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Comment by 0xB31B1B | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think this framing is correct. No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place. California’s reopen plan is gated by test and trace. It’s What every other developed country in the world is doing to allow them to reopen. We see this framed by right wingers as “stay closed” vs “open up” because they understand that this administration isn’t capable of launching an effective spread prevention program and are now solely focusing on shifting the blame.

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Test and Trace was never going to work in the way we think. The US is too dispersed, too large, and too opposed to government restrictions/intervention. If we had actually listened to GWB about pandemics when he was in office, and set up realistic T&T mechanisms, we might have had a chance in early January. But it quickly became apparent that we were not going to be able to contain SARS-CoV-2, and would have to try to mitigate it.

While it's easy to take political sides with this, that's in the past. We could have had better CDC leadership than Redfield. We could have had better leadership on the NSC than we had after the advisory committee was disbanded. We could have had better presidential leadership. We could have used testing kits from Germany until US kits were effective.

There's a lot of shoulda/coulda/woulda. But here we are.

None of this stuff is in the past. It could be anywhere from 12 months to forever until we have a vaccine. We might have missed the boat on our first wave (in frankly, the most unforgivable way possible), but we still have lots of time to improve in case we get further waves. And we damned well better assume those are coming.

> We might have missed the boat on our first wave (in frankly, the most unforgivable way possible), but we still have lots of time to improve in case we get further waves.

In much of the country that isn't NYC, including many of the places aggressively reopening, the first wave hasn't even peaked yet, so it's not so much that we missed the boat on the first wave and are now into preparing for potential later waves, we’re still actively screwing up the first wave.

Hopefully we'll have better plans in place, and leaders willing to act on them for COVID-20. My point about T&T was that it doesn't work when you have 1M infections. It's ideal when an epidemic/pandemic first starts to show up. But for now, it's useless health theater.

Contact tracing requires that:

a) You give the contact tracing system a complete and accurate history of your contacts.

b) You actually self-isolate when told you've had contact with an infectious person.

The civil liberties crowd will fight tooth and nail against a such that it is not possible to compel b. In the absence of enforcement, the conspiracy theorists will ignore it and the merely lazy will cheat.

Not even a competent attempt at contact tracing is going to work on the American people.

I can’t even imagine the levels of civil disobedience in America if a track and trace program is mandated. WA state, left leaning, already proposed track and trace to go to restaurants and already walked it back after pressure. People are starting to run out of money and food and they will turn to violence. We need to follow the same light social distancing approach as Sweden and Florida imo.

What's the reasoning for the pushback on track and trace? Concerns about government overreach?

Which government contractor do you trust with that information?

Getting sued because you happened to be in same restaurant as someone who got covid.

Im curious how effective do you think a test and trace program is likely to be? It seems like the kind of thing that works in isolated cases where things aren't yet widespread. Has it worked anywhere "at scale" ? And then even if it is implemented super well and everyone lets apple and google track them on their phones and stuff, how effective can it possibly be if symptom-free people can transmit it for weeks? One person who commutes on the subway in new york must come within 6' of hundreds maybe thousands of people every day. How can this possibly work? (Honestly asking)

South Korea and a number of other countries have had real world success with it, and have been able to open up fairly safely.

Of course, they had politicians who reacted quickly, firmly, universally, and most importantly early. In the USA, Corona was allowed to grow much much more and far fewer resources were brought to bear in an effective way against it. So its going to be much more difficult to get back under control, but not impossible, if we can turn it around.

Whats really happening besides that though is that the world is watching the self proclaimed world leader be the least competent and most impotent in their response, and throw its hands up and give up on good strategies like contact tracing. Its embarrasing.

This seems to be something Americans are scared of more than something that actually happens. Which ought to make sense; the average Californian's commentary on New York or Italy isn't "heh, sucks to suck".

> California’s reopen plan is gated by test and trace

California’s plan has multidimensional standards, it's not accurate to say it's “gated by test and trace”. But yes, the ability to effective monitor leading indicators of caseload and isolated the infected and exposed is fairly significant, and test is key to both and the trace part of test and trace an important factor in the second.

> No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place.

I wouldn't say "no one":

> Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that the city will "never be completely open until we have a cure,"

This is also a mentality I've seen numerous times on the web, including this site.

> "never be completely open until we have a cure,"

This is absurd, and indicates a politician pandering for the next election.

For ebola, with 25% to 90% mortality, it can be justified.

For corona, with under 0.1% mortality for working-age people, it's madness.

"The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks."

https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/ebola-virus-disease

yes, I don't understand it, but there seems to be a large group who want the lockdowns to remain no matter what. A commenter in a thread last week even went so far as to say the lockdowns were, overall, good for society. I have no explanation except maybe the national election. I hope that's not it because the wholesale destruction of livelihoods just to stick it to the other side is a very depressing thought.

There are a variety of reasons IMO:

-- Many of those making these comments are probably WFH with some level of normalcy so they don't really see how and why a lot of people are anxious to open things back up.

-- In the same general vein, they see a push to reopen as part of an agenda that puts "the economy" over people for the benefit of Big Business/The Rich.

-- They think there must be a near-term technological/policy fix if only the bad politicians would stop messing things up.

Almost all US states have now eased restrictions and with barely a test and trace program among them (maybe some programs in the Northeast, but where else?).

And if California is truly waiting for testing capacity, they may be waiting a long time because their rate of testing is extremely low compared to places that have opened up. New York has twice the per capita testing as CA and they have already began opening up parts of the state (despite being hit many times harder by the virus). Even NYC is about to hit the criteria for some reopening. Meanwhile, LA announced they would continue their lockdown until August. That sure sounds like they are on a "wait for a vaccine" plan.

The European nations that have eased restrictions have higher per capita testing than most US states. But they do not all have robust test and trace programs. Denmark opened up weeks ago, including many schools, but only last week announced a test and trace program.

> No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place.

Speak for yourself. The US doesn't have a vaccine, enough testing or tracing.

Wishing doesn't make it so. End the lockdown now.

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