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from the lockdowns-were-supposed-to-be-just-one-part-of-defense-at-depth dept.
Economists warn of 'widespread costs' from lockdown:
Blanket restrictions on economic activity should be lifted and replaced with measures targeted specifically at groups most at risk, say economists.
[...] They argue that while the extent to which the lockdown contributed to a subsequent slowing in the rate of new infections and deaths is not easy to estimate precisely, it seems clear that it did contribute to these public health objectives.
However, they say it is "very far from clear" whether keeping such tight restrictions in place for three months until the end of June when they began to be lifted was warranted, given the large costs. They say that the costs of carrying on with such a lockdown are likely to have become significantly greater than its benefits.
Debate over the global dilemma continues.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:41PM (44 children)
Stupid, when they'll be counting the dead from deprivation, the time for making decisions will be long past. You cannot help the dead, a dead economy included.
And why are you piling up meaningless words as if trying to sound clever while carefully not stating anything?
Is it you obliquely hinting that governments all over the world will be feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, housing the homeless, and all that for free, for years and years while the hide-under-the-bed game goes on and on? Very political of you, if so; when the manna fails to materialize, you can proudly tell all gullible fools you promised them nothing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:08PM (43 children)
It seems to me you are equating lockdown with shutdown. Lockdown will shutdown only the activities that bring people in close contact, inside narrow spaces.
Even if it's total shutdown of all activities, it would be for 2 weeks, not years and year.
Fortunately, it doesn't need to be years and year. Look at the plot for daily cases in US [worldometers.info] - in May/June it started to go down with only a lockdown, essential businesses continuing - in 2 month time, you could have brought it under control. But no, the re-opening needed to happen, so there you have it, 2 months later, US is at double the max infection rate until may.
Now, honestly, do tell me: did you see the anything essential going missing from the shop shelves during the lockdown?
Look mate, I'm in lockdown since march (and it wouldn't be for so long, were not for some untrained and idiotic security guards hired for the hotels designated as quarantine for repatriating Aussies, guards that took and gifted covid to their families).
I look around me and all the shop are stocked with food (actually with everything). Yes, I need to wait a bit to my butcher, small shop, only 2 customers can be inside with the imposed space. True, we're wearing masks; not such a big deal.
And that because the farms can function in the conditions of social distancing, by its nature. In fact most of the production can go ahead with managed risks. What need to be shutdown or reorganized are the activities that make easy for the virus to jump; restaurants/bars/theaters/sports/parties/etc. Don't tell me those are essential for the society's survival and not doing them means famine.
As for your "years-and-years" - even if you can't eliminate the infections over few months (New Zealand did, let's say PartTimeZombie and his co-nationals were lucky), you can keep it burning low control until treatments or vaccines are discovered.
Look, what if a treatment gets discovered in September, don't you think it will look stupid to have sacrificed 3-4 times more people only for... what?... some extra profit in the accounts of the corporations?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:16PM (16 children)
Meat packing plants? How are they faring today? How many hot spots have been discovered in them, to date? Has anyone collected all that data into a nice yummy package?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:26PM (10 children)
Wasn't his question. Are you unable to get meat currently? Dunno about where you live, but where I do prices rose a bit and sometimes the rack thinned out a little, but it has always been available.
What products truly went off the shelves that are not explained by initial waves of hoarding / profiteering attempts?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:36PM (8 children)
There are no real shortages - yet. Are we all happy to just sit on our asses, and wait for them to happen?
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:09PM (7 children)
I can't help feel a loss of potential comedy at using meat packing plants here instead of fudge packing ones.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:13PM (6 children)
OMG, tell me there is no shortage of fudge to pack!!
ROFLMAO
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @12:19AM (1 child)
Get a room, you two!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @11:41AM
How're we going to practice social distancing then? I mean I'm not poorly endowed but my shit ain't no six feet long.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @11:43AM (3 children)
There is a shortage of fudge. Because almost no one knows how to make it.
It's tricky, and seems to involve experience in judging the precise moment to interfere with the way sugar crystalizes.
There is no shortage of things called fudge, made with chemical emulsifiers and other components rather than rely on this critical judgement.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @05:27PM (2 children)
Candymaking still requires attention and timing, but infrared thermometers make it way easier than trying to judge by sight, water test, or candy thermometer.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 31 2020, @05:34PM (1 child)
So candy is still dandy but liquor is still quicker?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 04 2020, @04:20AM
Nah, even the fastest yeast you'd ever want to drink anything made with still takes a couple days to ferment a batch of wort; then you still have to distill it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:38PM
(Hiding under the bed in a burning house) "Where I am the air is only somewhat warm, and nearly no smoke at all."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:52PM (3 children)
About 3-4 closed in the entire state, one reopened after the cluster was eliminated and the business disinfected.
See for yourself [covid19data.com.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:13PM (2 children)
Disclaimer:
That topmost graphic is useless to a color blind old man like myself.
The chart below it is of some value. Public housing towers ranks higher than ANYTHING? Who'da thunk it? Informative, but it doesn't specifically address the food processing industries, which I was addressing.
1. Cedar Meats
2. Somerville Meats
3. JBS Abbatoir
4. Australian Lamb Company
5. Diamond Valley Pork
So, in Australia, public housing, health care, and retailing are the highest risks, in order, with a number of families figuring into total count. It appears that food processing ranks well below either public housing, or healthcare (to include nursing homes).
Interesting . . .
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)
Sorry, I don't have other source of info.
Yes, because they are as densely populated as New York [abc.net.au] (the link has a photo)
With the note that those are "infection clusters" and not "hotspots" - no, the Aussie families don't have hundreds of members. The name of the cluster is linked to where the origin of the cluster has been traced to. Many of these origins are now clear.
The worst hit are the age care - they can't isolated themselves more dependent as they are of a carer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @11:50AM
Sounds like his OS should have a feature whereby he could point to a pixel on the screen and get its RGB value.
Or a perhaps more useful one that imposes a time-varying transformation of RGB values so that the colour axis he doesn't perceive will be represented by easily perceptible continuous change in one of the colour axes he can perceive.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 03 2020, @02:54AM
They're fairing pretty good in Canada now, after some adjustments. It has made us aware that they're too concentrated and there should be more smaller plants. While some types of food might get thinner, I doubt that anyone is going to go hungry who wasn't last year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:51PM (20 children)
Stupid, WHAT "2 weeks"? What is it with you and honesty, a bitter breakup?
"Coronavirus India lockdown Day 126 updates | July 28, 2020"
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-coronavirus-lockdown-july-28-2020-live-updates/article32209098.ece [thehindu.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_lockdown_in_India [wikipedia.org]
Two months and some change on top, dude. Which achieved, as to stopping the virus, Exactly. Jack. Shit.
The world is rife with other very similar examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_lockdowns [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:15PM (19 children)
You're idiot. If everybody stays at home in quarantine two weeks, then everybody who is not seek can get out. During that time, whoever is sick can get treated in isolation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:38PM (9 children)
You need to not call others idiots when your solution is to eradicate the virus from $region and call everything solved. It doesn't solve anything. Not at all. It merely postpones it. And not for very long given the ease of contagion of this particular virus.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:08PM (7 children)
Probably needed to be clearer.
Theoretically**, one could eradicate the virus in an area by going a hard lockdown. It is idiotic to come with examples of non-hard lockdown that fail to eradicate it (as the comment I replied to did).
Practically, one needs only to keep it so that:
1. the impact on the health care system manage to cope with the load; and
2. to the best possible, avoid deaths die to the disease.
Both can be achieved without hard lockdown, as long as common-sense infection countermeasures are followed in a disciplined way.
Many countries managed to do it even without a lockdown, have South Korea as an example [worldometers.info] (daily cases currently under 100, without a lockdown [alarabiya.net]; but of course also without "It will go away. Could you look into drinking bleach? Masks are unpatriotic and brake mah liberty")
---
Practically, it has been done by New Zealand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:13PM (6 children)
While I appreciate that is a more thorough answer, it still neglects the undeniable fact that any eradication of a virus this easy to spread is going to be so extremely short-lived as to be pointless unless it's also accompanied by universal disbursement of an effective anti-viral medication, vaccine, or other avenue to immunity.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:33PM (5 children)
Eradication is hard and will work only in special circumstances, yes.
Managing the covid pandemic with can be done with reasonable cost, but it does require a good plan and discipline (the South Korean example).
In the absence of those two, economists can whinge all they want, there will more costs related to the pandemic they can't even imagine [soylentnews.org], much less quantify.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 30 2020, @05:03PM (4 children)
There are costs to either alternative that people can't imagine. Anyone who tells you they fully understand the economy is a damned liar and anyone who tells you they can predict anything beyond some very basic influences on it is lying and wants something from you. The shit these guys are saying is extremely basic and well proven. That doesn't guarantee they're correct but it makes it a hell of a lot more likely than the rebuttal.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @08:58PM (3 children)
Well, *you* certainly seem to spend a great deal of time expressing how fully *you* understand the economy the moment anyone expresses their own understanding of the slightest subset of it.
So, doctor, thyself and so on.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @03:38AM (2 children)
I do understand the fundamentals fairly well, yes. And they are the most fundamental driving forces of the economy, so understanding them well and basing your predictions on them may land you with egg on your face occasionally but at least not for spouting shit based on things you don't remotely understand. Which is what most of the folks chipping in on this are doing, both here and elsewhere.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @05:31AM (1 child)
See? This is why we need the #fakenews moderation!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @11:42AM
Okay, you earned that upmod. *hat tip*
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @12:48PM
It is a local, temporary solution, which has to be butressed with travel restrictions and testing and contact tracing for the few cases that didn't quite get eradicated.
Put enough local solutions together and you'll achieve a wide-area solution.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:01PM (6 children)
> If everybody stays at home in quarantine two weeks
Are you a physicist? We are not talking spherical cows here, and many people can't stay at home no matter how strict the lockdown measures put in place. For just one obvious example, health care workers have to take a break, they can't stay in their hospital/nursing-facility for two weeks.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:28PM (4 children)
By formal education.
They don't need to (my fault, should have made clear that's totally a "thought experiment" to show that one doesn't need years-and-years).
New Zealand managed to do eradication with lockdown.
South Korea managed to get an upper hand an keep the infection under control (currently new daily infections steady at around 100) without lockdown - just applying well thought countermeasures early and with a disciplined population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @08:25PM (3 children)
Problem with arguing on SoylentNews,
You might be arguing with an actual rocket scientist, or brain surgeon. [dailymotion.com]
"It's not exactly brain surgery, you know."
"Not exactly rocket science, is it?"
So, Buzzard, what do you do?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @03:40AM (2 children)
As little as possible unless it involves fishing. Why?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @04:24AM (1 child)
Just gauging that intellectual capability.
A 3 out of 10 on the Morty scale.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @11:46AM
I'm good enough at what I do to rarely have to do any of it to make ends meet. So that's exactly what I do, make ends meet and keep the rest of my time for myself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @12:18PM
As far as I know, the health care workers in Toronto where there was a SARS outbreak *did* stay in quarantine on hospital grounds 24 hours a day, treating patients while they were still capable of doing so competently.
They squashed the outbreak completely, but not without some deaths.
Afterward, they received the highest honour Canada has to bestow for courage in the face of life-threatening danger -- one normally bestowed only in military personnel.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:22PM (1 child)
For one, it isn't two weeks. It would be two weeks as many times over as there are people who are cohabiting that location that have any symptoms (months in some cases). And those who realize they are sick after the quarantine starts would not be able to seek care, since they likely won't have the necessary medical professionals and services available to them without breaking isolation.
Quarantine only works if you can quickly identify and collect the sick people into an area where they can be treated and isolated from the rest of society. The lockdowns were never intended or able to stop the spread, only limit it to prevent overwhelming the hospitals. For the most part, we can call that a success. Continuing the lockdowns on people with the lowest risk while there's excess hospital capacity available might delay a few deaths, but it also incurs huge costs on society in terms of the economics, mental and emotional wellbeing and delays the development of immunity/resistance within the population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @08:28PM
Incorrect. You do not isolate individuals, you quarantine areas, and wait for that area to reach a herd immunity, to stop being a locus of spreading infection. Or, you go Medieval, and burn the entire neighborhood to the ground. Preferably from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Thursday July 30 2020, @08:09PM (4 children)
I guess if you don't count toilet paper as essential. Or meat. Or PPE. Or disinfectants. Then, no.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 31 2020, @03:41AM
Bread, coffee, and dairy products as well here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @12:23PM (2 children)
Yes, some things disappeared for a short time until the stores ha the time to restock. When I went to shop one day, intending to buy, among other things, some rice, I was surprised to see that there was only one bag of rice available -- an eight kilogram bag of Thai basmati rice. I could not buy less than that.
I now have enough rice to last me a very long time. And it's very good rice.
But that shortage was very short-term as a result of one-day panic buying. The store had restocked within a few days.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @12:32PM
I've used about 25 lbs of rice since the pandemic started, out of the 50 lbs I bought. Now it's easy to find, however.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Friday July 31 2020, @01:20PM
Disinfectant wipes are still not available and have not been at any store in our area since March. The same with rubbing alcohol. Two weeks ago I saw the first sanitizing (Lysol type) spray since March. Bleach was out of stock for all of March. Up until May, toilet paper and paper towels were hit and miss. You might find a few and you might not depending on when the supply truck arrived.
This was not one-day panic buying. There was some hoarding/profiteering but supply chains were broken and manufacturing shut down in many places and demand for certain items skyrocketed based on need. (see PPE, ventilators, disinfectants, etc.)