It's all about risk. Humans are terrible at understanding probability. There must be a threshold where it becomes ok to take on the risk (e.g. driving a car everyday for most Americans). So where is that threshold?
Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions?
It might be the case that opening schools for younger ages with 2 shifts to reduce density (2 weeks in person, 2 weeks from home) could have an acceptable risk profile.
> Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions?
Then we'd actually put real effort into controlling it so we could go back to life as normal even with the virus not fully eradicated.
The problem with all of these simple "risk profile" analyses is that we as a country are being forced to accept risk we don't have to. With cars, we understand there is some amount of risk but also we as a society also care about those deaths and make tons of regulations and improvements to make driving safer. As such, death rates have fallen over the decades even as miles driven have accelerated.
Whereas with the pandemic we seemingly are just accepting high death rates and hoping for the best instead of putting in the level of effort to fix it. That makes it not just about risk tolerance, but frustration with the level of concern the country is putting into fixing the problem.
You can see the death rate dropping while cases are dramatically going up which one could argue is that exact mitigation happening.
Masks, sanitation, and distance have likely lowered the overall viral load even if one does contract it. Obviously higher testing rates contribute to the decreasing death rate but given the blind studies from asia I don't think it would be that drastic of a reduction.
It gives me some hope we can lower the risk enough to have children interact with the caveat being adults actually enforce masks/sanitation/distance.
The big question marks are "Long COVID", which I haven't seen mentioned about kids (so, good news?), and ADE reaction (Antibody Dependent Enhancement , of the virus) which we'll see in the second wave, when people get re-infected.
> Then we'd actually put real effort into controlling it so we could go back to life as normal even with the virus not fully eradicated.
ok now imagine the virus lives on surfaces for 5+ years and never dies. now what? you can’t eradicate this virus by quarantining, someone, and it only takes one, is going to spread it somehow.
now answer with that in mind. “we would just fix it” is a cop out, we can’t fix it.
Your comments are all dead and I vouched for this one, but it's clear from your comment history why. Nobody likes reading "angry programmer" comments here because you're just not special around here, so nobody has to bear the cost of your malice in order to divine the meaning behind your words. "Shut the fuck up" and "delete your account" are really intolerable, stupid ass comments for HN, and if your response to this is that you know but you don't care, I would suggest finding a technical community that places more emphasis on free speech absolutism (like EFNet maybe) than just wasting bandwidth as you are here on HN.
> The risk due to lockdown are greater than this virus.
I'm gonna have to ask for a source on this, because every single legitimate source I can find says the exact opposite.
An analysis from the UK government [1] summarised:
> Socio-economic effects are estimated to have the greatest impact on quality of life of all categories investigated, over the short and long term combined; from March 2020 to more than five years from now, the impacts of lockdown and a resulting recession are estimated to reduce England’s health by over 970,000 QALYs – the health impacts of contracting COVID-19 are still unclear in the long term, but between March 2020 and March 2021, these represent 570,000 lost QALYs.
So with even all the coronavirus deaths in the UK, which had one of the highest mortality rates in the western world, the lockdown is having a bigger impact on health than the virus. This is justifiable if you believe without the lockdown orders of magnitude more people would have died. But there's reasons to believe that's not the case: some recent research suggests regions are hitting "herd immunity" at only ~20% infected with basic precautions due to cross-immunity. And indeed, Sweden which didn't do a major lockdown isn't looking much worse off than the UK when comparing excess mortality.
Lockdown cause massive unemployment, bankruptcy, mental health issue, kids not getting proper education, delayed treatment/care for non-covid cause, etc. All this for what ? for the virus that for vast majority of people if you do get infected you are not going to be sick (asymptompatic) or only have mild symptom and less than 1% death rate ?
>Lockdown cause massive unemployment, bankruptcy, mental health issue, kids not getting proper education, delayed treatment/care for non-covid cause, etc.
a lockdown doesn't inherently cause this. These things are caused by a badly implemented lockdown, a lockdown that doesn't have measures in place to make sure people don't go bankrupt, measures to make sure people's mental health doesn't deteriorate etc.
Sure, I will totally support such implementation that neither restrict people movement nor have occupancy restriction, at least for this specific virus.
If let say covid has severity of anthrax or ebola then restricting people movement maybe justifiable but not otherwise.
There is zero evidence that a suppression strategy with lockdown will work. And as you said in your other comment the pandemic is not over yet so pulling data from other countries isn't helpful.
As to evidence...
"One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they've considered suicide in the past month because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data that paints a bleak picture of the nation's mental health during the crisis."
Perhaps it is time for parents to talk to their children about what they would like for a future? Most of the comments here are about the desires of the parents to be anxiety free.
Why is everybody going on about 'the lockdown'. There is exactly one city in the world that had a complete lockdown, that's Wuhan, China. Every other place had at best a partial lockdown with a ton of exemptions and a large amount of leeway for emergencies and other edge cases.
As for the suicide factor, yes, there is a chance of increased numbers of suicides, no for now there is no proof that such an increase is actually happening. If previous pandemics - without a lockdown - are any guide then a pandemic has regardless of the measures taken an increased risk of people committing suicide.
New Zealand had what you might call a timely response. If you test positive now your entire family will be moved to an isolation facility. It is not optional and if you refuse to do so you will be arrested.
> Bloomfield announced all of those who tested positive, as well as close family members who could be at risk, would now be put into self-isolation facilities.
> Bloomfield said they'd given moving confirmed cases into quarantine facilities "a lot of thought". It would help prevent spread between family members and limit the spread in the community from people coming to visit.
> It would "really strengthen our response", he said. [0]
Are you concerned with how lockdown effects children now?
Of course I'm concerned. But if you think that you'll be able to manage this without some inconvenience then that is a pretty strong delusion.
Think about the alternative: no quarantine, unchecked spread, lots of people dead.
If there is one country that is doing this by the book it is NZ, and they should be commended for it.
That you try to spin that as a negative is quite a feat.
I've been quarantined myself for two weeks, it wasn't as bad as it could have been and we managed. If I had to go through it again then I would, especially now that I know better how to prepare.
You're right. There may not be a way to manage this without locking people up and curtailing their rights. I'm not interested in doing that because this virus isn't the destruction of civilization. It doesn't effect 99.9% of people.
Your "by the book" is more like "at any cost." Why not just come out and say that you support draconian and authoritarian measures?
Your quarantine isn't comparable to forced isolation in a facility, right? Surely you can understand how that might damage a child?
A plan for dealing with the virus is necessary to stop the virus. At least in the US, hard lockdowns have resulted as a last resort because the Federal government has been in denial all along about the severity of the disease, and has failed to provide the kind of support and leadership that would mitigate the need for major lockdowns.
Lockdown maybe necessary if covid has severity of ebola, but with such low death rate ? Its overkill, the damage due to the lockdown is greater than the covid.
I think this is textbook confirmation bias. When you have two seemingly equivalent theories (the threat of C-19 is serious vs overblown), you select the one that is more convenient for your worldview.
Mr. and Mrs. Applecart both have full-time jobs and four children; they don't have time to home-school and wouldn't know how if they did. Their lives would be more functional if the threat is overblown, so they believe the threat is overblown.
Mrs. and Mr. Bandersnatch work in the mining industry. If scientists are correct, the fossil fuel industry is going to lead to climate collapse within about twenty years. Their livelihoods depend on oil extraction. They have a vested interest in being skeptical of scientific authority.
As someone else here pointed out, the study doesn't seem to factor economic security. I bet you would find a very strong correlation between economic security and willingness to keep children at home that would cross political lines.
... and who ought to be advocating for better social safety nets for everyone. I feel a lot of the "get back to normal" fighters are failing to imagine a sensible social safety net that might enable a lot more people to remain home/locked down.
> what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years?
What societies have done throughout history for diseases like smallpox, polio, malaria, tuberculosis, the flue, etc. Essentially, we learn to accept it.
Yes, I know, eventually a vaccine was found for smallpox, etc., but those diseases had been around for centuries (millennia?). Only very recently have we found ways to deal with them.
Another way to think about it is, what do we do if we learn that the pandemic will not end for the next 10 years? What activities do we allow and under what new mode of operation / conditions?
It might be the case that opening schools for younger ages with 2 shifts to reduce density (2 weeks in person, 2 weeks from home) could have an acceptable risk profile.