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posted by martyb on Thursday July 30 2020, @09:49AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (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.
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:08PM (7 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:08PM (#1028735) Journal

    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.

    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)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:33PM (#1028765) Journal

        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)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @08:58PM (#1028911)

            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)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @05:31AM (#1029147)

                I do understand the fundamentals fairly well, yes.

                See? This is why we need the #fakenews moderation!

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday July 31 2020, @12:48PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 31 2020, @12:48PM (#1029249) Homepage Journal

    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.

    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