> a temporary closure to “flatten the curve”. I had flashbacks to 2020.
Realistically, covid is here for the forseeable future.
It's a fast-mutating pathogen (which I understand is typical of respiratory infections) and since about half of humans worldwide are vaccinated and half aren't, in a perfect environment to evolve resistance to vaccines (and the immune systems defences generally).
If covid were a worse infection, this would be really serious. But it isn't. It rarely kills people without pre-existing conditions (the biggest of which is old age). It's also getting less virulent: e.g. in the UK omicron has led to a big increase in infections, but not in deaths[1].
Scott Alexander calculated that it takes 52 person-months of lockdown to save one person-month of life[2]. This suggests to me that if lockdowns reduce quality of life by at least 2%, they are QALY-negative.
My conclusion from all this is that I don't think lockdowns should be compulsory. If people think the threat to themselves or family members is severe, by all means they can lockdown; but expecting everyone else to is wrong as lockdowns reduce overall utility.
Regarding schools, in this as in a lot of things vouchers would be a good system, then people who don't like how their state schools are run can walk away and take their kid's education money with them.
I don't think I disagree. If there was a good time to consider full lockdown, it was at the beginning of the pandemic when little information about it was known. The more we learn about it, the less it seems like a real threat.
But.. things have evolved since then. We have entire WFH movement ( and I am saying this as its proponent ) banking on its staying power ( and most of the old school management hates it ) and we have political people eyeing the power and money that could be tapped just by scaring people.
It is weird. It feels like a lifetime ago that I typed on this very forum something along the lines of:
'we're in this together thing lasted whole two weeks'
Before people die they have to be in the hospital. Hospitalization rates are extremely low considering the infection rate. Death rates are also very low.
This is essentially a flu at this point, even for the unvaccinated. People with 2 shots are as susceptible to omicron infection as the unvaccinated, and once the booster wanes, so will the triple boosted.
Hospitalization rates are down. Number of hospitalizations may be up but the spread is larger than it’s ever been. Omicron is 5x more contagious than the original Covid at levels we’ve never seen before as a society.
Sorry if that was unclear: yes we are saying the same thing, that more children are now in the hospital for covid. I was talking about the rate per 100k children.
Realistically, covid is here for the forseeable future.
It's a fast-mutating pathogen (which I understand is typical of respiratory infections) and since about half of humans worldwide are vaccinated and half aren't, in a perfect environment to evolve resistance to vaccines (and the immune systems defences generally).
If covid were a worse infection, this would be really serious. But it isn't. It rarely kills people without pre-existing conditions (the biggest of which is old age). It's also getting less virulent: e.g. in the UK omicron has led to a big increase in infections, but not in deaths[1].
Scott Alexander calculated that it takes 52 person-months of lockdown to save one person-month of life[2]. This suggests to me that if lockdowns reduce quality of life by at least 2%, they are QALY-negative.
My conclusion from all this is that I don't think lockdowns should be compulsory. If people think the threat to themselves or family members is severe, by all means they can lockdown; but expecting everyone else to is wrong as lockdowns reduce overall utility.
Regarding schools, in this as in a lot of things vouchers would be a good system, then people who don't like how their state schools are run can walk away and take their kid's education money with them.
1: see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
2: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...