
Much of the lockdown effect was not imposed by top-down fiat - walterbell
https://quillette.com/2020/05/08/enough-with-the-phoney-lockdown-debate/
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qubex
This is an excellent analysis. For me the key quote is “ _One of the trends
that’s jumped out is that lockdown orders have tended to ratify public
behaviour as much as prescribe or circumscribe it_ ”. The author argues quite
convincingly (with transportation data) that the decision to lockdown is, as
he writes, ‘ _crowdsourced_ ’ and coming from a groundswell of micro-decisions
made on the individual level, and that consequentially the debate on lifting
lockdown orders is rather moot: people will likely continue to be very prudent
after the orders are lifted just as they were very prudent before they were
officially promulgated.

~~~
TylerE
The problem with this is that much of the relief for both businesses and
employees is tied to the order. If they could be open, they no longer qualify
for aid if they choose not to be.

~~~
votepaunchy
The Unemployment Insurance bonus runs through July. Many businesses are
looking to this to preserve wages while reducing payroll. And I have not heard
of this program being capped and running out of funding as has happened with
PPP.

“California workers who see their hours cut as little as 10% due to the
coronavirus outbreak are eligible to receive the entire $600-a-week federal
subsidy offered in the $2-trillion federal rescue package, state officials and
employment experts say.”

[https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-27/coronaviru...](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-27/coronavirus-
relief-law-workers-reduced-hours)

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himinlomax
In my case, the government mandate was necessary because my employer was
dragging its feet to generalize work from home, even though everything was in
place to allow it and we're the kind of business (online) that's pretty much
ideal for it.

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DoreenMichele
There are things I would like to see come out of this. I have a compromised
immune system and I saw a lot of benefits for me. My life mostly carried on as
usual. A few things I typically attend were cancelled, but I already work from
home and don't get out much.

I hope the pandemic leads to certain hygiene things being take more seriously
and improved, like public bathrooms. I hope it continues to be easier for me
to avoid certain things post pandemic without it raising an eyebrow.

But if people were better about not doing awful things like blowing their nose
in crowded public spaces, I don't think we really need a lock down, honestly.
I have a serious medical condition and I habitually avoid large crowds and
certain other things, but most people don't really know how much my life
choices are driven by my medical situation. I look sort of "normal" in some
sense. I sure as hell don't run around wearing a mask and gloves when I go
out.

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kevin_thibedeau
The only practical remedy for this in the US is free antibody testing for
asymptomatics and free infection testing for those with symptoms. Ideology
will prevent this from happening even though the same actors never bat an
eyelash over blowing trillions on pointless wars.

~~~
nostromo
> Ideology will prevent this from happening

Congress already passed a bipartisan bill to provide free testing.

~~~
foogazi
Proof that they can’t fix logistical problems with the stroke of a pen

The same US government appears to have given up on testing now

~~~
votepaunchy
The US continues to scale up testing (and are doing more than any other
country). The problem is that we don’t manufacture most goods domestically so
have limited supply of swabs and such.

[https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily](https://covidtracking.com/data/us-
daily)

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geofft
That's a very interesting graph, but I think it's not a complete story. Here's
another graph:
[https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries](https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries)

In particular, compare Sweden and the US with other countries (Norway,
perhaps, or South Korea).

Given the lack of correlation between government lockdown policy and public
transit ridership, there's a couple of conclusions you could draw. One, as the
author does, is that government lockdown policy doesn't effect behavior.
Another, based on the second graph, is that _none of the four cities the
author shows_ had a meaningful government-mandated lockdown - that yes, as the
author says, people didn't change behavior on their own, but that we can't
conclude that government has no leverage here because none of those cities
tried very hard. (As an NYC resident I can tell you that the government is
sitting quite firmly in the unfortunate valley between leaving people alone
and actually having an effect: there's a lot of people out of work and enough
stories of nonsensical policing like throwing people in a crowded jail for not
social distancing, but there are a lot of people, including our mayor himself,
who are out and about in public that it isn't obviously helping with R₀.)
Another possible one is that public transit ridership is a limited subset of
behavior and changes for its own reasons (it's hard to maintain social
distance and avoid touching metallic surfaces on a subway train) that don't
necessarily track whether people are staying home or whether they're going
around by means _other_ than public transit.

While I do agree with the author that the model of the government having a
magic lever is simplistic, I also don't think it follows that the government
has _no_ leverage. There are a number of policies well within the powers of
government, from unemployment eligibility to literally giving out food, that
I'd think have a much more effective influence on whether people stay home
than whether they're told to stay home. (I suspect the author will agree with
me that it's better to use government levers other than "we'll send armed men
after you if you don't," if you have any.) The lockdown protests from people
who want to return to work (to be distinguished from the protests from people
_who want others to return to working for them_ ) are from people who need to
work to survive and don't have remote work options - there are other things
the government could do to meet the underlying demands besides saying, okay,
you can go to work. In general, it's not that they want to leave their house,
it's that they have to.

And while I do agree with the author that it's the people and not the
government who make or break the lockdown (see also Hong Kong, where the
citizenry realized that their government wasn't taking the problem seriously,
for a particularly good example), I don't really think that ends the debate at
all. I think the author is pretty wrong about whether it's safe to send kids
back to school, for instance!

~~~
djsumdog
I don't think graphs like the one you linked are helpful. Cases are always
going to keep going up with additional testing. Cases need to be graphed
lithographically to be able to see when trends are dropping, and it's more
important to look at fatalities than case loads. I really like this visual:

[https://covidly.com/graph?country=United%20States#growth](https://covidly.com/graph?country=United%20States#growth)

~~~
geofft
The point I was trying to make with that graph is that cases in Norway, South
Korea, etc. _aren 't_ going up - they're pretty firmly going down. (And, in
turn, that government policy probably has something to do with it.)

Maybe I'm not understanding your rebuttal / how to use the graph you linked?
(e.g., type "Norway" and "Sweden" at the bottom, do the graphs not reflect a
meaningful difference between those countries?)

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sifar
"I am told by reliable sources within my own family that some of these parents
are even pressuring their neighbours to do likewise, and are shaming
dissenters on social media as bad parents. It’s lockdown by mob.

To some extent, I find this attitude of populist hyper-vigilance to be
exasperating, because sending your young kids to school is now generally safe
(and, selfishly, because I think my own seven-year-old could benefit from
getting back to a structured education environment). But we got into this mess
by letting our guard down, and so it’s not surprising that many ordinary
people want to err on the other side of the equation for a month or three.
Whatever your views, though, if you’re all in a fuss about lockdown policy,
please remember that the real lockdown was never imposed by government. It
turns out that it was inside each and every one of us all along."

This is a real slight of hand thinking. People were primed for lockdown, even
shamed, and then the claim that it was never imposed by the government.

