[Genuine Realist]

Trump showed himself as the absolute a$$hole he is, in the debate last night. But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

I don’t think it’s too early to opine that Trump’s leadership on the issue since March has been beyond abysmal. All he really had to do was to express confidence in the good faith and energy of medical science and the belief that solutions would be forthcoming. But he couldn’t even manage that. Somehow he managed to descend to personalities, go eyeball-to-eyeball with his foes, create enemies, blather about would be remedies, etc. All this was on display during the debate.

But that’s about it for Trump. The larger, ongoing narrative concerns the world wide societal reaction to covid. In my view, it consists of two elements - (a) the efforts of medical science to produce treatments and immunization, and (b) the development of social protocols to avoid the spread of the disease, while doing minimal harm to other social processes. Of these, the second is far more controversial. Trump’s behavior is a part of the history, but not the whole story, and, indeed, even a minor part in some respects.

The big unanswered, but unanswerable question is how much of the economic and social damage caused by the drastic shutdown of March was necessary. The issue is too heavily politicized to be resolved right now. Any definitive answer is years away. Presidential politics and the reflexive US bashing by the managerial elite completely obstruct the landscape. Europe Addressed the Crisis Correctly And American Yahoos Did Not - the usual narrative. 

To say that’s oversimplified is to put it mildly. Back in March, the idea of the drastic lockdown was to reduce the spread to manageable scale, then presumably return to business as usual. That hasn’t happened in Europe or anywhere. In Spain, an initial sluggish response caused a drastic and apparently successful, shutdown in June. Madrid became the model to which New York should aspire. But the economic stress felt by the tourist industry led to a reopening in July, that has led to a resurgence of cases. There’s a nice graph that shows the reversal of position of the two cities. . (I seem to be forced to post a link, rather than a direct insert of the image, so a link to a blog post will have to do.)

https://grealistink.typepad.com/wordplay...covid.html

A similar pattern has taken place in France, which hit all time highs for cases in early September. (The organizers of the French Open drastically cut back plans for spectator participation in response to the resurgence.) Germany was struck by a series of large protests in August over the severity of its restrictions. In essence, as US cases have begun to downtick, European cases have upticked. Meanwhile, for example, the demonized red state Atizona hit its lowest metrics in some months. Madrid has changed places with New York as positive and negative models. This link is not as easy to read as I’d like, but generally demonstrates the trends. (Take a look at the chart normalized for population.) 

And that hardly begins to exhaust the historical issues. A NYT article opines that 90% of the positive tests may be incorrectly identified as such. It is certainly entirely possible that the death totals may be politicized, with different nations and health services reacting in different ways to comorbidities.

I would expect these oscillations to continue into the near future, until some sort of stasis is reached, as a result of the combination of vaccinations or herd immunity. These European nations didn’t ‘solve’ the Covid-19 problem and move on. They took one approach to the issue, and came to various days of reckoning related to the damage done to their economic infrastructure. The push-pull is certainly not over. New York may have contained the virus more effectively than Madrid on a snapshot day in September. But the authorities are under terrific pressure from the service industry to reopen, to which it will certainly yield one of these days, after which an uptick of cases is a certainty. And so it will go.

The point is that little or none of this has anything to do with the chief executives of nations, what they did or didn’t do. It likely relates to sociometrics that are well beyond the instant analysis of op-ed thinking. It’s also complicated additionally by the probability that political divisions run along the same fault lines. 

The temptation to root all this into national or Presidential politics is natural enough. But it’s actually a type of magical thinking. Covid is as much a world changing event as collision with a Nemesis asteroid. Whatever solutions there are involve significant trade offs between economic and health issues, and drastic changes in socialisation (masks, social distancing, etc.) Nations and society are going to continue to try to balance these competing values now and into the near future, and no real hope for it.

It is going to be a long, long time before anyone can write a real history of these strange times.

[Genuine Realist]

Trump showed himself as the absolute a$$hole he is, in the debate last night. But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

I don’t think it’s too early to opine that Trump’s leadership on the issue since March has been beyond abysmal. All he really had to do was to express confidence in the good faith and energy of medical science and the belief that solutions would be forthcoming. But he couldn’t even manage that. Somehow he managed to descend to personalities, go eyeball-to-eyeball with his foes, create enemies, blather about would be remedies, etc. All this was on display during the debate.

But that’s about it for Trump. The larger, ongoing narrative concerns the world wide societal reaction to covid. In my view, it consists of two elements - (a) the efforts of medical science to produce treatments and immunization, and (b) the development of social protocols to avoid the spread of the disease, while doing minimal harm to other social processes. Of these, the second is far more controversial. Trump’s behavior is a part of the history, but not the whole story, and, indeed, even a minor part in some respects.

The big unanswered, but unanswerable question is how much of the economic and social damage caused by the drastic shutdown of March was necessary. The issue is too heavily politicized to be resolved right now. Any definitive answer is years away. Presidential politics and the reflexive US bashing by the managerial elite completely obstruct the landscape. Europe Addressed the Crisis Correctly And American Yahoos Did Not - the usual narrative. 

To say that’s oversimplified is to put it mildly. Back in March, the idea of the drastic lockdown was to reduce the spread to manageable scale, then presumably return to business as usual. That hasn’t happened in Europe or anywhere. In Spain, an initial sluggish response caused a drastic and apparently successful, shutdown in June. Madrid became the model to which New York should aspire. But the economic stress felt by the tourist industry led to a reopening in July, that has led to a resurgence of cases. There’s a nice graph that shows the reversal of position of the two cities. . (I seem to be forced to post a link, rather than a direct insert of the image, so a link to a blog post will have to do.)

https://grealistink.typepad.com/wordplay...covid.html

A similar pattern has taken place in France, which hit all time highs for cases in early September. (The organizers of the French Open drastically cut back plans for spectator participation in response to the resurgence.) Germany was struck by a series of large protests in August over the severity of its restrictions. In essence, as US cases have begun to downtick, European cases have upticked. Meanwhile, for example, the demonized red state Atizona hit its lowest metrics in some months. Madrid has changed places with New York as positive and negative models. This link is not as easy to read as I’d like, but generally demonstrates the trends. (Take a look at the chart normalized for population.) 

And that hardly begins to exhaust the historical issues. A NYT article opines that 90% of the positive tests may be incorrectly identified as such. It is certainly entirely possible that the death totals may be politicized, with different nations and health services reacting in different ways to comorbidities.

I would expect these oscillations to continue into the near future, until some sort of stasis is reached, as a result of the combination of vaccinations or herd immunity. These European nations didn’t ‘solve’ the Covid-19 problem and move on. They took one approach to the issue, and came to various days of reckoning related to the damage done to their economic infrastructure. The push-pull is certainly not over. New York may have contained the virus more effectively than Madrid on a snapshot day in September. But the authorities are under terrific pressure from the service industry to reopen, to which it will certainly yield one of these days, after which an uptick of cases is a certainty. And so it will go.

The point is that little or none of this has anything to do with the chief executives of nations, what they did or didn’t do. It likely relates to sociometrics that are well beyond the instant analysis of op-ed thinking. It’s also complicated additionally by the probability that political divisions run along the same fault lines. 

The temptation to root all this into national or Presidential politics is natural enough. But it’s actually a type of magical thinking. Covid is as much a world changing event as collision with a Nemesis asteroid. Whatever solutions there are involve significant trade offs between economic and health issues, and drastic changes in socialisation (masks, social distancing, etc.) Nations and society are going to continue to try to balance these competing values now and into the near future, and no real hope for it.

It is going to be a long, long time before anyone can write a real history of these strange times.

[BostonCard]

But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

That's not logically inconsistent.  There is a lot of evidence to show that there is not necessarily a trade-off between containing the virus and the hit to the economy, dating back to the 1918 influenza pandemic.  The bottom line is that the economy is more dependent on individual actions that government restrictions, and if the government fails to get the virus under control, people are not going to go out and spend money, regardless of whether the government lets them.  On the other hand, countries that manage to get the virus under control are able to open up more quickly, and when they do open up, the population is willing to resume normal activities.

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

[BostonCard]

But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

That's not logically inconsistent.  There is a lot of evidence to show that there is not necessarily a trade-off between containing the virus and the hit to the economy, dating back to the 1918 influenza pandemic.  The bottom line is that the economy is more dependent on individual actions that government restrictions, and if the government fails to get the virus under control, people are not going to go out and spend money, regardless of whether the government lets them.  On the other hand, countries that manage to get the virus under control are able to open up more quickly, and when they do open up, the population is willing to resume normal activities.

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

[Genuine Realist]

But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

That's not logically inconsistent.  There is a lot of evidence to show that there is not necessarily a trade-off between containing the virus and the hit to the economy, dating back to the 1918 influenza pandemic.  The bottom line is that the economy is more dependent on individual actions that government restrictions, and if the government fails to get the virus under control, people are not going to go out and spend money, regardless of whether the government lets them.  On the other hand, countries that manage to get the virus under control are able to open up more quickly, and when they do open up, the population is willing to resume normal activities.

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

My larger point is that it is simply too early to write history, and your own post is somewhat corroborative of that. i don't think it's possible to determine economic damage in a 90 or 180 day period. The determination is how much is done to the infrastructure that is irreversible, and no one knows that. Also, how much of the lockdown simply postpones a societal adjustment that is inevitable, and includes an acceptance of mortality rates that are higher than before the onset of the plague, but endurable? We are only six months into this blasted thing. 

How is this going to look to historians 50 years in the future? Or 500? History hasn't ended, as much as the millennials think so. Will they applaud the Swedens that simply took the blow, and went on  - because blows ARE coming, no matter what you do. Will they applaud the nations that locked down as the virus returned? Or see the lockdown as overkill, that led to major economic and political repercussions? Will they accept the death rate and infection rate as presently stated? Or find that they were over- or understated for short term political reasons?

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. But I don't know.

[Genuine Realist]

But the one point of interest in terms of covid is that Biden blamed him for both the covid deaths AND the damage to the economy. Obviously, that’s logically inconsistent. The bottom line is that it’s way too early to write history on covid - and the problem is exacerbated by the hysteria of Presidential politics. Essentially, the obsession with Trump and the American ‘failure’  is the gateway to magical thinking.

That's not logically inconsistent.  There is a lot of evidence to show that there is not necessarily a trade-off between containing the virus and the hit to the economy, dating back to the 1918 influenza pandemic.  The bottom line is that the economy is more dependent on individual actions that government restrictions, and if the government fails to get the virus under control, people are not going to go out and spend money, regardless of whether the government lets them.  On the other hand, countries that manage to get the virus under control are able to open up more quickly, and when they do open up, the population is willing to resume normal activities.

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

My larger point is that it is simply too early to write history, and your own post is somewhat corroborative of that. i don't think it's possible to determine economic damage in a 90 or 180 day period. The determination is how much is done to the infrastructure that is irreversible, and no one knows that. Also, how much of the lockdown simply postpones a societal adjustment that is inevitable, and includes an acceptance of mortality rates that are higher than before the onset of the plague, but endurable? We are only six months into this blasted thing. 

How is this going to look to historians 50 years in the future? Or 500? History hasn't ended, as much as the millennials think so. Will they applaud the Swedens that simply took the blow, and went on  - because blows ARE coming, no matter what you do. Will they applaud the nations that locked down as the virus returned? Or see the lockdown as overkill, that led to major economic and political repercussions? Will they accept the death rate and infection rate as presently stated? Or find that they were over- or understated for short term political reasons?

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. But I don't know.

[magnus]

How is this going to look to historians 50 years in the future? Or 500? 

Depends on who is writing that history.  Just look at the change in the stories surrounding Christopher Columbus.

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.

The current winner appears to be the country that had the most drastic of shutdowns.

[magnus]

How is this going to look to historians 50 years in the future? Or 500? 

Depends on who is writing that history.  Just look at the change in the stories surrounding Christopher Columbus.

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.

The current winner appears to be the country that had the most drastic of shutdowns.

[BostonCard]

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

[BostonCard]

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

[ATLcardinal]

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.

[ATLcardinal]

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.

[Mick]

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

Forgive the dual post, but according to Eurostat, seasonally adjusted GDP decreased by -12.1% in the Euro area and -11.7% in the EU during Q2 2020.  French GDP declined -13.8% compared to last quarter and -19.0% compared to the same quarter last year.  As noted, Sweden declined -8.6% compared to last quarter and if you compare it to the 2nd quarter of last year, Sweden's -8.3% decline is only fourth worst in the EU of 21 countries that had measureable data.  It was 8th worst of the 21 Euro countries a year ago.  By that measure, Sweden significantly improved their position relative to the other European countries.

Of the 21 European countries for which data is available, Sweden's -8.6% GDP decline from Q1 to Q2 was 8th smallest.  Finland "led" the way with a -3.2% decline, Lithuania was -5.1%.  Denmark and Latvia were -7.4% and -7.5%.  

Large, double digit declines were felt by Belgium (-12.2%), Germany (-10.1%), Spain (-18.5%), France (-13.8%), Italy (-12.4%), Cyprus (-11.6%), Hungary (-14.5%), Austria (-10.7%), Portugal (-13.9%), Romania (-12.3%) and the UK (-20.4%).  USA was -9.5%.

See page three of this release:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/...fed0230b57

[Mick]

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

Forgive the dual post, but according to Eurostat, seasonally adjusted GDP decreased by -12.1% in the Euro area and -11.7% in the EU during Q2 2020.  French GDP declined -13.8% compared to last quarter and -19.0% compared to the same quarter last year.  As noted, Sweden declined -8.6% compared to last quarter and if you compare it to the 2nd quarter of last year, Sweden's -8.3% decline is only fourth worst in the EU of 21 countries that had measureable data.  It was 8th worst of the 21 Euro countries a year ago.  By that measure, Sweden significantly improved their position relative to the other European countries.

Of the 21 European countries for which data is available, Sweden's -8.6% GDP decline from Q1 to Q2 was 8th smallest.  Finland "led" the way with a -3.2% decline, Lithuania was -5.1%.  Denmark and Latvia were -7.4% and -7.5%.  

Large, double digit declines were felt by Belgium (-12.2%), Germany (-10.1%), Spain (-18.5%), France (-13.8%), Italy (-12.4%), Cyprus (-11.6%), Hungary (-14.5%), Austria (-10.7%), Portugal (-13.9%), Romania (-12.3%) and the UK (-20.4%).  USA was -9.5%.

See page three of this release:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/...fed0230b57

[ATLcardinal]

Sweden continues to be the Rorschach test of COVID-19 strategies, with people using the experience to ‘see’ whatever position they start out with.   “The Swedish experience proves that lockdowns are a disaster!”  “The Swedish experience proves that lack of lockdowns are a disaster!”  I see plenty of articles comparing Sweden to the general EU as Mick is doing, but if you really want to use the Swedish experience as comparative proof you would look at relevant comparators.  Italy, Spain, France, etc. have nothing to do with Sweden in terms of pandemic timing, social customs, or economy.  BostonCard is spot-on -- Denmark is the most likely appropriate comparator across most axes, and with a complete lockdown that started March 11 a good policy comparator, but Norway and Finland are also useful comparators who took blunt lockdown measures.
 
The Swedish experience hasn’t been a disaster, particularly compared to the poorly managed situations in many other countries including the UK and US; and Sweden may look relatively good when all is said and done because as noted above it’s still too early to write history.  But so far Sweden provides good comparative evidence versus its peers that taking a more lax approach to the virus had as much or more economic damage than taking stringent measures (at least in the initial wave), with higher mortality.

[ATLcardinal]

Sweden continues to be the Rorschach test of COVID-19 strategies, with people using the experience to ‘see’ whatever position they start out with.   “The Swedish experience proves that lockdowns are a disaster!”  “The Swedish experience proves that lack of lockdowns are a disaster!”  I see plenty of articles comparing Sweden to the general EU as Mick is doing, but if you really want to use the Swedish experience as comparative proof you would look at relevant comparators.  Italy, Spain, France, etc. have nothing to do with Sweden in terms of pandemic timing, social customs, or economy.  BostonCard is spot-on -- Denmark is the most likely appropriate comparator across most axes, and with a complete lockdown that started March 11 a good policy comparator, but Norway and Finland are also useful comparators who took blunt lockdown measures.
 
The Swedish experience hasn’t been a disaster, particularly compared to the poorly managed situations in many other countries including the UK and US; and Sweden may look relatively good when all is said and done because as noted above it’s still too early to write history.  But so far Sweden provides good comparative evidence versus its peers that taking a more lax approach to the virus had as much or more economic damage than taking stringent measures (at least in the initial wave), with higher mortality.

[BostonCard]

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.

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.  Unfortunately, that means no indoor dining, no indoor bars, probably no movie theaters (other than drive ins) or other indoor recreational activities, and it means working from home if possible.  But it does allow a plethora of outdoor activities which are much lower risk, and even things like watching outdoor sporting events is probably fine with the restrictions on attendance.  For unavoidable, high-risk situations (like meat processing plants), you provide guidance to mitigate risks (mask, potentially even N95's, partitions, improved ventilation, and moving to decrease density).  To the extent you can supplement these measures with effective testing, tracking, tracing, and isolation to prevent asymptomatic spread, you can further suppress the pandemic.

As I've said many times before, this pandemic does not require that all transmission chains be terminated with a strict lockdown; it is manageable if you keep R(eff) at or below 1.  But that requires a sustained effort.

BC

[BostonCard]

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.

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.  Unfortunately, that means no indoor dining, no indoor bars, probably no movie theaters (other than drive ins) or other indoor recreational activities, and it means working from home if possible.  But it does allow a plethora of outdoor activities which are much lower risk, and even things like watching outdoor sporting events is probably fine with the restrictions on attendance.  For unavoidable, high-risk situations (like meat processing plants), you provide guidance to mitigate risks (mask, potentially even N95's, partitions, improved ventilation, and moving to decrease density).  To the extent you can supplement these measures with effective testing, tracking, tracing, and isolation to prevent asymptomatic spread, you can further suppress the pandemic.

As I've said many times before, this pandemic does not require that all transmission chains be terminated with a strict lockdown; it is manageable if you keep R(eff) at or below 1.  But that requires a sustained effort.

BC

[Goose]

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.

BC, why do we think that masking is really so effective? I am not saying it isn't. I am very compliant, mostly because a) it may work, b)it doesn't harm me in any way, and c) I am comfortable wearing a mask, it doesn't bother me at all. However, do we really have data that says how well it works? I know there are plenty of problems measuring this effect, and a placebo mask doesn't really exist. Any measured good effects of mask wearing could also be due to the fact that people who wear masks are more concerned with the disease and behave differently than people who do not wear masks. That said, it seems we have come a long way from "masks may be useful, but the data doesn't really support that" in February to "Masks are the answer" in September. It seems to me that social distancing has been a much more measurably certain contributor to controlling the virus than mask wearing has been at this point. When you say "Masking in public" are you saying when social distancing is impossible or in all cases?

[Goose]

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.

BC, why do we think that masking is really so effective? I am not saying it isn't. I am very compliant, mostly because a) it may work, b)it doesn't harm me in any way, and c) I am comfortable wearing a mask, it doesn't bother me at all. However, do we really have data that says how well it works? I know there are plenty of problems measuring this effect, and a placebo mask doesn't really exist. Any measured good effects of mask wearing could also be due to the fact that people who wear masks are more concerned with the disease and behave differently than people who do not wear masks. That said, it seems we have come a long way from "masks may be useful, but the data doesn't really support that" in February to "Masks are the answer" in September. It seems to me that social distancing has been a much more measurably certain contributor to controlling the virus than mask wearing has been at this point. When you say "Masking in public" are you saying when social distancing is impossible or in all cases?

[BostonCard]

The evidence for masking is copious but circumstantial and mostly observational in nature (and thus not high quality).  I wish there were a cluster randomized trial to prove (or disprove) the benefits of masking and give an estimate of the effect size.  I agree with your skeptical take on masks generally and with the position that social distancing probably does more to prevent transmission than masks.  I think we've gone from "masks may be useful, but the data doesn't really support that" to "masks are probably useful, but the data doesn't prove it".

And when I say "masking in public" I do mean it as a supplement to social distancing, not in lieu of it.  I would wear it indoors out of my house (like at a supermarket) when there are other people around even if there is mostly space to maintain 6 feet.  I would not wear it outdoors unless I was coming up on a group of people and there was a possibility of moving within 6 feet.

One speculative article that has shifted my thinking a bit is this one:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2026913

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

It is very speculative, but if this does pan out, then masking might not just protect others from asymptomatic carriers, but might protect the wearer, not just by reducing the probability of getting infected, but also by reducing the viral inoculum from an exposure and both reducing the severity of disease and spreading immunity.  It's an angle I hadn't seen before.

BC

[BostonCard]

The evidence for masking is copious but circumstantial and mostly observational in nature (and thus not high quality).  I wish there were a cluster randomized trial to prove (or disprove) the benefits of masking and give an estimate of the effect size.  I agree with your skeptical take on masks generally and with the position that social distancing probably does more to prevent transmission than masks.  I think we've gone from "masks may be useful, but the data doesn't really support that" to "masks are probably useful, but the data doesn't prove it".

And when I say "masking in public" I do mean it as a supplement to social distancing, not in lieu of it.  I would wear it indoors out of my house (like at a supermarket) when there are other people around even if there is mostly space to maintain 6 feet.  I would not wear it outdoors unless I was coming up on a group of people and there was a possibility of moving within 6 feet.

One speculative article that has shifted my thinking a bit is this one:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2026913

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

It is very speculative, but if this does pan out, then masking might not just protect others from asymptomatic carriers, but might protect the wearer, not just by reducing the probability of getting infected, but also by reducing the viral inoculum from an exposure and both reducing the severity of disease and spreading immunity.  It's an angle I hadn't seen before.

BC

[Genuine Realist]

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

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.

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. It 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.

[Genuine Realist]

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

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.

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. It 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.

[OutsiderFan]

Let's make this a lot more simple...

There is a house on fire.  Someone comes to put it out with water. Someone else comes and throws gasoline.  The truth is the house would have been lost no matter what.

We, as people, are appreciative of the "water fighters" and even laud their willingness to respond. At the same time, we scorn those who throw gasoline.

IOW, the outcome isn't as important as the ability to try doing the right thing, or at least be perceived to be doing the right thing, based on the available evidence.

[OutsiderFan]

Let's make this a lot more simple...

There is a house on fire.  Someone comes to put it out with water. Someone else comes and throws gasoline.  The truth is the house would have been lost no matter what.

We, as people, are appreciative of the "water fighters" and even laud their willingness to respond. At the same time, we scorn those who throw gasoline.

IOW, the outcome isn't as important as the ability to try doing the right thing, or at least be perceived to be doing the right thing, based on the available evidence.

[BostonCard]

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.

If you read closely, my post was not unabashed praise for New Zealand. It might have been "worth it" had the country been able to completely eradicate the virus and prevent it from coming into the country, but alas, the virus is a tricky son-of-a-bitch, and they've had ongoing, low levels of new cases since August.

This piece from the Economist's last week edition sums it up:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/0...d-19-wrong

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.

Alas, the article offers a way out of the trade-off (or, at least to optimize them):

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.

There is a way out, so throwing up one's arms and saying that its hopeless and no country can do it right is shirking leadership and responsibility.  Well-designed, targetted restrictions, testing, tracking, tracing, and isolating may be hard and it may require a lot of work to implement, but by and large we didn't even try.

BC

[BostonCard]

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.

If you read closely, my post was not unabashed praise for New Zealand. It might have been "worth it" had the country been able to completely eradicate the virus and prevent it from coming into the country, but alas, the virus is a tricky son-of-a-bitch, and they've had ongoing, low levels of new cases since August.

This piece from the Economist's last week edition sums it up:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/0...d-19-wrong

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.

Alas, the article offers a way out of the trade-off (or, at least to optimize them):

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.

There is a way out, so throwing up one's arms and saying that its hopeless and no country can do it right is shirking leadership and responsibility.  Well-designed, targetted restrictions, testing, tracking, tracing, and isolating may be hard and it may require a lot of work to implement, but by and large we didn't even try.

BC

[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.