Doomsaying
2020-Apr-29, Wednesday 17:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
The icon's a stormcrow. See what I did there?
So there's a battle in America over whether to reopen now and, if so, how much. My friends lean more toward the "stay closed as long as it takes," and I've been thinking about that and what it means from a policy perspective. I posted about it on Facebook and this is slightly expanded from that:
So, here are some facts to start:
Which gets to the policy part of what I was thinking about. Basically, "shelter in place indefinitely" isn't an actual policy solution. It's the same idea as abstinence education or "just say no" drug policies. Would they work if everyone listened and followed them? Oh, absolutely. Will they? No, definitely not. So in the real world, you have to design a policy knowing that some percentage of people will be sloppy in adhering to it, and some won't adhere to it at all, and come up with ways to mitigate the harmful effects of that. Chicago is definitely not doing this The messaging in Chicago is all "stay in side unless you are absolutely required to go out," even though that's not what the Illinois Department of Health guidelines say--they stress the importance of regular exercise for boosting the immune system, as they should--and the city has closed tons of parks and paths, forcing people onto narrow sidewalks or into streets where cars are speeding an average of 14 mph higher than last month due to a lower traffic burden. And there's very clearly no plan for what to do when the weather gets better. Chicago only has two or three months of summer a year, and once the weather gets nice and stays there, people are going to be out and about, quarantine be damned.
When I look at those Mayor Lightfoot "go the fuck home" memes, I think about how it's been cold and rainy with the exception of a handful of days for the last month and a half, and the importance of never giving an order you know will be disobeyed.
So I think, what is the point of the shelter in place orders? They're to flatten the curve, right? We have and are doing that, but eventually they'll have to be lifted, because herd immunity is the only way through this--either natural, because enough people get coronavirus and recover from it, or artificial, through a vaccine. What are the criteria to lift them? How long are they going to last? If the governor tries to extend it through June, I'm pretty sure there will be widespread disobedience. People are acting like the point of all this is to prevent anyone from getting infected, and the time for that was back in January when Republicans were lying to the public about the danger while privately profiteering on it. It's too late for that now. The only way out is through.
New Zealand is on its way to eradicating coronavirus, but to maintain that, they're talking about enforcing the current two-week quarantine on all foreign arrivals for another year. And they're an isolated pair of islands, so they might be able to do that. We can't. Not anymore.
Not that the "open our states!" plans are better. You can force stores to open--and that's the real point of Republican plans, to force stores open so that workers who don't come in due to worries about infection have "voluntarily" quit and don't have to be paid unemployment--but you can't force people to go to them. The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of restrictions lasting for a while and plan to be cautious about going out afterwards. Restaurants already run on thin margins. If you take out half the seating capacity of a restaurant to maintain a six-foot radius, that restaurant goes out of business even if it's always packed in the remaining seats. And there aren't going to be any big conventions or gatherings or festivals or concerts, or the money they bring in, in most places for the rest of the year because no one want to be the place where a coronavirus outbreak started and spread elsewhere.
You only have to see the Republicans' plan to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits to know what the real point of their reopening plan is.
Basically, my point is that if your plan is to prevent anyone from dying, you've already failed and you'll fail in the future, and screaming at people about how they're selfish and terrible won't work anymore than it'll prevent teenagers from having sex. People who think we can just shelter in place until we have a vaccine don't understand medical research or the effects of loneliness and isolation on people and are willing to inflict widespread trauma on the entire population in the hopes of something that might never happen. And Republicans are perfectly willing to let tens of thousands of people die because otherwise their stock portfolios might lose a bit of money next quarter.
Yes, all of our choices are bad. That's what happens during a plague.
It was raining when I woke up, and sitting in my sun nook with the rain on the windows, drinking tea, was lovely. Now it's just grey and drizzly, and that's much less fun. Hopefully the rain comes back, since the sun won't be back until the weekend.
So there's a battle in America over whether to reopen now and, if so, how much. My friends lean more toward the "stay closed as long as it takes," and I've been thinking about that and what it means from a policy perspective. I posted about it on Facebook and this is slightly expanded from that:
So, here are some facts to start:
- There has never been a successful vaccine for any coronavirus variant.
- The fastest vaccine humanity has ever developed was the mumps vaccine, and that took four years.
Which gets to the policy part of what I was thinking about. Basically, "shelter in place indefinitely" isn't an actual policy solution. It's the same idea as abstinence education or "just say no" drug policies. Would they work if everyone listened and followed them? Oh, absolutely. Will they? No, definitely not. So in the real world, you have to design a policy knowing that some percentage of people will be sloppy in adhering to it, and some won't adhere to it at all, and come up with ways to mitigate the harmful effects of that. Chicago is definitely not doing this The messaging in Chicago is all "stay in side unless you are absolutely required to go out," even though that's not what the Illinois Department of Health guidelines say--they stress the importance of regular exercise for boosting the immune system, as they should--and the city has closed tons of parks and paths, forcing people onto narrow sidewalks or into streets where cars are speeding an average of 14 mph higher than last month due to a lower traffic burden. And there's very clearly no plan for what to do when the weather gets better. Chicago only has two or three months of summer a year, and once the weather gets nice and stays there, people are going to be out and about, quarantine be damned.
When I look at those Mayor Lightfoot "go the fuck home" memes, I think about how it's been cold and rainy with the exception of a handful of days for the last month and a half, and the importance of never giving an order you know will be disobeyed.
So I think, what is the point of the shelter in place orders? They're to flatten the curve, right? We have and are doing that, but eventually they'll have to be lifted, because herd immunity is the only way through this--either natural, because enough people get coronavirus and recover from it, or artificial, through a vaccine. What are the criteria to lift them? How long are they going to last? If the governor tries to extend it through June, I'm pretty sure there will be widespread disobedience. People are acting like the point of all this is to prevent anyone from getting infected, and the time for that was back in January when Republicans were lying to the public about the danger while privately profiteering on it. It's too late for that now. The only way out is through.
New Zealand is on its way to eradicating coronavirus, but to maintain that, they're talking about enforcing the current two-week quarantine on all foreign arrivals for another year. And they're an isolated pair of islands, so they might be able to do that. We can't. Not anymore.
Not that the "open our states!" plans are better. You can force stores to open--and that's the real point of Republican plans, to force stores open so that workers who don't come in due to worries about infection have "voluntarily" quit and don't have to be paid unemployment--but you can't force people to go to them. The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of restrictions lasting for a while and plan to be cautious about going out afterwards. Restaurants already run on thin margins. If you take out half the seating capacity of a restaurant to maintain a six-foot radius, that restaurant goes out of business even if it's always packed in the remaining seats. And there aren't going to be any big conventions or gatherings or festivals or concerts, or the money they bring in, in most places for the rest of the year because no one want to be the place where a coronavirus outbreak started and spread elsewhere.
You only have to see the Republicans' plan to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits to know what the real point of their reopening plan is.
Basically, my point is that if your plan is to prevent anyone from dying, you've already failed and you'll fail in the future, and screaming at people about how they're selfish and terrible won't work anymore than it'll prevent teenagers from having sex. People who think we can just shelter in place until we have a vaccine don't understand medical research or the effects of loneliness and isolation on people and are willing to inflict widespread trauma on the entire population in the hopes of something that might never happen. And Republicans are perfectly willing to let tens of thousands of people die because otherwise their stock portfolios might lose a bit of money next quarter.
Yes, all of our choices are bad. That's what happens during a plague.
It was raining when I woke up, and sitting in my sun nook with the rain on the windows, drinking tea, was lovely. Now it's just grey and drizzly, and that's much less fun. Hopefully the rain comes back, since the sun won't be back until the weekend.
no subject
Date: 2020-Apr-29, Wednesday 23:56 (UTC)And as you say, it seems like the real point of opening everything is so that the states don't have to pay unemployment, and small businesses are all going to get completely screwed because they won't be able to cover their costs but they'll have to stay open anyway, until they just go bankrupt. So the idea of reopening now seems fairly terrible all around. If we did have better treatments or better testing and tracking of cases, people might actually feel safe going to stores and restaurants again, and small businesses might gradually get back on their feet. And also we might be able to avoid isolating everyone while also avoiding killing a ton of people. But that just doesn't seem to be the actual plan here.
willing to inflict widespread trauma on the entire population
I mean, I guess? Given the choice between "a lot of people I know have isolation-associated trauma" versus "a lot of the people I know are dead," one option is obviously preferable to the other? Besides, surely more death means more trauma, maybe not the same kind or for the same people, but probably not any less, all around.
It just seems to me like reopening without a better plan is like saying, "We've decided that if you're one of the people for whom this virus is deadly, well, sorry, I guess you're probably going to die this year." Waiting for herd immunity means just letting a lot of people get the disease, and a fair number of them die. And on top of that, there's no way to really know whether or not any given individual is one of those people who may not survive. We've got our lists of risk factors, but there are also young people with no prior health conditions who are dying, being hospitalized, suffering strokes. And though it's true that of course you can't stop some people from being selfish and putting others' lives at risk, it doesn't seem like the solution to that is to just go ahead and condone that action. When you have underage sex, you're making your own choice and you've got your own consequences to deal with. But here, you're putting other people at risk, not just yourself. And even if we can't change the fact that there will always be people in the world who don't care if their actions hurt other people, that doesn't seem like a reason not to try to stop them. :/
It would be a start if the plans to reopen at least had some provision where people over 60 or with serious health conditions could continue receiving government support after businesses reopen and jobs are available. As far as possible, it would be good to try to develop herd immunity using only the part of the "herd" in which most of the members are likely to survive...
no subject
Date: 2020-Apr-30, Thursday 02:06 (UTC)Given the choice between "a lot of people I know have isolation-associated trauma" versus "a lot of the people I know are dead," one option is obviously preferable to the other?
True, but I'm thinking of PTSD and trauma across the entire population vs. not the entire population dying. I've heard stories of my friends waking up crying, having panic attacks, seen them lashing out at other people on social media, etc. There's a lot of online scolds that are saying, like, "Just stay inside and binge Netflix, you idiots!" and not realizing that it's not that simple and it is actually harmful to people.
Though as you say, watching friends and family die is also harmful to people, but that study from SARS quarantine was from only a few weeks. The people suggesting over a year of shelter in place don't understand how damaging it would be.
It would be a start if the plans to reopen at least had some provision where people over 60 or with serious health conditions could continue receiving government support after businesses reopen and jobs are available. As far as possible, it would be good to try to develop herd immunity using only the part of the "herd" in which most of the members are likely to survive...
Something like this is more like what I was thinking is the best plan when all plans are bad. There are people with no prior health conditions being hospitalized and dying, but the fatality rate in people in their 30s and younger is extremely low (though higher than the flu), and the risk of rare complications like strokes is even lower and might represent previously-undiagnosed rare health conditions, like the woman in Italy who is still infected after two months because her body doesn't produce coronavirus antibodies and she'd never been infected with one before, so she never had a reason to figure that out.
Which is what I meant about what is the point of this and how far should we go? If waiting for a vaccine isn't feasible, what is the point where we open up a bit? No one is really articulating an end goal--it seems to be either "any danger is too much, leaving your house is selfish" (like the mayor of Chicago), or "well, it's too late, let's give up" (the governor of Georgia). The point of the lockdown was to give us time to increase our hospital facilities, which happened in Illinois and we never came close to going too far, get more PPE and more testing capability. The federal government keeps seizing PPE shipments from people for poorly-explained reasons and testing isn't going to get up to where we need it to go. So, what do we do?
I don't actually have an answer, because any workable answer assume a competent federal government and we don't have that.
no subject
Date: 2020-May-01, Friday 21:45 (UTC)You make a valid point, that this didn't have to get NEARLY as out-of-hand as it did. I remain convinced that this was absolutely deliberate.
You only have to see the Republicans' plan to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits to know what the real point of their reopening plan is.
Exactly. Fuck the middle class even more than they've already been fucked. It amazes me how selfish our policymakers are.
no subject
Date: 2020-May-03, Sunday 23:56 (UTC)We have no guarantee for a vaccine. The pressure to relax restrictions will increase over time, and as the curve is flattened, public authorities will comply to the will of the public.
And then there will be a spike, and the restrictions on movement will be imposed again.
It's going to be a bouncing ball between restrictions, relaxing, infection, restrictions etc, until we have a vaccine.
I have doubts whether herd immunity will be a solution. I am not entirely convinced by this argument, but I respect the points they're making.
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic
no subject
Date: 2020-May-04, Monday 00:26 (UTC)Well, I picked my icon for a reason.
I remain convinced that this was absolutely deliberate.
The rich have gotten a whole lot richer in the last couple months, so it wouldn't surprise me if they thought it would be bad enough to make some money, but not bad enough to ruin society.
Oops.
no subject
Date: 2020-May-04, Monday 00:40 (UTC)Hence the doomsaying. The longer restrictions go on, the slower we reach that point. If none of the current vaccine efforts pan out and a vaccine is four years or longer away--or if, chas v'shalom, it's impossible, then as you say, eventually people will get sick of sitting at home, of their favorite restaurants and shops going out of business, and they'll go out and gather whether it's legal or not. And the more this happens, the less people will comply because they'll be sick of it or they'll think that other people got sick but they won't or they have to make money or eat, or any number of reasons.
I see all kinds of people say they're willing to wait at home until a vaccine because they assume it'll be a year or 18 months at most. I don't know what they'll do if it turns out a vaccine is a decade out.