A lot of people are going to be upset about this, but realistically what is the alternative if you can't get the broader populace to adhere to strict social distancing, mask wearing, and sanitizing?
Seems to me if everyone took these measures seriously and genuinely made an effort to adhere to them we would be able to avoid this as the end game of outbreaks.
Other countries have curtailed massive outbreaks like this, it's possible to not end up in this situation.
>if everyone took these measures seriously and genuinely made an effort to adhere to them we would be able to avoid this...
Or impose a lockdown that actually applies equally to everyone.
My city in England had seen numbers fall to negligible between March and September, when the government opened the schools and universities again. We had an influx of 100,000+ students from all over the country, with the completely predictable outcome that cases skyrocketed in the space of a week of their arrival.
We've now been put in the government's "Very High" risk tier which, on paper, means pretty much a new localised lockdown... except all the schools and universities are still open. And all the bars and pubs have to close... unless they give you a plate of chips with your pint. And you have to wear a mask in public buildings and on public transport... unless it would 'distress' you to do so.
Either don't do lockdown at all, or do it properly. These half-arsed "total lockdown... except... except.. except..." are just going to keep things dragging on indefinitely
> Either don't do lockdown at all, or do it properly. These half-arsed "total lockdown... except... except.. except..." are just going to keep things dragging on indefinitely
Totally agree. I think what the western world is struggling with is that the imposition of authoritarian lockdown measures on a liberal populace is not incredibly popular because it rubs up against individual liberties that are a pillar of western liberal democracies.
> A lot of people are going to be upset about this, but realistically what is the alternative if you can't get the broader populace to adhere to strict social distancing, mask wearing, and sanitizing?
People around me are more upset about the government awful communication (blaming the population while more than half of the clusters are in schools, pretending the outbreak was sudden and unpredictable while the numbers have been close to the model projection for the last month) than the lockdown.
The French government gives a feeling of complete improvisation and general ineptitude that is hard to shake.
I agree with you in principal but I hear the same stories "if everyone would just wear a mask for 2 weeks we'd be done with this". But I'm not sure it's that simple.
In Massachusetts, we've been wearing masks, consistently since May 6th (as per governor's order). Our case numbers over the summer had been "ok", but not great (despite being 3rd in the world per capital bad in April). We've never been anywhere near close to "zero" as Melbourne is now seeing after their lockdown and I think we've only had maybe 1 day with 0 deaths since March. Now we're back over 1K new cases per day, 3x what it was 2 weeks ago and it looks like it'll keep going up.
Our lockdown in March-June was actually pretty complete, it wasn't troops-on-the-street / roadblocks, but almost everything was closed and the reality was there was literally no-where to go and absolutely nothing to do. People just stayed home. We may never had an official curfew here, but again the reality is there's no one out and about after 9pm anyway (even now).
Today, we still have universal masking in public, significant restrictions on office occupancy, indoor dining, gyms etc., most schools are either hybrid or remote. We lead the country in testing capacity and we currently have 2000 contact tracers in MA according to MA-DHHS Sec. Sudders. We also have some of the very best health care in the world and in general a well educated populace.
So how did it go so wrong in MA and so right for Melbourne? (good on you guys in Victoria btw, well done!).
I live in MA (Boston suburb) and have for a decade. I don't have all the answers but a few things to note on this topic..
1. The lockdown was probably not actually harsh enough.
I got a waiver from it, as did almost everyone I worked with, to continue coming into work. The paper said we were "critical to national infrastructure" but we work in long-term research which could easily be pushed back by weeks without anyone knowing or caring.
I don't know how typical this was or how many people were excluded.
2. You could always travel to and from other states pretty freely via car.
The only serious attempt I ever saw against this was at the New York Connecticut border they were checking for certain license plates (Florida maybe? they didn't care about my MA plates) one time. Even then, you could apparently get off the highway and avoid this because a friend of mine did.
3. Mask rules were/are looser in NH where everyone goes on weekends if traffic is any indication.
4. In recent months I saw a lot of people mushed together dining outside in the Italian district. We can debate how much this matters since it's outdoors but I don't think they were doing that in Australia. Separation looks more serious based on articles I've seen:
I don't have a lot of hard stats to put in here, but it wasn't Australia in MA and degree of enforcement certainly makes a difference if you're going to have rules.
I don't think I agree with this. I also live in MA, and I think, in general, the state has done a pretty good job. But we all live within our own bubbles. 5 years in Boston and I never heard a "boston" accent outside of Fenway Park. Does my experience represent, at all, the whole of MA? Probably not.
And with open borders to neighboring states (with weakish quarantine rules) I'm not surprised it's been unable to contain this thing.
At a glance, Plymouth is doing poorly. Probably driven by beachgoers and travelers. Shrug. This is hard.
As I'm sure you know, there's a been a travel order here in MA for a number of months now with $500/day fines for not quarantining. Not sure how well it has been enforced ... it excludes certain other states (e.g. most of New England) and states where their rates are low enough.
MA actually just got put on the CT & NY "must quarantine" lists because of our now-higher rates (not not vice-versa, in fact Baker just today called NY/CT out on it but they didn't give in any on it).
I'm sure though that probably travelers through the airports might be problematic ... then again, air traffic is down very very significantly (source: live under a Logan approach and it's been absolutely quiet since late March).
I don't really know how else MA would enforce cross border quarantine short of police checkpoints at every crossing which would be both expensive and likely unconstitutional.
As for Plymouth ... it's kinda cold now, I'd have expected that back in the summer, but not so much now (although the Plimoth Plantation is in fact open which I'm a bit surprised at!).
Spain has been wearing masks for months now with an excellent numbers, the only people without are very young kids and it gets just worse and worse. If masks do anything then it's very little - what a lot of the European countries agree with but mask is the last resort we're doing and enforcing type of populist measure by politicians.
They did, and they had very low case rates for a while until they opened everything up and winter came along. The point isn’t to end the pandemic, it is to minimize harm until a vaccine is available.
“He said flu and other winter conditions usually brought in 3,000 extra people to hospitals but there were already more than 10,000 coronavirus patients in England even before winter pressures had arrived.”
Considering there are high numbers of asymptomatic (or pre-symptomatic) doesn’t that become much much harder as the virus spreads. You still need to have some semblance of control over the virus in the broader population, no?
> We’ve all heard it. A lockdown fanatic rationalizes the never-ending lockdowns and the shifting goalposts by blaming people who supposedly have not been complying. “This would have been over months ago if everyone just did what they were supposed to. Whether intentional or not, this is gaslighting.
> Not only is this not true, but the exact OPPOSITE is true. Do these people not understand that “flatten the curve”, “slow the spread”, and “wait until a vaccine” all by definition mean stretching this out? Lockdowns do not eradicate viruses, they only delay the inevitable. As soon as the lockdown ends the virus spreads.
> If our goal was speed, then this whole pandemic could have been over in a few weeks if we just let it spread through the population, while shielding the elderly and vulnerable of course. The entire point of “flattening the curve” was to drag this out. Slowing the spread and waiting for a vaccine all prolong and delay.
> Anyone who thinks lockdowns could have eradicated the virus from every corner of the planet is either lying, ignorant, or insane. Even countries that were praised for keeping out the virus are now suffering new outbreaks.
I never said lockdowns would eradicate the pandemic, nor do I solely blame the populace. I actually think governments are the problem and we should have way more incisive responses, both economical and social, from our governments.
My entire point is that with the extremely large case numbers in Europe and the US (and to some degree the lack of adherence to guidelines) there isn’t, in my view, an obvious alternative to lockdowns as a means to slow the spread and reduce harm.
There are a lot of implications of not locking down such as the quality of care going down when hospitals become overloaded, long term effects/immunity not totally understood, among other things. The WHO has said that herd immunity is not a valid strategy to tackle this pandemic.
If you're going to advocate for a strategy that puts MORE people at risk and not LESS, then the burden of proof is on you to show that it will not cause more death and destruction. Saving lives is the priority and long term health outcomes should be a concern.
Also much of the data we have now is WITH significant measures being taken around the world, I can't imagine it would look better if we took less measures to prevent the spread.
it's a terrible point for two reasons. The first one is, the economic trade-off doesn't exist. Even countries who avoided the lock downs saw significant economic damage often comparable to the countries that implemented lockdowns. Doing nothing also wrecks every other aspect of life. The country doing best right now economically is China, which used by far the harshest but also most effective measures in stomping the virus out.
Second point, covid health damage isn't just limited to literal covid deaths. The disease sends countless people into hospitals, crowds out other necessary treatment, and causes debilitating damage to brain, heart, lungs and other organs in countless of patients. It's hard to even put a number on the long term damage done to people's bodies.
Do you actually have the data to run that calculation? Mortality rates with good health care would roughly double the yearly mortality. It wouldn't be like 2005 or any other year, it would be unprecedented. But if you actually do that the health care will be very poor and much higher mortality will result.
Seems to me if everyone took these measures seriously and genuinely made an effort to adhere to them we would be able to avoid this as the end game of outbreaks.
Other countries have curtailed massive outbreaks like this, it's possible to not end up in this situation.