
America needs an immediate five-week national lockdown to defeat coronavirus - smacktoward
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/03/21/coronavirus-america-needs-five-week-national-lockdown-column/2890376001/
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caseymarquis
It seems probable that the inability to close down critical infrastructure (ie
medical, utilities, food) and the exceptional contageousness of the virus will
likely thwart any attempt to eliminate it via isolation. It lowers the burden
on the medical system for sure, but it just delays the eventual spread.
Consider that 50 to 95% of Native Americans died from infectious disease after
Europeans arrived, while the fastest method of transport at the time was a
horse and most food was locally grown.

It's commonly stated that the average US citizen lives paycheck to paycheck,
and it's fair to guess a large fraction of those would be laid off during this
period.

If you're optimizing for strain on the healthcare system, then I suppose a 5
week lockdown makes sense. That said, unless a plan addresses providing for
the millions of people who can no longer afford food and rent during said
lockdown, it seems likely we'd encounter an entirely different set of
problems. I don't know what the effect of a 10% contraction in GDP would be,
but I think that's what you would need to weigh slowing the spread of the
virus against. I'd be interested if someone knowledgable could do the math on
lost years of life from 14% of the elderly dying vs such a severe economic
contraction.

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untog
> I'd be interested if someone knowledgable could do the math on lost years of
> life from 14% of the elderly dying vs such a severe economic contraction.

That's not a math problem. There is no equation for comparing the death of a
human being with economic contraction.

There are some really fundamental questions here that I don't think we're
going to answer soon. It's making me wonder about the nature of the US itself,
with authority scattered between DC, states and counties. With a priority
(arguably an obsession) with free market economics over all else.

When the dust settles the country is going to need to ask a lot of questions
about how it operates. Failure to do so (and don't get me wrong, I suspect we
will fail) just means the next time a pandemic like this comes around it's
going to devastate the country even more.

~~~
caseymarquis
Economic contraction would lead to decreased lifespan. There's definitely a
math problem here which optimizes for saved human life. Consider that a 100%
economic contraction would result in the majority of humanity dying. 10%
likely means some number of deaths among the poor (I've been the poor, there's
not a lot of wiggle room when you're barely scraping by deciding between heat
or food in the winter).

It's not that we can't lock down and accept economic contraction, it's that we
should do the math before we commit to that path. Lockdown may be the clear
winner.

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untog
Economic contraction can be countered by government spending in the short
term. For instance in the UK the government has pledged to pay up to 80% of
unemployed workers wages during this crisis. There will certainly be a hole to
dig out of later, but it means no binary choice between economic contraction
and people dying.

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caseymarquis
Agreed.

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xwowsersx
Someone I know made the assertion that the disease is "topping out" and based
this on the fact that "testing is increasing faster than positive results". I
am highly skeptical of this claim simply based on the fact that literally no
expert is making this claim, but I don't know how to dismantle this assertion.
Anyone have stats/numbers that would refute this (seemingly) bogus claim?

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oli5679
[https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19)

Plot confirmed cases and deaths vs. date on a log scale for countries with
more than N cases/deaths.

You'll see USA following similar pattern to Italy, and other European
countries, without significant slowdown of exponential trend yet.

~~~
xwowsersx
Thanks. Is this the right dataset to look at
[https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_...](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_19-covid-
Confirmed.csv) ?

~~~
xwowsersx
I guess I need the confirmed cases csv as well?

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canada_dry
Up next: suspending trading on all stock markets/exchanges during the
lockdown?

Perhaps I'm being wildly naive, but this would seem to be the next obvious
step. Hopefully then the administration would turn ~90% of it's focus on the
health/welfare of the population. Finally, the remaining ~10% of effort should
be on brainstorming approaches/protocols to restore the financial systems once
the national quarantine is lifted.

~~~
orasis
This would mean that companies couldn’t raise capital for five weeks and
individuals wouldn’t be able to liquidate stocks for necessary cash. Not a
great idea.

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magwa101
Finally, the plain truth.

