been pointed out in this thread.
I’ve never hidden my disgust for how the US has handled this. It should be criminal. Thousands have died and likely thousands more will die unnecessarily. As for bleach, he was being sarcastic. Ugh… No, I don’t buy that for a minute. I was trying to be ridicule him.
