Getting the balance right - Printable Version
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Getting the balance right - BostonCard - 08-24-2020
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-economy-pandemic-recession-business-shutdown-sweden-coronavirus-11598281419
Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall (I think), but excerpting some interesting facts:
![[Image: image.png]](https://www.evernote.com/l/ACzuFim2WOlOf52YiVmZooTRP1M9LLb8BWoB/image.png)
It's clear that opening bars was a colossal mistake given their effect on transmission above. Religious services are surprisingly ok (though there is that wedding in Maine that got 50+ patients infected and at least one person dead). Given their importance, we should invest more in finding a way to reduce transmission in food processing (maybe requiring N95 masks, for example). Schools and universities may be ok. As the article notes,
Quote:If schools don’t reopen until next January, McKinsey & Co. estimates, low-income children will have lost a year of education, which it says translates into 4% lower lifetime earnings.
Universal masking would be a brobdingnagian benefit: "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates a universal mask mandate in the U.S. could now save 5% of gross domestic product by substituting for more onerous lockdowns." The Economist, in a separate article, notes that a single American wearing a mask for a day can help avoid a fall in GDP of $56.14 (I think it is base don the same research from Goldman).
Cheap testing could help too: "Some epidemiologists and economists argue ramped-up testing could enable the economy to reopen safely without a vaccine. Mr. Romer estimates the U.S. could restore $1,000 in economic activity for every $10 spent on tests." Thus, it is particularly galling that we still don't have adequate testing.
Quote:Compared to April, “We know so much more.”
BC
RE: Getting the balance right - Genuine Realist - 08-24-2020
(08-24-2020, 08:47 PM)BostonCard Wrote: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdowns-economy-pandemic-recession-business-shutdown-sweden-coronavirus-11598281419I think it is important to note here how closely interwoven the social fabric is. I have the sense, as yet unquantifiable, that the complete lockdown of March to May was massive overkill; that we could have realized pretty much the same results with much less drastic measures, e.g., the social distancing that is becoming common practice. My belief is that the Great Beast shares that intuition - and, as a result, there is an understandable cynicism about the much less drastic and more well grounded measures on which we now insist, e.g., masks.
Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall (I think), but excerpting some interesting facts:
It's clear that opening bars was a colossal mistake given their effect on transmission above. Religious services are surprisingly ok (though there is that wedding in Maine that got 50+ patients infected and at least one person dead). Given their importance, we should invest more in finding a way to reduce transmission in food processing (maybe requiring N95 masks, for example). Schools and universities may be ok. As the article notes,
Quote:If schools don’t reopen until next January, McKinsey & Co. estimates, low-income children will have lost a year of education, which it says translates into 4% lower lifetime earnings.
Universal masking would be a of immense proportions benefit: "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates a universal mask mandate in the U.S. could now save 5% of gross domestic product by substituting for more onerous lockdowns." The Economist, in a separate article, notes that a single American wearing a mask for a day can help avoid a fall in GDP of $56.14 (I think it is base don the same research from Goldman).
Cheap testing could help too: "Some epidemiologists and economists argue ramped-up testing could enable the economy to reopen safely without a vaccine. Mr. Romer estimates the U.S. could restore $1,000 in economic activity for every $10 spent on tests." Thus, it is particularly galling that we still don't have adequate testing.
Quote:Compared to April, “We know so much more.”
BC
Most of the persons posting on this forum make their living in a manner that was not effected by the lockdown, medical practitioners, tech workers who can stay at home, pensioners (yours truly). For us, the lockdown was a massive inconvenience, but not fatal. For fellow citizens who made their living in ways that were directly impacted (your brother), philosophical acceptance is a lot harder to come by. If you had your living wiped out, your homeownership endangered, your children's education imperiled, learning that complete lockdown was not completely necessary isn't something you just shrug off. It's infuriating.
That fury shows up as a fully understandable cynicism about the protocols now being urged. IF you were wrong then, what makes you think you're right now? There's plenty of reason to blame Trump, and rightly so. But to the extent Fauci and others have lost the confidence of the public, they do share in that blame. They were cheerfully willing to inflict quite a lot more pain than might have been necessary. Mick and others wondered at the time. You pay for mistakes like that.
RE: Getting the balance right - Mick - 08-25-2020
(08-24-2020, 11:18 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote: I think it is important to note here how closely interwoven the social fabric is. I have the sense, as yet unquantifiable, that the complete lockdown of March to May was massive overkill; that we could have realized pretty much the same results with much less drastic measures, e.g., the social distancing that is becoming common practice. My belief is that the Great Beast shares that intuition - and, as a result, there is an understandable cynicism about the much less drastic and more well grounded measures on which we now insist, e.g., masks.
Most of the persons posting on this forum make their living in a manner that was not effected by the lockdown, medical practitioners, tech workers who can stay at home, pensioners (yours truly). For us, the lockdown was a massive inconvenience, but not fatal. For fellow citizens who made their living in ways that were directly impacted (your brother), philosophical acceptance is a lot harder to come by. If you had your living wiped out, your homeownership endangered, your children's education imperiled, learning that complete lockdown was not completely necessary isn't something you just shrug off. It's infuriating.
That fury shows up as a fully understandable cynicism about the protocols now being urged. IF you were wrong then, what makes you think you're right now? There's plenty of reason to blame Trump, and rightly so. But to the extent Fauci and others have lost the confidence of the public, they do share in that blame. They were cheerfully willing to inflict quite a lot more pain than might have been necessary. Mick and others wondered at the time. You pay for mistakes like that.
Kashkari of The Fed wants a drastic, six-week shutdown:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/08/feds-kashkari-advocates-six-week-economic-lockdown-to-defeat-the-coronavirus.html
Coming on the heels of the March through May devastation, I don't see how that helps things. Maybe the 19 - 23 million evictions expected by the end of September will help.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/20-million-renters-are-at-risk-of-eviction/
Incidentally, just read this morning that 60% of calls to California's unemployment insurance dept go unanswered. That surprises me. I doubt that they're taking 40% of their calls. My cousin went on unemployment and they didn't answer 43 of the 45 calls he made. That, coupled with the lack of a second stimulus tells me there's a gigantic F-U from the haves to the have nots.
RE: Getting the balance right - BostonCard - 08-25-2020
Cases are already coming down. The 7-day average of new cases peaked a month ago at 68,000/day; it is now down down to 43,000/day. Hospitalizations and deaths are behind but also starting to decline. While some states have backed off their reopening plans, and some have re-shut down some things likes bars and restaurants, no one has gone back to a lockdown, and there doesn't appear to be evidence that they should.
I think the pandemic can be successfully managed by:
1) Universal face coverings
2) Continue to close high risk activities (large gatherings, indoor activities without facemasks, etc.)
3) Shielding vulnerable populations
4) Testing and tracing as aggressively as can be done
Yes, a shutdown might further suppress the virus so that test and trace is easier and so that levels might be low enough to reopen some higher risk activities, but given the current trajectory, it is hard to argue on the necessity of another shutdown barring a third wave.
BC
RE: Getting the balance right - Genuine Realist - 08-25-2020
(08-25-2020, 09:15 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Cases are already coming down. The 7-day average of new cases peaked a month ago at 68,000/day; it is now down down to 43,000/day. Hospitalizations and deaths are behind but also starting to decline. While some states have backed off their reopening plans, and some have re-shut down some things likes bars and restaurants, no one has gone back to a lockdown, and there doesn't appear to be evidence that they should.Whether necessary or not, it ain't gonna happen.
I think the pandemic can be successfully managed by:
1) Universal face coverings
2) Continue to close high risk activities (large gatherings, indoor activities without facemasks, etc.)
3) Shielding vulnerable populations
4) Testing and tracing as aggressively as can be done
Yes, a shutdown might further suppress the virus so that test and trace is easier and so that levels might be low enough to reopen some higher risk activities, but given the current trajectory, it is hard to argue on the necessity of another shutdown barring a third wave.
BC
This veers into politics, but bears on the controversy about masks. Almost everyone who comments on the 2016 election and prophecies about 2020 ignores what I think is the most meaningful statistic of the 2016 election. This is the number of counties that Trump won (or, more accurately, the Democrats lost.) There are about 3113 counties in the United States. Of that number, Trump won around 80%, 2,626. Hilary won 487. Her electoral majority derived almost exclusively from the super-rich areas of New York and California, plus various academic enclaves. Outside of those areas, the Democrats generally got blasted.
To say 'Trump won' is a misnomer. The incredibly obnoxious Trump won in spite of himself. It's more accurate to say that vast regions of the US have lost all faith in the Democratic Party. The iconoclast Michael Lind defines the core Democratic force as the 'Managerial Elite', which dominates media, culture, and governmental authority. He sees its membership as regarding themselves as enlightened in a way that their fellow citizens are not - 'Woke'? - inhabiting cultural oases in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and various college campuses, and contemptuous of the Yahoos that dwell in the deserts that lie just beyond those borders. Of course the major media endlessly reinforces their bigotry (sic).
This gets back to Covid protocols, because - generally speaking - Lind's managerial elite can handle a lockdown far more easily than the rest of American (or European, for that matter) society. It's fairly easy for its spokespersons to blithely suggest the most extreme measures, because it's generally not as affected by them as the rest of society. And - characteristically- it will cavalierly damn those who protest that it IS too much, as ignorant, unscientific, etc.
I remain a believer in popular wisdom. My own thought is that we have actually arrived at the sort of balanced social distancing BC recommends in the post above, by trial and error, and a little of this, a little of that. It's actually not too bad a result in five months. It has not been helped by Trump's personalization of the issues - or by the tendency of the elite to dismiss the protests of those who wondered about lockdown overreach as ignorant fools.
RE: Getting the balance right - Goose - 08-25-2020
(08-24-2020, 11:18 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote: I think it is important to note here how closely interwoven the social fabric is. I have the sense, as yet unquantifiable, that the complete lockdown of March to May was massive overkill; that we could have realized pretty much the same results with much less drastic measures, e.g., the social distancing that is becoming common practice. My belief is that the Great Beast shares that intuition - and, as a result, there is an understandable cynicism about the much less drastic and more well grounded measures on which we now insist, e.g., masks.I think the "Great Beast" is reacting to the fact that despite the complete lockdown, we are still not anywhere near even "semi-normal", which was the targeted endpoint. The "Great Beast" also doesn't understand that there are tons of things we don't know about this outbreak. When Fauci, or any of the experts make a recommendation regarding policy it isn't a "fact". It is a best guess given what we know. The public doesn't want to hear that. They want a certainty that doesn't exist. Naturally, politicians don't want to tell people what they don't want to hear, so they oversell everything.
There are two big failures that have made the lockdown somewhat ineffective. First, the enforcement in the USA never drove the case load down as low as it needed to be to allow containment. We got stuck on a plateau of cases that was too high, but instead of finding and fixing the leaks, the politicians decided to reopen. Second, we didn't have the capability to do tracking and tracing on anything like the level required. Based on what I see and hear in San Mateo County, compliance is still a brobdingnagian issue as well. So the Great Beast shot itself in the foot with help from it's "brain" (the politicians).
The lack of trust in the experts is understandable, based on the overselling of their recommendations and the failure to actually do what was recommended. Masks are an example. When this started, as BC pointed out there was evidence both ways, and that masks for the general public probably weren't indicated. Now we know more about the transmission modes of the virus, masking makes sense. However, I think masks are gaining a "mystical power" with some of the "Great Beast". If only everybody wore masks, our problems would be over. That isn't so, and no expert has actually ever said that. Masks are a useful tool. How useful we really don't know, but we do know they are useful. They aren't an answer. The "Great Beast" wants an answer, and preferably a simple, easy one.
Yes, we could have produced these same inadequate results with a "lesser lockdown" in many parts of the country. In places like NY, I think the "Great Beast" realized the necessity for more drastic measures. In fact. most parts of the country got a "lesser lockdown" due to lack of compliance/short duration. Then we would still be in a situation where we are currently, no schools, no restaurants, no travel, and no end in sight. It is the latter condition that is making the "Great Beast" angry, IMHO. Sacrifices are one thing. No clear end to them is another.
Quote:Most of the persons posting on this forum make their living in a manner that was not effected by the lockdown, medical practitioners, tech workers who can stay at home, pensioners (yours truly). For us, the lockdown was a massive inconvenience, but not fatal. For fellow citizens who made their living in ways that were directly impacted (your brother), philosophical acceptance is a lot harder to come by. If you had your living wiped out, your homeownership endangered, your children's education imperiled, learning that complete lockdown was not completely necessary isn't something you just shrug off. It's infuriating.IMHO what is "infuriating" to most people is that the lockdown didn't produce the results that were expected. I don't think it is a question of "Could we have solved the problem in a less destructive manner?" (although that is a relevant question) but rather "After all this, we still are in a mess with no end in sight." Every time we even flinch, the curve goes up again. Schools open and a week later are forced to shut down. We avoided massive deaths, but still have way too many. Not very encouraging. We are stuck until some medical miracle (vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, something) saves us. The Great Beast doesn't like that at all.
RE: Getting the balance right - Mick - 08-25-2020
(08-25-2020, 10:07 AM)Goose Wrote: IMHO what is "infuriating" to most people is that the lockdown didn't produce the results that were expected. I don't think it is a question of "Could we have solved the problem in a less destructive manner?" (although that is a relevant question) but rather "After all this, we still are in a mess with no end in sight." Every time we even flinch, the curve goes up again. Schools open and a week later are forced to shut down. We avoided massive deaths, but still have way too many. Not very encouraging. We are stuck until some medical miracle (vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, something) saves us. The Great Beast doesn't like that at all.
We impoverished millions, ruined the economy, killed entire industries, threw tens of millions of people out of work with no appreciable change in infections and deaths. Don't know about y'all, but that was precisely the result I expected. The Great Beast got what was deserved.
RE: Getting the balance right - Genuine Realist - 08-25-2020
(08-25-2020, 11:44 AM)Mick Wrote:The Great Beast, the American public, possessed of zero intelligence and infinite wisdom.(08-25-2020, 10:07 AM)Goose Wrote: IMHO what is "infuriating" to most people is that the lockdown didn't produce the results that were expected. I don't think it is a question of "Could we have solved the problem in a less destructive manner?" (although that is a relevant question) but rather "After all this, we still are in a mess with no end in sight." Every time we even flinch, the curve goes up again. Schools open and a week later are forced to shut down. We avoided massive deaths, but still have way too many. Not very encouraging. We are stuck until some medical miracle (vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, something) saves us. The Great Beast doesn't like that at all.
We impoverished millions, ruined the economy, killed entire industries, threw tens of millions of people out of work with no appreciable change in infections and deaths. Don't know about y'all, but that was precisely the result I expected. The Great Beast got what was deserved.
I don't think it worked because it never could have worked. I had a link to an Economist article that discussed the fact that the European nations shut down to about 95%, whereas the US went to about 50%. BUT . . . and this is an important 'but' . . . Europe counted on American productivity to take up the slack of its own shut down. The criticisms of intellectuals, European qnd American, about the failure of US health efforts are thus hypocritical in the extreme from that perspective. (I no longer have the link).
My own thought is that the shut down in March was probably necessary, while the powers-that-be figured out what the hell was going on. But it extended far too long, and should probably have been relaxed about mid-April.
Those European nations are now trying to recover the lost economic ground, which is no small matter. Here is an Economist article that I do have at hand - https://www.economist.com/business/2020/08/02/amid-a-brutal-contraction-corporate-germany-assesses-the-damage?utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-08-03&utm_content=article-link-1
RE: Getting the balance right - 82lsju - 11-12-2020
(08-24-2020, 08:47 PM)BostonCard Wrote: It's clear that opening bars was a colossal mistake given their effect on transmission above. Religious services are surprisingly ok (though there is that wedding in Maine that got 50+ patients infected and at least one person dead). Given their importance, we should invest more in finding a way to reduce transmission in food processing (maybe requiring N95 masks, for example). Schools and universities may be ok. As the article notes,
more on the wedding in Maine from the CDC
Quote:A wedding reception with 55 persons in a rural Maine town led to COVID-19 outbreaks in the local community, as well as at a long-term care facility and a correctional facility in other counties. Overall, 177 COVID-19 cases were linked to the event, including seven hospitalizations and seven deaths (four in hospitalized persons).
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a5.htm?s_cid=mm6945a5_w#F1_down