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Comment by lefrenchy | Hacker News Reader

How do you come out this end and think “we did too much”? We have definitive proof that we actually did too little. Look at S. Korea, New Zealand, Thailand, etc.. More contact tracing, stricter targeted lockdowns, paying people to stay home. The problem is that we didn’t do enough, instead we took half measures and took all the damage with barely any of the benefit.

The idea that death was inevitable is wrong. There are plenty of nations and extremely dense cities with very low death numbers. Sure, Americans are higher risk because they are more obese (or so we think) but our death counts were avoidable.

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In the United States, our death count is skewed by a handful of cities, some of which represent some of the top destinations in the world. New York City gets 65 million visitors a year. Los Angeles get something like 50 million. All of South Korea — never mind Seoul — gets just under 18 million. And let's not even talk about New Zealand. Other than the hobbits, who's going there.

In the United States our numbers are skewed by places like NYC and LA. The rest of the country is doing much, much better, overall. Moreover, we're a free country. Yes, I realize that, on paper, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand are also. But the kind of contact tracing and other measures that has gone on in some of these countries is simply unacceptable here, and rightly so.

I stand by what I've said. We are destroying this country in an effort to "save lives." Your suggestion is what? More destruction?

If you read the original paper from the Imperial College, you'll note that death estimates in the United States were from 200 thousand (if we followed their recommendations) to 2.2 million (if we did nothing). Remember, these were estimates. But you will see that we are close to the low end in actual numbers. So, when you say that the idea of death being inevitable is simply wrong, what exactly are you basing that on? Can you answer that? Where do you come up with your assertion?

You are spreading misinformation. First, the vast vast majority of transmission in the united states was not from visitors, but from community spread, even in highly visited cities like NYC.

The 2 million number from the imperial paper everyone likes to quote is explicitly

> In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour

Where specifically voluntary quarantine (50% compliance) and case isolation (70% compliance), and closure of schools are exanples of interventions discussed. In what world do the current death totals (340k in the United states) disprove the idea that interventions saved lives, and more effectively managed interventions would have saved more lives (as they did in other countries).

I am not spreading "misinformation." That term is the new slander. I am referring to initial infections, not pretending that tourism has been going full swing since March. You cannot compare New Zealand to New York City. I don't even think you can compare Seoul — and I accounted for the difference in interventions, regarding Seoul. But you conveniently leave that out.

As for your "everyone likes to quote," I in fact said: "you'll note that death estimates in the United States were from 200 thousand (if we followed their recommendations) to 2.2 million (if we did nothing)." Are you pretending now that I am misrepresenting the paper? You are simply repeating what I've written, and pretending to be contributing something new to the conversation.

If you are referring to the initial infections then you are just as misleading. Again, we don't need to speculate about how much the coronavirus was initially spread to different cities based on their tourist populations, we can just look at the facts of how much initial spread there was to each location/

On February 24th, there were 14 cases diagnosed in the United States, and 39 people who were infected and repatriated to the United States[1]. In comparison, at the same time there were 564 cases in South Korea[2].

The difference between 350k deaths (so far) and 200k deaths (total) is a lot, and is perfectly consistent with the paper's findings that if you perform some interventions but not all of them, hundreds of thousands of people will die unnecessarily.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6908e1.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_Kor...

The numbers are not skewed by NYC and LA because most other big cities and states have similar or worse numbers per capita. They got got hit harder early on, and LA is recently experience a surge in cases due to citizens not following guidelines, but overall they don't lead significantly in any categories.

> In the United States, our death count is skewed by a handful of cities, some of which represent some of the top destinations in the world. New York City gets 65 million visitors a year. Los Angeles get something like 50 million. All of South Korea — never mind Seoul — gets just under 18 million. And let's not even talk about New Zealand. Other than the hobbits, who's going there.

Ridiculous and unfounded claim. Global travel has basically been shut down since the pandemic started, people aren’t going to New York for vacation right now.. The continued spread is not from mass tourism, but from our own failures.

> In the United States our numbers are skewed by places like NYC and LA. The rest of the country is doing much, much better, overall.

Sure, overall the dense cities suffer the most and rural places are doing better relative to US average. However, extremely dense cities in other countries (Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul) have handled it order of magnitude better. So your point here is moot, even in NYC and LA were the only focal points they are still way worse than the global average.

> Moreover, we're a free country. Yes, I realize that, on paper, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand are also. But the kind of contact tracing and other measures that has gone on in some of these countries is simply unacceptable here, and rightly so.

Contact tracing is your bounds for freedom? There are plenty of ways in which most people in the US are not free. Saying that we're much freer than other countries who are "free on paper" seems like American exceptionalism at it's finest.

> I stand by what I've said. We are destroying this country in an effort to "save lives." Your suggestion is what? More destruction?

You can beat this virus without destroying everything, it's simple really you just pay people to stay home. You put the economy on ice, beat the virus hard and fast and then open again. This is what New Zealand did and it worked. Doing half measures will only prolong the hurt and make the damage worse. If we had taken this more seriously and done better contact tracing and lock-downs earlier we wouldn't have a binary choice of "destroy your economy or let hundreds of thousands of people die".

The problem is that now in the US it's too late, so all we're left with are terrible options.

> So, when you say that the idea of death being inevitable is simply wrong, what exactly are you basing that on? Can you answer that? Where do you come up with your assertion?

We have empirical evidence that death is avoidable:

South Korea COVID deaths: <1000 Vietnam COVID deaths: <50 NZ COVID deaths: <50 Taiwan COVID deaths: <25 Hong Kong COVID deaths: <150

If you don't let the virus spread, people don't die. Simple as that.

We're the richest nation in the history of the world (and supposedly the greatest) and we've let >300,000 people die of this virus, how's that for American exceptionalism.

To reinforce the point, NZ is 2nd "most obese" in the OECD after the USA. Australia and Canada are similar.

The US should really be compared to Canada - the most similar and closest country. Death rate 36 per 100k vs 91 in the USA , according to Wikipedia.

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