The lockdown is expensive and may well not work. Here’s why we should try anyway(medium.com)
medium.com
The lockdown is expensive and may well not work. Here’s why we should try anyway
https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/the-lockdown-is-expensive-and-might-well-not-work-heres-why-we-should-try-it-anyway-dcd924e945e6
4 comments
Good explanation. (The article is moronic because it missed both the main reason about ventilators, and central banks are not going to help small business survive.)
I'm glad you mentioned Ebola.
The West's poorly-managed response to corona virus gives us some insight into the African experience of being overwhelmed by Ebola.
I'm glad you mentioned Ebola.
The West's poorly-managed response to corona virus gives us some insight into the African experience of being overwhelmed by Ebola.
This is incorrect, you're describing a mitigation approach which may be what is happening where you live, but many other countries are aiming for full suppression and having some success.
This story has been repeated a lot but (I am pretty sure) doesn't make sense.
It's true that the difference between good health care and totally overloaded hospitals could be a factor of two or more in the CFR.
But the difference between hospitals overloaded by a factor of ten and hospitals overloaded by a factor of twenty isn't.
If this disease has hospitalization, critical care, and death rates as high as it appears to (these rates are really hard to measure in the middle of a fast growing epidemic with inadequate testing and lots of variable lags, but we have e.g. Diamond Princess and South Korea to extrapolate from) and it is allowed to infect almost everyone, "bending the curve" until hospital capacity is not utterly overwhelmed would take years and years. And require lockdown after lockdown after lockdown to keep the case count down.
If it's worth huge sacrifices to reduce R, it has to be to reduce it to less than 1, shrink the epidemic to a manageable size, and then implement a massive testing and tracing operation which in combination with hygeine (masks!) and less costly social distancing (and eventually vaccines) hold R below 1 forever. Asian countries appear to have succeeded with this approach, so there is reason to think it isn't impossible. But without that follow up, or without reaching R<1, lockdowns can only delay the inevitable and will save a negligible number of lives.
It's true that the difference between good health care and totally overloaded hospitals could be a factor of two or more in the CFR.
But the difference between hospitals overloaded by a factor of ten and hospitals overloaded by a factor of twenty isn't.
If this disease has hospitalization, critical care, and death rates as high as it appears to (these rates are really hard to measure in the middle of a fast growing epidemic with inadequate testing and lots of variable lags, but we have e.g. Diamond Princess and South Korea to extrapolate from) and it is allowed to infect almost everyone, "bending the curve" until hospital capacity is not utterly overwhelmed would take years and years. And require lockdown after lockdown after lockdown to keep the case count down.
If it's worth huge sacrifices to reduce R, it has to be to reduce it to less than 1, shrink the epidemic to a manageable size, and then implement a massive testing and tracing operation which in combination with hygeine (masks!) and less costly social distancing (and eventually vaccines) hold R below 1 forever. Asian countries appear to have succeeded with this approach, so there is reason to think it isn't impossible. But without that follow up, or without reaching R<1, lockdowns can only delay the inevitable and will save a negligible number of lives.
Once the rate of infection is slower there is the possibility a vaccine will be developed fast enough to make a difference in the current pandemic, but that’s unlikely.
What is likely is that peak concurrent hospitalizations is lowered - once the hospitals are saturated you get an increase in fatalities for everything. Survival rates for many diseases are strongly tied to availability of treatment - even in the cases of diseases like Ebola.
It also provides time for improved treatment modes, reducing the amount of time in hospitals and the fatality rates for those there.
The core thing that people need to internalize is that these lockdowns are not designed to reduce the total number of cases.
They are there purely to try and reduce the total death toll.