Ontario doctors sign letter to Premier advising against sweeping lockdowns

Countries can much better afford to offer unemployment benefits to the “at-risk sheltering” population than they can to offer the same benefits across their entire working population. Most working age people are not at high risk.

Provided you’re not paying people more to not work than they would earn working, you can let the market decide.

We don't "know" any of this, except in the sense that it gets repeated a lot, uncritically. The actual published data is mainly anecdotal and/or ambiguous.

Consider restaurants -- South Korea still doesn't consider them to be high-risk facilities, and they're largely open:

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200819005400320

That case, in particular, is enlightening about the quality of the data: they blame the transmission on aerosols, but can't rule out droplet or surface contamination, either. It's a judgment call. Most of these stories are like this. The famous "Chinese restaurant" case-study that is cited all over the place to justify shutting down restaurants presents a grand total of nine infected (even though 73 "close contacts" in the restaurant were not infected), of which three may have possibly been infected at home:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

Then you have studies like this, which suggest a fairly low attack rate (3.5%), even if you're sitting right next to an infected passenger on a train, for hours:

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...

The authors characterize this risk as "high"...but is it, really? I mean, clearly, being in a sealed tube next to someone for hours increases the risk, but how far are we willing to go for a risk that can be characterized in fractions of a percent for face-to-face interactions that aren't measured in hours?

I feel like people don't know these numbers, and most people would be shocked if they did.

You're saying exactly the reason I haven't been concerned about the virus since day one. Early reports truly weren't that earth shattering when one looked at the numbers.

I truly encourage everyone reading the parent's post spread this information.

I'm about at the point of "F BIG TECH".

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/controlling-the-virus-narrative...

The virus seems to be able to have long lasting effects in otherwise healthy people who survive, albeit I find it hard to find a legitimate study about the prevalence of this rather than popular "news".

BTW, back in February many then-current spread models where extremely optimistic in hindsight (e.g. aerosol spread was virtually ruled out "because if aerosol was a factor, spread would be much faster than observed", they simply didn't know about other spread-slowing factors), we now know that non-blanket spread control is actually harder.

"It was already very clear in February that this disease rarely killed anyone under 60,"

CFR 0.5% for 40-49

You do realize that 40 is not that old? And that 0.5% CFR is really quite high?

Are you maybe one of those '22 and feeling indestructible' people? How could someone possibly talk about 0.4 CFR and greater CFR for an age-diverse population and not realize how extremely dangerous that is?

And it's 'quite serious' for probably 8-14% of those - and that they may get life-long consequences?

And the CFR jumps quite high when there is a lack of medical facilities?

And the R0/transmissibility is really quite high, not like some 'rare disorder' - it's something that without suppression almost all of us will contract. The 'young and partied' are now becoming walking Death Adders, it's a 'systematic issue' and not very helpful to point out that 'some are less likely to die' just as they are the 'root cause of spread'.

Even if was just to 'protect the elderly' a the shut down was easily warranted.

There are 200 000 deaths from COVID more than US Combat Deaths in Iraq, Vietnam, Korean wars combined - in just a few months.

This is the most devastating and deadly thing to happen to America in at least a century, the lock-down was reasonable, there were probably even other measures we should have been taking.

Social distancing on an interpersonal social level is 'economically inexpensive' for god sakes, we're more resilient than to have to be able to 'party' every week or few.

We have to be smart about this but all things considered we have no choice.

What we 'could have done differently' was probably a) react sooner b) move more aggressively in elderly care c) wore masks and d) had a plan for this ready beforehand instead of making it up as we go along.

Edit: Please do the calculation given: 1) your stated CFR rates 2) the 'herd immunity threshold' of 60-80% of population infected 3) an aggressive R0 meaning that this would happen quite quickly 4) adjustment to CFR given overflowing hospitals and lack of available staff - and the numbers are excessively bad, at very least millions dead, which is a monumental risk.

Some of this behavior I observed may have been due to our proximity to Kirkland (the early nursing home breakout), but there was an element of mob mentality, a perfect storm of ignorance + fear + reliance on authority, that I was shocked and dismayed to experience. After a short while, I just stopped discussing COVID with anyone because of the utter inability of people to calmly discuss complex issues and engage in a joint truth seeking mission.

Unfortunately even with all we know now, I don’t think people have revisited how COVID should be managed or how the risks should be perceived, in part due to politicization of the issue and in part due to anchoring bias. Our leaders are supposed to lead the masses through such events without such flaws, but for all the claims from leaders about “listening to science” and “looking at data”, they’ve simply failed us as you pointed out.

While we did manage to flatten the curve in spring, growth is back on an exponential curve in Canada, which means the threat of overwhelming the health infrastructure is still looming. A sweeping lockdown may not be the best answer, but measures needs to be taken to slow the growth.

Exponential growth is no joke. Hospitals are more prepared, but exponential growth means that even if you double the hospital capacity, they will still be outmatched rapidly if nothing is done to slow down the spreading.

In the same breath: "Yeah let's sacrifice out old for the economy!", you simultaneously encourage the current situation: sacrificing the current and future prospects of the entire rest of the population for no other reason than you believe the old can't quarantine without taking everyone else with them? The economy isn't just some GDP numbers and the DOW - that crap helps the hefty 401(k)s of the retirees anyway, it's people's jobs, savings, ability to afford food, rent, and vacations, and so on.

The "economy" you speak of is not merely investment income for wealthy people, or whatever other expendable construct you made for yourself. It is our livelihoods. It's how we feed our children, provide shelter, education, security, and hope for the future. A destroyed economy destroys lives, and carries as many or even more risks to our physical and mental health as does the virus itself.

I'm someone who cares about people. The choice is not simply between the elderly and the economy, and we have enough tools and resources such that we don't have to sacrifice any group for any other. But if your strawman + false-choice were our reality, your priorities are fucked up. If, theoretically, you'd be willing to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of the vast majority of the worlds population to whom this virus is no more a threat than a severe seasonal flu, to preserve the few reamining years or months of life for the "elderly" (whatever that means to you), I would honestly feel justified in calling you heartless and irrational.

The hospitalization rates generally lag about 2 weeks and they are not going up very much.

Province of BC has a lot of very detailed data on who gets it for what reason (they contact trace everything) and it's definitely younger people getting it right now.

Google 'Dr. Bonnie Henry'.

I think the media is purposefully underreporting the hospitalizations for the national interest and it's probably a good thing. The 'Freedom / Liberty' crowd hates to hear this kind of stuff, but the reality is, people are not very smart, even educated people can be easily misinformed and make bad decisions, which is why in a crisis we need constant behavioural reinforcement.

It's been 2 generations since the Western world has had a crisis in which everyone has had to participate and 'play their role' so it's almost out of living memory, but I suggest this is normal.

Smart people can read more and use the Internet for more detailed information.

Likewise, a region during August mandated mandatory hospitalization for most of the people positive to the virus, therefore inflating hospitalization numbers.

Unless reporting is either standardized (unlikely) or harmonized (possible) it is always going to be hard to make sense of the numbers.

That said, the right strategy is to focus on hammering the virus to zero quickly through old-school epidemiology techniques. If we had done so early, the problem wouldn't be this bad. It would have been expensive, but less-expensive than our present path.

The bright side of combating an exponential foe: Once you start to win, winning gets easier.

We followed with very strong lockdowns that brought us down from the ~700 new daily cases to the current ~15 new daily cases.

So if you assume that Victoria can contact trace almost as well as NSW, I think its fair to say it's worked because they've got to a number where contact tracing is effective.

Especially comparing it to the flu, as that's a virus that mutates much more often than most viri.

In any case no vaccine is 100% effective. The goal is typically to be effective enough that the virus dies out faster than it spreads. Which solves the problem.

There are a lot of covid vaccine trials going on. The different candidates have different properties. It has yet to be seen which candidates are succesful.

Which means if you cut out bars but allow churches (max 25 persons in Quebec btw), you still cut down a lot of spreading.

I don't agree with keeping religious gatherings, but it doesn't mean there is no science behind these decisions.

Say all increased gov’t spending to support people who lost their jobs during the shutdown. It’s a known number.

Sure it would be very rough, but just knowing the relative magnitude would be interesting. Is it $1,000 per QALY or $100,000 per QALY?

Hundreds of millions of people will suffer lasting damage due to poverty and malnutrition resulting from the global economic effects of lockdowns: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/09/25/pandemic-pus...