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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: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @10:23AM (12 children)
TFA links to another article discussing a cost-benefit analysis involving lives saved from the lockdowns. And here [cambridge.org] is the actual study described by the article. These studies suffer from serious flaws.
First, attributing the reduction in economic activity to the lockdowns is flawed. If people don't feel safe, they're going to avoid stores, restaurants, bars, theaters, sporting events, and other places where they could be exposed to the virus. Although those businesses won't be closed, people will still voluntarily avoid them out of concern for their own health. In order for the economy to recover, people need to feel safe going to those businesses again. If most people don't feel safe going to restaurants and bars, lifting the lockdowns won't save those businesses. They still have expenses to pay like rent, and unless they're able to bring in enough revenue to cover those costs, those businesses will still fail. This can lead to a downward spiral as people losing their jobs no longer have the income to spend at other businesses that remain open. That said, it's clear that lockdowns or even more targeted restrictions do have a significant role in reducing the spread of the virus. Just look at the states in the Southeast that reopened everything far too quickly. In short, the article seems to downplay far too much the economic downturn that would have occurred absent any lockdowns.
Second, the study is focused heavily on the number of deaths, and that preventing those deaths is the primary benefit of the lockdowns. This, too, is deeply flawed. There is growing evidence that many people infected with COVID-19, even those who were previously quite healthy, have long term effects from this disease. Even people with very mild symptoms still have lung damage. It's not clear how severe these long term effects are, but it's definitely cause for concern. If the aftermath of COVID-19 leads to chronic illness with more frequently and severe respiratory infections, if it causes long term heart damage, or if there are other persistent effects, these are very real economic concerns. Increasing chronic illness in previously young and healthy individuals has an economic cost of its own in the form of reduced productivity and perhaps needing to support people who are disabled because of the effects of this disease. An analysis that only considers the benefit of preventing deaths is deeply flawed when we know a lot of people, not only vulnerable groups but healthy people, have long term illness from COVID-19.
(Score: 5, Informative) by driverless on Thursday July 30 2020, @11:19AM (5 children)
And we even have real-world data on this, thoughtfully provided by the Kingdom of Sweden, who ran a don't-lock-down experiment for us. Result: Twenty times the death toll of their neighbours who did lock down, and no economic benefit compared to said neighbours.
I assume the economists who published this study are the same sort who are routinely outperformed in terms of making predictions by chickens pecking at corn in gridded boards and similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @11:47AM
And then we have Latvia, with a reverse situation compared to neighbors. Now what?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ [statista.com]
BTW, we have Belarus as well, while on the other end we have Belgium.
Cherry-picked data demonstrate things about you, not about the right way to respond to the virus (if indeed such a way can be deduced this early; observe the "second wave" rising presently in all those places that sat months in lockdown in the spring).
(Score: 3, Informative) by leon_the_cat on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:10PM (3 children)
Sweden is 4th worst in europe. The top 3 performed hard lockdowns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Belgium#/media/File:COVID-19-EU-log-relative-deaths.svg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @01:15PM
Sweden's death numbers are several times other nordic countries', those that are actually comparable to Sweden in terms of location/culture/size, unlike the other "top performers" that are much larger, hosts many more tourists/foreigners, etc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @05:31PM
While true, Belgium's numbers are inflated compared to the others: they're the only country including suspected cases in their death toll. Most countries only report Covid deaths following a positive test, while Belgium (FAFAIK the only one) includes every death with Covid-like symptoms and every unexplained death from a population with a high number of confirmed cases in their figures, even without a positive test.
Eventually, the excess mortality figures will likely give a better picture of the real death toll than the current self-reporting. Just last week, The Netherlands reported that the excess mortality during March and April was 50% higher than the official Covid death toll. The Economist has a few graphs [economist.com] offsetting the official corona figures against the excess mortality rate, which suggests many countries are underreporting the actual death toll.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 03 2020, @03:50AM
Another weird thing is generally the countries with the best healthcare faired the worse due to having more people ready to die, stroke survivors, heart attack survivors, cancer survivors etc. People who have already died due to lack of healthcare in other countries.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:26PM (1 child)
The lifting of the lockdowns were not solely motivated by saving businesses, and certainly not saving people. No, it was about saving the states money. The lifting of lockdowns in many places were so the state could stop paying out unemployment. If you worked at a place that "reopened" then you were obligated to go back to work or forfeit your unemployment.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:11PM
At least in democrat run states, the goal is to get the Trump administration to make up for state shortfalls, while trying to shift the blame for the state lockdowns to it.
After November 3rd, they can get back to economic reality.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:04PM (3 children)
People aren't going to bars, restaurants and sporting events because they "feel unsafe".
They cannot go because democrat governors for the most part have prohibited them from opening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:45PM (2 children)
Bullshit, but not because of what you said which was accurate. Bars and restaurants have been open for quite awhile in my state. Yep, they did get swamped. And we're now experiencing the covid spike that would be expected because of it, more or less on time with the re-opening. And bars in certain areas of our state got the word that they can't serve again.... because cases started spiking.
And I'm avoiding restaurants, bars, and sporting events because I KNOW they're unsafe. I've stopped getting from takeout windows as well, which I considered a calculated risk previously.
What that proves is that most people are in fact stupid.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)
What that proves is that most people are in fact stupid.
I'm not so sure of that. I think it proves that most *Americans* are in fact stupid, as seen by the ridiculous case and death counts here. The same goes in Brazil BTW, so it's not entirely exclusive to America. In countries with smarter populaces, they aren't having such huge problems.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @10:17PM
I don't think that stupid is the correct word here. It's more of a learned helplessness thing: if you don't believe your friend/family/neighbour would ever lift a finger to help you, the rational choice is to not lift finger (or a face mask) to help them either. Calling these people stupid without acknowledging that American society is broken at its core, is equally stupid.
Unless, of course, you're only calling them stupid to virtue signal your own allegiance. In which case, you are equally stupid, regardless of whether you acknowledge the brokenness of society.