COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It's not clear to me that we're going down. If you start at March 31 and fit a curve to now it has a negative slope, yes. If you start at April 9, it's almost flat.

There are places where the curve is gradually going down and places where it isn’t.  The troubling thing is that there is no evidence to me that the lockdowns themselves are causing the curves to go down in those places.  These tend to be the places that were already hardest hit, where the decline could purely be attributable to progress toward herd immunity. (I.e. If the curve has declined 25% in NYC, that could just be because 25% of NYC residents were already infected and are now immune.)

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

As much as anything, how much time and resource has been wasted on doing massive studies of some of these drugs on the basis of them being hyped of the back of dodgy or methodologically unsound initial studies?

Too much, and Gilead has been at the centre of it all after they claimed that remdesivir was a wonder drug that would definitely work.

When did Gilead claim this?  Do you have a link?

I haven’t heard the company making any statements, except that the results of a large multisite trial would be available in the next week or so.  Seems like everyone should just wait for that.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Another day another 30k new cases on the table

Given the findings of the serology studies, I’m not sure the number of new cases is particular relevant anymore.  I imagine we could find 300k new cases per day if we looked hard enough.  Spain’s reported cases jumped 50% today compared to recent days, but they also just started counting serologic positives as new cases.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/04/24/miami-dade-covid-19-screening-program-infection-rate/

The early findings of SPARK-C, the Surveillance Program Assessing Risk and Knowledge of Coronavirus, a public-private partnership designed to determine the actual rate of COVID-19 exposure in the community found 6% of participants tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, which equates to 165,000 Miami-Dade County residents.

This figure directly contrasts with testing site data.

As of Friday afternoon, there are 10,700 positive cases, according to the Florida Department of Health, suggesting that the actual number of infections is potentially 16.5 times the number of those captured through testing sites and local hospitals alone.

Researchers say they are “95% certain that the true amount of infection lies between 4.4% and 7.9% of the population, or between 123,000 and 221,000 residents. These results are similar but not identical to other recent, non-randomized testing programs that have been conducted throughout the United States.”

I think at a certain point even the most skeptical people need to acknowledge that a critical mass of serology studies have been done, and that they all point to the same fundamental conclusion: we are severely undercounting covid cases by somewhere around a factor of 10.

It’s true that none of these studies is perfect.  But they are diverse in their sampling pool and methodologies, and their flaws are pretty idiosyncratic.  There might be reason not to trust any single one in isolation.  But taken together, they paint a very convincing picture.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gilead-exclusive/exclusive-trial-of-gileads-potential-coronavirus-treatment-running-ahead-of-schedule-researcher-says-idUSKCN2262X3

I thought we were supposed to get results of the severe symptom patients half of their trials next week, in advance of Gilead’s quarterly earnings report Thursday.  Now this is saying mid-to-late May?  I’m not sure how that is “ahead of schedule”.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Uhh...is this not massively concerning to any of the lockdown forever folks?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in-idUSKCN2270RX?taid=5ea4b672e153850001937bf4&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

For those who don’t want to click the link, officials in four state prisons tested almost all their prisoners for the virus.  In one more than 80% tested positive.  Among all who tested positive, 96% were asymptomatic. 

I’m not sure how any of this is surprising given what we know about the contagiousness of the virus and its prevalence from all the serology studies that we’ve seen in the past two weeks.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

So it appears that being infected with COVID-19 does not confer immunity from getting infected again. This means that we'll never be free of it.

What evidence do you have of this?
There have been almost 3 million confirmed cases of covid-19, including almost a million confirmed recoveries.  As far as I know, there have been no confirmed cases of independent reinfection after recovery.  If infection didn’t confer immunity, shouldn’t there be thousands of such cases?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Uhh...is this not massively concerning to any of the lockdown forever folks?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in-idUSKCN2270RX?taid=5ea4b672e153850001937bf4&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

There are far fever 60+yr olds in Prison, than outside.

5% inside vs 21% outside.




https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/09/prisons-are-facing-aging-populations-too/379972/

Right, this shows how the virus is so much less harmful to young and healthy people than it is to older people.   

And thus it also suggests that a strategy differentiating between how we treat the vulnerable versus healthy population would be much more effective at reducing over deaths than our current strategy of blanket lockdowns.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

When we will see active cases start to drop?

Increasing case numbers are a good thing right now, because they indicate increased testing.  We’re still probably only catching maybe 10% of the actual cases that are out there.

Decreasing deaths is what we should really be looking for.  Though I’m skeptical we’ll see significant drops while our current strategy is in place.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can we just ponder how amazingly wrong the 60k projection was. At current rate, 60k gets crossed within the next three days with no end in sight.

Yes, all of the “flatten the curve” models that were used to justify our strategy have proven incredible wrong in their most basic assumptions.  Plenty of people were was willing to acknowledge how little we know about the virus.  But no one was willing to acknowledge that this might mean we would need a “Plan B” if the lockdowns didn’t work.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can we just ponder how amazingly wrong the 60k projection was. At current rate, 60k gets crossed within the next three days with no end in sight.

Yes, all of the “flatten the curve” models that were used to justify our strategy have proven incredible wrong in their most basic assumptions.  Plenty of people were was willing to acknowledge how little we know about the virus.  But no one was willing to acknowledge that this might mean we would need a “Plan B” if the lockdowns didn’t work.

And what do you think "Plan B" would look like?

In broad terms, in areas where the healthcare system is not at risk of breaking down, implement very strict quarantines for vulnerable members of the populations while encouraging the rest of the population to be deliberately infected with an attenuated strain of the virus (though probably not all at once).  People should be quarantined after infection for a few weeks, but issued an immunity certificate after recovery that frees them of all restrictions.  You can lift the quarantines on the vulnerable population once herd immunity to achieved.

This is basically what is going to happen anyway in heavily affected countries, it’s just going to take a lot longer and result in more deaths if the general lockdowns continue.

What is your Plan B if the lockdowns fail?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can we just ponder how amazingly wrong the 60k projection was. At current rate, 60k gets crossed within the next three days with no end in sight.

Yes, all of the “flatten the curve” models that were used to justify our strategy have proven incredible wrong in their most basic assumptions.  Plenty of people were was willing to acknowledge how little we know about the virus.  But no one was willing to acknowledge that this might mean we would need a “Plan B” if the lockdowns didn’t work.

And what do you think "Plan B" would look like?

In broad terms, in areas where the healthcare system is not at risk of breaking down, implement very strict quarantines for vulnerable members of the populations while encouraging the rest of the population to be deliberately infected with an attenuated strain of the virus (though probably not all at once).  People should be quarantined after infection for a few weeks, but issued an immunity certificate after recovery that frees them of all restrictions.  You can lift the quarantines on the vulnerable population once herd immunity to achieved.

This is basically what is going to happen anyway in heavily affected countries, it’s just going to take a lot longer and result in more deaths if the general lockdowns continue.

What is your Plan B if the lockdowns fail?

Well, I certainly don't think the lockdowns can last longer beyond June, and we need to have a framework for reopening the economy. I would support something similar to the "Safer At Home" approach which Polis has proposed in my state, with a focus on maintaining social distancing, promoting sanitary practices, regulating store capacity/safety, and encouraging (but not mandating) the use of masks and the like. We need to continue expanding our testing apparatus, and I would support the idea of quarantining and contact tracing those who are ill with the virus, particularly those in nursing homes and among the most vulnerable populations. I will readily acknowledge that we haven't had the most effective response to this pandemic, not by any means, and the incompetence of our President is a factor in that. Hence, we should be willing to embrace new solutions if need be.

I guess my reaction to that is if the lockdowns haven’t caused infection and death rates to fall significantly by June, why would lifting some of those restrictions work any better?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can we just ponder how amazingly wrong the 60k projection was. At current rate, 60k gets crossed within the next three days with no end in sight.

Yes, all of the “flatten the curve” models that were used to justify our strategy have proven incredible wrong in their most basic assumptions.  Plenty of people were was willing to acknowledge how little we know about the virus.  But no one was willing to acknowledge that this might mean we would need a “Plan B” if the lockdowns didn’t work.

And what do you think "Plan B" would look like?

In broad terms, in areas where the healthcare system is not at risk of breaking down, implement very strict quarantines for vulnerable members of the populations while encouraging the rest of the population to be deliberately infected with an attenuated strain of the virus (though probably not all at once).  People should be quarantined after infection for a few weeks, but issued an immunity certificate after recovery that frees them of all restrictions.  You can lift the quarantines on the vulnerable population once herd immunity to achieved.

This is basically what is going to happen anyway in heavily affected countries, it’s just going to take a lot longer and result in more deaths if the general lockdowns continue.

What is your Plan B if the lockdowns fail?

Well, I certainly don't think the lockdowns can last longer beyond June, and we need to have a framework for reopening the economy. I would support something similar to the "Safer At Home" approach which Polis has proposed in my state, with a focus on maintaining social distancing, promoting sanitary practices, regulating store capacity/safety, and encouraging (but not mandating) the use of masks and the like. We need to continue expanding our testing apparatus, and I would support the idea of quarantining and contact tracing those who are ill with the virus, particularly those in nursing homes and among the most vulnerable populations. I will readily acknowledge that we haven't had the most effective response to this pandemic, not by any means, and the incompetence of our President is a factor in that. Hence, we should be willing to embrace new solutions if need be.

I guess my reaction to that is if the lockdowns haven’t caused infection and death rates to fall significantly by June, why would lifting some of those restrictions work any better?

Because it's not solely about making the rates go down to zero. Nobody was expecting that; just look at all of the people who don't care and are congregating en masse despite these measures being in place. It's about controlling it so that it doesn't continue to scale exponentially, which we have.

Now that that's worked, people like you are questioning its effectiveness on a complete misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do and what it has done.

Is this manageable ad infinitum? Absolutely not, and especially not with this government that refuses to support its people, unlike other countries like Canada. Nevertheless, the repercussions of prematurely declaring it done and resuming as normal will come.

So you’re saying the goal is to keep the rate of new infections and deaths where they are?  Until when?  What happens in June when we still have 2,000 people dying every day?

And FWIW, this is NOT the goal reflected in any of the models or “flatten the curve” memes.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Can we just ponder how amazingly wrong the 60k projection was. At current rate, 60k gets crossed within the next three days with no end in sight.

Yes, all of the “flatten the curve” models that were used to justify our strategy have proven incredible wrong in their most basic assumptions.  Plenty of people were was willing to acknowledge how little we know about the virus.  But no one was willing to acknowledge that this might mean we would need a “Plan B” if the lockdowns didn’t work.

And what do you think "Plan B" would look like?

In broad terms, in areas where the healthcare system is not at risk of breaking down, implement very strict quarantines for vulnerable members of the populations while encouraging the rest of the population to be deliberately infected with an attenuated strain of the virus (though probably not all at once).  People should be quarantined after infection for a few weeks, but issued an immunity certificate after recovery that frees them of all restrictions.  You can lift the quarantines on the vulnerable population once herd immunity to achieved.

This is basically what is going to happen anyway in heavily affected countries, it’s just going to take a lot longer and result in more deaths if the general lockdowns continue.

What is your Plan B if the lockdowns fail?

Well, I certainly don't think the lockdowns can last longer beyond June, and we need to have a framework for reopening the economy. I would support something similar to the "Safer At Home" approach which Polis has proposed in my state, with a focus on maintaining social distancing, promoting sanitary practices, regulating store capacity/safety, and encouraging (but not mandating) the use of masks and the like. We need to continue expanding our testing apparatus, and I would support the idea of quarantining and contact tracing those who are ill with the virus, particularly those in nursing homes and among the most vulnerable populations. I will readily acknowledge that we haven't had the most effective response to this pandemic, not by any means, and the incompetence of our President is a factor in that. Hence, we should be willing to embrace new solutions if need be.

I guess my reaction to that is if the lockdowns haven’t caused infection and death rates to fall significantly by June, why would lifting some of those restrictions work any better?

Because it's not solely about making the rates go down to zero. Nobody was expecting that; just look at all of the people who don't care and are congregating en masse despite these measures being in place. It's about controlling it so that it doesn't continue to scale exponentially, which we have.

Now that that's worked, people like you are questioning its effectiveness on a complete misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do and what it has done.

Is this manageable ad infinitum? Absolutely not, and especially not with this government that refuses to support its people, unlike other countries like Canada. Nevertheless, the repercussions of prematurely declaring it done and resuming as normal will come.

So you’re saying the goal is the the rate of new infections and deaths where they are?  Until when?  What happens in June when we still have 2,000 people dying every day?

The goal is to keep these unfortunate mortalities as low as possible for as long as possible to give time to develop a vaccine so that we can finally defeat this thing, once and for all.

If by June, we have kept it to 2,000 people dying every day (given how infectious and malicious it is in spreading), then that's unfortunately the best we could do.

The big difference here is this administration did not make use of the ample time it had to prepare. We could have stopped the leak while the water level was an inch off the floor. Instead, we ended up with a flooded basement and a sealed door that's leaking into the main floor, but at least it has been stopped there.

The administration’s response has been unfathomably incompetent.  I said on this board that Democrats should have made Trump’s resignation a prerequisite to supporting any stimulus package.  Doing this might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  But no one on either side has been willing to do what is necessary to get rid of him, so I’m not sure how complaining about Trump’s response now helps us going forward.

Going forward, 2,000 deaths per day is NOT the best we could do.  We can’t just live under quarantine with 2,000 deaths per day for the next year or more waiting for a vaccine.  This is ~1 million deaths.

We can do better if we differentiate between people who are highly vulnerable (because they are old or immunocompromised) and people who are not vulnerable at all (because they have already been infected and recovered).  It would open up the country faster (although certainly not immediately) and result in far fewer fatalities over time.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The administration’s response has been unfathomably incompetent.  I said on this board that Democrats should have made Trump’s resignation a prerequisite to supporting any stimulus package.  Doing this might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  But no one on either side has been willing to do what is necessary to get rid of him, so I’m not sure how complaining about Trump’s response now helps us going forward.

Going forward, 2,000 deaths per day is NOT the best we could do.  We can’t just live under quarantine with 2,000 deaths per day for the next year or more waiting for a vaccine.  This is ~1 million deaths.

We can do better if we differentiate between people who are highly vulnerable (because they are old or immunocompromised) and people who are not vulnerable at all (because they have already been infected and recovered).  It would open up the country faster (although certainly not immediately) and result in far fewer fatalities over time.

In what world does increased contact lead to fewer fatalities? And what about those of us who could easily survive it, but who also live with someone who might very well not?

And what about potential long term effects for those who do survive it, like permanent lung damage, which has already been documented?

It would lead to fewer fatalities by more effectively engineering who gets infected.

Right now, the lockdowns aren’t working, and so we are slowly headed toward herd immunity any, just very slowly and very bluntly.  Everyone had basically the same chance of getting infected, whether they are old and vulnerable or now.

This is crazy.  People with various risk conditions probably have 1000x the chance of dying from the virus as a young and healthy person.  

If 75% of the population is inevitably going to get infected, it would be much better to efficiently determine who that 75% will be and then strictly quarantine the remaining 25% until herd immunity is reach than to slowly let chance determine who will protected through blanket lockdowns.

With respect to the question of what happens if you live with someone vulnerable, I would stress that deliberate infection should be voluntary.  If you want to quarantine yourself with a vulnerable person who is dependent on you, that is fine.  If you want to get infected and then separately quarantine until you have recovered, that would be fine too.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The administration’s response has been unfathomably incompetent.  I said on this board that Democrats should have made Trump’s resignation a prerequisite to supporting any stimulus package.  Doing this might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  But no one on either side has been willing to do what is necessary to get rid of him, so I’m not sure how complaining about Trump’s response now helps us going forward.

Going forward, 2,000 deaths per day is NOT the best we could do.  We can’t just live under quarantine with 2,000 deaths per day for the next year or more waiting for a vaccine.  This is ~1 million deaths.

We can do better if we differentiate between people who are highly vulnerable (because they are old or immunocompromised) and people who are not vulnerable at all (because they have already been infected and recovered).  It would open up the country faster (although certainly not immediately) and result in far fewer fatalities over time.

In what world does increased contact lead to fewer fatalities? And what about those of us who could easily survive it, but who also live with someone who might very well not?

And what about potential long term effects for those who do survive it, like permanent lung damage, which has already been documented?

It would lead to fewer fatalities by more effectively engineering who[/i[ gets infected.

Right now, the lockdowns aren’t working, and so we are slowly headed toward herd immunity any, just very slowly and very bluntly.  Everyone had basically the same chance of getting infected, whether they are old and vulnerable or now.

This is crazy.  People with various risk conditions probably have 1000x the chance of dying from the virus as a young and healthy person. 

If 75% of the population is inevitably going to get infected, it would be much better to efficiently determine who that 75% will be and then strictly quarantine the remaining 25% until herd immunity is reach than to slowly let chance determine who will protected through blanket lockdowns.

With respect to the question of what happens if you live with someone vulnerable, I would stress that deliberate infection should be voluntary.  If you want to quarantine yourself with a vulnerable person who is dependent on you, that is fine.  If you want to get infected and then separately quarantine until you have recovered, that would be fine too.

I just told you that the lockdowns are working earlier, and you start this response by saying that they aren't. It's like what I explained yesterday was thrown in the trash.

On the rest of this, particularly the deliberate infection (with a focus on that part about potential permanent damage that I referenced earlier, and you chose to ignore), it's a hard pass from me and practically most sane people out there who put their health over production for "the economy."

IIRC, you said that the lockdowns are working to slow the exponential growth of the virus, but not fast enough to lead to the eradication of the virus.

I agree with this.  But if the virus is slowed but not eradicated, the end point is still herd immunity, with the majority of the population getting infected.   It’s just a question of how quickly you get infected.  

It seems to me that you can either stay in your house indefinitely and still get infected at some random point in the next year, or choose to get infected now (or at time most convenient for you).    

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

It’s likely higher than 0.3% overall, but probably lower than 0.1% among the young and healthy.

Take a look at the Berkeley study I linked to in Post 603 of this thread.
They estimate overall mortality in Northern Italy at about 0.6%, but mortality among those 40-49 at around 0.02%. (They don’t estimate it for anyone younger because there aren’t enough deaths to make an estimate.)

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

This would likely be skewed towards people who think they will survive. Why would an 85 year old ever volunteer for this?

I don’t really think we need people to be voluntarily infected just to get a good grasp on the death rate.  We’re already pretty close to reasonable estimates for most categories.  And we can get much better just from improved serology studies. 

One thing I would really like to see is a serology study of infants and children.  Most of the ones released so far deliberately exclude children.  I know the number of deaths among children is extremely low, but this could partially be the result of lower infection numbers.  This seems especially relevant for infants, who are especially vulnerable to many diseases, but may be less likely than other groups to get infected since they tends to be much more socially isolated than adults.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/otis_reid/status/1254510389225807872

Good thing America is nothing like The Bronx.

This would be completely consistent with an IFR of 0.6% and an infection rate of 25%.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If people can't develop immunity, as there have been hints of since the beginning, this may end up fundamentally changing our society. Obviously things won't remain exactly as they are now forever, but there will be significant change from the old "normal."

There have been literally zero hints towards this.

'No Evidence' Yet That Recovered COVID-19 Patients Are Immune, WHO Says
Recovered coronavirus patients are testing positive again. Can you get reinfected?
Questions raised over COVID-19 reinfection after Japanese woman develops illness again

There's tons more, going back to at least mid-March, if my memory serves.

Don't call me a liar. I make sure my opinions are stated as such, and unlike many others, I don't make up information to suit my argument.

Anyway, my point was that we may see masks become part of daily life, as well as other things I can't think of but would be different than how life is now to keep the reproduction number down while the least vulnerable return to work. Life will be different.

Did you read the second two articles, as opposed to just the headlines?
Both of them include quotes from several doctors describing why an independent reinfection in these scenarios is very improbable, in contrast to several other much more likely explanations.

As far as I know, we still have yet to see a single confirmed case of independent reinfection.  Does this prove that reinfection is impossible?

Logically, no.  
But this seems to be kind of like an “All ravens are black” problem.  If you see one white raven, you’ve proven the statement is false.  If you see a thousand consecutive black ravens, you still haven’t logically proven the statement is true.  But you might be reasonably convinced it is very likely to be true by induction.

So far, this is a case where we have seen 3 million black ravens and zero white ravens.  

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254792999080349697

Of course, not all the excess deaths are necessarily due to COVID-19.  It's likely that there are some due to other medical conditions where people sought help too late due to fear of going to the hospital.  In the other direction, there's probably also a decline in deaths due to auto accidents.  But regardless of the exact numbers, it seems clear that "official" COVID-19 deaths are an underestimate (which is not really a surprise).

I would just like to add that this probably isn't as scary as it looks because almost all of the excess mortality from COVID-19 is occurring in older age cohorts, and a lot of these people would have probably died in the next 24 months anyway.  The pandemic has just hastened their demise.  If anything, we should expect to see reduced all cause mortality for several months after the pandemic ends (as a lot of folks who would have died in that future time period ending up dying early from COVID).  

This is, of course, entirely speculative, in addition to being a rather cruel way to minimize the impacts of the virus.

It is certainly speculative with respect to individuals, and I don’t think it is accurate in the aggregate when applied to most seniors.  An otherwise healthy person in their early 70s has a life expectancy of about another 15 years.

However, it is true in aggregate when applied to nursing home patients where we have seen the greatest concentration of deaths.  The majority of nursing home patients die within six months of being admitted to the home (I’ve linked to the study below).  

If we are talking about extending restrictions for the better part of a year, most nursing home patients will have died from something else before they are lifted, likely with a much lower quality of life if they can’t see visitors or participating in most activities.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2945440/

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1254825274786668546

Good news.

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

If lockdowns worked, this decline would have happened much earlier.

Pandemics die down. People build up immunity, the seasons change, and things change.

Do you literally not understand, or simply refuse to, that the whole point of the lockdown isn't to magically eliminate the virus but to keep the numbers steady so the healthcare system isn't overwhemed?

Keep the numbers steady until when?  You mean the initial goal of the lockdown was to keep infections and death constant until a vaccine was developed?  So everyone was always planning on enforcing lockdowns for 18 months?

The fact is that this was NOT the goal of the lockdown.  If our goal was to spread infections around more evenly so that particular local healthcare systems didn’t get overwhelmed, we would have gone about this much differently.  We would have implemented stronger restrictions where we saw empirical signs of rapid growth, and weaker restrictions where we didn’t.  And we wouldn’t have discouraged New Yorkers from leaving town when the virus exploded there.  If we just wanted to reduce the burden on an overloaded health care system, we would have encouraged New Yorkers to leave to lighten the load on NY’s system and spread the virus to places where it could be better managed.

The goal of the lockdown was to reduce total infections.  That’s what all the models told us would happen.  But the models were wrong in many ways.  The models way underestimated the contagion of the virus and overestimated its lethality.  The lockdowns have almost completely failed to turn the spread negative, and by bluntly forcing a one-size-fits-all approach, they have increased the deaths that will result from the virus by failing to better protect the most vulnerable.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

If lockdowns worked, this decline would have happened much earlier.

Pandemics die down. People build up immunity, the seasons change, and things change.

Do you literally not understand, or simply refuse to, that the whole point of the lockdown isn't to magically eliminate the virus but to keep the numbers steady so the healthcare system isn't overwhemed?

The goal of the lockdown was to reduce total infections.  That’s what all the models told us would happen. But the models were wrong in many ways.  The models way underestimated the contagion of the virus and overestimated its lethality.  The lockdowns have almost completely failed to turn the spread negative, and by bluntly forcing a one-size-fits-all approach, they have increased the deaths that will result from the virus by failing to better protect the most vulnerable.

That is the exact OPPOSITE of what the models ever told anyone. The models are a function of number of cases over time. The whole point of flattening the curve is to have the same number of cases over a longer time span so that the system is not overwhelmed (see below).



The number of cases under the peak is the same over a longer period of time. Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematical functions can understand this. Your understanding of the models is flawed, and so is your argument by derivation.

You can't misinterpret information, assign it a different end game, and then call it a failure because it doesn't fit that interpretation. Please read up more on this information.

Finally, we don't have lockdowns. We have stay at home orders, which are far less restrictive, and a good number of people aren't even following them; there are some of those people even within our own forum community.

You can just glance at this model and see how wrong it was.  The model shows a symmetrical increase and decrease in cases.  That’s not what’s happening in the US, and it is not what’s happening anywhere that’s had a major outbreak.

And if you do believe this model, I guess that means that you accept that at least 70% of the population will end up being uninfected even with restrictions in place indefinitely.  So if it can be shown that the health care system will not be overwhelmed if restrictions are removed, you would be perfectly happy to do this, regardless of how much it would increase infections?

Someone should do a national poll asking the question: Would you support the current restrictions if you knew they would lead to a 70% chance of you and your family being infected?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I don’t really see how this can be interpreted as evidence the lockdowns are working.  It’s seems just as likely to me that this is an inevitable consequence of approaching herd immunity, with about 25% of NYC’s population already infected.

If lockdowns worked, this decline would have happened much earlier.

Pandemics die down. People build up immunity, the seasons change, and things change.

Do you literally not understand, or simply refuse to, that the whole point of the lockdown isn't to magically eliminate the virus but to keep the numbers steady so the healthcare system isn't overwhemed?

The goal of the lockdown was to reduce total infections.  That’s what all the models told us would happen. But the models were wrong in many ways.  The models way underestimated the contagion of the virus and overestimated its lethality.  The lockdowns have almost completely failed to turn the spread negative, and by bluntly forcing a one-size-fits-all approach, they have increased the deaths that will result from the virus by failing to better protect the most vulnerable.

That is the exact OPPOSITE of what the models ever told anyone. The models are a function of number of cases over time. The whole point of flattening the curve is to have the same number of cases over a longer time span so that the system is not overwhelmed (see below).



The number of cases under the peak is the same over a longer period of time. Anyone with a basic understanding of mathematical functions can understand this. Your understanding of the models is flawed, and so is your argument by derivation.

You can't misinterpret information, assign it a different end game, and then call it a failure because it doesn't fit that interpretation. Please read up more on this information.

Finally, we don't have lockdowns. We have stay at home orders, which are far less restrictive, and a good number of people aren't even following them; there are some of those people even within our own forum community.

You can just glance at this model and see how wrong it was.  The model shows a symmetrical increase and decrease in cases.  That’s not what’s happening in the US, and it is not what’s happening anywhere that’s had a major outbreak.

And if you do believe this model, I guess that means that you accept that at least 70% of the population will end up being uninfected even with restrictions in place indefinitely.  So if it can be shown that the health care system will not be overwhelmed if restrictions are removed, you would be perfectly happy to do this, regardless of how much it would increase infections?

Someone should do a national poll asking the question: Would you support the current restrictions if you they would lead to a 70% chance of you and your family being infected?

"You can just glance at this model and see how wrong it was.  The model shows a symmetrical increase and decrease in cases.  That’s not what’s happening in the US, and it is not what’s happening anywhere that’s had a major outbreak."

Indeed. The model is... a model... not a calculation of what's actually going to happen or is currently happening. It is a model... of a goal that we need to approximate as much as possible.

"And if you do believe this model, I guess that means that you accept that at least 70% of the population will end up being uninfected even with restrictions in place indefinitely."

Yes, the model does say that.

"So if it can be shown that the health care system will not be overwhelmed if restrictions are removed, you would be perfectly happy to do this, regardless of how much it would increase infections?"

Correct. That's the point that health experts and health economists would say: 'okay, we did what we needed to do, and we're good to go.'

"Someone should do a national poll asking the question: Would you support the current restrictions if you they would lead to a 70% chance of you and your family being infected?"

That's not the point of it at all. First of all, the model predicts that about 70% of the population will end up with COVID-19 at some point, but it does not mean that every individual has a 70% chance of being within that 70%. That's a clear misunderstanding of the data.

So the IMHE model predicted that if we implemented restrictions, there would be basically zero deaths after June 1.  How does this square with a very long "flatten the curve" model?  How does this square with 70% of the population getting infected?  Under this scenario and a 0.6% IFR, aren't about a million people going to die regardless?

Maybe we should rephrase the polling question to "Would you support the restrictions if you knew they would not reduce the total number of people infected?"

I really think people believe that the restrictions are eventually going to eradicate the virus and prevent them personally from getting infected.  If they knew the result was that they would still very likely get the virus slightly later, I don't think people's view of them would be the same.