New restrictions in Hong Kong show that a single lockdown won’t be enough | Hacker News Reader

New restrictions in Hong Kong show that a single lockdown won’t be enough

theatlantic.com

73 pointsothello99 comments

The political acceptability of releasing then locking down again is likely to be very low in my view.

Friends and colleagues I speak to who haven’t followed the modelling papers etc think the point of a lockdown is to eliminate the virus entirely - not contain, not delay but eliminate entirely. There is also a very strong fear of getting the virus (many of the same people are convinced that it’s a death sentence almost akin to Ebola). I suspect that these views are very widespread and this is why the lockdowns currently enjoy strong popular support.

A release followed by a second lockdown would, I think, be viewed as an admission that the policy was a failure therefore and would also lead to a reassessment of how dangerous it really is amongst those people. Those still suffering from the economic damage from the first (which will be almost everyone) will have a lot of reasons to resist very hard and I think most governments in democratic countries would struggle to implement such a policy.

Right, if there's a resurgence I'm not participating. The cure would be worse than the disease.

I encourage susceptible populations to quarantine themselves, rather than everybody quarantining. We must work, date, and life must go on.

The cure would likely be worse than the disease for you.

Are millions of people dying an acceptable trade-off for us to be able to date?

Is it an acceptable trade off for you?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52002734

There is a legitimate debate of: Cause an Economic Depression vs X times the number of yearly deaths.

Note, the Economic Depression would indirectly cause deaths.

For example everyone agreed that not shutting down the global economic was the correct decision in regards to the Swine Flu pandemic which did cause 100,000 or more deaths.

What if it was 1 million projected deaths, 10 million or 50 million?

I honestly do not know the answer but there are individuals who specializes in these decisions.

Deaths would also worsen an economic depression. Why does everybody forget about this?

Also, an economic depression reduces air pollution which would reduce deaths.

There are lots of factors that would need to be considered. Most people I’ve seen advocating this pov are stopping at the first order analysis.

Because most people who don't advocate the POV are stopping at the zeroth order analysis, saying that you're a heartless killer if you want to consider any factors instead of just saving lives.

I can’t correct other peoples flawed thinking. But I can avoid reacting to it when that reaction makes my thinking worse.

Just because someone does something I don’t like doesn’t mean I should base my viewpoint around rejecting theirs.

Consider, sure, but we need to actually consider.

There is no model for any of this, on either side of the issue, and so the off-hand "we need to get back to dating, etc." really does look... heartless. It's just as much a zeroeth-order analysis as the other.

Fixing that would mean giving due consideration to the complexity of the situation, at least attempting to define one's assumptions/model, and being explicit about how much loss of life one is willing to accept.

With inadequate measures, this pandemic could rival the Holocaust in number of deaths. There's absolutely a difference between allowing millions to be killed rather than committing mass murder or genocide, but "let's get back to life as usual" does demand justification.

> Also, an economic depression reduces air pollution which would reduce deaths.

In the immediate term, sure. In the medium term an economic depression would weaken investment, research & development in new green technologies which would increase deaths as the effects of climate change worsen.

Or, it could spur some necessity is the mother of invention innovation for deployment.

Or a million other things could happen.

I am asking that you change your “would” to “could” to properly reflect the uncertainty.

We have a tendency to want to convince people of our views, which gets in the way of making our views more correct. This is challenging to fight, but necessary to learn.

Only through meaningful antibody mass tests can we decide the true scope of the spread, thus the real numbers of fatality rate.

Economies couldn't wait for the cure, and vaccines mostly likely won't last long.

Hopefully we'll discover the tradeoff is less severe than that, but if not it's going to have to be. I don't think you realize just how unhappy people are with being locked down; it's very likely we would see violent rebellions against an attempt to impose a second one.

When you say, very likely, can you put a percent on it so we know if you mean 20% or 80%?

I mean 80%, although I have a bias here because I'd be one of the people trying to make it happen.

Super interesting, thanks for replying!

So you are aware that your estimate is biased because of your other beliefs, but you don’t try to fix that? Mind if I ask why?

Sorry, no, I may have been unclear. I don't know that my estimate is biased - I believe I've properly adjusted for my other beliefs and desires - but I can't know for sure I adjusted correctly so it would be misleading for me to present an estimate as though I'm a dispassionate observer.

Our best guesses are the best we can do. Are you familiar with the research around the bias bias? Or the fact that smart people tend to be more subject to biases?

And this is why we need police or national guard to enforce lockdowns. And to charge people spreading the virus with felony murder and manslaughter charges, like they seem to be doing in extreme cases in Italy.

I’ve seen some toxic comments on this site before, but nothing like someone blatantly saying “I’ll happy kill those around me to avoid any inconvenience to my daily routine”.

Your emotions are out of whack. Quotation marks are used for exact quotes, and nobody is saying anything remotely like that. I'm not going to continue to dive into the reasons I disagree with your argument. But that level of emotionality is incredibly tribal and counterproductive to the pursuit of truth.

This kind of attitude is exactly my concern. You don't seem to have a shred of sympathy for the rights or motivations of the people who don't want to be locked down; you're talking about them as though they're cattle, and they'll be prodded into compliance no matter what they have to think about it. Every advocate I've seen of months-long lockdowns has had this kind of authoritarian power fantasy.

It works when people are afraid. We do have a Negativity Bias [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias] that gets amplified under stress.

You have to understand what you are trying push back on before telling someone who is scared - deal with it. It never works. Fears will just increase.

How else do you think we end up with 20 year wars, wall st bailouts, the TSA, the NSA, drone strikes, metal detectors at schools etc etc?

Dealing with people who are worried or panicking requires more imagination.

I agree with what you're saying. It's very important to send positive messages: we'll get through this, we'll soon have enough medical capacity to treat everyone who falls sick, we've weathered worse crises in the past and this one won't be the one that beats us. I try to do that and encourage other people to do it.

But it also needs to be made clear to people who propose to build a dystopian society that this is not okay. No amount of fear makes it justifiable or understandable to propose that your fellow citizens should be rounded up at gunpoint.

First part is good. Second part of "needs to be made clear" is where you will run into issues.

We have this need to get everyone to agree with our views. But firstly it's not important to get things done and secondly it's not possible because of the variety of different needs and personality traits in the population.

It's a possible approach only on Putin or Xi planet . But it breaksdown in democracies (esp given the propaganda these days) people just harden their positions(they hear your view as an ultimatum or a demand), get defensive, react, attack etc. Trust breaksdown and then there is no hope for anything nuanced.

Better option is to give people something else to focus on, something to do etc while doing everything you doing well in your first para.

It's intended as an ultimatum and a demand. At some point we have to shift from calming people to fighting back; we can't wait until soldiers are in the streets to say that months of martial law is unacceptable.

Protecting your interests (economic, freedom or whatever else) sounds like your goal. Ultimatums are the route you are choosing to get there.

And the point to remember is ultimatums work when you have established authority and power over everyone else ala Xi, Putin etc.

In democracies it doesn't work because power is distributed. To force the political/judicial/business/military/intelligence/religious/social/media circles in all parts of the country to all bend over is probably the most complicated route to choose to get to your goal.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Other users have replied to that comment in keeping with the guidelines, but your post here breaks them—for example:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The possible end result of the disease is death. Which cure is worse? A 44 year old school teacher and father of six died in my county. He went from sick to dead in a week. He had no underlying conditions that made him "at risk." By all accounts, he was active and healthy. The population of people who are at risk of death or long term lung damage are those that can be classified as "human."

I don't particularly care if people don't want to protect themselves but this isn't about selfish individuals. This is about everyone else. If, like some politicians, you are willing to "sacrifice" yourself, please do it quickly and away from populations.

I guess I'm not sure I see why we're the ones who have to move. I'd be totally fine with a proposal to construct voluntary social distancing sites for people who'd like to spend the next 18 months isolated.

Perhaps because the safety of the majority should outweigh the minority. If you'd like to risk yourself, why shouldn't you be the one to move to a high infection site? Why protect you and yours and not me and mine? Those who opt in to risky behavior (willfully accepting the possibility of being infected with a dangerous virus being the risky behavior), should be allowed to do so away from the rest of us.

This is of course why curfews are enforced by the military.

Exactly what I’m seeing. There is a perception that this is going to stop it entirely and that if we only went full national lockdown for 2 weeks, this would all be over.

Successive lockdowns and easings are probably going to continue for up to two years. Anybody arguing that the stock market or the economy is going to bounce back quickly in the next two months are either bullshitting you or deluding themselves.

No “stimulus” package is going to be effective, because you can’t use spending to stimulate an economy which has been forced to stop producing goods and services. All you will accomplish is inflation as more money chases fewer goods and services.

/r/Wallstreetbets just had someone put $775k, the person’s entire net worth, into options on the idea that the market will crash by 6/19. I am sure comments like yours give them hope that they are right.

Personally, I think that the economy will change significantly, but crash vs recover for markets is different. If suddenly workers got a fair wage and everyone got universal healthcare we could easily see the country doing a lot better while the markets would tank as this would undoubtedly be paid for by loss of corporate profits.

From a first principal perspective there is no reason why anyone should think that it is impossible for China or another country to create 2 billion vaccine doses in the next 6 months. There are plenty of reasons to say this will not happen but it isn't impossible. If it does happen everything flips very quickly.

It’s also possible no vaccine will be discovered as there are no coronavirus vaccines.

Your black-and-white answer to this also has a pretty low probability. We may not find a vaccine, however we may find ways of treating the illness making the ICU less needed.

There are no human approved coronavirus vaccines. There were a number of SARS vaccines that never finished clinical trials because SARS became pretty much a non-issue before they finished. There are also coronavirus vaccines approved for animals. Both of these things could potentially help with faster developing a vaccine for COVID-19.

From a practical perspective, there seems to be no appetite in the medical community to attempt this. We have vaccine candidates now, and the consensus opinion seems to be that we should go through the trial process. There just isn't much room to shorten the timeline without cutting corners and safety and efficacy verifications. Unless we learn something dramatic and terrifying new about this virus in the near future, I don't see what would cause this calculus to change.

Which first principles are you using to come to that conclusion?

Huh?

From first principles there is no reason why anyone should think that their won't be 2 billion vaccines tomorrow (perhaps via divine intervention). Heck, from first principles I'm not even sure Australia exists (Maybe Australia is a giant hoax. After all, i have never been there.)

Proving things from first principles is really hard. The fact you weren't able to disprove a statement from first principles is not strong evidence the statement is actually true.

Sorry, I don't believe in a magical skyman as a first principal.

Well you can of course take anything you want as a first principle, this is kind of an odd choice. Typically people take as first principles foundational things they believe to be true but know they can't prove. Things like, our memory reflects things that happened in the past or other people exist as real people and aren't just complex NPC.

Most atheists believe that there is no reasonable evidence for a deity, thus it makes no sense to believe in one (or some varation of that). In particular they believe this conclusion is rational and can be arrived at through reasoning. Taking "there is no deities" as a first principle, is in essense taking a view about religion on just "faith". My understanding is that to most atheists, this sort of appeal to faith is an anathema.

Before administering a vaccine into everybody, we must first make sure it's not worse than the disease (on average, what is a very high var).

This test takes some time, so no, not on the next 6 months. One can realistically expect it by 2022, if we are willing to rush and accept some risk.

By the way, 6 months is how long it takes to create a batch of flu vaccines.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fpo4y5/brot...

That's a dumb bet. If the system crashes odds are pretty high they aren't getting paid.

The economy is going to change, for sure. But different verticals are going to react differently to this state of intermittent lock-downs. Travel-related industries (hotels, restaurants, airlines, oil) are going downwards. Food delivery and gym@home equipment is going to sky-rocket. At the end of the day, it's a gamble to state where overall GDP or stock-market is ending, but over time increased air-born disease risks are going to facilitate new industries to come to life, and old ones to offset. Just like it always happened.

Like Warren Buffett says, "From a standing start 240 years ago, Americans have combined human ingenuity with a market system to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers...". There is nothing to suggest this is suddenly going to stop moving forward, even as we adapt to these new realities.

I’ll just give one example of how things will change — massive amounts of women are going to leave the workforce. Schools and day cares are not going to be reliable for the foreseeable future and women are more likely to quit their jobs and stay home if that becomes necessary.

There are significant second order effects (and 3rd, 4th degree effects and so on) that are difficult to foresee and accurately simulate. For example, just to continue on your train of thoughts, the number of average children in existing young families is going to go up, which is going to increase food consumption and, potentially decades later, construction activities in real estate.

Why would young families suddenly have more children?

There are various memes floating around about how there's going to be a surge of kids conceived during this quarantine/social distancing times.

In short, it seems likely people are going to have more sex when they are stuck at home.

OTOH, I know people with children who are going crazy. I don't they are encouraged to have more children.

> I know people with children who are going crazy

I am going crazy, but my kids are also learning an absolute ton from having all this 1:1 attention from someone who is totally invested in them. I've seen big strides from each of them. Their character is really coming out.

I'm one to look for silver linings; this is surprisingly one of them.

Most people are desperately looking to the past for guidance on what the future will bring.

The same reason that there are spikes in child births 9 months after a long snowstorm.

Something I saw on Twitter the other day:

"in 9 months there will be a baby boom, entirely consisting of firstborn children"

> the number of average children in existing young families is going to go up

Intuitively, you'd expect that, but the data from previous epidemics show the opposite effect:

- http://www.populationassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/CAD_...

- https://ifstudies.org/blog/will-the-coronavirus-spike-births

>either bullshitting you or deluding themselves

Was this the best possible way to treat an intellectual disagreement? Surely people can disagree with you without being liars or delusionary?

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Surely people can tell you the Earth is flat without being delusional or a liar.

At some point, when the stakes are so high, willful ignorance is harmful and should be called out.

The difference is that flat earthers reject objective evidence. This is someone disagreeing over projections about the future. And, to be frank, nobody has a fucking clue how to estimate the medium term effects of this.

If nobody has a fucking clue then anyone who is certain that the economy will recover in 2 months is either deluded or bullshitting themselves.

But we do know certainly that we will only be hitting the peak of infections sometime in April in states that were much more proactive than the median. It is extremely unlike that things will clear up, say, by Easter. Those who are so optimistic are innumerate and don't understand exponential functions.

Yes, certainty in future economic projections is delusional, but it’s a delusion that is well received by society. Humans prefer confidence over competence, and abhor uncertainty. Right now, we have a lot of uncertainty.

First part is mostly correct.

Second part, you're dead wrong in two areas. Manufacturing of essential goods continues in haste. And, stimulus is essential for people have lost their jobs and need to buy food. So take your theoretical keyboard economics degree and leave it at the door. Let's take away your source of income, ability to work and see how you feed your family.

It will keep people in their houses in the very short term, but it won’t fix the overall economic problems if the economy is frozen for a year or more.

For the next 2 years? You understand that there are antivirals being tested as we speak and vaccines in trial for a 12 month release right?

There is another study from Harvard released this week saying the same thing about multiple surges of containment:

[1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927586

But of course. If you intentionally prevent ppl from being infected then they remain susceptible. Short of a vaccine, you can't put it off forever. Those ppl can't hide forever.

This is an expected - or should be - result of "flatten the curve." FTC is not about the virus per se, it's about the healthcare system. That is, to not exceed the volume the healthcare system can handle.

Put another way, an increase in the number of positives isn't necessarily a bad thing. If if stays towards the 80% who are asymptomatic or low risk then the more the better. They'll get it. Recovery and will be past it. The key number - the number the media should be emphasizing - is the positives in high risk individuals. That's the curve we don't want to see spike.

Furthermore, it's where those happen. One-thousand as 50 in 20 cities is not the same as 500 in one city (e.g., NYC) and the other 500 distributed evenly elsewhere.

The aggregate numbers make great - but crap - headlines. The understanding is in the details.

It's amazing how many people copy-paste knowledge without doing the most basic logical checks on it.

For example, nobody yet explained to me how flattening the curve is gonna make much difference when say NYC has 3,000 ventilators, and the average time on a ventilator is 20 days. If 1/100 of NYC's 8 million population need a ventilator that'd still be 80,000 ventilators needed.

So flattening would reduce the deaths to 74,000 instead of 77,000?

[To be clear I'm not saying this math is exact. But I am saying I am owed the actual math by people who want me to change my life over it]

8.000.000 by 100 is 80.000.

And if the governor is able to somehow organize another 30000 ventilators in 3 weeks, your death count goes down from 77k to 44k. Or 11 times 9/11.

The improvement isn't quite that high, because people sick enough to need a ventilator are often going to die even if they get one, but I agree with your point that increasing medical capacity is the high-leverage play here.

What are you saying was copy and pasted? I'm suggesting what you're suggesting: better details, not aggregates that are meaningless.

Why wont the world stay at home together for 3 months? Lets start apr1! Then by july there will be no more covid19. And lots of other infectious diseases too, i imagine..

If only there was a way to suspend the entire economy.

Technically this is clickbait - the title's implication is that we'll have more lockdowns in the future, while the article only talks about how the current lockdown will ebb and flow. If something is lifted and reinstated its really the same lockdown, not a new one.

I was hoping to read an article about the potential of other coronaviruses or threats that may cause global lockdowns in the future.

Ir's arguably less clickbaity than saying that the lockdown is going to last for the next two years, which is the alternative framing.

Baity title - the actual article was more interesting than the sensationalist baity title suggested

Quite an inflammatory title too. Don’t tell me what to do.

“ Hong Kong and Singapore were early examples of places that were able to contain the spread of the virus”

coughTAIWANcough

Again for the people in the back:

T•A•I•W•A•N

Being an island nation is definitely an advantage in this regard.

not for UK evidently

Which evidence? Do we have a continental control UK where results are the same?

In my parents county, there is one village with 9 cases out of 800 inhabitants that has been put on full lock-down, nobody is allowed to leave the village. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of hiking trails in the area and somehow, some of the locals have gotten 'lost' in their backyard, only to reappear in the next towns supermarket.

China woo this again. Not sure n ext round will be 20 years long if they continue their eating and Gov social control.

This is terrible thinking: South Korea and other places have not locked down and they have effectively contained the virus.

We are doing Trillions of damage they are avoiding. Given the costs we should be spending billions studying what they are doing.

We need to understand more effectively how the virus is spreading and focus on those spots, not this lockdown stuff which is too costly.

Some basic policies like mask-wearing for everyone in public, gloves, and masks in restaurants, and on subways busses, N95 maybe for anyone in crowded area jobs, anyone with any sickness immediately self-isolates etc..

These total shut-downs seem like a 'home vacay' for now but it will start causing serious pain very soon.

Edit: I should add by 'trillions in damage' I'm not worried about shareholders; this will have serious consequences for people. Many millions are losing their jobs, millions will be evicted, foreclosed, homeless, jobless, and otherwise, have their lives severely disrupted. FYI in America no job = no healthcare. At some point, the shelves stop being stocked. We need to be smart.

From the article: HK did in fact not effectively contain the virus.

"In recent days, this semblance of normalcy has vanished. The number of confirmed cases here has ticked upward at a much quicker pace than before, worrying health experts. The government reversed course on its easing of restrictions, sending workers back home, closing parks and city facilities, and reiterating calls for social distancing."

Sorry, I meant to wite South Korea.

It's actually even worse than that on the ground in HK right now.

Ban on non-residents. Groups of more than 4 people are broken up. A growing skittish-ness about "foreigners", (thought to be the people who brought the second wave of infections to HK). Etc etc.

HK and Tokyo are not examples to be emulated, they are examples of what we should be trying to avoid.

"HK and Tokyo are not examples to be emulated, they are examples of what we should be trying to avoid."

???

Japan has one of the lowest rates of infection/million and data shows that spread is considerably slower.

Assuming the data is not fiction, obviously, we should be emulating them, not ignoring them.

FYI they also have not 'locked down'.

They're literally stopping the virus while not destroying their economies, while we are putting millions out of work while the virus expands.

It's likely, unfortunately, that the Tokyo data is fiction. There's been a significant spike in new cases starting immediately after the Olympics were officially delayed.

I share your skepticism, that said, it'd be nary impossible to hide hospitals overflowing with patients etc. there'd be too many whistleblowers in the medical community. So we'll have to keep an eye on Japan.

I agree, there's something much bigger at play here. They've been telling us NOT to wear masks.

Why not put everyone in masks and gloves instead?

There’s nothing bigger at play. The reasoning is obvious. It’s because there are not enough masks available and it’s more important that healthcare workers get them right now than the general public.

Once healthcare workers are covered, then we can make sure everyone else starts wearing them.

The reason they've been telling us not to wear masks is a little tricky: they don't want us to buy N95s in lieu of having them go to medical staff.

From the BBC:

"Disposable surgical masks also are not recommended for people unless they're sick or caring for someone who's ill."

Well, if it helps someone caring for someone who's ill, obviously it will help a random person no? I suppose the issue is the degree of effectiveness, how it is used, and I've read that wearing a mask makes people otherwise too confident and lax in other things aks washing hands.

If Korea can do it, we can do it, whatever 'it' is it's not magic.

I'm hoping ubiquitous mask usage + testing + efficient contact tracing would be a formula to spread the curve and keep 80% of the economy open. I think large gatherings are out until herd immunity or vaccine.

That said, I'm monitoring countries with high mask usage and it seems like people are getting complacent with social distancing and other active measures, lack of vigilance and adherence is going to become an issue, especially once nice weather rolls around. And I'm not entire convinced mask-usage is effective at high levels of community spread, it might only have disproportionately utility at the head of the outbreak.

Still out of all large scale, realistic intervention, some sort of mask usage using mass or crowd sourced production outside of medical supply chain might be worth trying. I think it be relatively easy to distribute DIY masks to everyone with insert pocket - apparently 2 pieces of paper towels has 80% filtration value.

There's also a lot natural experiments happening in cities, at least according to anecdotes and personal experience, most of the China/Korea towns are taking it very seriously. Where I live, there was like 80% mask usage. It be interesting to compare infection rates between a big Chinese grocery store with a Western one in a few weeks.

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