[Goose]

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.

I totally agree that New Zealand is very different than the US and that their experience doesn't tell us much about strategy for larger, non-island nations that started out with a much higher COVED-19 penetration into the population. However, the statement they have "little international traffic" is incorrect, percentage wise. Since New Zealand is as small as it is, and pretty rural, they import lots of necessary goods. They also rely on exports to pay for those necessary goods. The shutdown in international traffic affects them much more than the USA. It is true that New Zealand has little "transit through" international travel (although stopping there is a cheap way to get to Australia from the USA). However, New Zealand does have LOTS of international tourist trade, especially per capita.

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.

I don't know about the MSM and their motivations, but I believe the entire US population has pretty much all along been looking for a utopian cure/treatment. Our society is very used to some company or some organization coming up with a solution to difficult technical problems that we just expect it will happen. The idea that we all have to actively work together for a prolonged period to solve a problem is no longer in the American DNA. We expect that somebody else should fix this RTFN.

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.

That was never the goal, and I don't know of anybody who stated that. The initial need to lockdown in places like New York was generated by the fear of overloading the health care system. When that happens, the death rate increases very non-linearly. People get no care so they just die. The more general plan was to get the number of cases down to a level that we could track and trace the remaining disease and keep it under control while  re-opening and removing the lockdown. Unfortunately, we did not develop an adequate track and trace system to match the level of disease we were experiencing even after the lockdown. Whether "the hammer and the dance" was possible in the USA even if we really tried is arguable, but it is clear we didn't try very had or very quickly.

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.

I think the lockdown did work to the extent promised in Europe. Unlike the USA, they did get their number of cases down to the point their contact tracing was properly sized had a chance to work. Unfortunately, both in Europe and the USA, there are a significant number of people who do not comply with the requirements of contact tracking and tracing. They don't quarantine/isolate as required. This problem is made worse by the COVID-19 virus being contagious before symptoms occur and having a significant number of cases that remain asymptomatic. Put those two things together and it isn't possible to make "the dance" work. In the USA it wasn't possible to begin with, because we didn't drive our case numbers down to where our contact tracing capability had a prayer of working.

So instead of "the dance", we got the mill around in circles approach using some forms of social distancing, masking, and to a large extent a residual shutdown. It is probable that this approach is the only one we were capable of executing. In any case, we are apparently without other options. We will see how "good" this default approach turns out to be. Where we are in San Mateo County at this moment is not sustainable. We are going to need more economic activity to go forward. To what extent we can do that without Reff getting too big is TBD.

[Goose]

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.

I totally agree that New Zealand is very different than the US and that their experience doesn't tell us much about strategy for larger, non-island nations that started out with a much higher COVED-19 penetration into the population. However, the statement they have "little international traffic" is incorrect, percentage wise. Since New Zealand is as small as it is, and pretty rural, they import lots of necessary goods. They also rely on exports to pay for those necessary goods. The shutdown in international traffic affects them much more than the USA. It is true that New Zealand has little "transit through" international travel (although stopping there is a cheap way to get to Australia from the USA). However, New Zealand does have LOTS of international tourist trade, especially per capita.

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.

I don't know about the MSM and their motivations, but I believe the entire US population has pretty much all along been looking for a utopian cure/treatment. Our society is very used to some company or some organization coming up with a solution to difficult technical problems that we just expect it will happen. The idea that we all have to actively work together for a prolonged period to solve a problem is no longer in the American DNA. We expect that somebody else should fix this RTFN.

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.

That was never the goal, and I don't know of anybody who stated that. The initial need to lockdown in places like New York was generated by the fear of overloading the health care system. When that happens, the death rate increases very non-linearly. People get no care so they just die. The more general plan was to get the number of cases down to a level that we could track and trace the remaining disease and keep it under control while  re-opening and removing the lockdown. Unfortunately, we did not develop an adequate track and trace system to match the level of disease we were experiencing even after the lockdown. Whether "the hammer and the dance" was possible in the USA even if we really tried is arguable, but it is clear we didn't try very had or very quickly.

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.

I think the lockdown did work to the extent promised in Europe. Unlike the USA, they did get their number of cases down to the point their contact tracing was properly sized had a chance to work. Unfortunately, both in Europe and the USA, there are a significant number of people who do not comply with the requirements of contact tracking and tracing. They don't quarantine/isolate as required. This problem is made worse by the COVID-19 virus being contagious before symptoms occur and having a significant number of cases that remain asymptomatic. Put those two things together and it isn't possible to make "the dance" work. In the USA it wasn't possible to begin with, because we didn't drive our case numbers down to where our contact tracing capability had a prayer of working.

So instead of "the dance", we got the mill around in circles approach using some forms of social distancing, masking, and to a large extent a residual shutdown. It is probable that this approach is the only one we were capable of executing. In any case, we are apparently without other options. We will see how "good" this default approach turns out to be. Where we are in San Mateo County at this moment is not sustainable. We are going to need more economic activity to go forward. To what extent we can do that without Reff getting too big is TBD.