The Weirdness of Government Variation in Covid-19 Responses
richardhanania.substack.com
richardhanania.substack.com
Other point is about the difference of covid responses compared to the lack thereof on other issues. This is pretty much a prime example of what Carl Schmitt called the State of Exception. Covid is a pretty rare occasion in modern times where all the red tape and bureaucracy gets pushed aside and states actually exercise sovereign power, and that just brings differences much more to the surface, both across the pond and here on the continent.
Is there a pattern there or do I just have crazy friends?
As an American-- there are plenty of very real "conspiracies" (our banking system, our medical system, our economic system, Jeffery Epstein) that are completely ignored while a substantial portion of our populace tilts at (imagined) windmills.
I have no explanation other than that, a significant sub-population of our people must be absolute morons.
So that's at least five, then...
Austria much earlier than a few other European countries had a much more populist streak whereas Germany even now is fairly consensus oriented and stable. It's a sort of mix of libertarianism, nationalism, conservatism and questions of national identity that seem very at the front of Austrian politics in a way that you barely have in Germany.
Also, it's politically very hard to pass vaccine mandates in "obedient" Germany but easy in "wild-west" US. This has to do with privacy laws more than medicine or science.
What's common, as far as I can tell: right-wing=anti mask/vaccine and left-wing=pro mask/vaccine.
It has three times as many people and twice the population density, and the average person makes significantly less per year. Is it that surprising that a smaller, less dense, richer suburb doesn't need as many restrictions as the largest county in the country?
This is all without even touching the historical political differences between the two counties. Frankly I'm amazed (and very glad, I'm visiting over the holidays) the two counties have such similar vaccination rates.
Edit: Also he neglected to mention Orange County actually has a higher vaccination rate than LA County. Seems like a Federalism success story to me.
We are two years into this. It's clear that Covid is endemic and here to stay. That its rate of mutation and spread is too high to contain. Antiviral treatments and therapeutics should be given more heavy support and research. People also need to move on, and live freely, because life is too short to live in a bubble of fear and dreariness. How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses? How much life and joy has been sucked out of the world to stave off the inevitable?
One way or another, the restrictions are going to eventually end. But they could have ended sooner, with fewer deaths and fewer severely ill, had more people decided to act affirmatively and with their civic duty in mind.
Because this never ends. COVID has killed, what, a few snow leopards?
I mean, this thing is forever. Life is way to short to spend the rest of it in fret of Covid. But that isn’t my call that make, nor is it yours or the governments. We have multiple vaccines, treatments, etc. COVID is here forever. It’s no longer anybody but each individual to decide how to deal with that.
We have a SARS virus that we hope is actually just a common cold. That’s the plan. Hope and see.
Even highly vaccinated European societies are seeing a sharp rise in cases now that winter is here. Even Portugal, which vaccinated basically 100% of adults, has seem cases triple in a month.
They seem to be doing alright, but antibodies are currently fresh from recent vaccines. We’ll see how this goes long run.
But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season.
You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Last year it was 15. So about a 33% improvement. Good, but what happens if/when cases go higher? Portugal already vaccinated everyone.
Certainly. I'm not claiming victory yet, and I don't think we should. But all current evidence points to vaccines being both short-term effective against infection and long-term effective against severe illness, which are the two metrics we (should) all care about.
> You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11.
Do you have a link for that? I'm curious whether Portugal breaks it down by vaccination status; the numbers I've seen from Singapore show mortality rates around tenfold for the unvaccinated. It's not inconceivable that deaths there are disproportionately spread among pockets of unvaccinated individuals, as we've seen elsewhere.
There is indeed a good relative protection compared to the unvaccinated. However, Delta seems to be worse in the absolute by about 2x. At least for intensive care, not sure anyone studied death.
The other thing is that severe disease protection did decline as well in Israel. Pre booster they fell to 80%, instead of the previou 95-98%.
This doesn’t sound like much, but it amounts to only 5x relative protection, vs earlier 20-50x relative protection.
And since Delta is 2x worse in absolute for severe disease, you get only a 2.5x absolute reduction in severe disease for the same level of cases. Then, if cases go up by 2.5x the actual number of severe disease instances are equal.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-severe-covid-cases-cou...
Why did you pick Oct 21st for a comparison? Why not the latest data? Say Nov 21st. The deaths are far lower.
Those saying “live with it” argue for a removal of NPIs leading to even higher caseloads. If improvement per case is only 2-3x at most then if you go 2-3x past prior peaks the absolute problem is as bad.
I checked the Uk and got 2-3x depending on metric (icu 2x better, hospital and death, 3x)
Denmark is .5-2x better on these metrics from prior peak.
Germany 3x better on deaths (checking prior case peak, December 21st 2020)
Can you find a country which does not have this pattern, where they are actually 10-20x better for a given caseload?
If not, I posit the pattern holds and that this method has some use in predicting future results at a given caseload in a country at European average levels of vaccination, without boosters.
What do you mean by 4x: relative severe disease protection? That would be 75% efficacy, a marked drop from 95% efficacy (20x protection). I think most of the west still has higher severe disease efficacy than that, though Israel fell as low as 80% pre booster.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
[2]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/
I'm not really sure what to make of this, though the country's so tiny (population of 33k), I wouldn't jump to any major conclusions.
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/christmas-cancelled-gi...
No clear success from a covid mitigation perspective, but lots of huge wins in gaining power and growing bureaucracy. From the perspective of an advocate that wants a way to push their agenda forward, or a director that wants to get more budget and headcount for their group, covid had been a huge boon. There have been massive losers as well, in politics, business, and personal freedom, but if you look at how some have benefitted it's clear why there are lots of entrenched interests that don't want us to move on.
That's what restrictions and lockdowns are largely driven by: preventing disasters within the hospital system.
So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?
You know that the vaccine has been available for, like, nine months, right? Anyone who wanted to get it got it months ago, and has been rather safe. ICUs being full points to a problem with the medical system (and, at least in America, the medical system is well known to be broken), and if you don't want to fix that, there's a really easy political fix (which is to de-prioritize unvaccinated COVID patients, given that - again - there's a vaccine available, so if you willingly chose not to get it, then your medical care can wait until those who have unpreventable issues are helped).
We're well past the point where you can make the argument that these restrictions are for the greater good, because we've been in a state where one's health is almost entirely one's personal responsibility (you either take the vaccine and you're safe, or you don't and you're not) for months now.
If other people want to remain unvaccinated and that leads to them dying ("loss of human life on a massive scale"), they can do that.
You've hit an important central issue: that Governments (and/or HC systems) aren't ready to take this step. As such, I suspect it might be a logically easy concept, but as a political step, maybe not so much. :)
I mean, in the absence of a few thousand years worth of medical ethics, sure, that's an obvious step.
But it's very much not how things are done. The only place where anything even vaguely like this happens is with organ transplants. In general, hospital triage is based on need; if the unvaccinated person with covid is sicker than the blameless road traffic accident victim, and there's one ICU bed, well, it doesn't matter that they brought it on themselves; the covid patient gets it, and good luck to the road traffic accident victim.
This isn't _just_ a political issue (though it would also be a very difficult political issue); it is how the whole institution works.
Triage based on vaccination status would be a very extreme move, much more so than mandatory vaccinations to work or than unvaccinated-only lockdowns.
It's political suicide to do so. Takes courage to do the right thing.
Think cars, motorbikes, planes etc. They do all result in events where people die. But we keep them because they provide a lot of utility to many many people.
My view: Lockdowns absolutely help avoid disasters. But they are a temporary measure.
Lockdown while people get vaxxed, procedures updated and social adoption of masks can occur and any other handy measure. Then the lockdowns have to be eased to shift the risk mitigation load onto these other measures.
This is a complicated task. Every country/zone will have different trade offs. Everyone will have an opinion backed by an example from somewhere else.
I think the best we can do is:
- avoid disaster
- give people a fair and equitable chance to save themselves via vaccination
- implement sensible measures where possible/socially acceptable
- open up slowly, adjust as neccessary
- sadly, let the deliberately, knowingly unvaccinated fall as they may. While avoiding disaster...
So forced masks forever?
Maybe you lockdown supertight until leadership decisions figured out, communicated and logistically sorted out. One of those decisions may be that some lockdown restrictions can be eased if people wear masks. IE relax one mitigation measure by using another.
But that's up to each society to decide for themselves.
My own opinion, once everyone is vaccinated as best as they will, ease lockdowns and mask usage in stages so that vaccines can be tested in real world conditions for effectiveness AND hospitalisation rates are kept under control.
In an ideal future with covid, we'd have perfect vaccines, zero lockdown and zero masks. In reality, I think we can get pretty close but with vaccine booster shots instead.
Now fuck off with any other restrictions, that's where I think the line is.
Your anger should be directed at the unvaxxed because that’s what’s driving policy right now.
You're right it isn't any different, which is why we should all oppose it. Just be a use things are a certain way doesn't mean it is the right way.
It's *so easy* to say "we don't want to be told what to do" but then expect all the comforts of modern society. It's such a nieve take.
The alternative... A world where the only things that are illegal are infringements on someone else's rights. Why does it have to be anarchy or social conformity and control? It's not a dichotomy. Literally every time some group opposed some social control the bellyachers came out with the anarchy argument. No more segregation, let the women vote, let gay people do what they want, let people smoke weed... Good enough is simple, really simple: let everyone do whatever they want except infringe on the rights of others. What "comforts of modern society" do we lose by simplifying our rule set down to that?
It means you don't shit on your neighbour's porch.
It means you don't park in a handicap space, knock the old biddy who wanted it out of her wheelchair after she laboriously has got out of her car further away from the shop, and give her the finger as you walk away laughing.
It means you don't spit your boss in the face; don't cheat on your taxes, your creditors, or your wife; don't drive drunk or fuck toddlers in the arse.
It means all that, and a million other things like it.
Are you OK with that, or is any of the above something that you insist on your "right" to indulge in?
If not, then what the fuck is different about your "right" not to care whether you're coughing death-in-agony in the face of everyone you meet, that you must insist on that?!?
And fuck off with the restrictions.
If your actions only affected you, nobody would care at all.
So yes, my actions do only affect me, and potentially those who have chosen to take the same risk as me. Those who are vaccinated have the level of protection they signed up for, I have the level of protection I signed up for.
But then go out into the wilderness and die under some fucking tree, so you don't take a bed in the ICU from some poor fucker who needs it not because of their own stupidity.
Why does that have to be the standard? Why can't you accept alternatives? Perhaps covid antibodies from contracting the virus instead of vaccine? Or a negative covid test? Or masks? Or germicidal light to clean air? Or restricted public involvement?
Why must we follow those SPECIFIC standards before we can be free?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan...
I would argue that most of these countries and US counties being talked about in this article were deeply divided from the start, and never had great adoption of mitigation efforts due to politicization of the issue.
Had we all acted like New Zealand, actually having unified messaging and adoption of efforts, maybe we could have cleared this up early on and wouldn't be fighting all these variants now.
Meanwhile in Germany questions have been asked in the Thüringer Landtag (parliament of the state Thüringen) [2] about an oddity in the relationship between excess mortality and vaccination status of states (Bundesländer) - the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the excess mortality [3,4 (both in German)]. This should of course be the other way around, it is after all against severe disease and death that the vaccines are meant to protect.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKVOqYUAHTo
[3] https://www.utebergner.de/der-wert-eines-menschen-haengt-nic... (in German)
[4] https://www.utebergner.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/%C3... (in German)
What they're doing 'right', in general, is not having a lot of old people. It would be rather difficult for most developed countries to emulate _that_.
Morbid jokes aside, what I see here is an indicator that vulnerable people need to be protected (if they want), and the rest of the young healthy population needs to go on with life, and probably spend a little more time outside.
Ultimately it all comes back to the hospitals; if they're overloaded then suddenly things get a _lot_ worse, and people start dying of preventable non-covid things.
Yes, I enjoy morbid jokes.
Preventing the young who probably won't wind up in hospitals from doing whatever they want doesn't solve the problem of vulnerable people not obeying lockdowns and winding up in an ICU. And it doesn't seem to affect the transmission rate if 2 years of data are telling us anything useful. The vulnerable who choose not to protect themselves are going to wind up in an ICU whether the young healthy people are living their lives or not. So what's the solution then?
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...
And while there's lots of confounding issues here, like developing nations or autocracies with underreported or suspect data, it's pretty clear that some countries are doing a ton better than others. And it certainly looks to my eyes that among developed democracies, the nations with stronger popular adherence to mitigation strategies (in particular vaccination rates, but distancing and mask-wearing too) are the ones who are winning.
(And needless to say, the US is pretty much at the bottom of the list of industrial democracies.)
If someone was walking around a mall with Ebola, I'd assume you'd be comfortable with them being restrained and placed in quarantine?
Everyone that contracts COVID and is seriously harmed (or dies) contracted it from someone else - and through different measures, that transmission and death was preventable. And yet, because in the majority of cases, COVID isn't seriously harmful or fatal, it's okay to be part of its transmission to others?
What is your measure of success? I think for most governments it is preventing hospitals from being overrun and depleted of nurses and doctors through infection. Also allowing time to get the population vaccinated and hence protected. Can't speak for the USA but in Australia we are nearing 95% double vaccinated, the measures to control the virus are broadly supported by just about everyone in spite of what you might hear.
The very fact that people can legitimately question the efficiency of lockdowns means they aren't worth it. For lockdowns to be worth the cost their effect should be so apparent and dramatic that any reasonable person looking at the data would see it was worth it. If you need PhD level math to discern the difference between your control and test groups.... it means even if lockdowns work they aren't worth the cost.
I would think that not having a high school graduation / prom /recital /wedding etc to be a lot less ruinous than having a close relative die from one of these?
I agree with you: life is too short. Personally I would hate for it to be cut even shorter because all the hospital beds are taken up by people who contracted an avoidable, extremely infectious disease.
https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-af...
https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedd...
My parents raised me with the mantra “life isn’t fair” and while trite, it’s even truer today than it was all those years ago.
The vaccine has been available for anyone who wants to get it for the better part of a year now, boosters have been released, and it's effective at preventing both transmission and severe cases (to include death).
If your relative is vaccinated, the odds of them getting severely sick from an unvaccinated person are incredibly small, and as such, various gathering restrictions are not only ineffective, but straight-up immoral.
(if your relatives aren't vaccinated, then they've made a choice to increase their risk exposure, and that's on them - given the effectiveness of the vaccine, it's pretty clear that safety is a personal choice, not something that other people impose on you - which is reinforced by both of the links you posted, wherein unvaccinated people died from the virus, not vaccinated ones)
"Different areas responded differently, which sure is interesting. The end."
It's a historical fact.
Don't expect rationality from the crowd.
Kindergartners are getting rashes on their face because school forces them to wear a damn mask.
We quote talking heads to justify our insanity.
Wow. Hyperbole much?
> It's a historical fact.
No, it's not.