The pandemic has changed the shape of global happiness
economist.com
economist.com
If you're an average American discouraged by some of the more draconian health measures here, you'd feel pretty isolated and hopeless, not knowing how much solidarity exists throughout the world.
Why is high social trust the 'correct' kind of happiness?
I'm willing to give leeway and interpret this as the wrong kind of happiness for the situation, though.
> Why is high social trust the 'correct' kind of happiness?
The very next sentence in TFA grabbed my attention before seeing this question:
> A global poll in 2019 found that only 52% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean thought a neighbour would return a wallet; just 41% thought a cop would. That is the lowest share of any region.
If social trust is a major component to your happiness and you distrust ~50% of the community and have even less trust for the institutions said to protect society, that might be the “wrong” type / source of happiness for your given environment.
Although COVID-19 has improved a lot of things for office workers who didn't lose their jobs, life has become a miserable shadow of what it once was. As someone who's spent the last 3 years living a nomadic lifestyle traveling the world, now I'm severely limited in where I can go, and anywhere I go life isn't the same - people wearing masks, distancing and avoiding eye contact, half of local businesses closed, fear.
And now someone's going to reply to me saying "don't you know there's a pandemic! How could you be so selfish as to complain about not being able to travel when people are dying." And that's exactly my point.
[1] EDIT: I meant to say that many of the Asian countries hailed as role models in handling the pandemic - South Korea, Taiwan, etc - never had to resort to lockdowns. Meanwhile the U.S. had strict lockdowns and Europe is still practically shut down. This makes it even more absurd to me that one isn't allowed to question lockdowns without being labeled some selfish Trump anti-vaxxer.
Maybe in that scenario, without corresponding lock downs, life wouldn't be as miserable but you don't know that.
Also, hospital overcapacity in itself does not justify lockdown policies. Some would argue that not being allow indoor dining or to walk outside after 10pm is a violation of basic human rights (not to mention neither of these measures were implemented in Korea for example).
Kindergartens, schools, universities, cinemas, gyms were closed soon after the outbreak with schools and universities having online classes.
You're mixing up cause and effect. South Korea has definitely considered lock down measures as cased increased but so far they haven't needed to.
Not only is hospital overcapacity location-dependent but so have been the location and severity of the lock downs around the world. Every few weeks where I am from the restrictions are re-considered based on the rate of infection, etc.
Right now for example I'm in a third world country with a highly ranked healthcare system (above Germany). No lockdown here, hospitals aren't overwhelmed, and life is almost like normal (other than half the local businesses appearing to be out of business). There are basic measures like hand sanitizer everywhere, and needing to put it on to say enter a shopping mall.
2 weeks ago I was in the U.S., and I never really even saw that. I was in a post office, and I had to ask the cashier if they had sanitizer and she took a little bottle from the back, after which I'd imagine she put it back behind the counter as if hiding it from customers. When I took an Amtrak train nobody offered hand sanitizer or checked my temperature.
I'm not saying that having hand sanitizer available is the cure to containing COVID, I'm saying that these are the absolute easiest to implement measures that even third world countries have managed to implement, and the U.S. is not even capable of that. The U.S. seems incapable of doing anything other than telling restaurants they need to shut down, which is absurd (yes there are things being done behind the scenes and I'm hand-waving a bit, but the point is that even compared to third world countries, the U.S./west appears to be immensely incompetent despite being the wealthiest countries)
I have relatives that live in Florida (in fact, I was Florida the day the pandemic was declared). And just a few months ago Florida just basically declared the pandemic is over -- no shut down, no mandatory masks, and the social distancing signs and materials gone.
A shut down is a big stick that's needed once the exponential growth starts returning and all signs are that things are going to get overwhelmed. In this US, this is a regular issue.
You say your point isn't the lockdowns aren't necessary but now it really isn't clear what your saying. If the point is the US is, in general, incompetent at this then I wouldn't disagree. But I'd argue your focus on lock downs is misplaced rather than everyone else's. The same people who don't want lock downs also don't want all those million other less destructive measures. And people who may want lock downs also want those million other less destructive measures.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/9443799...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/10/9332533...
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/hospital-icus-running-space-du...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/diversions-transfer-del...
https://patch.com/us/across-america/its-bad-hospital-over-ca...
https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/valley-hospita...
https://homehealthcarenews.com/2020/03/over-capacity-challen...
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/st-l...
And good news:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/12/30/covid-19-hosp...
The idea came from China and was considered unthinkable here when they did it. India also locked down. Friends in Ghana also told me that they locked down.
Do you honestly, honestly believe that Americans or Europeans at any level would have been able to transition to and adhere to such strict restrictions?
Of course. Why would that not be possible?
This is another common response I see, this defeatist attitude that the west is not capable of implementing the same smart common sense policies that the east did. With this pessimistic attitude it's sure as hell not possible, and will be the west's downfall.
I agree to the extent that our pessimistic attitudes are a cancer that will lead to our downfall. I do not believe we can overcome them as they permeate up and down the spectrum of influence and political power.
I realize the irony in taking a pessimistic stance and recognizing the harm in that pessimism, but I don’t really know what else to say or how to change it.
In any case since I no longer live in the U.S., I don't really have much skin in the game anymore, so this stuff doesn't stress me out like it used to. So even though I may sound optimistic, I actually gave up enough to compel me to emigrate from the country. But I do see positive change happening in the U.S., just slower than in other countries.
Australia adhered to much stronger restrictions. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646
I think the willingness to follow rules is a much more important trait than the ease with which roads could be closed.
The US has many roads between states and it is indeed impractical to close them. But it would not be impractical to ask every citizen to not travel. But how many would've heeded that call?
The only place I've been stopped for a temperature check was entering a large mall. Similarly, caughing when having a spicy soup hasn't resulted in getting carted off to a hospital.
A fever while going through immigration at the airport would probably trigger a medical check of some kind, though (along with the normal 14 day quarantine).
Didn't end up overwhelming hospitals, in fact everyone was constantly warned about overwhelming hospitals but it just didn't happen. A boggeyman used to scare and people.
almost none of the publicly pronounced mitigations have much mitigative effect. the most reasonable mitigation is sensible distancing when you're going to spend extended time with non-household members in tight quarters, but that's not big enough or visible enough for many, so we get the extended security theater to deal with the fear externalized onto the rest of us.
combined with light masking in situations where prolonged indoor closeness (not incidental closeness, like in a grocery aisle, but rather among friends hanging out) is unavoidable, we could have kept most businesses and institutions open and had essentially the same results. we didn't need lockdowns, school/office closures, curfews, outdoor masking, incessant handwashing/disinfecting, or any of that other stuff that didn't really have any substantive effect.
it did, but the effort was not sustained, nor done consistently enough in the USA to have had return on the investment/cost.
I would argue that a bigger, more stringent lockdown, for at least 1-2 months, would have produced vastly better results. It's not like you can half-mitigate the pandemic with a half-lockdown.
I think this was obvious to everyone on some level even early in the pandemic, but the politicization of the pandemic meant safety theater and then blaming the noncompliant was the play, when a winning strategy was probably more like: protect the vulnerable, be completely transparent with the people about the dangers, make accommodations to minimize unnecessary risks (no sit in dining, close non essentials, sanitize often), then let people make their own risk calculations based on the available evidence and their own situation, taking steps to ensure their decisions don’t affect others as much as possible.
A realistic strategy should have been the go-to, not some ideal strategy that only works in dreams.
and there-in lies the heart of the issue - the assumption that most people are able to make a good assessment, and that the assessment takes into account the impact on a societal level, rather than an individual level.
This simply does not happen. People are selfish. People only look out for themselves. Therefore, it is required that in a pandemic, authoritarian rules and strict adherence to public safety be applied. Even if some individuals believe they can remain safe, even if they can take precautions. Unfortunately, this mindset does not exist in america - not everyone would follow this sort of authoritarian rule. And thus, the lockdown is half-assed and ineffective.
And not to mention that there's been misinformation being spread, leading to people to believe that they shouldn't be locked down or wear masks.
Isn’t deciding the national budget, or when to go to war, or public policy just as difficult an assessment and the public just as incapable of making it? The president has incredibly power over others lives, can cause just as many deaths as covid, should the people be deciding that in their selfishness and stupidity? Your argument is just against democracy in general because so much of public policy is far more “dangerous” than covid.
Not to mention: the lockdown route didn’t work still didn’t work because it’s still unrealistic! We tried lockdowns, and they failed because Americans didn’t like them. That was completely predictable, and if our goal is results, and have to consider the fact that humans are some simple system that follow plans to the tee. We can’t make policy based on what works in frictionless vacuums, the real world is messier than that.
US and European public health agencies don't seem up to that task. You could lockdown until US numbers are literally 0 and we'd just grow exponentially again after we got the first case from incoming visitor.
And I don't think a 2 month stringent lockdown would be enough to totally eliminate the virus once its in every county in all 50 states. There aren't enough federal agents in the world to weld rural Kentuckians into their houses like was done in Wuhan.
Other than Wuhan, have lockdowns ever really stopped--over the long run--a large outbreak?
Australia had an outbreak in melbourne that came from a leak in hotel quarantine, and sydney had a similar leak. There was large scale lockdown in melb (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia...) which lasted 4 months - it was brutal for everyone, but it kept the outbreak from spreading from around 7000 cases. You can make similar observations for sydney.
Therefore, the question of whether lockdowns work for large outbreaks has the implied assumption that you only lockdown after the outbreak is large, and thus is a loaded question. The lockdown needs to look like an overreaction after the fact, or it would not have helped.
it isn’t just about whether we can stop this pandemic through technocratic means (sure, in theory, we could), but whether it makes sense for such a relatively weak pandemic (we shouldn’t). you can’t consider just the technocratic arena, but must also consider the inextricably-intertwined sociopolitical consequences as well.
Victoria, Australia was a great example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646
Opening up before suppression without strong contact tracing (or vaccine) just seems like the worst of both worlds: you have the horrible effects of a lockdown, and the knowledge it's just going to come back.
perhaps in an ideal world, your scenario may have proven effective, but we don’t live in that world. this pandemic wasn’t severe enough to warrant such drastic measures in our imperfect world (as opposed to something akin to the bubonic plague, where nearly everyone would have voluntarily locked down).
Parameterize an epidemic model with the leakage we saw measured in the Victorian lockdown and you get the same pattern.
if you look at the wealth of information we have with a skeptical eye, you’d see there isn’t much support for lockdowns for this pandemic (which is different from mitigations like context-sensitive distancing). what is quite evident is that a lot of people are scared out of their wits even a year on (e.g., people wearing 2 masks outside) and cynical about other people (trying to kill grandma with their selfishness), and as a result want to believe in technofascist panaceas with all their might.
Are you rejecting epidemiological models as a reasonable representation of reality? That's a pretty bold take - all models have limits, but epidemiological modelling is a pretty well established science that makes good predictions that repeatedly hold up.
There are mechanical reasons to think a lockdown should work (reduced contact means reduced transmission), good explanations for circumstances where they fail (exponential spread from any leakage means it doesn't take long to erase the gains from reduced transmission) and multiple locations where they have worked.
even if you can get the math to line up with reality in this instance, at the very least an epidemiological model isn’t going to tell you why, with any certainty.
your reasonings are about why something should work to buttress your beliefs, but you haven’t yet enumerated why any alternative explanation (especially the simpler ones) should or shouldn’t work. that would differentiate your reasoning from popular zealotry.
the term ‘science’ has lost meaning in popular/political discussions because it tries to elide uncertainty in just this way.
The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be. Supply chains don't have 4-5 months of leeway. People aren't going to avoid their friends and family for that long.
I think there is a point of no-return where there are too many infected people in too many corners of a given population to ever really contain it again.
The first 6 weeks or so weren't strict enough and cases were still growing at the half way point, we squandered the first 6 weeks with ineffective half measures.
> How long do you think it would take America to go from 70,000 cases to 0?
Roughly the same time, cases were roughly halving every couple of weeks or so. Much like searching a binary tree doubling the size of the tree does not double the search time.
> The longer a lockdown, the less severe it can be
Victoria and several other places learned that this is not true, a less severe lockdown had cases growing or stagnating and delivered the worst of both worlds. Hard lockdowns offer a way back to normality.
The Asian countries were only able to do what they did because they were prepared, culturally and logistically, for a viral epidemic before one arrived.
At this point, we probably have well over 100 examples of this. I'm interested if there are any counter examples. Are there?
But on the same hand, there's not any controlled experiments going on. Has this actually been statistically proven?
For example, major populations centers in Florida and Texas had lockdowns for different parts of their spikes. But the states in general were much more lax. And yet, they seemed to have fared similarly to California and New York - which had much more strict local and state-wide measures.
You can see the difference pretty clearly looking at the time series.
But as soon as you open up again infections go up unless you have suppressed the virus completely. Countries that took it seriously did this.
Because it seems like they just delay (for only a matter of weeks) what is going to happen anyway.
Most of the United States really had two significant waves. NY and other early hotspots never had the summer peak. The summer peak states never had a huge outbreak in spring because they locked down two months.
The states that managed to not have several outbreaks until fall (California and the Planes states) all got hit much worse.
It all seemed to even out.
No, the U.S. was relatively unprepared, but that doesn't invalidate anything I said.
In Korea the worst day had just over 1000 new cases in the whole country. They had forced quarantine for those infected and very strong (legally enforced) contract tracing[1].
Meanwhile in the US and Europe they seem to have abandoned contact tracing completely (unsurprising given how widely spread it is now). Lockdown (or vaccine) seems the only alternative in that case (or lots of deaths of course).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_South_Kor...
Lockdowns in the US haven’t had any positive outcomes versus the freedom to live with masks and social distancing.
This is basically the argument from anti-maskers (the ones against mask mandates, not the ones arguing masks don't work): Don't treat us like children.
My critique of lockdowns goes far beyond not being able to live a nomadic lifestyle. Notice how I said that life isn't the same no matter where I am. I could write a whole essay, talk about how all my friends are depressed, etc., but that's outside the scope of my comment.
Eh, I think it depends on your personality. As an introvert, I’ve never been as happy as this past year. It has been fantastic and I am dreading having to work in an office again, social distancing going away, perhaps masks going away. I try not to think about the end of the pandemic since it just makes me depressed.
For what it's worth I consider myself an introvert too. But introversion is definitely a spectrum, and if I'm alone all the time then I'll feel depressed (I wish I didn't though).