(09-30-2020, 01:00 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I suspect that the winners are going to be those nations and societies that continued to experiment with various forms of social distancing, while resisting the impulse to drastic shutdowns. I THINK that's the US and most of the West.

(09-30-2020, 11:14 AM)BostonCard Wrote:  Consider, for example, Sweden, which is often held up as an example for not shutting their economy down in response to the virus.  Sweden has had a fatality rate of 58.3 per 100,000, which is substantially higher than its Nordic neighbors (Denmark 11.2/100,000, Finland 6.2/100,000, Norway 5.0/100,000).  Now, your point would be made if Sweden's GDP had been minimally impacted, but alas GDP in Sweden fell by 8.3% in the second quarter.  That was worse than Denmark (-7.4%), Norway (-5.1%) or Finland (-4.5%).  In other words, not only did Sweden wind up with a much worse impact of COVID-19 than its neighbors, its economy was hurt more than its neighbors.  This suggests that not only is there not a tradeoff between controlling the pandemic and economic growth, but actually there is a direct correlation between how well you control the pandemic and growth.

BC

(09-30-2020, 02:26 PM)ATLcardinal Wrote:  It is too early to write the final story, but I think we are now at least in the second half (although I do expect this to go overtime).  Still, I think there are takeaways that seem fairly clear:
1) Broad lockdowns are not necessary in the pandemic if people take it seriously and do a reasonable job of following social distancing/mask guidelines.
2) But, it is insanity in this country that many have correlated masks with lockdowns when in reality it is a reverse correlation.  Widespread mask wearing is lockdown avoidance behavior.

As to whether Trump deserves the accusation on covid deaths and economic damage, well, I think controlling the pandemic without lockdowns is the number one challenge for economic growth. And holy crap there is he on national television last night belittling masks.  Again.  Because somehow he thinks there is political advantage in it.  So yes he deserves blame for both.

(09-30-2020, 04:45 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Thoroughly agree with this.  Lockdowns should only be necessary as a last resort when you're already facing a health disaster (think Wuhan, Lombardi, Spain, the UK, New York), but under most situations should be unnecessary.  A policy that restricts large numbers of people from gathering indoors unless necessary and masking in public when possible probably gets you 90% of the way there.

Quote:SARS-CoV-2 has the protean ability to cause myriad clinical manifestations, ranging from a complete lack of symptoms to pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death. Recent virologic, epidemiologic, and ecologic data have led to the hypothesis that facial masking may also reduce the severity of disease among people who do become infected.3 This possibility is consistent with a long-standing theory of viral pathogenesis, which holds that the severity of disease is proportionate to the viral inoculum received. Since 1938, researchers have explored, primarily in animal models, the concept of the lethal dose of a virus — or the dose at which 50% of exposed hosts die (LD50). With viral infections in which host immune responses play a predominant role in viral pathogenesis, such as SARS-CoV-2, high doses of viral inoculum can overwhelm and dysregulate innate immune defenses, increasing the severity of disease. Indeed, down-regulating immunopathology is one mechanism by which dexamethasone improves outcomes in severe Covid-19 infection. As proof of concept of viral inocula influencing disease manifestations, higher doses of administered virus led to more severe manifestations of Covid-19 in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection.4

(09-30-2020, 02:15 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  I don't think that's true.  The current winners are countries that had a very robust public health system going in (in part due to SARS) and were able to maintain the pandemic under control without shutting down.  Taiwan, despite being close to the epicenter of the pandemic, remained more or less open but has seen 0.03 deaths per 100,000 and a just 1.4% fall in GDP.  South Korea and Germany have also done pretty well by that metric, though restrictions on movement and the hit to GDP in Germany has been higher.

New Zealand is a good case example of a country that imposed a harsh lockdown under the belief that it could keep the virus from entering the country.  Though it has largely succeeded (notwithstanding a recent outbreak), its economy shrank by 12.2% in the second quarter.  Some of that is not its fault; its a country very dependent on tourism and that was going to come to a screeching halt regardless, but still, for New Zealand the lockdown may have been disproportionately harsh and caused an unnecessary hit in GDP.

But by and large, I thin the hit to GDP is going to be strongly proportional to the extent of the outbreak, and less so to the degree of lockdown (once you adjust for the fact that countries with worse pandemics, like Spain and Italy were forced to lock down harder).

BC

(09-30-2020, 08:29 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  In terms of determining winners and losers, I believe that the experience of small island nations, with homogenous populations and little international traffic has next to nothing to say to the larger, populous nations of the world. (New Zealand has a population of 4.9 million, IIRC. Santa Clara County alone has a population of 1.9 million.) They seem to me to be outliers that don't signify too much to the direction of history. If the US MSM wasn't frantically looking for a utopia that solved all the problems of covid without consequence, to throw in the face of Trump, I think the basic irrelevance of the examples would be obvious.

Quote:One problem is the desire to escape a trade-off between shutting down to keep people alive and staying open so that life goes on. The right lauds Sweden for supposedly letting the virus rip while it makes a priority of the economy and liberty. But Sweden has a fatality rate of 58.1 per 100,000 and saw GDP fall by 8.3% in the second quarter alone, worse on both counts than Denmark, Finland and Norway. The left lauds New Zealand, which has shut down to save lives. It has suffered only 0.5 deaths per 100,000, but in the second quarter its economy shrank by 12.2%. By contrast, Taiwan remained more open but has seen 0.03 deaths per 100,000 and a 1.4% fall in GDP.

Quote:Blanket lockdowns like the new one in Israel are a sign that policy has failed. They are costly and unsustainable. Countries like Germany, South Korea and Taiwan have used fine-grained testing and tracing to spot individual super-spreading venues and slow the spread using quarantines. Germany identified abattoirs; South Korea contained outbreaks in a bar and churches. If testing is slow, as in France, it will fail. If contact-tracing is not trusted, as in Israel, where the job fell to the intelligence services, people will evade detection.

Governments must identify the trade-offs that make most economic and social sense. Masks are cheap and convenient and they work. Opening schools, as in Denmark and Germany, should be a priority; opening noisy, uninhibited places like bars should not. Governments, like Britain’s, that bark out a series of ever-changing orders which are broken with impunity by their own officials will find that compliance is low. Those, like British Columbia’s, that set principles and invite individuals, schools and workplaces to devise their own plans for realising them, will be able to sustain the effort in the months ahead.

(09-30-2020, 08:29 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  In terms of determining winners and losers, I believe that the experience of small island nations, with homogenous populations and little international traffic has next to nothing to say to the larger, populous nations of the world.

Quote:If the US MSM wasn't frantically looking for a utopia that solved all the problems of covid without consequence, to throw in the face of Trump, I think the basic irrelevance of the examples would be obvious.

Quote:What's going on (I think) are societies trying to find the correct equilibrium between necessary social distancing and the minimum activity you have to have to keep human society afloat. The original metaphor - drastically lockdown for a manageable period until the contagion goes away - was wildly overstated.

Quote:has generated enormous cynicism about the much more practical masks-and-six-feet social distancing protocols we are practicing now. (It's not just Trump.) In Europe, there is considerable political resentment about the lockdown, and it is only going to get more intense as it becomes apparent that it did not work to the extent promised.



I'm not going to deviate from the premise of the first post. How this will look in hindsight I don't know. My intuition is that societies with resilient economies and adaptable societies are going to be appreciated the most. I also have a hunch that the drastic lockdown will be viewed as a big mistake, because the virus was much too robust to be defeated by so crude a method. A lot depends on how quickly truly efficacious vaccines become available.