What if we had continued as normal?

mr_fegelien · 10-08-2020 1:38pm #1

Let's say when at the start of this year, the world saw the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan but world governments refused to close down and operated as normal. Where would we be now?

Would we have achieved herd immunity? Would the economic and mental health damage be less for the time being and in years to come? I'm not sure I agree that lockdown was a good idea?

yerwanthere123 · 10-08-2020 1:39pm

We'd have been playing Russian Roulette with peoples lives, and considerably more people would be dead.

Sesshoumaru · 10-08-2020 1:40pm

mr_fegelien wrote: »

Let's say when at the start of this year, the world saw the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan but world governments refused to close down and operated as normal. Where would we be now?

Would we have achieved herd immunity? Would the economic and mental health damage be less for the time being and in years to come? I'm not sure I agree that lockdown was a good idea?

What do you think yourself?

Sesshoumaru · 10-08-2020 1:42pm

yerwanthere123 wrote: »

We'd have been playing Russian Roulette with peoples lives, and considerably more people would be dead.

The US is engaged in a large scale experiment on behalf of the world to see what happens in certain states when you don't lock down, wear masks or generally pretend the virus is no worse than the flu. Results won't be surprising I think, but we need only wait a few more weeks to see the result.

gabeeg · 10-08-2020 1:45pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

The US is engaged in a large scale experiment on behalf of the world to see what happens in certain states when you don't lock down, wear masks or generally pretend the virus is no worse than the flu. Results won't be surprising I think, but we need only wait a few more weeks to see the result.

Eh some of the preliminary results are in, and it's not looking good

Sesshoumaru · 10-08-2020 1:57pm

gabeeg wrote: »

Eh some of the preliminary results are in, and it's not looking good

I would expect it to not look good. I expect overflowing ICU wards and hospital panels deciding who gets treatment and who doesn't. That's what I expect. Will still be interesting to see it actually happen.

Not sure what other excuses the deniers will use after this? But we'll see.

ShockChance · 10-08-2020 2:04pm

September will show how bad America handled this crises.

Oranage2 · 10-08-2020 2:17pm

People would be petrified to leave their homes.

Tenzor07 · 10-08-2020 2:18pm

Ask Sweden?

10-08-2020 2:20pm

OP get hold of the movie 'Outbreak' with Dustin Hoffmann and Renee Russo.

Naturally, you yourself would like the small town destroyed for the eye candy.

The Unbearables · 10-08-2020 2:21pm

mr_fegelien wrote: »

Let's say when at the start of this year, the world saw the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan but world governments refused to close down and operated as normal. Where would we be now?

Would we have achieved herd immunity? Would the economic and mental health damage be less for the time being and in years to come? I'm not sure I agree that lockdown was a good idea?

Health systems all over the world would have collapsed. Economy's would have collapsed as people refused to use public transport and go to work crammed in with other people. Millions would have died and most of them would have been people with underlying conditions and the elderly although plenty of young and fit would have died also and have had long term lung and heart issues.

All and all i think we've handled and are continuing to handle the virus well here in this country given the difficult hand we've been dealt by China.

justshane · 10-08-2020 2:22pm

This is what happened in Sweden. As much as the lock down was/is frustrating it was a necessary move.

JDD · 10-08-2020 2:26pm

This is something I have been wondering about. We all saw the overflowing hospitals in Italy and Spain, and the general consensus was that it was going to be an unmitigated disaster in the US due to the structure of their healthcare system. What happened in Italy and Spain was the central reason for our very strict lockdown.

Certainly, it looked like this was the right conclusion when coronavirus hit New York, but even then the situation wasn't as bad as it was in Bergamo or Madrid a few weeks earlier. Now we have it spread to Texas and Florida and California, and despite the numbers being diagnosed there doesn't appear to be overflowing hospitals, doctors deciding who gets a ventilator and who is too far gone, no further pictures of refridgered trucks outside hospitals, or the army bringing bodies to crematoriums.

In fact, despite the numbers being diagnosed, deaths are nowhere near what they were in April and May in the US. While clearly they are increasing, not at the rate they did in early April. So I guess we will see what the outcome is. Yes, they have definitely had way more deaths to date than they would have had if they had imposed a full lockdown. But there is some reason to believe that in two or three years, they might have had less deaths than other countries that swung from full lockdown to half reopening to full lockdown. Certainly they may be picking up on cancers earlier. The rate of suicide goes up at the same time as the rate of unemployment goes up - it was estimated in Ireland that there were between 300 and 500 additional suicides when the unemployment rate went from 4.5% to 8.5% in the earlier part of the recession. Clearly the suicide numbers will be less than the additional deaths from covid, and probably the numbers ultimately dying from undiagnosed cancer, but when you add all the "avoidable" deaths that will have resulted from lockdown, there may not be a huge difference between that and those who would have died from covid if it had been left run free.

What this will all come down to is the vaccine. If we get a working vaccine in H1 2021, then the lockdowns will have been worth it. If we don't, then those who let the virus run free may come out of it in a better position than the rest of us.

yosemitesam1 · 10-08-2020 2:28pm

Maybe 1000-2000 more deaths in the country and overall things would be much better than they currently are.

Macy0161 · 10-08-2020 2:35pm

I don't think there was a realistic choice at the time.

However, the numbers of (apparently) asymptomatic cases now around the meat processing plants does have me wondering will it be more like the flu, without the vaccine? The vulnerable groups are the same, so assuming asymptomatic remain asymptomatic with no long term consequences, where does that leave us? It's a bad thing for the transmission of the virus, but if it can be so far from the worst case scenarios?

10-08-2020 2:36pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Maybe 1000-2000 more deaths in the country and overall things would be much better than they currently are.

Baseless nonsense.

Hoboo · 10-08-2020 2:37pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Maybe 1000-2000 more deaths in the country and overall things would be much better than they currently are.

Not if you were one of the 1000-2000.

Charles Babbage · 10-08-2020 2:38pm

This thread is based on a false premise, even if governments had not closed places who is going to go out to a pub or restaurant and get a possibly fatal disease? Who is going to work there? The government is merely coordinating something responsible people are going to do anyway.

The Unbearables · 10-08-2020 2:41pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

I don't think there was a realistic choice at the time.

However, the numbers of (apparently) asymptomatic cases now around the meat processing plants does have me wondering will it be more like the flu, without the vaccine? The vulnerable groups are the same, so assuming asymptomatic remain asymptomatic with no long term consequences, where does that leave us? It's a bad thing for the transmission of the virus, but if it can be so far from the worst case scenarios?

Just the flu bro.

joseywhales · 10-08-2020 2:44pm

We are also assuming that medical staff are expendable resources, when they are some of our most valuable people. They are not machines, I am sure that morale would seriously plummet along with standard of care if we let ripp and told them to deal with it, seeing their fellow human make the effort definitely has a positive psychological effect on them.

Grab All Association · 10-08-2020 2:46pm

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Ask Sweden?

They could be right on some measures but completely wrong on others. Luckily for Sweden though they don’t have the diehard Trumptard types blocking A&E departments or protesting about haircuts. Swedes have the common sense to social distance, wear masks and practice good hand washing etiquette.

What I always ask these types of people is, If Covid 19 is a hoax and communism in the back door as these Trumptards claim, then surely Donald Trump is one of the globalists along with Mr. Gates and Soros. Why is he going along with the lie?

They then proceed to call you a paedophile or CPC agent.

touts · 10-08-2020 2:47pm

This all can be summed up in the misleading graphs that were shown to describe what flattening the curve meant. In one graph you had a huge spike way above the hospital capacity over a short amount of time. Then they flattened it and showed the graph coming down under the line and it was only a little bit longer. Maybe only twice as long. Not so bad. Lets do that.

Except the volume in the second graph was significantly less than in the second graph. Why? Because they displayed it as taking only a little bit longer. In reality it needed to be shown as going from 2-3 months for the spike to 1-2 years flattened. But they knew that would scare the sh1t out of the population and cause uproar. People would accept restrictions for a couple of months. But a couple of years. Not a hope. So they shortened the timescale on the graph and "we'll cross that bridge when we'll come to it". Well we're at that bridge now.

river?version=5048540&width=1340

So the question is was that lie worth it. How many would have died had we taken the Swedish approach and just let it happen. Probably thousands more. The health service barely got through as it was. Had the spike happened it would have collapsed completely. The death toll would have been enormous. Just remember the images from Bergamo and Whuan. Look at the images from Brazil. Would you have accepted those conditions if it meant your local pub could have reopened today. Would you have accepted the death toll so you wouldn't have to put on a mask on the Luas? Would you have accepted mass graves so you could get a ticket to your local GAA club's league match?

Irish Steve · 10-08-2020 2:48pm

If we'd done nothing here, the health service would have completely imploded, and the nursing home sector would have been even harder hit than it has been, the number of deaths would have been significantly higher because the hospitals would not have been able to spend the time with each patient that was needed to properly manage thier conditions.

Even now, with the extra knowledge that has accumulated over the last months, the health service is finely balanced, and a big surge in cases still has the potential to cause overload, with all that implies.

We can only hope that some of the changes in the health care system are seen through to completion, as things are now, there are still a lot of unresolved issues that could bring the whole house of cards down.

joseywhales · 10-08-2020 2:55pm

We are still waiting on that big first piece to be resolved , rapid and broad testing of the population. If we had 24 hour results and enough capacity, it could be as effective as a vaccine(assuming correctly not everyone would be willing to take). We would break the chains as soon as or before they form, in such a scenario zero cases is achievable.

mariaalice · 10-08-2020 3:00pm

Fear would have stopped people going to work as it would have been everywhere, so accesses to food would have become scrappy shops would open hit and miss even garages, widespread hoarding of food, the civil defense, and the army would have had to be back up the Garda. The very vulnerable who could not leave their house in those situations would have food parcels thrown at their front door every now and then by the civil defense.

Hospitals would have become a scary place so lots of unscheduled home berth and people who really need a hospital staying at home. Doctors and nurses in full PPE would be given Garda escorts to work and prioritised for fule along with anyone maintaining power and water.

Mostly we would have been grand but it would be a very scary place until we got something sorted.

MrStuffins · 10-08-2020 3:01pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Maybe 1000-2000 more deaths in the country and overall things would be much better than they currently are.

In other words "Thousands more would be dead, but in my imaginary scenario none of them are me or related to me so I would have been grand with that once I was able to have a pint without paying €9 for some chicken wings".

Classic!

mariaalice · 10-08-2020 3:07pm

It would not be the thousands of more deaths alone that would be the issue, but the fear and irrational behavior generated by the thousands of more deaths which would have caused the real problems

yosemitesam1 · 10-08-2020 3:08pm

MrStuffins wrote: »

In other words "Thousands more would be dead, but in my imaginary scenario none of them are me or related to me so I would have been grand with that once I was able to have a pint without paying €9 for some chicken wings".

Classic!

In the long-term, between increases in deaths due to cancer, mental health etc the difference will be narrow between doing nothing and what we did do.
Covid isn't the deadly killer we were told it was back in February and all perspective on the big picture has been lost in favour of trying to eliminate covid

schmoo2k · 10-08-2020 3:08pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Baseless nonsense.

Go back and read the first post - its the whole point of this thread.

bilston · 10-08-2020 3:19pm

Tenzor07 wrote: »

Ask Sweden?

The thing is that while Sweden has done worse than most, it has still fared better than some European countries. No surprise in some like the UK, Spain and Italy for various reasons...however Belgium is a curious example. Sweden has fared much better than Belgium who had a stricter lockdown from a pretty early stage as well. Some of this might be down to luck, or there are ethnic and demographic factors at play.

MrStuffins · 10-08-2020 3:24pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

In the long-term, between increases in deaths due to cancer, mental health etc the difference will be narrow between doing nothing and what we did do.
Covid isn't the deadly killer we were told it was back in February and all perspective on the big picture has been lost in favour of trying to eliminate covid

Ah yeah, and sure all the people who die of Covid would have died anyway in the long term so it's grand.

As long as you can do your shopping while not having to wear a mask, it's all worth it!

hi! · 10-08-2020 3:28pm

JDD wrote: »

This is something I have been wondering about. We all saw the overflowing hospitals in Italy and Spain, and the general consensus was that it was going to be an unmitigated disaster in the US due to the structure of their healthcare system. What happened in Italy and Spain was the central reason for our very strict lockdown.

Certainly, it looked like this was the right conclusion when coronavirus hit New York, but even then the situation wasn't as bad as it was in Bergamo or Madrid a few weeks earlier. Now we have it spread to Texas and Florida and California, and despite the numbers being diagnosed there doesn't appear to be overflowing hospitals, doctors deciding who gets a ventilator and who is too far gone, no further pictures of refridgered trucks outside hospitals, or the army bringing bodies to crematoriums.

In fact, despite the numbers being diagnosed, deaths are nowhere near what they were in April and May in the US. While clearly they are increasing, not at the rate they did in early April. So I guess we will see what the outcome is. Yes, they have definitely had way more deaths to date than they would have had if they had imposed a full lockdown. But there is some reason to believe that in two or three years, they might have had less deaths than other countries that swung from full lockdown to half reopening to full lockdown. Certainly they may be picking up on cancers earlier. The rate of suicide goes up at the same time as the rate of unemployment goes up - it was estimated in Ireland that there were between 300 and 500 additional suicides when the unemployment rate went from 4.5% to 8.5% in the earlier part of the recession. Clearly the suicide numbers will be less than the additional deaths from covid, and probably the numbers ultimately dying from undiagnosed cancer, but when you add all the "avoidable" deaths that will have resulted from lockdown, there may not be a huge difference between that and those who would have died from covid if it had been left run free.

What this will all come down to is the vaccine. If we get a working vaccine in H1 2021, then the lockdowns will have been worth it. If we don't, then those who let the virus run free may come out of it in a better position than the rest of us.

Yes because hospitals around the world saw what was happening in Italy and prepared. Italy were blindsided. The health service literally changed overnight to prepare.
And there have been hospitals overflowing in America eg Florida,Texas - I’m a nurse and active in fb groups for same. Nurse and doctors have been overwhelmed there too.

Charles Babbage · 10-08-2020 3:31pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

In the long-term, between increases in deaths due to cancer, mental health etc the difference will be narrow between doing nothing and what we did do.
Covid isn't the deadly killer we were told it was back in February and all perspective on the big picture has been lost in favour of trying to eliminate covid

If we had not acted then the health service would have imploded entirely and we would have even more deaths from cancer also. You hardly need a PhD in pubic health to work this out.

Spiderman0081 · 10-08-2020 3:33pm

mariaalice wrote: »

Fear would have stopped people going to work as it would have been everywhere, so accesses to food would have become scrappy shops would open hit and miss even garages, widespread hoarding of food, the civil defense, and the army would have had to be back up the Garda. The very vulnerable who could not leave their house in those situations would have food parcels thrown at their front door every now and then by the civil defense.

Hospitals would have become a scary place so lots of unscheduled home berth and people who really need a hospital staying at home. Doctors and nurses in full PPE would be given Garda escorts to work and prioritised for fule along with anyone maintaining power and water.

Mostly we would have been grand but it would be a very scary place until we got something sorted.

This is exactly what happened in Sweden. Trust me. I live there

YellowBucket · 10-08-2020 3:35pm

There's a major problem in the USA, and with some degree of bleed-over to Ireland through social media, where people are just picking their own facts and reality and burying their heads in the sand about this. Unfortunately we aren't going to be able to just reset the clock to 2019 and everything will be fine.

If we had just ignored it and continued with business as usual, we would have created a frightening situation where people were getting very sick and dying and that would cause mass panic and kill the economy anyway. There's a fine balancing act going on to maintain life as normal while not risking a dramatic outbreak and that's probably going to have be part how things are until we have a technical solution to this blasted virus, which will be both vaccines and medical treatments, and it's quite possible that the medical treatment aspect will play a more important role in the short to medium term than the vaccine.

The reality of it is we've lived through a relatively golden age of very few dangerous and highly contagious diseases. Really since the 1950s we've been living a somewhat charmed life where vaccines had eliminated almost all of the really nasty diseases and the ones that remained were relatively difficult to catch or have been highly treatable. Even HIV despite its horrendous initial days is now something we can treat effectively and even at its peak it was fairly hard to catch other than through direct fluid-to-fluid contact. This thing is transmitted by talking and breathing in the same room, which is quite a different situation, and more like the TB and Polio era.

The fact that it's an unpleasant reality is just a fact. We're going to have to just be pragmatic, deal with it and muddle through until we have technical solutions and frankly turning it into an insane populist garbage fest as a significant percentage of Americans have done is completely counterproductive nonsense and it's something we could do without importing.

All people are being asked to do is wear a feckin' surgical mask or similar barrier to prevent risk of spread of a rather nasty virus. It's hardly that big an imposition and if people want to turn it into some kind of conspiracy theory lunacy, I don't really think there's much anyone can say in response other than they really need to get a sense of perspective and get a grip on reality.

It's crap. It's frustrating. It's annoying. However, that's biology and life in general. We need to just get on with dealing with this and in a couple of years it will hopefully be just a story to tell the grandkids and a rather dramatic episode of Reeling in the Years.

Atlantic Dawn · 10-08-2020 3:35pm

Before we go congratulating ourselves for our approach we should scale in to the lives saved those people who have missed out on cancer testing and other treatments to make room for Covid. Majority of these people are many decades off their life expectancy unlike those that died from Covid.

OMM 0000 · 10-08-2020 3:39pm

Look at places like Hong Kong where the locals have a sense of responsibility and doing what's best for the community. So everyone wears masks and they never shut down. People still go to work, go out to restaurants, etc. As a result they have had barely any deaths.

Unfortunately they recently made the mistake of allowing people who work on planes and boats to have free access to the country (no quarantine or testing required) which has spread a bit of the virus, but they've realised that was a mistake and things are getting under control again.

The Hong Kong model is the correct one - don't destroy your economy, everyone wears masks, and take some temporary actions (such as closing pubs at night) whenever there is a flare up of cases in the community.

I don't think this sort of thing could work in Ireland though, as there's too many selfish people and too many scumbags. You need to have a law abiding population for it to work.

CalamariFritti · 10-08-2020 3:41pm

We knew this virus was going to kill people. Even with the best of medical attention some were going to die.
So the plan was to flatten the curve. So that chaos in an overwhelmed health service wouldn't create extra deaths on top of those that seemed inevitable.

I think that was and still is valid and it ultimately succeeded. Had we not slowed it down an overwhelmed health service would have had to triage and we would have lost more lives.

But now we seem to have changed tac. Now it seems every corona death must be prevented at all costs.

YellowBucket · 10-08-2020 3:42pm

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Before we go congratulating ourselves for our approach we should scale in to the lives saved those people who have missed out on cancer testing and other treatments to make room for Covid. Majority of these people are many decades off their life expectancy unlike those that died from Covid.

That's also an issue that needs to be dealt with properly and has to work within the backdrop of a viral outbreak. It's a tragic mess and there's no perfect solutions either.

If you look at the outbreaks that happened in healthcare environments they were far from non-serious and there's been a hell of a lot learned and approaches have adapted over the last 6 months.

Clearing those backlogs is essential and a big part of that will be ensuring that people don't go around spreading the virus and placing excess load on the healthcare system this autumn or we'll be back to a situation where it can't cope with everything that's being thrown at it and inevitably the knock-on impacts of that are other things go untreated end up in queues.

There's a finite resource in any healthcare system and as a population and business community (points at meat sector) we need to ensure we aren't dumping risk into the health system that it doesn't need.

Every time someone goes "ah feck this it's grand!" be they a member of the public or some manager in a plant, and if someone ends up getting COVID-19 that's resources pulled straight out of other aspects of the healthcare system and someone added to a queue somewhere, even if nobody dies as a direct result of it, someone's chances are being reduced.

Also some of those put at most risk were the people who had to treat COVID-19 patents in the front lines of healthcare, yet some seem to not give a toss about that. It's all been 'feck the masks!' or 'how dare ya take time off to self isolate, I've a business to run!"

CalamariFritti · 10-08-2020 3:44pm

OMM 0000 wrote: »

Look at places like Hong Kong where the locals have a sense of responsibility and doing what's best for the community. So everyone wears masks and they never shut down. People still go to work, go out to restaurants, etc. As a result they have had barely any deaths.

Unfortunately they recently made the mistake of allowing people who work on planes and boats to have free access to the country (no quarantine or testing required) which has spread a bit of the virus, but they've realised that was a mistake and things are getting under control again.

The Hong Kong model is the correct one - don't destroy your economy, everyone wears masks, and take some temporary actions (such as closing pubs at night) whenever there is a flare up of cases in the community.

I don't think this sort of thing could work in Ireland though, as there's too many selfish people and too many scumbags. You need to have a law abiding population for it to work.

In your opinion. Whether thats true or not remains to be seen. The fat lady isn't even warming up yet.
And would you trade living in a totalitarian regime for a brief COVID success? I wouldnt.

ShooterSF · 10-08-2020 3:47pm

mr_fegelien wrote: »

Let's say when at the start of this year, the world saw the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan but world governments refused to close down and operated as normal. Where would we be now?

Would we have achieved herd immunity? Would the economic and mental health damage be less for the time being and in years to come? I'm not sure I agree that lockdown was a good idea?

Are you asking if you are sure or?
"I'm Ron Burgundy?" :pac::pac:

Tenzor07 · 10-08-2020 3:49pm

bilston wrote: »

The thing is that while Sweden has done worse than most, it has still fared better than some European countries. No surprise in some like the UK, Spain and Italy for various reasons...however Belgium is a curious example. Sweden has fared much better than Belgium who had a stricter lockdown from a pretty early stage as well. Some of this might be down to luck, or there are ethnic and demographic factors at play.

Well, Anders Tegnell did say come back in 1 year and ask who took the better approach...

The truth is that all European and American health and political systems were almost completely blindsided by this back in the earlier part of the year, they heard of alerts from China back in December/January however the HSE still weren't restricting care home access and the Govt. weren't banning flights from/to Italy months later..
Only now they are still scrambling to find a way to deal with it, fumbling around with the meat processors in the midlands after the HSE had said they wouldn't go near it, opening contact tracing call centres and putting passenger tracing forms online only late into August and almost 6 months after the start of the crisis. Only now making face coverings mandatory...

The Irish HSE/Govt. response could best be described as them at the controls of an aircraft trying to learn how to fly it when it's heading nose first for the ground and a number of the passengers have already died due to shock, now they are handing out parachutes to the rest.

Now going into the Autumn/Winter season after School kids being kept at home for 6 months and everyone staying indoors it is almost sure to see massive spikes in cases as kids come home after mixing at schools and we see households having to isolate for 2 weeks. Which then has a knock on effect for the households of essential workers or those who can't work from home still.
The traditional flu season will see people panicking as they don't know if it's covid or flu, overwhelming GP's and testing centres.

This all stems from the Hse/Govt. response of the slowest easing of restrictions in Europe, pushing out allowing social contact until the Winter and lead to wider lockdowns sending the economy into double quarter recessions and more borrowing...

OMM 0000 · 10-08-2020 3:51pm

CalamariFritti wrote: »

In your opinion. Whether thats true or not remains to be seen. The fat lady isn't even warming up yet.
And would you trade living in a totalitarian regime for a brief COVID success? I wouldnt.

I'm not stating my opinion, I'm stating facts. The data is available.

Hong Kong isn't a totalitarian regime, and bringing up this point is completely irrelevant.

Replace Hong Kong with South Korea and you have a similar result.

dwayneshintzy · 10-08-2020 4:00pm

CalamariFritti wrote: »

In your opinion. Whether thats true or not remains to be seen. The fat lady isn't even warming up yet.
And would you trade living in a totalitarian regime for a brief COVID success? I wouldnt.

Totalitarian measures were not put in place in HK to deal with covid-19.

CalamariFritti · 10-08-2020 4:00pm

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I'm not stating my opinion, I'm stating facts. The data is available.

Hong Kong isn't a totalitarian regime, and bringing up this point is completely irrelevant.

Replace Hong Kong with South Korea and you have a similar result.

Ok, I agree with most of that, there are other examples. Japan seems to have done the same with success. But you're effectively suppressing and locking the virus out. Why I'm saying lets wait and see is because it may still turn out that thats just prolonging the inevitable. Or else live masked up and with other restrictions for ever and ever.

YellowBucket · 10-08-2020 4:01pm

The fundamental reality of it is that some countries may simply not be able to deal with it and will just flounder until there's a vaccine. I think the US is in that category as it quite literally does not have the political capital or leadership ability anymore to cope. Even in normal times, the US was hitting full government shut downs over inability to find working consensus on a whole range of issues and it's been off the scale entirely in the last few years.

In more normal political times, I think the US would have coped be it under Democratic or Republican leadership. What's going on right now is really very bizarre stuff.

A lot of European countries are somewhere in the middle on that. They've fared a bit bitter, but there's still a lot of nonsense bubbling up here and there and there's bleed-over of conspiracy theories and discourse generally between most countries.

It's not about totalitarian regimes vs liberal regimes, but rather about public buy in to deal with a crisis.

Bit cynical · 10-08-2020 4:09pm

We would have always had to have some sort of shutdown initially just to get things organised and make some sort of a plan. During this time the questions would have been concerning the extent to which hospital and ICU capacity could be expanded and what what level of infections could be coped with.

I think we went from "flattening the curve" to a sort of eradication strategy where getting cases down to close to zero as quickly as possible became the priority. This would make a lot of sense if we were New Zealand where the whole country can be isolated once cases are eliminated but may prove to be a mistake in our case. We did quite well with this. Having had quite high deaths, we managed to bring it down to the extent that we had no reported deaths for a period of about 10 days. However, with all eradication strategies, once you have the numbers down, then what? Unless you can isolate the country, you have to keep most of the restrictions in place until the vaccine.

Miccoli · 10-08-2020 4:14pm

It's hard to say really, there have been studies from Loughborough University which concluded lockdown has caused more deaths than the virus.

Personally I think we should of gone with a similar approach to Sweden. However if we had done nothing at all it would of been catastrophic for the elderly population.

RandomViewer · 10-08-2020 4:20pm

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Maybe 1000-2000 more deaths in the country and overall things would be much better than they currently are.

Would have been much higher, add a zero to the end, you got to figure we'd be looking at dose levels similar to hospital exposure

10-08-2020 4:21pm

Miccoli wrote: »

It's hard to say really, there have been studies from Loughborough University which concluded lockdown has caused more deaths than the virus.

Personally I think we should of gone with a similar approach to Sweden. However if we had done nothing at all it would of been catastrophic for the elderly population.

Intrigued to see this study. Have a link handy?

endacl · 10-08-2020 4:23pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

What do you think yourself?

That’s not how this works. Mr F is only responsible for the initial brainfart. After that it’s up to those with patience for him to tease things out.

What if we had continued as normal?

Comments