The failed experiment of Covid lockdowns

[_ajax18]

No, this is not from Breitbart. I'm still waiting to see the hordes of people who you claimed would be disabled from Covid.

Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. has now carried out two large-scale experiments in public health—first, in March and April, the lockdown of the economy to arrest the spread of the virus, and second, since mid-April, the reopening of the economy. The results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections.

Considering that lockdowns are economically costly and create well-documented long-term public-health consequences beyond Covid, imposing them appears to have been a large policy error. At the beginning, when little was known, officials acted in ways they thought prudent. But now evidence proves that lockdowns were an expensive treatment with serious side effects and no benefit to society.

TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported cases of Covid-19 in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction. That is measured not by the mandates put in place by government officials, but rather by observing what people in each jurisdiction actually did, along with their baseline behavior before the lockdowns. This is captured in highly detailed anonymized cellphone tracking data provided by Google and others and tabulated by the University of Maryland’s Transportation Institute into a “Social Distancing Index.”

Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.

It could be that strict lockdowns were imposed as a response to already severe outbreaks. But the surprising negative correlation, while statistically weak, persists even when excluding states with the heaviest caseloads. And it makes no difference if the analysis includes other potential explanatory factors such as population density, age, ethnicity, prevalence of nursing homes, general health or temperature. The only factor that seems to make a demonstrable difference is the intensity of mass-transit use.

We ran the experiment a second time to observe the effects on caseloads of the reopening that began in mid-April. We used the same methodology, but started from each state’s peak of lockdown and extended to July 31. Confirming the first experiment, there was a tendency (though fairly weak) for states that opened up the most to have the lightest caseloads. The states that had the big summer flare-ups in the so-called “Sunbelt second wave”—Arizona, California, Florida and Texas—are by no means the most opened up, politicized headlines notwithstanding.

The lesson is not that lockdowns made the spread of Covid-19 worse—although the raw evidence might suggest that—but that lockdowns probably didn’t help, and opening up didn’t hurt. This defies common sense. In theory, the spread of an infectious disease ought to be controllable by quarantine. Evidently not in practice, though we are aware of no researcher who understands why not.

We’re not the only researchers to have discovered this statistical relationship. We first published a version of these findings in April, around the same time similar findings appeared in these pages. In July, a publication of the Lancet published research that found similar results looking across countries rather than U.S. states. “A longer time prior to implementation of any lockdown was associated with a lower number of detected cases,” the study concludes. Those findings have now been enhanced by sophisticated measures of actual social distancing, and data from the reopening phase.

There are experimental controls that all this research lacks. There are no observable instances in which there were either total lockdowns or no lockdowns at all. But there’s no escaping the evidence that, at minimum, heavy lockdowns were no more effective than light ones, and that opening up a lot was no more harmful than opening up a little. So where’s the science that would justify the heavy lockdowns many public-health officials are still demanding?

With the evidence we now possess, even the most risk-averse and single-minded public-health officials should hesitate before demanding the next lockdown and causing the next economic recession.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed ... 1599000890

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Once taken place in a terribly dreadful time, there was a small cat-licking bird that lived on a not-so-big lane by my house whose name was Charles just like every other soul, male or female, that lived on my smelly, stinky, orange, old, rotten, messy, busted cul-de-sac between Belmont and Rose which are both awfully gay Streets Like North street or some crap that reminds me of a celebrity like Paris Hilton or some blonde loser that doesn't even know the capital of her own country, which is the United States of America a.k.a.: The U.S.A which is a pristine nation of beauty, opposing to a country as the country of Somalia and Belgium, a part of Europe, which doesn't even have a government, it's just in a complete state of anarchy just like my mind and soul which are both filled with outrageous nonsense that I'm typing down right now into some fat long sentence that probably makes no sense but who cares I'm trying to set some sort of weird record here like most ducks snorted or some weird thing like that and if I do set some sort of record I will be in the Guinness Book of World Records (though anti-American and pro-European, a place of pitty and despair as Somalia is) which was always my dream because that book has a whole bunch a cool and weird stuff in it and I would Become famous and add to the weirdness of the book like some of their records which reminds me of the Rob & Big where Rob sets all of those skateboarding Records And Big Black eats bananas and donuts and three weeks later they both get plaques saying the record they set and I want to get one of those so that's why I'm writing all of this stuff down without ever using a period or some other sentence ending mark like an exclamation point or a question mark or any other symbol that could possibly end my streak of words that is really long now and would take me a while to count just like counting sheep which is supposed to put you to sleep but it really keeps you awake because you want to keep counting and counting until you don't know what comes after trillions, but that would take Years or something because it would take a while just to count a trillion seconds or minutes would be even worse just like how ducks are worse that geese because they are more aggressive around their young unlike great white sharks which are often eaten by their mothers when they are born and the ones who do make it out alive have no mother to teach them how to hunt or whatever because none of that matters because us human beings have mothers unless they die or run off with some CEO of a big company or someone else who makes a lot of money and then they leave you with your dad and you are jealous of your friends if you have any because they have moms and you don't because your mom was some greedy pig who wanted money but ended up only getting the money part and she bought drugs because she was depressed and ended up killing herself from an overdose and you wouldn't even know about it until you become some rich person and check the files somewhere and learn that she died of a overdose and you eyes get all teary and then you start crying because you know that you wouldn't be alive without that woman you called mom and I just found out right now that the longest sentence is like 10,000 words so I have a ways to go and you have to go with me so let's go to 6th gear and throw out some words like Emphysema which I had to do a report on in 4th grade because we had a ton of projects and this was the disease one and we chose diseases out of a hat and I came out with Emphysema which is a form of lung cancer which is 98% caused by smoking which reminds me of the way my dad describes smoking: "you get plant leaves, wrap them in paper, light it on fire and suck on it" which is normally a sentence but not today because I'm setting out on the quest for a long sentence that I'm typing up which reminds me of a story my grandpa told me about himself when he was "your age" about how they covered the letters on the type writers and they had to type so that they could memorize where the letters are on a type writer and my grandpa says he will never regret taking that class because it helped him out a lot when it came to typing and now a days he is not bad a typing at all because He is almost as fast as me because I am a pretty fast typer and writing this article isn't taking very long and expect being pretty far pretty soon at the pace I'm going right now so there are going to be some serious records getting busted when I'm finally finished writing this article on this dumb website which will probably end up huffing this article even though it is fun-packed and joyful and keeps the reader reading when they use that excuse to mom saying "just one more sentence" but that sentence is 10,000 words long and still continuing to go at a reasonable pace and it is going to shatter most of those long sentence records just like how the chargers are going to shatter the most consecutive years without a super bowl win record and I doubt that they will win one in the near future but they patriots are going to win some serious super bowls because they are the best team ever even better than the cowboys or 49ers and no one cares a bout them so go patriots and boo chargers even though I live in San Diego and Like the Padres I hate the Chargers because they are bad and the padres are bad too but I don't care because they are my favorite team and the dodgers are my least favorite along with the Yankees because the Yankees get a lot of money to spend and the padres and marlins get almost nothing and then the Yankees buy a-rod for a lot and the Rays get almost no money but are still fighting for first place this season without expensive players like Derek Jeter or a-rod or Johnny Damon or whoever because they are an all around better team that can beat the Yankees even though the Yankees can beat the royals a lot who really suck because they suck more that the padres do and so do the mariners and Rockies even thought the Rockies went to the world series last year they lost and haven't stopped losing for a while now, either and they are last place in the NL west and that is where the padres used to be but they started hitting home runs and winning games and are dong pretty good right now despite having little offense except for Adrian Gonzalez who is leading the NL in RBI's even though he is on the team who scores the least runs in the league but they are not last in homeruns though they are like 5 away or something but I’m not sure so screw that and let's talk about something fun like water or food or dirt or something but I think food is the best because their is a lot of things to talk about with food like you r favorite food which mine happens to be some spicy burrito form Chipotle mexican grill and it is very good just like this macaroni my mom made one time that had bread crumbs on top and it was very good like all of the food they serve on top chef which I wish I could be a judge for because they have a lot of good food on that show and it makes my mouth water whenever I watch it and that is why I watch it because the food is totally awesome and sometimes I hate the people but they end up getting eliminated like the Dance crews in France's Best Dance Crew which is a great show and you should watch it because people do good dancing like the JFrabbawockeez because they won the first season and they are very good just like supreme soul and So real crew and phresh select and super cr3w and I’m only at 1500 words right now so I have to write some serious stuff like a life biography about myself and anything I’ve ever done which includes going to big bear to ski, fishing, breathing, swimming, going, farting, eating, sleeping and a whole lot more stuff which reminds me of 4th grade again when my teacher was debating with the class whether "a lot" was one or two words and all of the kids including myself said one while the teacher said two and he was right and we were wrong but no one cared because we all had fun arguing about and I have fun arguing with my friends about football and not baseball because in baseball we all like the same team but in football I like the patriots and my friends like the chargers and the 49ers and the eagles and the saints but my team always woops their team's ass and they say that the patriots "cheat" and that's how they won even though the patriots just pwned their team and they suck and my team is good but we all agree when it comes to baseball because we all like the padres and we never really argue over anything in baseball which is my favorite sport and I play it and I am good a it and I want it to be my profession but I doubt that that will happen so my backup plan is being a cop because you get all of the benefits and you get paid after you retire which is good news and I would also like to be some government dude or something like that because they get the benefits too so it would be cool to work for the government which reminds me that my principal worked at the white house and taught the president email because he was the computer guy or something like that so h knows a whole bunch of computer crap like my dad and he is fat too so everyone makes fun of him and I think he huffs kittens too but I am not sure and about that and what the hell is up with all the noob and kitten huffing on this gay ass website like all of the things like "the writer may have been huffing kittens" and stuff like that it really annoys the hell out of me just like other things such as when people clip their finger nails it makes that weird noise that get me all crazy and I hate it just like how me friend hates the sound of chalk on a chalkboard which I find soothing and relaxing but he gets really annoyed and psyched out and he is also very pale-skinned and so is the rest of his family so it must have been some genetic thing like twins and clones and whole bunch of other confusing science crap that I learned a long time ago in 7th grade or something which was when we watched movies in class like UHF which has "Weird Al" Yankovic in it and it is very funny because "Weird Al" Yankovic has to save a TV station with a whole bunch of weird shows like wheel of fish and rauls wild kingdom with a whole bunch of cool animals like flamingos and turtles and stuff like that but who cares lets get to the meaty part of this article which is the part where I write the longest word known to man which is Methionylthreonylthreonyl...isoleucine which is cut out because it has 189,819 words so Wikipedia had to cut out the middle part and the longest word is the name of a protein which is the largest known to man to so big names go to big things is apparently the moral of this story ladies and gentleman the road doesn't stop here and I have to continue no matter what you say or think so I should just write some story now that has no periods so lets start with a guy named Carl who liked fish and women and he went to Clara’s house and they had a good food but that isn't enough of a story to set the record so I think I’ll just stick to writing random crap which really makes no sense at all and here is some random picture that shows a guy who has two legs and another guy who has three who is mocking the guy with two legs because he rips his flesh in disgust every night and you think about who would be dumb enough to rip their flesh instead of cut the ring off or something that doesn't involve entirely gruesome crap like that and I have another life after this one just like how cats have 9 lives I have three because I’m on my second one right now and it is great and you might think I’m a whole new person but you are thinking wrong it's just when I died I came back t life and next time I die I’ll come back to life again and then when I die I’ll be dead for sure which reminds me of Stephen king's book called pet sematary which is coo because people come back to life because there was a burial ground that bring people back to life if they are dead and that book is a great book and you should read it along with the Harry Potter series which has magic in it and it is cool too so don't shank yourself when you are cutting that meat for dinner or you might die of massive blood loss or might just need a band aid I mean that works too or you don't even need a band aid because I don't use them and I have never gotten and infection in my life so maybe I’m lucky or have an alligator immune system or something but I don't use band aids and I don't use Neosporin on my cuts so I’m some sort of miracle I guess but I’m wasting twenty minutes of my miracle life on this retard article that I just want the Guinness book of world records to see and go that is the longest thing ever and have me in their book so I’m striving towards that goal right now and I’m not stopping until I hit at least 3000 words and then I’ll do the construction thing and finish thing up tomorrow or sometime after now and I will be the author of the longest single sentence on the planet earth which will be a real accomplishment on my part so you can be real jealous right now because I am making history right in front of you and if you are still reading this I am truly impressed because this article must be getting really boring by now and maybe your not even reading this just scanning the article for periods which I’m afraid you will not find until the very end of this article which is a very, very, long way away and if you are a slow reader well sucks for you but now I have to use that construction thing and I will finish this and now I am back after a hard day at work but I’m still going now so get ready to rumble with this long thing called a sentence that is as long as Mt. Everest is tall and the Marinas Trench is deep and speaking of the ocean fish of all kinds live in the ocean such as puffer fish which are poisonous to eat if not prepared right and will make you die after and you ADMINS BETTER NOT DELETE THIS BECAUSE IT IS SOME RECORD and if you do delete it well I will have this saved and what will you do then you people who will want to delete this because you don't care about people trying to break records so don't delete this or I will boycott Uncyclopedia and will be very mad at you guys like how I am Mad at Tim for being so annoying just like Celebrities and loud people and people who don't brush their teeth which makes me think of killing myself except I wouldn't do that because I am some sort of miracle as you probably read before or not because you are tired of reading this jumble of words that are still making a grammatically correct sentence that is breaking records right now and I won't stop until you let me break some serious records like longest sentence and some other weird stuff that I might get an award for or something but I also want that Guinness record plaque that you get for setting a monster record like most consecutive noses picked with boogers in them or something completely obscure like that which is like a bunch of the articles on this website which are actually some times funny like how to solve a one by one by one Rubik’s cube which made me laugh pretty good and the star wars one is good too so never delete those two because they are funny unlike this article because this article is more boring than funny but who cares some retard might laugh at this bundle of crap and I think that I will put that crap tag on this article so people know that this article isn't really funny but that it is long and boring like Dances with Wolves and some other long movies that you actually fall asleep during which is hard for me to do so I tend not to nut I did when I watched Dances with Wolves because it was really boring like counting sheep to a trillion or some other large number that some little kid says he wishes he had that many dollars but he will never get that many dollars because there isn't even that many in circulation right now and if there was that would be some major inflation right there so don't think you can get that much money kid because then you would not be doing this country a favor which it desperately needs I might add so instead burn money instead of make it and lower inflation rates and do everyone a favor except for the people who are already really rich and don't care about inflation and would rather drive an escalade instead of a Prius in times like this with all of the gas prices and stuff that would drive up your bill but they don't notice because they have a lot of money and don't care therefore they should die and burn in hell with all of the lawyers and other bad people on this ball we call earth that really isn't a perfect sphere because of the mountains and valleys makes it look all jagged but from space it looks like a sphere but looks may be deceiving so don't think that the world is a sphere no matter what other people say and tell them to eat themselves when they try to convince you that the earth is really a sphere but it isn't just like how most ignorant people think that Columbus found America but he really didn't that was Leif Erickson, but Columbus really found the Bahamas thinking they were penis outside of china and he was wrong so everyone forget Columbus and remember some other sailor like Henry Hudson who tried to find the northern passage but didn't so his crew killed him but a he was a great man any way so remember him instead of Columbus or remember William Penn who created Pennsylvania or remember your grandma or someone but not Columbus so go ahead and think that the earth is flat even though it isn't and it can have for corners if you think about it so go die and fall off a cliff or something interesting like that or at least get a life that want’ to penis e a cool record like the one I'm setting right now so go to a pawnshop and buy a life or kill yourself and get a new one or something weird like that or I will force you to and if you are still reading this you are an amazing human because I forget most of the stuff I’ve written already except for the great white shark thing at the beginning of the article and I remember that I need to go see some good movies tomorrow or sometime in the near future like within a week or something but forget that I'm only at 3500 words now so lets go to 4000 penis and then maybe I’ll call it quits because this is boring and I would rather write another article that is good and long but not all one sentence like this one so let's come up with some final five hundred words or so to say before I stop writing all of the nonsense so let's brainstorm ideas like poo, ducks, lemons, flanges, more ducks and star wars which sound about like enough and I like star wars out of there so let's talk about some penis star wars stuff like Kit Fisto who has weird tentacle things on his head and Ki-Adi-Mundi who has two brains and is on the Jedi which is penis honor and privilege because it is and Kit Fisto gets killed by Palpatine in the 3rd movie like Mace Windu who is cool and I like his light saber because it is purple unlike the standard blue and green colors which I prefer green out of but most people seem to like the blue colors but who cares about them they like blue and green is better so you better not like blue or you are some lame person that will be lame for the rest of your life like some people who think that they are cool but are really posers and they live their life not knowing that they are continually mocked and made fun of all of the time behind their backs and that they are really dumb or something so go out and tell all of the posers you know to not be posers anymore and tell them that they should go jump in a lake or something insulting like that and make them run and cry and you can laugh at them and hope they don't tell their mom who will be mad at you so maybe you shouldn't even do that you should just laugh at them behind their backs while they live the poser life and I'm near 4000 words now so let me slow down now yeah I have about a hundred words left so let me write down the exact amount before I stop writing so let me finish this thing up by talking about donuts and their fried goodness and how they make you fat and stuff but they do taste good so you should eat them because they are good and they taste good even though you could get fat but no one cares so eat them and be happy and I am starting to near 4000 now so just be a bit patient and this has been fun guys so let me finish right about, where you should wait for it, and wait, 'till right about, where we are almost there, having just two more for that you should wait, while this actually isn’t going to stop because I want this to keep going for a little while longer so that I can still break some record but man am I tired so I think I will actually shut up now, nope this has to continue forever and will continue for years and then a Bert killed the 3-legged guy and ate his orange while pooping and then I shall say the bird's name is "a bird who walked across the street killed a guy with a Minecraft nose and stuff. Jesus Christ is my lord and savior.You guys probably think that that is the worlds longest sentence, but it's not,because I just keep on adding commas, and it's pretty easy, if you think about it, so anyway there is this girl at school and she's my friend, and all but she's turning really mean, its a different person, and I'm trying to beat the record, but that girl, who likes this boy, who likes this girl, and who likes this other boy, and that same kid likes this other girl, but that girl like another guy, but the guy is actually a 40 year old man that eats penis for a living for the ability to never show the meerkats who's doing the write things oh and my last remark is that socialism does not work because look at Europe and Greece which is failing miserably; America always wins, there is no doubt about America's beauty, Amen and I just made it longer, and longer still as I continue to talk and talk and talk and talk throughout this, though I believe it would be referred to more as typing, so I will continue to type and type and type and type and type until I grow bored of it, and I have so I will take my leave soon, but not before I say that I somehow managed to make this already super long sentence longer, so HALLELUJAH, but we are not done yet everything I just said IS NOT RELEVANT to daily life, if you read this all you have no life, did u mention I like waffles and pancakes and people and gay marriage. This is a hell of a sentence peeps. What ever the man did the child would not wake up from the bullet that entered his head and he woke up again to find himself in heaven and then he felt fire and it was hot very hot very hot very hot very hot very hot but then he said "so" and he was alive again, alive, alive, alive, alive and then he flew like a bird and he looked in the mirror and saw his wings and his beak and his legs he was a bird like wow like what like wow like what that's so cool but then a dragon came and saved the bird and turned him into a princess and he had to live with the dragons and it was so boring and like who wrote this, who has the time to do this, because I obviously don't, and many other people don't, such as the president, CEO's of companies, terrorists, workers, kids, parents, adults, and many other people, but who even gives a damn about what we're doing, because this is all BS.

- Doc

[_Some Schmo]

This article has been brought to you by the "Removing a Band-Aid One Millimeter at a Time" and "Prolonging the Pain" Super PACs.

[Guest]

No, this is not from Breitbart. I'm still waiting to see the hordes of people who you claimed would be disabled from Covid.

Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. has now carried out two large-scale experiments in public health—first, in March and April, the lockdown of the economy to arrest the spread of the virus, and second, since mid-April, the reopening of the economy. The results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections.

Considering that lockdowns are economically costly and create well-documented long-term public-health consequences beyond Covid, imposing them appears to have been a large policy error. At the beginning, when little was known, officials acted in ways they thought prudent. But now evidence proves that lockdowns were an expensive treatment with serious side effects and no benefit to society.

TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported cases of Covid-19 in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction. That is measured not by the mandates put in place by government officials, but rather by observing what people in each jurisdiction actually did, along with their baseline behavior before the lockdowns. This is captured in highly detailed anonymized cellphone tracking data provided by Google and others and tabulated by the University of Maryland’s Transportation Institute into a “Social Distancing Index.”

Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.

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It could be that strict lockdowns were imposed as a response to already severe outbreaks. But the surprising negative correlation, while statistically weak, persists even when excluding states with the heaviest caseloads. And it makes no difference if the analysis includes other potential explanatory factors such as population density, age, ethnicity, prevalence of nursing homes, general health or temperature. The only factor that seems to make a demonstrable difference is the intensity of mass-transit use.


We ran the experiment a second time to observe the effects on caseloads of the reopening that began in mid-April. We used the same methodology, but started from each state’s peak of lockdown and extended to July 31. Confirming the first experiment, there was a tendency (though fairly weak) for states that opened up the most to have the lightest caseloads. The states that had the big summer flare-ups in the so-called “Sunbelt second wave”—Arizona, California, Florida and Texas—are by no means the most opened up, politicized headlines notwithstanding.

The lesson is not that lockdowns made the spread of Covid-19 worse—although the raw evidence might suggest that—but that lockdowns probably didn’t help, and opening up didn’t hurt. This defies common sense. In theory, the spread of an infectious disease ought to be controllable by quarantine. Evidently not in practice, though we are aware of no researcher who understands why not.

We’re not the only researchers to have discovered this statistical relationship. We first published a version of these findings in April, around the same time similar findings appeared in these pages. In July, a publication of the Lancet published research that found similar results looking across countries rather than U.S. states. “A longer time prior to implementation of any lockdown was associated with a lower number of detected cases,” the study concludes. Those findings have now been enhanced by sophisticated measures of actual social distancing, and data from the reopening phase.

There are experimental controls that all this research lacks. There are no observable instances in which there were either total lockdowns or no lockdowns at all. But there’s no escaping the evidence that, at minimum, heavy lockdowns were no more effective than light ones, and that opening up a lot was no more harmful than opening up a little. So where’s the science that would justify the heavy lockdowns many public-health officials are still demanding?

With the evidence we now possess, even the most risk-averse and single-minded public-health officials should hesitate before demanding the next lockdown and causing the next economic recession.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed ... 1599000890

I think the article deserves to be carefully and honestly considered along with other evidence and studies that have been done. I think it has become clear that lockdowns alone are not the be all and end all of covid-19 pandemic mitigation. But I don't think it has been established as conclusively as the article claimed that lockdowns are never better than no lockdown at all. For example: it claimed that:

Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.

I'm not sure they aren't confusing cause with effect here. Did those five places have longer, stricter lockdowns because they had larger Covid outbreaks, or did they have larger outbreaks because they had longer, stricter lockdowns? Look at the graph for New York, for example: Because New York had the largest initial outbreak (probably because New York was the main point of entry for Covid victims coming from or through Europe), they initiated a strict lockdown. Consequently, their rapid rise to a sharp peak of daily new cases was quickly followed by an almost equally rapid decline in new cases, and for the last 4 months the daily new cases in New York has remained relatively flat, and their positivity rate is an impressively low 1.1%.

In California too, which has a partial lockdown plus strict mask and social distancing requirements, had a rapid decline in daily new cases since the sharp peak of Aug 14, and has been relatively flat for the last 2 months, with a positivity rate of 2.6%. Hopefully that continues to improve. I don't think we can yet reasonably claim that the lockdowns just don't help.

Neither do I think it is reasonable to unequivocally conclude that the rapid decline in daily new cases in most other countries other than the U.S. had nothing to do with their lockdown protocols, particularly considering their spectacular success in Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand, etc., and the fact that all the Scandinavian countries that used lockdown protocols fared better than Sweden, which did not.

Please have the open mindedness and honesty to also consider this study: Lockdowns save lives. The evidence is clear around the world.

More than a third of the global population is under some restriction on movement related to the coronavirus pandemic. But after several weeks of lockdown measures, small groups have begun to protest and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have argued that countries should open back up.

"Give people their freedom back!" Musk tweeted on Wednesday, linking to a Wall Street Journal op-ed from TJ Rodgers, the founder of manufacturing company Cypress Semiconductor.

Rodgers recently outlined two arguments for why US lockdowns were a mistake: The first is that his own analysis found a minimal correlation between states that closed businesses early and their overall death count (adjusted for population size). The second is that Sweden — where many schools and businesses remain open — has a lower death rate than some European nations that imposed full lockdowns, like Italy, Spain, and the UK.

But overwhelmingly, evidence suggests that lockdowns help contain outbreaks and save lives.

China, Germany, and Spain all saw their number of daily infections drop off after lockdowns were instated.

In Italy, a team of researchers recently simulated what could have happened if the country's restrictions had been relaxed in March — or not imposed at all. The results showed that the country's lockdown prevented around 200,000 hospitalizations between February 21 (when Italy's first case was reported) and March 25. It also reduced transmission of the virus in Italy by around 45%, according to the study.

Another group of scientists found that Chinese cities that implemented restrictions before they discovered any COVID-19 cases saw one-third fewer cases during their first week of infections than cities with delayed responses to the outbreak.

"Social distancing provided by the lockdowns has clearly slowed the spread of the virus," Jeffrey Morris, director of the biostatistics division at the University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

Morris estimated that most places in the US have reduced their normal activity levels by 70% due to lockdowns and social distancing. That means fewer opportunities for the spread of infection.

Also consider this from the same article:

Rodgers's analysis suggested that shutting a state down quickly didn't save many lives in the US, but Morris pointed out several issues with the argument.

For one thing, Morris said, there's no consistent definition of a lockdown across all 50 states. Some states have allowed restaurants to stay open, while others issued only partial stay-at-home orders. New York is also an outlier, since it represents more than a third of the nation's coronavirus deaths — far more than any other individual state. That means it can skew the results.

"I find the analysis they did to be simplistic and clearly not the best way to answer the question," Morris said. Additional factors like population density could also influence a state's death rates, he added

and this:

A recent NBER paper found that the optimal lockdown policy involves a severe lockdown two weeks after an outbreak is detected, which is then gradually withdrawn after three months.

"Clearly we need for society to practice new levels of caution in terms of social distancing, hygiene, and mask-wearing," Morris said. "Lockdowns achieved this, but at great cost."

The article is not quite up to date, but I still think its general conclusions still apply.

[_Res Ipsa]

Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. And the way they set up the measurement means they almost certainly have the causation backwards. The greatest expected effect of lockdowns is not during the first part of the lockdown. But that’s all they measured. GIGO.

[_Gunnar]

Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. And the way they set up the measurement means they almost certainly have the causation backwards. The greatest expected effect of lockdowns is not during the first part of the lockdown. But that’s all they measured. GIGO.

Good answer!

I think this article is also worth reading: Fact check: Does the WHO Now Agree With Donald Trump on Ending Lockdowns?
Upon reading this article, it is clear that Trump took the WHO claim out of context. Here is an important takeaway from the article:

"We think lockdowns only serve one purpose, and that is to give a bit of breathing space to stop everything, the virus stops moving, and while you've got that breathing space you should be really building your testing, building up your contact tracing, build up your local organization, so that as you release lockdown you're bound to get more cases but you can deal with it really, really elegantly," he said.

Nabarro went on: "The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large we'd rather not do it." He pointed to regions where tourism has suffered, the effects on farmers, and poverty levels.

"We really do appeal to world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems, for doing it, work together and learn from each other, but remember lockdowns just have one consequence you must never ever belittle and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer."

It makes sense that lockdowns should be regarded as temporary, emergency measures, even though disastrous as a long term solution. If a lockdown turns into a permanent or semi-permanent solution, we probably didn't do it correctly.

[_Themis]

Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. And the way they set up the measurement means they almost certainly have the causation backwards. The greatest expected effect of lockdowns is not during the first part of the lockdown. But that’s all they measured. GIGO.

We should see increases in covid 19 cases for at least one to two weeks after a lock-down. It's not surprising that we are going to see this and more pseudo studies to support certain political agenda's. The US response to covid was an unmitigated mess, with the white house being the most inept. This is what you get when you put Morons in charge. Lock-down's have been a staple around the world and have worked very well at reducing the spread. Some countries have eradicated the virus and are fully open again. Maybe, Ajax, what you should focus on is an evidence based argument about whether lock-downs are more harmful, in areas like economy and mental health, then saving lives and health of people from covid 19. The problem for the US was a lack of leadership, especially from the white-house.

[_Res Ipsa]

Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. And the way they set up the measurement means they almost certainly have the causation backwards. The greatest expected effect of lockdowns is not during the first part of the lockdown. But that’s all they measured. GIGO.

Good answer!

I think this article is also worth reading: Fact check: Does the WHO Now Agree With Donald Trump on Ending Lockdowns?
Upon reading this article, it is clear that Trump took the WHO claim out of context. Here is an important takeaway from the article:

"We think lockdowns only serve one purpose, and that is to give a bit of breathing space to stop everything, the virus stops moving, and while you've got that breathing space you should be really building your testing, building up your contact tracing, build up your local organization, so that as you release lockdown you're bound to get more cases but you can deal with it really, really elegantly," he said.

Nabarro went on: "The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large we'd rather not do it." He pointed to regions where tourism has suffered, the effects on farmers, and poverty levels.

"We really do appeal to world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems, for doing it, work together and learn from each other, but remember lockdowns just have one consequence you must never ever belittle and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer."

It makes sense that lockdowns should be regarded as temporary, emergency measures, even though disastrous as a long term solution. If a lockdown turns into a permanent or semi-permanent solution, we probably didn't do it correctly.

Gunnar, in my experience, most people who talk about WHO's response to the pandemic have no idea what they are talking about. The article you quote is a pleasant exception.

At the beginning of the outbreak, one of the most crucial questions to answer was whether standard public health procedures could contain and suppress the virus. Could we contain it, like SARS or Ebola? Or would those measures be ineffective, like colds and seasonal flu?

After WHO sent its first team to China, it concluded that COVID-19 could be contained through standard public health measures. Here's the money quote from the report:

Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain COVID-19 in China. These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize transmission chains in humans. Fundamental to these measures is extremely proactive surveillance to immediately detect cases, very rapid diagnosis and immediate case isolation, rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts, and an exceptionally high degree of population understanding and acceptance of these measures.

.

Report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source ... fce87f4e_2

The report was published in March. But WHO started talking about it in February. In press conference after press conference, WHO practically pleaded with governments to implement these measures instead of giving up and going straight to lockdown. Lockdown is an emergency measure of last resort to avoid overwhelming hospitals when community transmission is rampant.

Towards the end of the first wave of lockdowns, WHO repeatedly stressed that lockdowns could give countries a second chance to contain and suppress the virus by implementing testing, isolating, tracking and quarantining once the lockdown reduced the spread to a manageable rate. Most states ignored that advice. We tried in Washington. Our lockdown wasn't lifted until we had enough PPE and testing supplies to do effective contact tracing. But it hasn't worked. My local health department sent out a bulletin pleading for cooperation with its contact tracing efforts. Despite the efforts to educate the public and enlist its support, people were increasingly (1) gathering indoors in groups; (2) avoiding health department personnel after testing positive; and (3) refusing to give the health department contact tracing information.

Dr. Tedros has said more times than I can count that the most important tool in fighting the virus is national unity. Disunity opens cracks that the virus exploits. Instead of unifying the country around fighting the virus effectively so people can have the confidence necessary to ramp up the economy, Donald Trump has used the pandemic to politically divide the country. He has literally screwed the U.S. over. I'm counting the days until the traitorous, incompetent SOB is kicked to the curb.