Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

[Infidel144]

"Justin Trudeau@JustinTrudeau
·Mar 29
Officiel du gouvernement - Canada
If your results come back negative for COVID-19, you’ll be able to head home and finish your mandatory quarantine there. If your test results come back positive, you’ll need to immediately quarantine in designated government facilities. This is not optional."

.https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/st...62503720112132

[Lord Thesaurian]

Legio wrote,

False, but I forgive you.I’m feeling benevolent today. According to Coronavirus Update (Live):
Last updated: March 31, 2021, 19:46 GMT. The day is reset after midnight GMT+0.
Tawai : 0.4
Vietnam: 0.4
Accordingly...the news
Why Covid-19 death toll ratio per million remains extremely low in Vietnam?... February 8, 2021

Taiwan vs Vietnam is your tangent, and it doesn’t appear to have gone the way you planned. Pivoting to alternative measures and using data from other sources and from 2+ months ago just means you’re committed to your sophistry. Here, again, is the latest death rate ranking in Asia, from highest to lowest, from the link you were given. As I said, Taiwan’s death rate is lower, though not by much. Your insistence that the death rate is “exactly the same” hurts your lockdown argument anyway, as I said.

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That said, Performance is a different thing. It takes into account 6 parameters
Confirmed cases
Confirmed deaths
Confirmed cases per million people
Confirmed deaths per million people
Confirmed cases as a proportion of tests
Tests per thousand people
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Take note:Tests matter! - (more: scroll down to the bottom of the post)

Now, let’s take a look at the performance
The index Covid Performance - Lowy Institute 13 March 2021
According to the Covid Performance Index,see chart 2.Folllow the link.
According to Political regimes:


According to population size.

See the chart.

In fact, overcrowed/ China’s low death rate per million was a remarkable feat, because...as I said before, population size matters!
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OK, here is the Ranking - on January 2021
1-New Zealand: 94.4
2-Vietnam:90.8
3-Taiwan: 86.4
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Follow the link to the website, provided above - or just read the news, New Zealand, Vietnam top pandemic response list, Japan lags


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Now, let’s talk a bit about fake news and media bias: for example, the Inquerer.net:
The big title in the front page is :
"NEW ZEALAND, TAIWAN TOPS COVID PERFORMANCE INDEX"
OK, let’s read the article. It actually says: “New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan rank the top three”
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More fake news- read the Sidney Morning Star. Take look, COVID Performance Index ranks the countries that handled ...
What they say?

Now, please go back to the source Covid Performance - Lowy Institute 13 March 2021
Or read above.Unfortunatly, it’s the opposite.

Thanks for providing more evidence refuting your own narrative. The fact Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, with no national lockdown, performed similarly to countries famous for lockdowns, including New Zealand, China and Vietnam, suggests lockdowns aren’t even a common factor, much less necessary, as anecdotes go, and thus contrary to your claims. Heres the latest global death rate ranking, highest to lowest.

Japan: 130
Australia: 149
South Korea: 150
Hong Kong: 157
New Zealand: 191
China: 193
Taiwan: 201
Vietnam: 202

Your culture tangent doesn’t help you here, obviously. Notice the global ranking does appear to shift the calculus enough for Vietnam to outrank Taiwan a bit, but still similar enough to suggest the opposite of your claim that lockdowns are medically and morally necessary; let alone in the broader context of the region. In other words, even when the data is curated in a way expected to support your claims, you’re still wrong.

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Let’s move on.What’s going on right now?
In the lost paradise of the herd immunity-Sweden

Sweden is not an exception, of course,
Leaders of Covid-hit German states call for national lockdown
France to widen new lockdown measures to entire country
New restrictions in Poland. Lockdown at Easter

For someone who’s determined to focus on Sweden, you’d think your references to it didn’t actually undermine your argument.

Latest European death rate ranking, highest to lowest:

France: 18
Poland: 20
Sweden: 22
Germany: 31

Lockdowns revisited,
By comparing the number of deaths counted with deaths predicted by their model if no lockdown measures had been introduced, the authors found some 3.1 million deaths were averted Estimating the effects of... - Nature

Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission. Continued intervention should be considered to keep transmission of SARS-CoV-2 under control.

It’s not surprising that the study, which focused on 11 countries in the same region and adopting the broadly similar strategies, found lockdowns were correlated with reduced transmission. It’s also telling that the implications of that correlation didn’t hold when looking at larger datasets of 50+ countries, or when parsing different strategies. Obviously lockdowns will reduce transmission in absolute terms; the question is whether their impact is necessary or even effective. The study I cited earlier actually differentiates between more restrictive and less restrictive NPIs, and found “no significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country,” including many of the same countries from your citation.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...1111/eci.13484

Additional Recap:

- Lockdowns aren’t associated with reduced critical cases or mortality.
- Lockdowns are not an effective tool to reduce death rates and policies have been employed based on faulty assumptions and predictive modeling that proved to be inaccurate.
- There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of flu viruses. The WHO, perhaps in a bygone era when it didn’t have to actively consider the opinions of the CCP, found that “forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical.” (World Health Organization Writing Group. Nonpharmaceutical public health interventions for pandemic influenza, national and community measures. Emerg Infect Dis 2006;12:88–94.)

And again, Hit big, hit earlier,

Who got it right? New LSE research

(1) exactly what we are trying to do right now, here.

This blog post doesn’t help your case either, and the referenced paper actually highlights a couple of my own points, including the CFR report you dismissed as “American capitalist propaganda.” In other words, the paper does not claim, as you have, that lockdowns are medically and morally necessary. It directly refutes your claim:

Chen and Qiu (2020) rely on a dynamic panel epidemiological model of nine countries to show that interventions like mask wearing and centralized quarantine can replace the costly, in economic terms, national lockdown without significantly heightening the epidemic peak.

Using daily data for 32 countries and relying on the stringency of the conducted policies, we find that the greater the strength of government interventions at an early stage, the more effective these are in slowing down or reversing the growth rate of deaths.

What can we learn from these two countries’ responses to the H1N1 pandemic? A comparison of the effectiveness of the two strategies clearly points to the inferiority of the containment strategy in handling the H1N1 pandemic. The containment approach is costly, unsustainable, inflexible and impractical. When adopted at the very beginning of the outbreak, it may help slow down the transmission of the virus. But, against the backdrop of globalisation, it is impossible to institute barriers against such spread. Moreover, it may complicate efforts of surge capacity building when a shift to mitigation becomes necessary. Interestingly, China looked to a centuries-old approach to contain the rapid spread of the H1N1 flu pandemic, even though both scientific data and historical evidence suggested the limits of this approach.

China was not the only country that adopted a containment strategy. Compared with countries in Europe and North America, and against the WHO recommendations, many Asian countries, especially those in Northeast and Southeast Asia, pursued a containment strategy in responding to the spread of the virus. Policymakers therefore need to update their thinking on disease threats and the strategies aimed at resolving such threats. It is true that decision-makers tend to err on the side of caution when encountering an unpredictable and potentially disastrous novel disease, but that is no justification for allowing risk assessment and risk communication to be dominated by worst-case scenarios, or allowing domestic political concerns to prevail over science in decision-making.

Echoing these earlier lessons, the models predicting Covid growth rates from the early period of the pandemic have also been widely discredited and are in fact an example of methodological error in the studies advocating for lockdowns, as cited:

Opposite to Great Britain, Italy, or Belgium that enforced a complete lockdown, the Netherlands only adopted an “intelligent” lockdown, and Sweden did not adopt any lockdown. However, they achieved better results. Coupled to new evidence for minimal impact of Covid-19 on the healthy population, with the most part not infected even if challenged, or only mild or asymptomatic if infected, there are many good reasons to question the validity of the specific epidemiological model simulations and the policies they produced. Fewer restrictions on the healthy while better protecting the vulnerable would have been a much better option, permitting more sustainable protection of countries otherwise at risk of second waves as soon as the strict measures are lifted.

The Covid-19 models’ predictions15 appear wrong in the dynamic, as they show a pattern very far from the one experienced so far (Figure 1). They propose a result only depending on subjective assumptions not being supported by a proper statistic through a very simple mechanism. Their assumptions were questionable when the simulations were performed. These assumptions are completely wrong after 2 months. Why these simulations have not been revised is an open question.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...33392820932324

Epidemic forecasting has a dubious track-record, and its failures became more prominent with COVID-19. If extreme values are considered, extremes should be considered for the consequences of multiple dimensions of impact so as to continuously calibrate predictive insights and decision-making. When major decisions (e.g. draconian lockdowns) are based on forecasts, the harms (in terms of health, economy, and society at large) and the asymmetry of risks need to be approached in a holistic fashion, considering the totality of the evidence.

Prolonged draconian lockdown is not equivalent to seat belts. It resembles forbidding all commute. Lockdown measures were decided based on examining only one type of impact, COVID-19. Total lockdown is a bundle of dozens of measures. Some may be very beneficial, but some others may be harmful. Hiding uncertainty can cause major harm downstream and leaves us unprepared for the future. For papers that fuel policy decisions with major consequences, transparent availability of data, code, and named peer-review comments is also a minimum requirement.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/

Our finding in Fact 1 that early declines in the transmission rate of COVID-19 were nearly universal worldwide suggest that the role of region-specific NPI’s imple- mented in this early phase of the pandemic is likely overstated. This finding instead suggests that some other factor(s) common across regions drove the early and rapid transmission rate declines

https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...719/w27719.pdf

Given that by the time the CCP cover up was exposed, the disease had already spread internationally, the odds of a national lockdown strategy successfully containing the illness were slim to none, and things more or less played out as expected. The common theme of success hasn’t been lockdowns, but in fact, early and diligent personal, individual compliance with measures proven to reduce transmission, including individual social distancing and masks.

---------
Mass testing revisited,
Executive summary: The Lancet
February 19 2021

---
Testing programmes are an essential measure in facing covid clusters,https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...002-5/fulltext February 4 2021

------
Testing strategies could facilitate the task by allowing the rapid testing of large number of people. Here, Mallapaty, 2020, the use of saliva samples, testing all the population of large urban areas like Wuhan
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In countries that have managed to bring the pandemic under control a necessary step in “reopening” society was to have sufficient testing and contact tracing capacities to successfully contain the outbreaks that will inevitably occur as social restrictions are removed or relaxed, here Steinbrook, 2020, Salathé 2020

Fairly irrelevant given no one in this discussion claimed people shouldn’t get tested or that testing is inherently counterproductive. What the evidence does say in relation to the relevant study was that rates of testing, full lockdowns and border closures were not associated with the number of critical cases or deaths.

[Infidel144]

Latest European death rate ranking, highest to lowest:

France: 18
Poland: 20
Sweden: 22
Germany: 31

Remember though, Germany is very strict in what counts as a coronavirus death.
It would be useful to know how these various countries count covid mortality (strict as with Germany and Portugal, or loose like US, UK, Italy).

[enoch]

Even in the states our systems do not all follow a specific criteria. California is on it while states like Florida underreport. The Cuomo nursing home scandal in NY being one of the more discussed failures because it is purposeful takes the spotlight but incompetence and overwhelmed services are revealing discrepancies all over in audits.

[Cyclops]

Have to say the various idiot myths offered about COVID have been whacked down so often the finally seem to be dying out. Lockdowns are a sensible tool in the kit (especially in most western countries where we allow greater social freedoms usually), compliance matters and masks aren't a Muslim plot. My guess is the variety of successful and unsuccessful efforts suggest a mediocre plan that everyone follows is better than the best plan that no one wants to follow. Trustworthy leadership matters and money is less important than self belief.

The sensible arguments about too much government authority being allowed in a time of crisis hasn't been intelligently argued here and its a surprise as I think its a real issue. There will be more viruses, the preconditions are all there and the same empty vessels banging on about how bad lockdowns are seem to want to revert to "normal". I think we left "normal" a long time ago and were living on luck and borrowed time for at least two decades. I think countries need more permanent plans or they can expect more huge mortality bills and lost QALYs.

We kicked the flu in the nuts with our anti-COVID measures and if the value of that ground gained can be recognised I'd love to see stronger measures there too (eg required masking at appropriate times, a bit more quarantining maybe). COVID vax may become the next flu vax, but you have to watch the way the medical and stock market models have intersected so balefully.

I see our US friends smashing Cuomo, and it looks like he deserves it as much as Trump for his many failures. Neither is the devil, they both had their hands tied by the general gridlock but it looks like both made things so much worse than they had to be, and political grandstanding was a massive part of their degraded performance. Once again they got Biden when they needed Harris, like they got Trump when they needed Pence. Please guys elect some leaders not clowns and corpses.

Be great to ensure the government has the necessary resources without ballooning their powers because it will get abused sooner or later. The political compromise and "war cabinet" approach in Australia seems to have delivered some good outcomes but its kept at least three governments in power which should have been hit for six because of rotten corruption (Labor in QLD, LibNats in NSW and Federally). These governments need to be booted asap, and another crisis would keep some leaders in power who possibly belong in gaol.

We've got to disentangle the corporate tentacles in medical decision making. The lack of masks leading to actual lies from leaders (to preserve stocks for purchase by health workers) was extremely dodgy, the weird involvement of medical decision makers in certain labs and certain areas of research seems to have led to actual obstruction of truth seeking eg in the Wuhan Lab rumours. Its bad enough reflexive Chinese secrecy led to the outbreak, (idiot Trumpbot conspiracy theories aside, that's basically what happened) and Trumpish incompetence made it worse in many countries (thanks Boris), we don't need the doctors being cute too.

Can the anti-science people also just **** off? Its lovely we have freedom but if its being used to say all vaccines contain alien semen, of Jewish space lasers start wildfires, can that person be removed from office immediately? Just a thought. I mean science is a method, so we can all do it really. By all means cleanse the temples of science (it shouldn't even have temples but people are stupid and they tend to make things into religions) because we need that human ingenuity revved up to find the next cure (something that did go well so far, this time) and not getting involved in politics. If the president starts jabbering pointlessly (and you know ol' Joe ain't that far off Trumpster for a decent jabber) just say, "that's pointless jabber, wear a mask DH".

[conon394]

Once again they got Biden when they needed Harris, like they got Trump when they needed Pence. Please guys elect some leaders not clowns and corpses.

Umm that is a bit of an odd statement Cyclops. Assuming you were at all either left of center in any way or in any way a firm anti Trumper - Biden was clearly the guy to win. He has moved quickly and pretty forcefully to implement an agenda (a progressive one) and seems to not be suffering the Obama problem of getting roped into negotiations that are really stalling tactics and end up disappointing his base and doing nothing at all to actually effect the votes of mythical moderate republicans. I like Harris, I liked Corry Booker, I like Jay Inslee even Liked Bernie (but I thought the socialism attacks would do him in) before Biden but the reality is I'm not sure any of could have won and Biden did win the primaries fair and square.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Have to say the various idiot myths offered about COVID have been whacked down so often the finally seem to be dying out. Lockdowns are a sensible tool in the kit (especially in most western countries where we allow greater social freedoms usually)

I’d ask for a citation for that assertion, but that might cramp someone’s style. Conflating peer reviewed evidence to the contrary with “idiot myths” “aliens” and “Jewish space lasers” reflects more on your argument/rhetorical stream of consciousness than it does anything else. You’re also wrong, given that evidence to the contrary has grown since the beginning of the pandemic, rather than died out.

[enoch]

Example of such evidence. Personally I am psyched to finally get 5G.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Example of such evidence. Personally I am psyched to finally get 5G.

Conflating evidence against the efficacy of lockdowns with conspiracy theories concedes the lack of a coherent counterargument.

[enoch]

I hear people talk about evidence. What confuses me is the groups WHO have the access to the most evidence around the world believe lockdowns work. Even in highly highly conservative and autocratic and really all countries not run by those whose political agenda makes lockdowns unpalatable.

Why is the vast behemoth of science so sure lockdowns work?

Is it a conspiracy?

[Lord Thesaurian]

I hear people talk about evidence. What confuses me is the groups WHO have the access to the most evidence around the world believe lockdowns work.

This assertion is circumstantial at best, as I noted in my last post, and not much of a counter in any case.

- There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of flu viruses. The WHO, perhaps in a bygone era when it didn’t have to actively consider the opinions of the CCP, found that “forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical.” (World Health Organization Writing Group. Nonpharmaceutical public health interventions for pandemic influenza, national and community measures. Emerg Infect Dis 2006;12:88–94.)
http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/webs...ndemicflu.html

Vaccination is noted as the best way to reduce transmission, and it was estimated to take at least 6 months from the beginning of a hypothetical pandemic for the first vaccines to be produced. Masks are recommended to the public for prevention, citing SARS. When discussing quarantine measures, the authors reference the WHO report quoted above. They conclude there is “no basis” to recommend mass quarantines as a measure against flu viruses. A second WHO report was jointly cited noting the inefficacy of border closures and mass quarantine of travelers in controlling transmission during SARS.

More on these WHO findings:

The World Health Organization's recommended pandemic influenza interventions, based on limited data, vary by transmission pattern, pandemic phase, and illness severity and extent. In the pandemic alert period, recommendations include isolation of patients and quarantine of contacts, accompanied by antiviral therapy. During the pandemic period, the focus shifts to delaying spread and reducing effects through population-based measures. Ill persons should remain home when they first become symptomatic, but forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical. If the pandemic is severe, social distancing measures such as school closures should be considered. Nonessential domestic travel to affected areas should be deferred. Hand and respiratory hygiene should be routine; mask use should be based on setting and risk, and contaminated household surfaces should be disinfected. Additional research and field assessments during pandemics are essential to update recommendations. Legal authority and procedures for implementing interventions should be understood in advance and should respect cultural differences and human rights.

Thermally scanning intercity travelers was inefficient in detecting cases. Early isolation of patients and quarantine of contacts successfully interrupted SARS transmission, but influenza's shorter serial interval and earlier peak infectivity, plus the presence of mild cases and possibility of transmission without symptoms, suggest that these measures would be considerably less successful than they were for SARS.

Phase 6 (Pandemic Declared)

Patient isolation and tracing and quarantine of contacts should cease, as such measures will no longer be feasible or useful.

Persons with fever and respiratory symptoms and their contacts should be asked to undergo voluntary home confinement.

Countries with cases may introduce exit screening measures for departing travelers. However, such measures are disruptive and costly and will not be fully efficient, as influenza viruses can be carried by asymptomatic persons, who will escape detection during screening.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291415/

The WHO declared Covid a global pandemic on March 20, 2020, just days after Europe went into lockdown, and shortly before China’s first lockdowns were lifted. New Zealand entered national lockdown on March 25, 2020. Vietnam went into national lockdown April 1, 2020 after targeted mass quarantines failed. Due to the CCP coverup, public reaction in China was delayed well beyond the first phases of the outbreak, and the first lockdown in Wuhan occurred just days before the first death outside China on February 2, 2020. At the time, China and the WHO criticized travel restrictions as counterproductive to the point of actually increasing the spread of Covid.

As per the WHO’s recommendations, lockdowns and mass quarantines were ineffective at that stage, if at all beyond the earliest phases of the outbreak in China.

Here is the WHO’s current advice on lockdowns:

Large scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions, often referred to as ‘lockdowns’, can slow COVID‑19 transmission by limiting contact between people.

However, these measures can have a profound negative impact on individuals, communities, and societies by bringing social and economic life to a near stop. Such measures disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups, including people in poverty, migrants, internally displaced people and refugees, who most often live in overcrowded and under resourced settings, and depend on daily labour for subsistence.

WHO recognizes that at certain points, some countries have had no choice but to issue stay-at-home orders and other measures, to buy time.

Governments must make the most of the extra time granted by ‘lockdown’ measures by doing all they can to build their capacities to detect, isolate, test and care for all cases; trace and quarantine all contacts; engage, empower and enable populations to drive the societal response and more.

WHO is hopeful that countries will use targeted interventions where and when needed, based on the local situation.

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-de...s-and-covid-19

It’s false if not misleading to suggest the WHO generally recommends lockdowns or that they “work,” let alone that they’re “medically and morally necessary.” The current standard largely echos the one cited above, which describes their effect as very limited, and they came far too late at any rate for Covid, according to WHO guidelines.

WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro reiterated,

I want to say it again: We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as a primary means of controlling this virus,' Dr Nabarro said.

'The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted. But by and large, we'd rather not do it.

'Just look at what's happened to the tourism industry, for example, in the Caribbean or in the Pacific because people aren't taking their holidays. Look what's happened to smallholder farmers all over the world because their markets have got dented.

'Look what's happening to poverty levels — it seems we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x8oH7cBxgwE

Not exactly subtle. To argue lockdowns “work” because the WHO recommended against their use, rather than explicitly condemning their use by world governments, borders on sophistry. For several years, the WHO has observed their general lack of effectiveness, regardless of how diplomatic they might be about the subject given most major countries used them extensively.

Even in highly highly conservative and autocratic and really all countries not run by those whose political agenda makes lockdowns unpalatable.

Why is the vast behemoth of science so sure lockdowns work?

Is it a conspiracy?

Wut

[enoch]

Lord of Thesaurus why are the scientists, governments of all types list goes on all in favor of lockdowns? Costs money. What sort of view of the world thinks the sort of people/interests whose influence matters like losing money?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Lord of Thesaurus why are the scientists, governments of all types list goes on all in favor of lockdowns? Costs money. What sort of view of the world thinks the sort of people/interests whose influence matters like losing money?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The idea that incompetence or misjudgment necessitates a nefarious design is a deflection from your own argument, not a critique of mine. I’ve cited several relevant experts/academics discussing aspects of, and WHO guidelines concerning, mass quarantines.

[swabian]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The idea that incompetence or misjudgment necessitates a nefarious design is a deflection from your own argument, not a critique of mine. I’ve cited several relevant experts/academics discussing aspects of, and WHO guidelines concerning, mass quarantines.

You don't have an idea of how creepy this is what you just said, right?

[antaeus]

Interesting perspective from the CPER... https://voxeu.org/article/aiming-zer...conomic-growth

Rather than debating over which mitigation strategy is best - lockdowns or broader testing/tracing or voluntary mitigation... CPER are arguing that elimination - either through intent of policy, or as a side effect of good policy - seems to have allowed for significantly better economic performance. And that a policy of de-facto elimination, with periodic targeted action for flare ups allows for significantly more business and consumer confidence. And it all hinges on (what I keep going on about) unified action and well communicated policy - which stablishes significant trust capital with government.

And for countries who have managed to find themselves in a near-elimination state, the biggest threat to their continued better economic performance appears to come from having to deal with the side effects of poor performance within trade partners who haven't followed any sort of elimination strategy - either intentionally or accidentally.

I'd add to this, that it's not just poor economically poor performing countries threatening the wellbeing of better performing countries, they're also threatening the health outcomes of better performing countries now too... Australia's success in managing COvid, has for example led to the EU confiscating 3 million vaccine doses destined for Australia - which in turn lengthen Australia's period of vulnerability to existing strains of Covid.

[PointOfViewGun]

Countries that followed strict lock down procedures properly like New Zealand certainly benefited the most. Those that did a half-assed job merely mitigated the outcome while also lengthening the process. On the other hand, those that had less lock down procedures enacted ended up creating a lock down environment as well as the extra deaths.

The studies that look at lock down measures, however, always try to simplify it which is a really bad way to look at it. There are many factors in play:
How widespread lock down measures were applied?
How strict were each lock down measure applied?
How well did the public follow them?
How well was it enforced?
How much does the public try to circumvent the measures?

Simply saying restaurants are closed while people are getting together in their houses more doesn't really tell us the full picture if the latter is not accounted for. This is pretty much what most, if not all, studies, even those that show positive effects for lock downs, fail to satisfy. They're too simplistic.

One thing is for sure, eliminating opportunities of contact between individuals also eliminates transmission of a virus. That is a given. So, the efforts should be directed at doing it smart and quick.

[antaeus]

Countries that followed strict lock down procedures properly like New Zealand certainly benefited the most. Those that did a half-assed job merely mitigated the outcome while also lengthening the process. On the other hand, those that had less lock down procedures enacted ended up creating a lock down environment as well as the extra deaths.

The studies that look at lock down measures, however, always try to simplify it which is a really bad way to look at it. There are many factors in play:
How widespread lock down measures were applied?
How strict were each lock down measure applied?
How well did the public follow them?
How well was it enforced?
How much does the public try to circumvent the measures?

Simply saying restaurants are closed while people are getting together in their houses more doesn't really tell us the full picture if the latter is not accounted for. This is pretty much what most, if not all, studies, even those that show positive effects for lock downs, fail to satisfy. They're too simplistic.

One thing is for sure, eliminating opportunities of contact between individuals also eliminates transmission of a virus. That is a given. So, the efforts should be directed at doing it smart and quick.

Certainly, but as we've seen in places like Taiwan, there is a window of opportunity to not lockdown, if other responses are aggressive (quarantine, track, trace, etc), and widely bought-into by the populace. As you suggest, limiting the ability to spread is the important part - and to do that effectively comms is key.

Everything else just makes the epidemic longer, slower, more costly, even if it allows people to go to the beach for spring break.

[PointOfViewGun]

Certainly, but as we've seen in places like Taiwan, there is a window of opportunity to not lockdown, if other responses are aggressive (quarantine, track, trace, etc), and widely bought-into by the populace. As you suggest, limiting the ability to spread is the important part - and to do that effectively comms is key.

Everything else just makes the epidemic longer, slower, more costly, even if it allows people to go to the beach for spring break.

Taiwan is a good case of early strong response that made it possible that they don't even need to consider a full lock down. They did used a number of lock down measures though. School openings were postponed. Other than that, they took proactive measures early on and the public largely played responsible. We don't know how Taiwan would reach if the cases surged because of irresponsible individuals like we have seen in Italy.

[enoch]

Studies in the states concerning lockdowns are particularly flawed because freedom of movement domestically wasnever implemented. (Borders aren’t seen as real between states). If California had been able to close its borders (sadly borders are imaginary lines) even with its large population it likely would have been able to mitigate even more negative outcomes through lockdowns.

It’s unfortunate China doesn’t release anything resembling true data because they had the means and the infrastructure for a real lockdown combined with tracing etc and my guess is they did a lot better than other blocs because of this.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Countries that followed strict lock down procedures properly like New Zealand certainly benefited the most. Those that did a half-assed job merely mitigated the outcome while also lengthening the process. On the other hand, those that had less lock down procedures enacted ended up creating a lock down environment as well as the extra deaths.

This assertion has been reduced to an unfalsifiable appeal to purity built on an anecdote. It’s worth repeating that the pandemic was declared before NZ went into lockdown, and at that stage, WHO recommendations indicate mass quarantines will no longer be effective and should therefore not be used as the costs of implementation likely exceed potential benefits. Parsing demographic and geographic factors from the lockdown impact in a single country will require the full perspective of hindsight, but the odds of a potential counter factual being significant enough to countervail the trend we’re seeing in the current as well as previous pandemics regarding the (in)efficacy of lockdowns are inherently low.

This would make NZ an outlier, best case, given its geography and low population density isolated it from international spread since the beginning of the outbreak by default. It would have been in a completely different place relative to more interconnected regions that were sitting on hundreds or thousands of undetected cases by the time major NPIs were adopted.

It’s also untrue overall that less restrictive interventions led to increased case growth relative to more restrictive measures. As cited earlier:

Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a nonsignificant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, for example, the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95% CI: -5%-19%) when compared with Sweden and + 13% (-12%-38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro-contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.


Conclusions: While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less-restrictive interventions.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33400268/

The studies that look at lock down measures, however, always try to simplify it which is a really bad way to look at it. There are many factors in play:
How widespread lock down measures were applied?
How strict were each lock down measure applied?
How well did the public follow them?
How well was it enforced?
How much does the public try to circumvent the measures?

Simply saying restaurants are closed while people are getting together in their houses more doesn't really tell us the full picture if the latter is not accounted for. This is pretty much what most, if not all, studies, even those that show positive effects for lock downs, fail to satisfy. They're too simplistic.

The “ more restrictive vs less restrictive” study looked at ~50 different NPIs from 11 major countries including Sweden, South Korea, the UK and Germany. Omitted variable bias is a major reason why the efficacy of lockdowns observed in some studies is statistically overstated.

A good example of that is the Flaxman paper referenced earlier and probably in every lockdown discussion since its publication. Professionally or otherwise, it’s been cited hundreds of times as evidence lockdowns work.

Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission. Continued intervention should be considered to keep transmission of SARS-CoV-2 under control.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7

The way the result was determined suggests the conclusion relies on a causation fallacy, which could be why it doesn’t hold when comparing more vs less restrictive NPIs across countries. The reason for this, in the context of the Flaxman study, is their model retroactively uses the number of deaths to predict future deaths under NPIs vs no NPIs and determined that NPIs reduce transmission.



That’s a fairly obvious conclusion, but to stretch this into a claim that “lockdowns in particular” caused it is mostly conjecture. As I said earlier, it’s unsurprising a study, looking at countries in the same region and adopting the broadly similar strategies, found lockdowns were correlated with reduced transmission. What’s odd is that Flaxman et al, determining the efficacy of lockdowns vs a few other categories of NPIs, don’t appear to address the fact that their own model predicts Sweden’s NPIs reduce Rt as much as other lockdown countries, including significant overlap with Denmark and Norway.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Also significant, I think, is that the predicted range of NPI impact is arguably more precise for Sweden than other countries in the model, and yet not much less than the most generous predictions for lockdowns’ impact on Rt. Flaxman and colleagues determine 3-3.5 million lives were saved by NPIs, but don’t mention the caveat in their conclusion this is due to “lockdowns in particular.” The model does not necessarily show this, even under its a priori assumption that all NPIs have the same multiplicative effect on Rt. The latter assumption is significant given it means the effect of any NPI on the model predictions will be equally strong in the first place, and even then, lockdowns don’t appear to have been especially impactful relative to other NPIs.

The reason the authors deduced a particularly strong effect of lockdowns is because most countries in the sample, all except Sweden, employed lockdowns in similar time periods, producing an outsized effect on the model by virtue of being a common factor relative to other kinds of interventions. Because the model attributes 100% of the reduction in Rt to government interventions at the outset, the commonality of lockdowns is predisposed to have a dominant effect, which seems to have led the authors to a correlation/causation fallacy. The results of the model actually suggest less restrictive NPIs did most of the heavy lifting across all countries in the sample, relative to lockdowns. This matches the conclusions of the comparison between mrNPIs and lrNPIs

The flaw in Flaxman’s argument is observed in other research, due in part to the difficulty of accurately weighting the probable effects of individual variables in a Bayesian model.

The peculiar aspect of the claim that lockdown accounts for 81% of the reduction in R 0, is that Sweden did not implement any lockdown, but still see a similar decrease in R 0 as the other countries, even though the other NPIs were reported to have no substantial effect on R 0. To solve this problem, as compared with the authors’ earlier work9, which showed a significantly higher R 0 for Sweden, they invoke a country-specific last intervention parameter, which is only implemented for Sweden10 (see equation i). The “last intervention” parameter is multiplied with R 0, and can therefore be seen as a parameter adjusting the model for Sweden independently. As can be seen, when analysing the posterior distributions of the intervention parameters, the “last intervention” parameter for Sweden results in 73.5 % of Sweden’s reduction in R 0 (Figure 1). The last intervention impact on R 0 is not reported or discussed in the Nature publication, possibly misleading decision-makers on the importance of lockdowns.

In conclusion, it is peculiar that the model displays an almost identical change in R 0 in all countries, dropping sharply below one at the final NPI, independently on the nature of that NPI. In reality, all countries had different NPIs implemented at different time points, likely with varying strength and efficiency, and it is quite likely that NPIs such as enforcing social distancing at least had some effects, not seen in the models. Given the importance the initial report had on government policies and the fact that we show here that the conclusions made about the significance of the lockdown are not entirely correct, we do think that we should pinpoint this to readers and policymakers. Correct assumptions on the effects of NPIs are becoming even more urgent as many nations still are imposing different NPIs, and that these might go on for an extended period

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...40v1.full-text

Because modeling attributes virtually all reduction in Rt to whatever NPI is used last, this indicates not only the existence of confounders but also that the common use of lockdowns is predetermined to have an oversized effect on any estimates.

Our finding in Fact 1 that early declines in the transmission rate of COVID-19 were nearly universal worldwide suggest that the role of region-specific NPI’s imple- mented in this early phase of the pandemic is likely overstated. This finding instead suggests that some other factor(s) common across regions drove the early and rapid transmission rate declines. While all three factors mentioned in the introduction, voluntary social distancing, the network structure of human interactions, and the nature of the disease itself, are natural contenders, disentangling their relative roles is dicult.

Our findings in Fact 2 and Fact 3 further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates over time and across locations. Many of the regions in our sample that instated lockdown policies early on in their local epidemic, removed them later on in our estimation period, or have have not relied on mandated NPI’s much at all. Yet, e↵ective reproduction numbers in all regions have continued to remain low relative to initial levels indicating that the removal of lockdown policies has had little e↵ect on transmission rates.

The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion. We argue that research going forward should account for these facts when assessing how important NPI policy is in shaping the progression of COVID-19.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/wo...719/w27719.pdf

Taiwan is a good case of early strong response that made it possible that they don't even need to consider a full lock down.

Taiwan certainly did respond earlier than most other countries, thanks in part to its network of contacts on the mainland that passed information on the outbreak during the time Beijing was still trying to cover it up. Subsequent miscommunication from the WHO, probably in deference to China, about human transmission also delayed appropriate response by other countries, to the extent Taiwan’s NPIs came a month earlier than most. It would be a misnomer to say acting “early enough” makes lockdowns unnecessary, because lockdowns are ineffective beyond the earliest phases of an outbreak in the first place, which had likely passed by the time China publicly acknowledged the outbreak in Wuhan and announced countermeasures. This fits the findings from earlier research, which found the spread of Covid could have been confined to a regional outbreak had Chinese authorities put in place NPIs that were delayed 3-4 weeks by the coverup effort.

https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-e...l&stream=world