12 thoughts on “The Covid “Emergency””

  1. “In short, humanity in early 2020 was confronted with two novel dangers.”

    Three dangers, they forgot about Trump. Science is whatever the Democrats need it to be at any given moment. Don’t be the first one to stop clapping.

  2. Copied from a another forum, which copied it from WSJ:

    Quote:
    We find that the benefits of protection are disproportionately higher for older people. Consider two extremes: the 18-year-old and the 85-year-old. If the 18-year-old dies, he loses 61.2 years of expected life. That’s a lot. But the probability of the 18-year-old dying, if infected, is tiny, about 0.004%. So the expected years of life lost are only 0.004% times 35% times 61.2 years, which is 0.0009 year. That’s only 7.5 hours. Everything this younger person has been through over the past year was to prevent, on average, the loss of 7.5 hours of his life.

    Now consider the 85-year-old. If he dies, he will lose 6.4 years of expected life. The probability of dying, if infected, is much higher for him, about 8%. So the expected years of life lost are 8% times 35% times 6.4 years, which is 0.179 year—65 days. The benefits of protection, measured in life expectancy, are 210 times as high for the older person.

    The costs of protection include reduced schooling, reduced economic activity, increased substance abuse, more suicides, more loneliness, reduced contact with loved ones, delayed cancer diagnoses, delayed childhood vaccinations, increased anxiety, lower wage growth, travel restrictions, reduced entertainment choices, and fewer opportunities for socializing and building friendships.
    EndQuote

    This is a cold, analytical approach, like actuarial tables. But it does put things in an interesting new light.

    1. Thank you for putting this in numerical terms – that makes it far easier to comprehend.

      I have mixed feelings on the lockdowns. I was in favor of the “two weeks to flatten the curve” in areas where the healthcare system was being overwhelmed.

      I also consider the Australian approach of brief but very severe “Circuit breaker” lockdowns to have been successful, though in part due to Australia’s geography.

      Thus, I think there may (debatable, of course) be a case made for brief (two weeks or less) lockdowns in some circumstances.

      On the other hand, what we saw here in the US in some states… months and months of stay-home lockdown, were IMHO a very different thing. The damages those wrought were exacerbated by their duration, for dubious “benefit”. I also consider the precedent this set on abolishing civil liberties and rights to be vastly more damaging to our society than even a major pandemic (which this pandemic was not).

      Failing to weigh collateral damage and consequences is the antithesis of the scientific approach. It’s illustrative that those who shout “follow the science!” the loudest are all so often those who do the precise opposite.

      1. I have fewer mixed feelings; especially a year ago in the March through May timeframe. Then I thought even the two weeks was a dumb idea, but as it meant very little to me (I wasn’t essential, but I could work virtually and made the same pay); I chose not to argue too much. Later in June and July, the southern US really could have used a two weeks to flatten the curve. Instead, we already had 3 months of uneventful lockdown and now a cause to protest with BLM and George Floyd. So we didn’t lockdown during that time, but we should have, if it was really about saving lives.

        Otherwise, I looked at the initial numbers from the Princess Diamond cruise. From a statistical standpoint, it was a near perfect sample of a far larger world population. There was over 3,000 people, all with near equivalent time of exposure and exposure levels, and if anything, was weighted a bit heavy on the older population.

        The first review of the data was a bit early, as a few more deaths happened later. Still the statistical model I built with that data was far closer to reality today than Imperial College London. Our elite chose to buy into the Imperial College’s model of doom and gloom.

        The Princess Diamond results were a bit better than reality. The COVID disease really is a bit worse than most flu seasons, and this is primarily due to the longer term effects it has on cardiac health (many recovered patients note much higher resting heart rates, and we won’t know how many fewer years they’ll have because of it). I’m willing to admit this. Yet I think the lockdowns are still a bad idea. I don’t think those that fully supported the lockdowns will admit their errors in analysis. They’ll continue to proclaim the science supports their analysis, when it actually never did. If you bring them data, they’ll drop back to “if it saves one life” and ignore the “if”.

  3. That was a great article, particularly in its emphasis on the burden of proof for policy actions in a free society.

  4. I have mixed feeling about the effectiveness of the lock-downs as well. I think rather than lock-downs we should have done a more effective job in selective quarantines. Esp. the highly at-risk elderly. Lock-downs are what you get when you can’t arrest people on the street suspected of being disease carriers. But neither are preferable in a free society. However, I can’t beat us up too much. When you go back to the mid-1300’s and the plague, societies didn’t manage those particularly well either. Although the ‘vapor’ theory did help evacuate cities (for those who could afford it) which no doubt helped reduce the spread of the disease until it had run its course. Same now.

    What wasn’t emphasized enough was the concept that if you flatten the curve you also extend the curve. The idea that a two-week lock-down to ‘flatten-the-curve’ was idiotic on its face! Knowing full well the implication that flatten-the-curve means you also spread the smaller hill out along the X (time) axis. There was going to be no magic step function to zero after two weeks. In fact a flattened curve IMPLIED the disease would be amongst us for a much, much longer time. Longer than if the epidemic had been allowed a sharper bell curve. The point was to prevent the overwhelm of medical resources, not the elimination of the disease. Somehow we forgot that message along the way.

  6. “Far too many people are not dying in our current global pandemic, and far too many children are not yet infected,” the reader wrote.
    It’s important to have prioritized goals….

  8. I just got mine yesterday.
    Partly because I am over 60 years old (high risk, eh?)…
    Mostly because if some official demands: “Ihre Papiere bitte” I can show my CoVid card and proceed with my (quote) life as a free citizen(un-quote).

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