Cue Vietnam, Thailand, Uruguay.
Are you just listing places that have decent covid numbers? Don’t forget most of Africa. What I was talking about was Little_Nemo’s perfect plan and how possible it would have been to implement. Mongolia was similar to New Zealand with an early hard shutdown/travel ban.
Looking at that stringency ranking website: oddly enough Uruguay stands out as one of the least stringent in South America, fwiw.
I have no idea what you’re asking here. Yes, things are getting worse in Germany, but not nearly as bad as the US. They’re getting worse in most places, because even if one country gets it under control, people travel there from other, more idiotic, countries. As someone mentioned someplace here, it’s like having a peeing section in the pool.
Anyway, whatever it is your asking can probably be answered by a Google search done by you.
Germany recorded 1200+ deaths a few days ago. Germany has about one-fourth the population of the US. If you multiply 1200+ by four, you get a number close to 5000. The number 5000 does not rate favorably compared to US daily death rates.
Now, Germany has of course not experienced numbers like that for any length of time, as the US has. At least not yet. But the shape of their curve does not look good. It does not look good at all.
I was not seeking data. I was asking you, or anyone else in the thread who thinks the whole thing can definitely be ‘managed’, to consider the trajectory Germany appears to be on.
I really wish people would acknowledge that this is about balancing different risks, and that a full and complete lockdown would likely cause more damage than Covid-19.* So any lockdown is already a balancing act of policy choices, not just science. And, we do these sorts of policy balancing all the time, including making choices we know will lead to more injuries and deaths.
For example, does anyone here ever drive above 20 mph? If no one ever did, there would be almost no pedestrian deaths (and way fewer car crash injuries and deaths). But, a trade off has been made about expediency vs pedestrian deaths. Building a skyscraper is known to result in deaths from the construction process. But skyscrapers are allowed to be built.
So, the response to Covid is not a single answer of, do what prevents the most infections with Covid. There are other, collateral consequences and concerns. For example, shutting down schools takes women out of the workforce, setting women’s careers back like nothing else in my lifetime. Some parents have no one to care for their kids when they’re not in school, but have to work to have money to live on. People die from poverty and lack of education. How Many U.S. Deaths are Caused by Poverty? | Columbia Public Health.
It’s all a trade off.
The US is in terrible shape because there has been no coherent strategy at all. But there is not one single right answer that is clearly what should have been implemented. There are a range of ways to balance things.
*A full and complete lockdown of everyone staying home with no exceptions would cause the deaths of many people requiring medical care, e.g., or having fires not put out, power outages going unrepaired, etc. If you allow medical workers and other emergency personnel to go to work, now you also need childcare workers, gas stations, public transportation workers, further support workers, etc.
…you called?
The basics of how to control a pandemic are the same whether you are on an island, an archipelago, or “a massive country at the center of global commerce.” There are obviously different challenges for different countries. For example New Zealand is “in the middle of nowhere.” It had a fraction of the ICU beds as other similar countries. Our supply chain has a big giant ocean in the middle of it. We are the gateway to many Pacific Islands and a measles outbreak in 2019 that killed 79 people had its origins from New Zealand. We aren’t even close to being able to leverage the economies of scale the United States can. America spends 42% more on heathcare than the next biggest spender. It has 40 MRI machines per million population compared to our 15.
One of the richest countries in the world that spends more on healthcare than anyone else has significant advantages over countries like New Zealand that are reliant on money and people coming in from overseas to keep our country going. It wasn’t “easier” for us to do what we did. We literally had to reinvent how we did everything.
So you misrepresent “the New Zealand contingent.” We have never argued that all America had to do was establish an absolute lockdown in February and the virus would have disappeared in a few weeks. We have argued that exponential spread is exponential spread, that the measures we used here to bring Covid under control (gold-standard contact tracing, managed isolation at the borders, regional lockdowns for incubation periods, etc) could have been used more effectively elsewhere. And what happened in Victoria Australia exemplified that. But it would have been perfectly possible to debate the particular point you were debating without bringing New Zealand into the discussion.
Its heartbreaking to see what is happening in America right now. We won’t even be getting the vaccine in New Zealand until mid/late 2021, and I’m perfectly fine with that. The only viable exit strategy for America is the vaccine. We can wait a year or longer if need be for the vaccine because there are places in the world that need it more urgently.
Little Nemo’s original plan was of course overly barbaric. I just thought New Zealand was about as close as you could get without abandoning all of society’s requirements for a few weeks.
…almost nobody, not even the famous “New Zealand contingent” have argued for a “complete lockdown with no exceptions.”
I really wish people would acknowledge that this isn’t about balancing different risks, and trying to balance peoples lives with economic decisions ultimately leads to poorer outcomes for both. To quote Katharine Murphy from the Guardian “The best strategy for economic recovery is a successful public health strategy.”
…you didn’t use New Zealand as a point of comparison. You called out the “New Zealand contingent” which, to be honest here, on these boards is essentially me. You didn’t need to do that.
100% this
While the stringency index measures intensity of response to the active threat of covid, it is essentially rubbish in usefully capturing what needs to be in place once a country has gotten Covid under control and the stringency measures can be eased off and managed at its borders rather than restaurant by restaurant.
I’ve just seen some footage of NZ’s New Years Eve celebrations - shoulder to shoulder, no mask wearing, kissing even! That’s fine because they have eliminated the virus and can wind back most of their stringency measures. Same behaviour in Old Zealand would just be throwing fuel on the fire.
New South Wales currently has an outbreak - 3 new cases yesterday. Other states have immediately shut their borders, and there is a flotilla of contact tracers racing around trying to clamp it down. While it ruined our Christmas and New Years Eve, there was a very low level of grumbling or active flouting of social distancing etc, That’s because we see what is happening around the world where dickhead behaviour by a minority provides all the space needed for the virus to spread like crazy.
There’s also a high level of trust in the Australian national and state governments (despite their best efforts in normal times to give everyone the shits) to make competent decisions based on good information. So far they’ve shown that works. That’s the other part of people accepting policy and reality - there has to be trust that if someone else makes a decision on your behalf, that it will be a sound one.
Germany appears to be on a difficult trajectory that’s still better than the US. What’s your opinion?
Because it’s a novel disease, the experts bobbled some of the messaging and information straight out of the gate. One of my favorite publications confidently stated that masks were pointless (they have since retracted).
Mature and public-minded people understand it’s an evolving situation and are willing to cut the experts some slack while they do their experting. On the other hand, some people simply hate the fact that parts of our life need expert help to figure it out, so they’ll do everything possible to ignore expert information. They would rather die following Dr. Oz than live under Dr. Fauci.
Yet they’re not satisfied to be quietly noncompliant; vice-signaling is also necessary. They need to be seen loudly flouting the rules so that… uh… I thought this would make more sense when I got to this part, but it’s just not rational behavior. Narcissism? Spite? Cussedness? You tell me.
This jumped out at me. It is a particularly American position, not shared by most ethicists, economists, and public health planners in most of the world. In my opinion (the opinion of the doctors I read and the doctors I am related too), this “American Position”, that the better is the enemy of the best, contributes to the poor public health system in the USA.
I realize that might have been a throw-away line in a particular context, but I think that the poor regard for “public health” in the American system is a contributing factor for the course of the COVID infection in the United States, so I thought it was worth calling out.
Let me be clear: my position is that
(1) most non-American ethicists, economists, and public health planners hold that “trying to balance peoples lives with economic decisions ultimately leads to better outcomes for both”
(2) there is a significant American population, including a significant number of American doctors, that hold the opposite position, as advance by the previous poster.
(3) this postulated moral position contributes to the world-leading system of individual medical care in the USA (for those who can afford it), and the 3rd-world standard of public health in the USA.
… because a system which does not balance life with economic consequences only works for those that don’t have to worry about economic consequences.
I didn’t say anyone was advocating that. I said you have to acknowledge that even a complete and total lockdown with no exceptions would be a trade-off. There is no non-trade-off position. There is no position that is the single correct balance. There is expert information, and policy choices about how to put that information to use. And I specifically pointed out that there are trade-offs of lives against lives. People will die from being rendered poor and homeless. People will die from depression.
The trade-offs of any lockdown change depending on how long it lasts. A two to four week disruption is really different from a one-year disruption.
How is it not about balancing different risks?
A complete and total lockdown with no exceptions would stop the spread of Covid-19, no question. Why don’t we do that? Because people would die from Covid-19 and from other causes, and people would starve, etc. That is, the trade-offs would be unacceptable. That is why no one is advocating that.
Of course the best strategy is a successful public health strategy. Now define the successful public health strategy.
Hint: New Zealand’s strategy is not an option now. New Zealand did the optimal thing when it did it. The question is, what’s the optimal thing now?
What do you think is the optimal strategy now, when it’s already everywhere?
I think it does involve stringent lockdowns, but not indefinite ones. It probably involves knocking the numbers back with stringent measures, and loosening up to address other issues, then locking back down as numbers rise again. Exactly what the OP complains of.
Too late to add: and the fastest possible vaccine implementation.
Thank you. I feel like there is so much magical thinking on all sides, and while it’s obvious that stuff like “it’ll all be gone by April and anyway, we can just take hydrochloroquine” is wrong, people aren’t calling out the subtler versions of it. If there really were an obvious, correct solution that results in the best outcomes for all, most countries would have found their way there already.
…just a reminder of exactly what it was you said.
If nobody is advocating a full and complete lockdown (as defined by you) then this thing that would likely cause more damage than Covid-19 won’t ever happen. And it won’t happen because almost everybody agrees that a complete and total lockdown with no exceptions would definitely cause significant damage.
Its much too late to be arguing about trade-offs. The trade offs have already been made. They were made months ago. And the countries that chose poorly have people that are going to die from being rendered poor and homeless. That will die from depression. The countries that chose to prioritize the economy, trading against peoples lives are the countries that are “shuttering schools taking women out of the workforce”, they are the countries that have “set women’s careers back like nothing else in your lifetime.” They are the countries where parent have to send children to school or else they will nave no money to live on. America is where it is because it gambled on a trade-off: and they lost.
It isn’t about balancing. Its about prioritizing. New Zealand prioritized saving lives. Then worked to mitigate the effect on the economy. The distinction matters.
You are making my point for me.
Hint: the New Zealand strategy is an option now, as can be demonstrated by the fact that I live in New Zealand and I am currently subject to that strategy as I type this into my computer.
What you probably meant to say was that the New Zealand’s strategy is not an option now for America.
I have this working theory that I apply to complex systems. The more control and clarity you have at the top of a system, the more control and clarity you have at the very bottom of that system.
It one of the key reasons why the New Zealand strategy was so effective. There were plenty of people here that advocated for less strict lockdowns, that we needed to “balance the economy with covid restrictions”, that we should open the borders and we would “just have to learn to live with Covid-19.”
But the government just ignored them. Its a feature of our parliamentary system: only a single house, proportional representation, independent electoral commission, as well as an obligation to consider the Treaty of Waitangi in all decisions, it means the lobbying and the horse trading that is all too common in the United States doesn’t happen here. As loud as the Covid skeptics got (and they got plenty loud) the government didn’t have to pay them any attention at all. They just got ignored.
From the top down our response was driven by the science and communicated to the public with precision. For the first three months the only people we were hearing from were the Prime Minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield. The Daily Briefings were so well watched they (rather cheekily) got an IMDB entry.
Compare that to America right now, and, IMHO, America is a failed state. The Federal response has been woeful. The States, without the support from the Federal government, have been left to figure things out for themselves. It would be hard enough for a Governor to manage an earthquake or a hurricane or some other natural disaster without appropriate assistance from the Federal government. So why would anyone expect them to be able to (using your words) find the correct balance between the needs of the economy and what needs to be done to control the pandemic? There are mostly career politicians, they aren’t experienced crisis managers. They are doing exactly as you suggested and they are failing exactly as I expected them to. They are trying to balance calls from the film industry and lobbyists from the food industry and the restaurant industry and from millionaires and billionaires that things need to open up. They are balancing not wanting to be labeled a “socialist” with millions of people unable to earn enough money to be able to pay the rent.
This is why the idea “we must find balance” doesn’t work. Its a false equivalence. Its “bothsiderism.” Prioritizing saving lives will save the economy. Prioritizing saving the economy will cost lives. Trying to find “balance” will result in listening to the people with the biggest privilege, the loudest voices, the biggest bank accounts, and it will cost lives.
So what do I think the optimal strategy now is?
I’ve already stated in this thread that there is only a single viable exit strategy for the US. And that’s the vaccine. So much depends on who will control the Senate. Biden has already ruled out lockdowns from his strategy. The well is well and truly poisoned at this stage. The amount of misinformation out there is overwhelming. The lockdowns most of America are used to nowhere near the level of lockdown that are effective for anything other than flattening the curve for a bit while lockdowns are still in place.
Getting the vaccine distributed as fast and as wide as possible will be the quickest and probably only way to bring the pandemic under control in America. You’ve literally run out of time for a more complex set of solutions. Supplement this with mask mandates and regional lockdowns with the states that decide to play along. But the strategy has to be kept as simple as possible.
…there were obvious and correct solutions that did result in the best outcomes. I’ve been talking about them on these very boards for months now. Break the chains of transmission for three incubation periods of the virus. Managed isolation. Gold-standard contact tracing. Genomic sequencing. Life has been back to normal for me since we finished the first lockdown since May. After 9 years of business I had the best December ever and I was able to bank enough money to be able to see me through until the start of Feb. Somebody very close to me passed away a couple of months ago and hundreds of people were able to attend her service in person without a mask in sight.
Many of us have been YELLING as loud as we can about what needed to be done. It wasn’t because there wasn’t obvious and correct solutions that results in the best possible outcomes for all. Its just that you all (as in a general “you” and not specifically you) didn’t really want to listen.