
‘Quarantine fatigue’: Researchers find more Americans venturing against orders - harambae
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/quarantine-fatigue-researchers-find-more-americans-venturing-out-against-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders/2020/04/25/fa1f01b2-84a3-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html
======
miscPerson
Why is anyone surprised?

Quarantine is harmful, and only useful if we’re preventing something worse.
That’s probably the case, broadly — but the policies in other countries raise
questions about US policies.

This is compounded by the arbitrary nature of closures, eg public construction
and landscaping can continue but private can’t. People resent politicians
arbitrarily (and self-servingly) picking winners and losers in the economy.

It’s further compounded by the fact that leaders haven’t announced a clear
vision for when this ends. People complied because they cared and wanted to
prevent deaths — but now we’re in a situation where the workforce is
devastated and being hurt by arbitrary requirements, with no clear plan.

Naturally, people aren’t just going to sit there hurting — and if leaders
don’t articulate a clear direction towards fixing things, people will find
their own.

~~~
amluto
It’s also unclear whether the lockdown is accomplishing anything. We have
enormous economic damage, lots of boredom, no dramatic _decrease_ of cases in
most places, an unimpressive amount of progress toward herd immunity, and no
meaningful increase in testing, prevention, treatment ability, or clever
policies from any level of US leadership.

In other words, what have we accomplished by locking everything down? Delaying
large numbers of deaths by a few months?

Extending the lockdowns until we maybe have a vaccine in 2021 does not seem
like a great idea.

~~~
lm28469
> no dramatic decrease of cases in most places

What does that even mean ? It's slowly going down everywhere with serious
lockdowns instead of going exponentially up. Anything less than exponential is
a _dramatic_ decrease.

~~~
thu2111
Exponential growth for a short period is seen in every epidemic, even small
ones, because they all follow the same bell-curveish sort of shapes. Having
observed that by itself doesn't mean anything - all epidemics grow slowly,
then quickly, then slowly again as they approach their natural saturation
point, then go into decline.

The idea that COVID-19 would grow exponentially starting from zero until a
saturation of 100% was reached was only ever the outcome assumed by
simulations, which have - as far as I can tell - a perfect track record of
total failure. At least the sort of models created by universities in the
modern era do.

To make this clear, the UW model driving much US policy response was updated
several times in real time yet despite that managed to make wrong predictions
for the exact same day it was updated.

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1247010068148731904?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1247010068148731904?lang=en)

And not just wrong, but reality fell far outside this models own uncertainty
bounds too, so according to the modellers observed reality was not just
unlikely but almost completely impossible.

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1246465515704463360?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1246465515704463360?lang=en)

(note how wide the uncertainty bounds are, yet that it's still wrong)

More commentary:

[https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1245416486879051778?...](https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1245416486879051778?lang=en)

[https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1248640413835108355](https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1248640413835108355)

The Imperial model that drove the UK ignored the possibility of hospital
capacity increases entirely, and comes from a team that has (as far as I could
find out) never successfully predicted an epidemic.

Real diseases don't play out like unending exponential growth until the whole
world is infected - they go into decline far before that.

Quite why this is so is unknown. The dark secret of epidemiology is nobody
really understands viral spread. Every model is wrong and nobody can explain
why. Germ theory must have a major gap, so what is it? My guess is a
combination of much higher asymptomatic spread than currently understood
(asymptomatic infection not being a phenomenon that's really been investigated
much as only academic modellers care about it), and perhaps some forms of
natural immunity to viruses that aren't based on antibodies.

Whatever the cause, it'd be wrong to compare the observed outcomes vs the
predictions from models that are known to be completely useless and say,
there's been a decrease.

------
throwaway2020-1
Note that the data is from cubeiq - featured in a rogues’ gallery of firms in
the long tail of firms monetizing personal information

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location-
data-privacy-apps.html)

We need this data now, but let’s also not forget this area needs regulation
(that among other things will give teeth to violations of “but it’s all
encrypted/anonymized!” claims)

~~~
jakeogh
Tech giant briar patch. You want the gov to decide what can be remembered a-la
GDPR? Maybe some Article13 after?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141283)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072801)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481197)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21249878)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815778)

The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI)

------
nicois
This is particularly frustrating to witness in Australia, where we have all
but eliminated covid-19, but there is no political will to eliminate it
entirely. Had we closed hairdressers, building sites and takeaway restaurants
a month ago, we would be looking at zeroes for daily infection.

While many places in the world cannot yet justify the costs of elimination, a
country like Australia, bordered by water, could have reached the goal before
fatigue set in. As it is, I am resigned to awful subsequent waves culminating
in the so-called herd immunity goal.

~~~
DarthGhandi
Highly suggest you read this before chasing an impossible ideal:

[https://www.scmp.com/week-
asia/opinion/article/3081110/coron...](https://www.scmp.com/week-
asia/opinion/article/3081110/coronavirus-lockdown-vaccine-herd-immunity-can-
there-be-winning)

~~~
lbeltrame
All these scenarios seem to completely disregard the eventual availability of
pharmacological treatment for the disease, which may improve (little or much,
we'll see from the trials, no miracles though) the clinical management and
thus the pressure on the hospitals.

------
wegs
This seems like nonsense. People in big cities rarely go less than a mile.
Many are now starting to venture out into forests and similar safe areas for
the first time.

On the other hand, a one-mile track in Wisconsin or Montana might be an
evening drive.

~~~
CameronNemo
>forests or similar safe areas

Unfortunately walking trails were not built for social distancing.

~~~
wegs
Which is a great reason to stay off the beaten trail.

~~~
starlingforge
It really isn't though... Leave some nature for everyone else and stay on the
trail.

------
hatenberg
We really have trouble learning lessons as a species. 1919 is calling.

~~~
jakeogh
We achieved better results than _every_ pre-peak prediction. What do you
measure?

~~~
Retric
I saw plenty of predictions this was just another flu and thus no big deal.
Wuhan contained it early so total infections would be kept low etc.

If anything I am shocked how accurate many epidemiology predictions where.

~~~
jakeogh
Obviously, I'm talking about professional predictions. If for some reason you
care about armchair predictions, it's going to be 10 to 1 in the "way worse"
range for a random sample here.

Which accurate pre-peak predictions are you referring to?

~~~
Retric
I am talking about predictions from politicians not random people online.
Professional predictions had huge error bars around various levels of response
and tended to be surprisingly accurate IMO.

Hell the stock market still seems to think it’s no big deal.

~~~
jakeogh
Which professional pre-peak predictions were surprisingly accurate?

~~~
Retric
Those underpinning the ‘flatten the curve’ projections and causing everything
to shutdown for one. With exponential growth before a shutdown and flat growth
during it.

There where plenty of different models based on different government
responses, and they generally hold up well.

~~~
jakeogh
Like this one?

[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/medicine/s...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-
college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-
modelling-16-03-2020.pdf)

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1239975682643357696.html)

Is 1.1M is "holding up well"?

~~~
Retric
Yep, I suggest you read it.

 _Suppression. Here the aim is to reduce the reproduction number (the average
number of secondary cases each case generates), R, to below 1 and hence to
reduce case numbers to low levels or (as for SARS or Ebola) eliminate human-
to-human transmission. The main challenge of this approach is that NPIs (and
drugs, if available) need to be maintained – at least intermittently - for as
long as the virus is circulating in the human population, or until a vaccine
becomes available. In the 3 case of COVID-19, it will be at least a 12-18
months before a vaccine is available . Furthermore, there is no guarantee that
initial vaccines will have high efficacy._

That’s the current UK strategy and they don’t have exponential growth.

~~~
jakeogh
Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? It would be more useful than
cheap shots. The paragraph you quoted is unrelated to the prediction.

p16: "In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a
single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and
social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and
ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic
scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if
all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the
order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US."

We achieved better results than the best case estimate for the US in that
paper, and not by a little.

~~~
Retric
The prediction is not based on suppression but mitigation, thus we are outside
the model.

But for now _suppression_ is holding steady in the US and UK. With current
rates projected out for 18 months being lower than the predicted mitigation
strategy.

That said, there seems to be significant pressure to reopen, so we are likely
to experience the mitigation strategy starting in a few months.

~~~
jakeogh
Why wont you talk about the predicted numbers? Which professional pre-peak US
prediction did you find suprisingly accurate? Clearly it's not this one.

~~~
Retric
Suppression can limit spread to an arbitrarily small number depending on when
it’s implemented. They correctly stated it’s capable of stopping exponential
growth and that each mitigation or suppression strategy’s effectiveness
depends on when it’s implemented. So, if we started a week earlier the daily
death toll would be ~1/10th as large.

That prediction exactly matches observed outcomes. Do you expect them to
predict our public policy and it’s date of implication?

~~~
jakeogh
There are no studies that I am aware of that predicted the exceptional outcome
the US has had as far as total deaths. If there are, please link to them. The
study that you think is suprisingly accurate, has a minimum number of 1.1M
dead if we implemented "case isolation, household quarantine and social
distancing of the elderly" in the US, which is a reasonable approximation of
what we did.

