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You're asking the wrong question. It's not correct to ask if COVID shelter in place orders are worth it for "200k" deaths.

The correct question to ask is, "What is the cost of not sheltering in place?" The answer seems to be between two million and three million deaths in the US from COVID alone[0]. Of course, there would be even more deaths due to ICUs being full and even more acute shortages of PPE for medical personnel.

We would also experience profound second- and third-order effects of millions of additional deaths on the economy.

> should we... force video taped gym sessions and cardio exercises? require wearable monitors? prohibit admittance to public transport without a gym validation stamp or a doctor note?

I hope you've taken the opportunity to read this again. To be charitable, it does not meet the high standards I think we hold ourselves to at HN. People suffering from heart disease don't infect others with a potentially fatal virus.

Other countries have applied strict shelter in place and mask rules with great success. In the US, compliance with such rules has been made political, and questioning it--often with straw man arguments like those above--has become the mark of supposed contrarian rebels.

As a result we have something of the worst of both worlds. Sadly, as more Americans irresponsibly refuse to apply basic COVID safety measures, more people get infected, thus supplying rhetorical ammunition to critics like those in this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/coronavi...




Your counter-claim of 2-3M US deaths from COVID is questionable. This is 0.7-1.0% of total population. Sweden, which had no forced quarantines and for which the ministry of health web site explicitly recommends not wearing a mask for people with no symptoms, has effectively zero COVID deaths from late July (from Wikipedia; deaths per week show a classic curve for an infectious disease). No second waves that are starting to hit other countries. Sweden's total COVID deaths are reported as a bit under 6000 as of today -- less than 0.06% and well under the 0.7-1.0% you estimate.

This does not mean that the total estimates of 2-3M for the US are proven wrong. But it is a strong counterargument to that estimate that should be addressed if we base our response on the estimate of 2-3M of COVID deaths with no strict measures. My 2c.

I will also push back on your "compliment" to me of not meeting the high standards of HN (you note you are being charitable; I wonder what the "objective" characterization). You lecture me to re-read my post and think about my mistakes (at least that is how I understood it; if I understood it wrongly, sorry). I did re-read it and still see my questions as valid. If the answers to them are obvious, great; but this does not make asking them unethical. Sorry for this rant, I will take the downvotes for it if they come.


> No second waves that are starting to hit other countries.

Sweden is actually seeing a second wave. Its death rate is still low.


I notice I'm getting downvoted for this post. Perhaps I was too verbose or inarticulate, so I'll try to be clearer:

* Are mask and shelter in place laws worthwhile to avoid two to three million additional deaths due to COVID?


I downvoted you because the idea that 1% of the total population will die without lockdowns is directly contradicted by all available evidence.

Various countries had various levels of lockdown, and none had anywhere remotely close to that fraction of their population die.


Exactly. However, if you look at the Economist excess deaths tracker, one could estimate a likely death toll with less stringent restrictions: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

Taking Brazil, they had about 62 excess deaths per 100k (who knew Brazil was so dangerous in general?). I'm rounding down because I can't be bothered getting a calculator, so using 50.

Taking this level of excess deaths and applying it to the US, we get 600k excess deaths (so 3x the reported total). Using the excess death numbers for the UK, 90 odd, and again lazily rounding, we'd get 1.2 mn excess deaths this year.

I think the OP's point was actually pretty reasonable, and will look much more accurate in a few years when we have better excess deaths data and (hopefully) this pandemic is over.




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