
Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives? In Most Places, the Data Say No - mrfusion
https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-lockdowns-save-many-lives-is-most-places-the-data-say-no-11587930911
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lowdose
Maybe we should have a conversation about the age distribution of the deaths.
Because no one in the media is willing to publish aggregated world data.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105061/coronavirus-
deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105061/coronavirus-deaths-by-
region-in-italy/)

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109867/coronavirus-
deat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109867/coronavirus-death-rates-
by-age-new-york-city/)

~~~
armagon
I believe it is widely known that the disease disproportionately affects older
people.

Are you saying you wish we had worldwide stats for the demographic breakdown
of the deaths? (If someone does that, could I also request a breakdown that
shows the size of the demographic -- for example, in the charts the parent
poster shared, I assume that there just aren't many 90+ year olds alive (as a
percentage of the population), and so there aren't many deaths -- but a ratio
would make it way easier to tell.)

~~~
abduhl
I think they're saying we should realize that a septuagenarian or an
octogenarian is, economically speaking, a drain on society and we should be
having a conversation about whether stopping the world economy to keep cost
centers running makes sense.

~~~
1propionyl
Yes, because the elderly among us are, like all human beings, merely vehicles
of economic value.

My parents wish I would call or write to my cost centers more, but I don't see
the incentive to invest my valuable time for little to no ROI.

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Daishiman
This honestly looks like a propaganda piece that directly contradicts a ton of
evidence to the contrary.

~~~
JPKab
I think calling something propaganda is a great way to silence discussion.

It's arrogant to assume that the lockdowns are the only way to respond to this
virus. I don't want to assume. I want to be informed by the data. That
landscape is shifting, and I want our leaders to be willing to change their
minds as new data comes in and we learn more.

Maybe we carry on with lockdowns, maybe they were a good idea in cities, but
never for suburbs. It's really hard to tell at this point.

I was for the lockdowns, and I'm willing to stay that way, but I'm willing to
hear more facts ,data, and analysis.

We all work at keyboards, and get to stay employed. The cost/benefit analysis
for coders as individuals is a hell of a lot different than it is for
construction workers, restaurant workers, retail, etc. We should really try to
be sensitive to that, instead of acting as if economic devastation doesn't
cost lives, and is just a bit of pain to endure while we save lives from the
virus.

I grew up in an economically depressed area. Poverty, loss of livelihood and
misery kill people too. Think about the fact that this is mainly being done to
protect elderly people who have already earned the money they need for life,
and is primarily costing young earners their livelihoods.

The political system in the US already favors the elderly at the expense of
the young. Do you think you're ever going to see Social Security checks
equivalent to what you are paying in?

~~~
Daishiman
> I was for the lockdowns, and I'm willing to stay that way, but I'm willing
> to hear more facts ,data, and analysis.

Then look at the data. There's an entire subreddit of all the latest papers
and analysis regarding the disease and its spread, and the ineffectiveness of
lockdowns has been debunked time and time again, especially now that we have
models that have high approximations of the real-time spread of the disease.
We have examples from Singapore, Germany, Brazil, and various US states about
how easing lockdowns without concern for the necessary sanitary measures has a
very measurable impact on new infections and deaths.

In the beginning there were no clear exit scenarios. We have multiple
governments that have expressed them now, with specific goals and measures
that have to be considered to not reignite the spread of the disease.

So yes, I consider this propaganda because the basic premise of the article is
flawed and is the subject of journalists failing to navigate the current state
of research, and its implied motivation of defending premature openings at the
cost of an additional tens of thousands of lives.

------
soared
> To normalize for an unambiguous comparison of deaths between states at the
> midpoint of an epidemic, we counted deaths per million population for a
> fixed 21-day period, measured from when the death rate first hit 1 per
> million—e.g.,‒three deaths in Iowa or 19 in New York state. A state’s “days
> to shutdown” was the time after a state crossed the 1 per million threshold
> until it ordered businesses shut down.

Can someone better at stats walk through this? Doing a simple test like this
and then claiming lockdowns don't work does not seem genuine.

~~~
LorenPechtel
The places that are slow to shut down are the places that are more dispersed
and thus have a lower R0. Thus this is totally bogus.

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zzleeper
Suppose perfect lockdowns, so no new infections after lockdown, not even
family members.

Suppose incubation is 1w, then 1w of worsening syntoms, and then death at 3w,
consistent with Italy and other countries (sp. in places with enough beds,
deaths seemed to have occurred later).

Then, isn't the whole premise wrong? You want to study lockdowns but only look
at deaths from infections BEFORE the lockdown?

Am I missing something?

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arcturus17
Any idea how one could procure this wihtout the paywall?

~~~
soared
[https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/do-lockdowns-save-many-
lives...](https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/do-lockdowns-save-many-lives-in-
most-places-data-say-no)

Excerpt:

Do quick shutdowns work to fight the spread of Covid-19? Joe Malchow, Yinon
Weiss and I wanted to find out. We set out to quantify how many deaths were
caused by delayed shutdown orders on a state-by-state basis.

To normalize for an unambiguous comparison of deaths between states at the
midpoint of an epidemic, we counted deaths per million population for a fixed
21-day period, measured from when the death rate first hit 1 per
million—e.g.,‒three deaths in Iowa or 19 in New York state. A state’s “days to
shutdown” was the time after a state crossed the 1 per million threshold until
it ordered businesses shut down.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

We ran a simple one-variable correlation of deaths per million and days to
shutdown, which ranged from minus-10 days (some states shut down before any
sign of Covid-19) to 35 days for South Dakota, one of seven states with
limited or no shutdown.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The correlation coefficient was 5.5%—so low that the engineers I used to
employ would have summarized it as “no correlation” and moved on to find the
real cause of the problem. (The trendline sloped downward—states that delayed
more tended to have lower death rates—but that’s also a meaningless result due
to the low correlation coefficient.)

~~~
arcturus17
Isn't that just an excerpt? It links to WSJ at the end...

~~~
soared
You're right, thanks! - edited

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bdavisx
The author is a well known government hands-off libertarian, so keep the bias
in mind.

~~~
soared
Wikipedia:

> Rodgers is known for his public relations acumen, brash personality, and
> strong advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism

> Laizzes-faire is an economic system in which transactions between private
> parties are absent of any form of government intervention such as
> regulation, privileges, imperialism, tariffs and subsidies

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xfitm3
The saying is only 3 meals from anarchy. Pick your poison: economic collapse
or avoid coronavirus. I'd take the virus, personally.

