
We're in for 2 Months - foobuzzHN
https://foobuzz.github.io/covid19/
======
burlesona
Two months seems like the minimum. The really hard problem is that even if you
reduce spread to near zero, it’s almost guaranteed that cases will continue to
spread among the essential workers who are still active during the lockdown.
As long as that’s the case, the end of the lockdown will result in the cycle
starting over.

It seems to me that what we’re really doing with the lockdown is buying the
time to “mobilize,” in the military sense, our healthcare system. If we had
the testing capacity to test everyone and contain only the sick, this would be
less serious. If we had 10x as many ventilators, and 100x as much protective
equipment, this would be less dangerous. If we had an effective treatment
(like a Tamiflu for Covid), then this would be less dangerous. Etc.

It seems to me unlikely that we will be locked down less than 2-3 months. But
after that, I doubt the public will be willing to endure another global
lockdown of this magnitude. Thus I think everything we’re doing now is really
about delaying the inevitable long enough for us to get a coherent response in
place.

To the extent that anyone is a “winner” in a pandemic, it certainly appears to
be Taiwan and South Korea, who responded fast enough to the first wave to keep
it from requiring an authoritarian response (or, at least thus far).

~~~
roywiggins
The worst part of this to me is that we could have used the time that China
bought with their lockdown to mobilize ourselves. Instead, we didn't.

Also, the US's lockdown seems liable to be more porous than China's.

~~~
ericjang
Having this level of foresight and the guts to risk millions of unemployed
workers for a "maybe scenario" is rare. If you were running the country, or
were the governor of a coastal state like NY/CA, at what precise date would
you have started ramping up ventilator&mask production?

Would you have instituted a statewide lockdown when there were 1-2 cases in
California?

Would you be willing to trade certain unemployment and economic unproductivity
for 2+ months, in exchange for the possibility that you _might_ end up like
Italy instead of Taiwan/South Korea? The last datapoint we had was SARS-Cov-1,
which ended up not becoming a huge pandemic. Of course, the disease
characteristics for SARS-Cov-2 are different, but without the benefit of
hindsight, was the decision really that clear?

Incompetent US administration aside, the financial markets - which can be
thought of as an expensive forecasting computer - certainly did not price in
what would happen, so I'm not sure we can expect policymakers to arrive at
far-superior decision making.

Considering that China is not completely out of the woods yet either, and the
US/Italy lags about 1 month behind them in pandemic progression, how would you
advise the US act now, with the knowledge of what China is doing?

~~~
roywiggins
I'm not talking about locking down early, I'm talking about starting a crash
program to produce masks and tests, organizing a national system to redirect
resources like masks and ventilators, etc. If we had the testing capacity we
have now a month ago, we would be in a much better position.

We didn't know how much it was spreading in the US because we weren't testing
cases that didn't have a nexus to China/SK. So we had no idea what the spread
was like and there was no data to go on to inform decisions to lock down.
Seattle only got there early because some local flu researchers disobeyed
their own IRB rules and tested cases for the virus without approval.

California seems to have gotten the lockdown about as early as was practical
and has done much better than NYC, so they're actually doing well, all things
considered.

~~~
ericjang
_I 'm talking about starting a crash program to produce masks and tests,
organizing a national system to redirect resources like masks and ventilators,
etc._

Pretend for a second that you're Andrew Cuomo on January 1, 2020. What
information would you have to justify this crash program?

Pretend that you're Andrew Cuomo on April 4, 2020. You're aware of what stage
China is in. What would you do differently?

~~~
mercer
> Pretend that you're Andrew Cuomo on April 4, 2020. You're aware of what
> stage China is in. What would you do differently?

I would not make cuts to Medicaid, for one.

------
vearwhershuh
I'll say it again:

We get it, we are going to have to shut down the main street economy for
months, and potentially on and off for years.

OK, we aren't rioting yet.

So, elites, what's the plan to keep people from starving and being thrown out
in the streets? A one time $1000 check at some point in the future isn't a
plan.

People who swarm criticize anyone saying "this is crazy" need to start
presenting feasible economic plans, or they are gonna see fully operational
crazy in a month or so.

~~~
eof
It’s not really a one time payment though. Unemployment checks will be a much
larger injection than the checks.

------
magnusmagnusson
From economical perspective, I don' think United States can stay 'shut down'
as it is now. 10 million+ jobless claims MINIMUM in past two weeks.. (since
those not eligible are not counted) Gotta figure out a way to get healthy
people to work. Or I mean, they could stay closed for 2-4 months but that
would be quite a wild time.

~~~
brianwawok
What’s interesting is the wage gap. Many (most) of the shut off jobs are the
lower paying ones. Waiters and factory workers. Obviously some weird
exceptions (pro athletes).

Many of our nations higher paying jobs are either essential (doctors, nurses),
or remote friendly (developers , to some extent lawyers and real estate
agents).

Even if 25% of our economy is not working, we can make near 90% of our GDP.

Which isn’t ideal but it makes the lockdown perhaps less dire than it appears
for the economy.

~~~
mynegation
It may be true for few weeks or so, but if this continues the fallout will be
widespread. Lower wage jobs is the bedrock of the whole economy. How much
lawyering can you do if you have to take care of your own food prep,
childcare, or - simply put - your clients start disappearing one by one
because they cannot pay? How much longer you can continue to pay to the
banking staff if mortgages and business loans default like house of cards? How
much longer can you pay to programmers at Facebook when advertisers like
restaurants, spas, hotels are not paying for advertising?...

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Advertising is an _incredibly_ recession resistant industry.

Especially for FB and Goog, as they use second-price auctions, so anyone who
measures their results will see performance improvement, make more money and
thus (theoretically) invest more in advertising until it is no longer
profitable.

They'll lose some revenue, but it won't be anything ridiculously large; and
even if it is, some of the previously priced out advertisers (less profitable
mobile games, for instance) will return.

Advertising is a hell of a business, especially online.

~~~
nojvek
Google stock has fallen significantly since its highs. So has FB. MSFT has
been doing well because of cloud and Teams.

Airlines are heavy advertisers and their industry is crushed. We’ll see the
next quarterly results. I bet at-least 30% revenue quarterly loss compared to
last year.

The economy is very intertwined. Especially when people start defaulting on
mortgages en-masse. The 2 trillion stimulation hasn’t yet started sending out
cheques to those who need it. Banks haven’t figured out how to loan to
businesses that need it.

The worst death count / day of virus is still to come.

People can may be weather one or two months, after that. Shit will really hit
the fan.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Stock prices are mostly bullshit. US equities (particularly growth stocks)
have been _massively_ over-valued for years, because of low interest rates and
QE.

Nontheless,they have a good business model and will most likely be fine (even
if they show no revenue growth, they make a _lot_ of money).

If you're suggesting 30% revenue loss relative to last year, that's probably
flat to -10% revenue for each of them, which in the midst of a global pandemic
is pretty good.

Like, things are going to be really bad for a whole lot of people, on that we
agree.

However, i continue to believe that Goog and FB's businesses will weather the
storm a lot better than most other technology companies.

------
kerkeslager
I don't agree with the conclusion here. We can draw the conclusion from this
that it takes two months for lockdown to work. But that doesn't mean we can
start loosening lockdown restrictions after two months. There's a causal
relationship between lockdown and slowing the spread: if you remove the
lockdown, the spread will rise again.

Some speculation: a big part of why lockdown takes that long to work is that
it seems to take that long for people to start taking things seriously enough
for lockdown to work. A few weeks ago in NYC there were still people coughing
on each other in public and laughing about it, and my observation of a lot of
people's behavior over time is that for some people, they need someone
proximal to them to die of it before they will start complying.

I don't say this judgmentally. Personally, I probably didn't take things
seriously for about a week after I probably should have, and looking back at
why, it wasn't because I didn't care, it was a fear reaction--one very human
reaction to something scary is to downplay it or pretend it isn't happening.

------
zabana
What I'm worried about is the number of people who will suffer as a
consequence of this worldwide lockdown.

Depression, loneliness, suicide, addictive behaviours (alcohol, tobacco,
recreational drugs), high stress due to varying economic factors, panic (media
induced) etc ...

~~~
skat20phys
There have been studies of this from previous pandemics. Together with studies
from the Great Recession / financial collapse the gist is there's definitely
going to be an increase in mental health problems of all those sorts --
substance use, suicide, etc.

The interesting thing is that in previous situations deaths attributable to
these things was offset by a decrease in deaths due to automobile accidents,
workplace stress-related incidents, etc. That doesn't make it ok at all, and
it's possible this time around is worse socioeconomically so things aren't
offset. But it might not show up in overall trends if you just looked at
general disability or death.

------
temac
On one hands tons of countries locked down after China (relative to the number
of serious cases or deaths - I understand there is a debate about Chinese
numbers, but I don't find it relevant here, because Italy or France _also_ did
not test a lot and _also_ under-reported deaths -- basically counting only
cases that were tested and died in an hospital -- in the end given the dynamic
of the epidemics and other uncertainties it does not change a lot rough date
predictions even if there would be 3 times more deaths)

So it even could take a few more weeks to get to the same low point again.
Plus China had an extremely aggressive strategy, accumulating the measures,
and even Italy did not use all of them. And France does less than Italy (non
essential production has not been stopped by the government in France).

On the other hand I doubt we are going to eradicate the disease (at least not
in the immediate future and not only with worldwide lockdowns), so we might
want to use another lifting strategy than what they did in China (if we manage
to develop means to control the spread at a very low rate)

2 months is still a reasonable approximation, given all the unknowns. But I
will not even be surprised if it ends up being 3, and 4 is not out of the
question.

------
ckdarby
Does anyone believe the numbers that China has given?

I asked as I see everyone use them to compare against but then I see articles
popping up talking about reporters who reported difference numbers just vanish
over night.

~~~
jhpriestley
since the criticisms of the Chinese numbers tend to be wild derivations from
urns or anonymously sourced US propaganda, yes I am inclined to believe the
numbers.

If you are seeing these articles "pop up" then you read fake news btw

~~~
RHSeeger
Given the number of times the Chinese government has been shown to lie and
actively try to hide dissenting people/information when it tells a story they
don't want told... I think it's fair to start from a point of distrust. Sure,
it doesn't mean they're lying about the numbers here, but they started out
this whole thing by lying about it, by throwing someone (a doctor?) that did
speak out in jail.

~~~
jhpriestley
They did not throw any doctor in jail.

I don't trust the Chinese government but I think if they were lying then their
opponents would be able to build a more persuasive case by now.

~~~
RHSeeger
My apologies, I was mis-remembering. Dr. Li Wenliang was arrested, questioned,
and officially reprimanded for warning about the Corona virus outbreak.
Looking now, I don't see that he was actually thrown in jail.

That being said, it does still speak to the point of the Chinese government
and their attempts to control the narrative. At least for me, that makes me
start from a point of distrust over anything they say.

------
jellicle
The author missed inter-family infection growth during a lockdown. If you have
a family of 5 people and person 1 is infected, person 2 gets infected by 1
after one week, a week later person 2 infects 3, a week later person 3 infects
4, a week later person 4 infects 5. And only then does the infection cascade
stop.

This is also happening in hospitals, in nursing homes, in homeless
shelters...all are also "families" for this purpose. If your "lockdown" was
truly no contact between any two humans, the cascade would stop quicker. But
that's not the case.

Comparing the US to China is wrong, because the US isn't doing MOST of what
China did to allow the lockdown to be lifted.

------
moneywoes
Haven't cases started reappearing in China? And haven't they had to restart
the lockdown.

------
riskneutral
"The rate of growth at a given day is the number of new cases on this day, as
a percentage of the number of cases from the previous day. The rate of growth
is constant for an exponential evolution, and is 0 when there is no more
growth. (Mathematically, it is the derivative of the function divided by the
function itself.)"

I don't think that's the curve they're talking about flattening.

I think 2 months is just the lower bound.

~~~
patd
The curve that we must flatten is the admissions to the ICU as that's the main
bottleneck if we want to limit the number of deaths.

And 2 months is probably not back to normal (international travel, etc). China
is still fearing a second wave coming from the rest of the world.

~~~
humanrebar
I don't believe any country can eradicate the virus within its borders once it
has spread sufficiently, at least without some form of herd immunity. I think
China knows this and is already finding ways to blame foreigners. I think
China could completely shut down its borders and still be at significant, if
not inevitable, risk.

Note that I think other countries will also play the blame game. I don't plan
to buy into the finger pointing as it doesn't really solve anything.

------
hn_throwaway_99
As others have pointed out, this only gets thing to a steady state _while
everyone is still locked down_. _All_ the countries that have loosened their
lockdown restrictions had to tighten them back up after they had new "flare-
ups".

We're in this for _many, many_ months. Somehow a lot of people have forgotten
that "flattening the curve" greatly _lengthens_ the time period of the curve.

Also, the thesis behind flattening the curve is still that the same number of
people eventually get it, and it's only once you get broad population immunity
that the spread stops.

We will be fighting this with social distancing until there is a vaccine.

~~~
standardUser
"We will be fighting this with social distancing until there is a vaccine."

Well, not really. We can also fight it by producing more needed medical
supplies, developing better treatments and expanding hospital capacity. We
aren't just trying to influence the curve, but also the line we are trying to
keep the curve under. And some nations have had luck flattening the curve
using testing and tracing (but the US does not seem to be interested in this
approach for some reason). It's also worth considering that the level of
social distancing is not fixed. There is a wide range of options between
universal quarantine and business as usual.

~~~
jellicle
Okay, so if I promise you you'd have a hospital bed and a ventilator for your
last week on Earth, you'd go let some infected people cough in your face?

If your answer is no, you're still worried about the consequences of infection
including death and permanent disability, then the public is still going to
want to avoid infections even if ICU beds were completely unlimited.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I don't think anyone's proposing a policy where the public will be _forbidden_
from social distancing if they want to.

------
chrisweekly
I'm confused -- or rather, think the author may be -- about what's being
measured and inferred. A rate of growth of 0 still means the number of new
cases is increasing. The rate of growth needs to be negative before the rate
of new cases can peak, slow, and (hopefully someday) stop. Acceleration vs
velocity vs position. Right?

~~~
monktastic1
> The rate of growth at a given day is the number of _new_ cases on this day,
> as a percentage of the number of cases from the previous day.

I haven't read the whole thing, but here he's defining "rate of growth" as the
number of _new_ cases. If there are 0 _new_ cases each day, then eventually
the number of _total_ cases goes to zero.

~~~
chrisweekly
Thanks.

------
SeekingMeaning
> ... stop playing the game of "in our country it's going to be different than
> in China" ...

------
oDot
From what I read, a single lockdown doesn't work, as even 1 patient is enough
to destroy everything, and a lockdown can't guarantee he wouldn't exist.

A solution seems to be selective lockdowns by area backed by a huge amount of
testing.

~~~
standardUser
"...as even 1 patient is enough to destroy everything"

That implies we are trying to make the virus extinct, which we are not. We
want the virus to spread, but at a manageable rate.

~~~
oDot
Right, my point is that a single lockdown is not enough. You have to have good
monitoring and intermittent lockdowns in different areas based on that
monitoring

------
Touche
What I want to know is how long after the lockdown is lifted will we know if
it's going to spread again? 2 weeks?

------
asiachick
So we all lockdown and the rate goes down. It stop staying locked down won't
the rate go back up? The only way the rate stays down is if we stop staying
locked down is

(a) most people already caught it and are immune

(b) we develop a vaccine

(c) we develop a cure that is easily mass produced and easily distributed.

Until one of those happens we're in lockdown. No? And that means 12 to 24
months.

~~~
hannasanarion
What were holding out for is testing capacity. Once tests are readily
available, we can isolate people who catch it and all they people they've been
in contact with, and the virus can be held down in quarantine while the rest
of society goes on.

This strategy has worked in China and South Korea, where life is now slowly
resuming, but most other countries haven't caught up with their testing
numbers yet.

The reason we're all quarantined now is that there's presently no rapid
reliable way to tell who needs to be quarantined and who doesn't.

~~~
standardUser
"What were holding out for is testing capacity."

Really? Because I have heard of no plan at the federal or state level to
implement a wide-scale test and trace program to contain the virus. This seems
like a very good idea, but not one being implemented in the US.

~~~
ygra
The US is far beyond containment at this point. As are many other countries
right now, as well. Only when the cases go down again due to successful
measures is containment an option again, as you need enough resources to trace
contacts and test every potential infection.

~~~
standardUser
"Only when the cases go down again due to successful measures is containment"

We have already taken measures to contain the virus. So why aren't we
preparing these needed resources for testing and tracing while the lockdowns
are in effect? Two months will pass and we will be no better prepared than we
are today because no government in the US is working towards this. The
containment will be for nothing, just a temporary measure that will have to be
repeated over and over because we aren't even trying to implement a better
solution.

------
animalnewbie
If you're trusting China's numbers I don't know if I shoukd trust your
analysis.

------
drtillberg
As long as there are a few cases in the community-- and there always will be--
the end of each lockdown potentially will trigger a surge of cases, and thus a
new lockdown.

I think what is really going on here is world leaders assume China is most
knowledgeable about this virus, because goodness knows its labs probably have
been studying it for 15 years, they don't have confidence that China is
forthcoming about what it knows, and in a few nations globally the effect
borders on catastrophic so it's not something to be ignored. So, governments
have _copied_ the _more_ _knowledgeable_ _actor_ , which happens to be an
autocratic communist government, in hopes that it's approach is the best
informed and effective scientifically .

Thus, the answer to 'when do the lockdowns end' really is: when we feel more
knowledgeable about the virus than the nations that resorted to placing their
populations under house arrest, and therefore feel confident enough to stop
following China's example.

------
captain_crabs
If real information about China were to leak out, my guess is it would happen
through the vector of internet/social media. Chances are, some other source
would need to copy + repost it before being taken down. This is what I looked
for.

One such account which is purportedly doing this is
[https://twitter.com/truthabtchina](https://twitter.com/truthabtchina). To
summarize this, among other rumors:

    
    
        - lots more people have died that communicated (there's an estimate of ~22m due to missing cell phone contracts)
        - riots are happening between regions where lockdown occurred, and regions next to them)
        - lockdown isn't practically over in areas where resurgence of infection is happening (pending other containment approaches)
    

edit: I've eaten dinner with some friends from China in the past month before
lockdown started, and am in frequent contact with people traveling throughout
SEA. I was trying to provide and summarize a potential semi-primary source.
Added some more specific #'s, info, and removed inflammatory words. Sorry - I
wasn't trying to be fear-mongery. However, I am trying to accurately reflect a
harsher reality

I do think it's quite reasonable to assume some areas of China are getting
back to normal.

I also think it's quite unreasonable to assume info _isn't_ being censored and
controlled, especially post journalist-eviction.

~~~
baron_harkonnen
Do people on HN really have no friends/connections in China? People post
comments like this as if it's some mysterious information black hole where we
can never know what's really happening.

I communicate pretty often with people living in China and with family and
living in China. Things, even close to Wuhan, are returning to normal. People
are going out, eating out, socializing more.

From all of the everyday people reporting there is no obvious or visible
things not being reported. By and large people in China are primarily worried
about America right now.

It wouldn't shock me if there was some important information not being
reported, but this conspiratorial "If real information where to leak out" is
nonsense since you can very easy interact and talk with actual people living
in China.

~~~
smacktoward
There is also the willingness of Chinese companies and individuals to ship PPE
gear to the US. If the government there were really still in crisis mode, you
would expect it to clamp down hard on that sort of thing.

~~~
captain_crabs
This is a pretty good point. However, there's also the chance that they can't
use the gear and that's why they're sending it:
[https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=virus+t...](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=virus+test+kits+contaminated+with+virus)

However, could be this was a one-off genuine mistake (things are hectic). I'd
love to know more

