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Comment by mrkstu | Hacker News Reader

The problem, of course, is that you can replicate that level of safety, if it matters to you, anywhere, by locking yourself in your house.

Since the US isn't an island, anytime SF loosens up, CV will immediately spike anyway, so no real advantage gained.

You end up creating a backlash.

If the vaccines live up to their advance billing some small number of lives will be saved, but it is very unclear whether, in the long run, more lives will be lost to the costs of a severe lockdown than saved by it.

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Doctors, nurses, EMTs, transit agency workers, taxi drivers, grocery workers, bank tellers, police, firemen, street cleaners, nursing home staff – none of them can lock themselves in their house and continue to get paychecks like the average tech worker. Creating a safe environment for essential workers, homeless, elderly and otherwise financially struggling folks is something most other cities are failing at, and I'm happy San Francisco is not prioritizing the feelings of bros who need to go out to bars.

Other than doctors, can any of those groups actually still afford to live in SF?

They still work in SF, whether they live there or not.

> it is very unclear whether, in the long run, more lives will be lost to the costs of a severe lockdown than saved by it

I have yet to see data that shows any evidence of this theory. If you are aware of any existing data that points to this conclusion, I'd love to see it.

Did you know that the Spanish flu of 1918 wasn't really Spanish?

Edit: Okay so maybe I skipped to the punchline. Just trying to say politics influences data or lack of data.

Of course there isn't data about the long-term societal effects of a global lockdown in a modern society. But there are huge numbers of kids being denied education and social interaction right now. There are people who have lost money and are not eating right or living in healthy conditions, etc. So there are clearly going to be massive negative impacts from the mitigation, and nobody will know the scale for decades to come.

For example, just US children are on track to miss 9 million vaccinations in 2020. [1]

Worldwide poverty and deferred healthcare for vaccines and cancer screenings will have a decade the rack up an order of magnitude more deaths than will ever be directly attributed to COVID.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/health/coronavirus-childh...

Children can, and, according to the CDC, should get vaccinations during lockdowns.

"CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend every child continues to receive routine vaccinations during the COVID-19 outbreak." [0]

Personally, I'm hoping vaccinations against COVID are what ends the pandemic.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/visit/vaccination-durin....

> The problem, of course, is that you can replicate that level of safety, if it matters to you, anywhere, by locking yourself in your house.

Yeah. But this idea breaks down as soon as one needs to leave the house for basic necessities. In that case, you would be much better off in a community which takes the issue seriously.

> more lives will be lost to the costs of a severe lockdown than saved by it

Not many lives should be lost by lockdowns, if at all. Perhaps if this issue wasn't so politicized, governments could intervene (and some have, in Europe) to help those in need.

The only reasonable hypothesis I've heard for an increase in number of deaths due to lockdown is suicide and deferred medical care for non-COVID cases.

The US is running at an average 1500 deaths a day now.

We lost about 132 deaths per day from suicide in 2019. Even if that doubles, that leave a lot of room for additional deaths due to deferred medical care. The numbers just don't add up.

Just to be a bit pedantic, these aren’t apples and oranges comparisons. It’s common to measure lives lost in quality-of-life adjusted years, since losing an 85-year old to COVID is a lot different than losing a 20-year old to suicide or due to deferred medical treatment. (The ages are exaggerated, but obviously COVID victims tend to be much older.)

"Since April, 1.9 million excess years of life have been lost, 13% above historical average. Over the course of the pandemic, we found age and sex contributions to excess YLL have shifted. Deaths among adults 65 and older accounted for 80% of excess YLL in April but only 36% of excess YLL in June. Since April, working age adults 20-64 have accounted for 47% of excess YLL, and males 20 to 64 have contributed 34%."

April, May, and June had around 10% excess YLL. July and August had 17.5% excess YLL.

https://healthcostinstitute.org/hcci-research/the-impact-of-...

And? The parent point was that lockdowns might cause other kinds of death (suicide, deferred medical treatment). All-cause mortality obviously encodes those non-COVID deaths, there is no way to tell them apart. Since the cited study lacks the necessary data (and openly states as much), using it to support any claims about the impact of COVID vs lockdowns is simply begging the question.

My point was that dismissing COVID because it "only affects the elderly" is not accurate.

The data I've seen on suicides is cautiously optimistic in many places.

"Nevertheless, a reasonably consistent picture is beginning to emerge from high income countries. Reports suggest either no rise in suicide rates (Massachusetts, USA11; Victoria, Australia13; England14) or a fall (Japan,9 Norway15) in the early months of the pandemic. The picture is much less clear in low income countries, where the safety nets available in better resourced settings may be lacking. News reports of police data from Nepal suggest a rise in suicides,12 whereas an analysis of data from Peru suggests the opposite.10"

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352

There is good data saying that people have delayed medical care (including me), but I can't find anything about detailed results.

On the other hand, if you are trying to distinguish COVID from the effects of trying to control it, I would like to point out that none of the "lockdown" restrictions have restricted access to medical care. That is either a personal choice or a consequence of overwhelmed facilities.

I'm not dismissing it, and your quote is not something that I ever said -- who are you quoting?

> If the vaccines live up to their advance billing some small number of lives will be saved, but it is very unclear whether, in the long run, more lives will be lost to the costs of a severe lockdown than saved by it.

https://youtu.be/bzh6HwN0gbw?t=398

Better yet, watch the whole thing. And check the public numbers.

Stop spreading misinformation.

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