International ***COVID-19 Breaking News v19: U.S. coronavirus deaths top 100,000***

[badascan]

It's all perspective, the weak minded benefit from clinging to their safe thoughts... wealth redistribution and whatever else too...

 

[Renard]

I wonder if that points to people resisting when faced with non-voluntary restrictions. Or perhaps there's a certain "baseline" of comfort that you once you go under, people start compensating for through behavioural changes.

For example let's say you're in France and during the lockdown police are asking for your papers, harassing you for taking a jog, shortening the number of hours you can access stores, and the government is preventing you from leaving the house after 18h (a real measure coming into effect January 16). What would you do? Chances are you would say "fuck those assholes" (rightfully) and become non-compliant because they're going too far and disrespecting you (hypothesis 1). Another possibility is that because you have the same needs as before (exercise, get some air, browse the store to get your mind off things, etc) you will change your behaviour around the restrictions so you can still fit in the things you did before or some iteration of it - essentially cancelling out the new restrictions (hypothesis 2).

 

[MaxMMA]

Don't tell the people on this karate forum that. They think that an entire population of obese smokers will curb the spread by wearig cloths over their mouths when they go to buy their bulk crates of soda.

 

[GoldenWolf87]

The article says other studies show that lockdowns across Europe and China did stop the virus from infecting millions of more people.

China? didn't they lie about the covid numbers to?

 

[Rocco Siffredi]

The article says other studies show that lockdowns across Europe and China did stop the virus from infecting millions of more people.

again, if you believe what china says about it you are a fool. flat out.

 

[Papi Chulo]

 

[Hellowhosthat]

Comparing us to South Korea doesn't work, very different cultures. On the last night before the first lockdown half of the country here piled into their local pub for one last night out (then cases predictably skyrocketed), I don't think you'd get Koreans doing that.

 

[HUGHPHUG]

But we are flattening the curve guys.

NO ONE CAN DIE!

 

[Neph]

They work if people abide by them; just look at Melbourne, Australia.

 

[Grassshoppa]

So you're saying it's a conspiracy?

 

[Cid]

Comparing us to South Korea doesn't work, very different cultures. On the last night before the first lockdown half of the country here piled into their local pub for one last night out (then cases predictably skyrocketed), I don't think you'd get Koreans doing that.

It's a pretty inconclusive study.

Sweden had less people leaving their home without restrictions than England had with them.

The morons here won't even read the article let alone the study. They only care about re-affirming their positions.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

It's a pretty inconclusive study.

Sweden had less people leaving their home without restrictions than England had with them.

The morons here won't even read the article let alone the study. They only care about re-affirming their positions.

Yep, out culture is very much to not give a shit what the government advises for the most part and binge drinking etc is a big part of UK weekend culture.

I have no doubt that if it wasn't for shutting down pubs and bars at least that our cases would be a lot higher.

Now there are some parts of the lockdowns I don't agree with (I don't see why people can't play golf for example), but overall I think they've slowed the spread here.

 

[Sano]

I knew it was Ioannidis when I saw it was from Stanford. It's quite sad when authors are, seemingly, blind to their own biases. With that said, it's definitely an interesting study, although it has some big limitations. It doesn't conclude what TS is saying either, and as usual media doesn't understand or care to understand what studies say.

Basically, they compare less restrictive interventions for Covid-19 (lrNPI) to more restrictive interventions for Covid-19 (mrNPI). The distinction they use for more strict is stay at home orders and business closure. It's generally not well defined, but that's fair enough.

They then compared the rate of growth of confirmed cases during spring, between Sweden and Korea as 'less restrictive', and Italy, Spain, France, England, The Netherlands, USA, Iran and Germany as 'more restrictive'. They made a model that accounted for less restrictive policies, and then compared the additional help of more restrictive ones. As a result, they didn't find that 'more restrictive' countries, in this case stay at home orders and business closing, were more beneficial when comparing the two sides, after already adjusting for 'less restrictions'.

Now, problems with this methodolgy.

1) Seems to me they cherry picked countries. It cannot be a coincidence that the countries in the 'more restrictive' category were the countries the worst hit during the first wave, in the world. Germany being the only expection. Why didn't they pick more comparative countries? Like say, other Scandinavian countries?

2) Seems to me they cherry picked the timeframe. Sweden by now have more cases per capita than all those other countries, outside of the US and The Netherlands.

3) As far as I can tell, most of the countries in the 'more restrictive' category did not impose mandated stay at home orders. In this case you would be adjusting for something that's pragmatically no different between groups.

4) Case growth was largely a result of testing. The countries in the 'less restrictive' group tested less per capita.

5) There's a correlation-causation fallacy going on here. Even if stricter lockdown measures didn't result in less case growth per capita, that could be because the countries were much harder hit for a variety of other reasons. In that case, stricter measures could be a necessary result to a trajectory of higher rate of infection and thus not the other way around. So the implementation of stricter lockdown measures might have prevented the spread from increasing. Showing association, doesn't imply causation either way.

6) Their model. I can't decipher it, or at least that would take some time, but their findings do not coincide with others in the field. There's something to be said about mandated stay at home orders not being benifical though.

The last point is the most important one, cultural differences. They address this themselves:

"Data on individual behaviors such as visits to businesses, walking, or driving show dramatic declines days to weeks prior to the implementation of business closures and mandatory stay-at-home orders in our study countries, consistent with the behavioral mechanisms noted above.34–36 These observations are consistent with a model where the severity of the risk perceived by individuals was a stronger driver of anti-contagion behaviors than the specific nature of the NPIs"

Basically;

7) In the study, willingless and perception of risk was correlated to less infection. If people do not follow the rules, and don't care, they wont work.

We know that social distancing reduces transmission. That's a fact. Degree of lockdown is a very crude, imperfect tool to control that.

It's a pretty inconclusive study.

Sweden had less people leaving their home without restrictions than England had with them.

The morons here won't even read the article let alone the study. They only care about re-affirming their positions.

To expand on your point, from the study: "While we find no evidence of large anti-contagion effects from mandatory stay-at-home and business closure policies, we should acknowledge that the underlying data and methods have important limitations. First, cross-country comparisons are difficult: countries may have different rules, cultures, and relationships between the government and citizenry."
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ess_Closure_Effects_on_the_Spread_of_COVID-19

 

[PhitePhan]

I knew it was Ioannidis when I saw it was from Stanford. It's quite sad when authors are, seemingly, blind to their own biases. With that said, it's definitely an interesting study, although it has some big limitations. It doesn't conclude what TS is saying either, and as usual media doesn't understand or care to understand what studies say.

Basically, they compare less restrictive interventions for Covid-19 (lrNPI) to more restrictive interventions for Covid-19 (mrNPI). The distinction they use for more strict is stay at home orders and business closure. It's generally not well defined, but that's fair enough.

They then compared the rate of growth of confirmed cases during spring, between Sweden and Korea as 'less restrictive', and Italy, Spain, France, England, The Netherlands, USA, Iran and Germany as 'more restrictive'. They made a model that accounted for less restrictive policies, and then compared the additional help of more restrictive ones. As a result, they didn't find that 'more restrictive' countries, in this case stay at home orders and business closing, were more beneficial when comparing the two sides, after already adjusting for 'less restrictions'.

Now, problems with this methodolgy.

1) Seems to me they cherry picked countries. It cannot be a coincidence that the countries in the 'more restrictive' category were the countries the worst hit during the first wave, in the world. Germany being the only expection. Why didn't they pick more comparative countries? Like say, other Scandinavian countries?

2) Seems to me they cherry picked the timeframe. Sweden by now have more cases per capita than all those other countries, outside of the US and The Netherlands.

3) As far as I can tell, most of the countries in the 'more restrictive' category did not impose mandated stay at home orders. In this case you would be adjusting for something that's pragmatically no different between groups.

4) Case growth was largely a result of testing. The countries in the 'less restrictive' group tested less per capita.

5) There's a correlation-causation fallacy going on here. Even if stricter lockdown measures didn't result in less case growth per capita, that could be because the countries were much harder hit for a variety of other reasons. In that case, stricter measures could be a necessary result to a trajectory of higher rate of infection and thus not the other way around. So the implementation of stricter lockdown measures might have prevented the spread from increasing. Showing association, doesn't imply causation either way.

6) Their model. I can't decipher it, or at least that would take some time, but their findings do not coincide with others in the field. There's something to be said about mandated stay at home orders not being benifical though.

The last point is the most important one, cultural differences. They address this themselves:

"Data on individual behaviors such as visits to businesses, walking, or driving show dramatic declines days to weeks prior to the implementation of business closures and mandatory stay-at-home orders in our study countries, consistent with the behavioral mechanisms noted above.34–36 These observations are consistent with a model where the severity of the risk perceived by individuals was a stronger driver of anti-contagion behaviors than the specific nature of the NPIs"

Basically;

7) In the study, willingless and perception of risk was correlated to less infection. If people do not follow the rules, and don't care, they wont work.

We know that social distancing reduces transmission. That's a fact. Degree of lockdown is a very crude, imperfect tool to control that.


To expand on your point, from the study: "While we find no evidence of large anti-contagion effects from mandatory stay-at-home and business closure policies, we should acknowledge that the underlying data and methods have important limitations. First, cross-country comparisons are difficult: countries may have different rules, cultures, and relationships between the government and citizenry."
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ess_Closure_Effects_on_the_Spread_of_COVID-19

I appreciate your analysis. Do you happen to know of any research that demonstrates lockdowns to be effective?

 

[Headkicktoleg]

I wonder if that points to people resisting when faced with non-voluntary restrictions. Or perhaps there's a certain "baseline" of comfort that you once you go under, people start compensating for through behavioural changes.

For example let's say you're in France and during the lockdown police are asking for your papers, harassing you for taking a jog, shortening the number of hours you can access stores, and the government is preventing you from leaving the house after 18h (a real measure coming into effect January 16). What would you do? Chances are you would say "fuck those assholes" (rightfully) and become non-compliant because they're going too far and disrespecting you (hypothesis 1). Another possibility is that because you have the same needs as before (exercise, get some air, browse the store to get your mind off things, etc) you will change your behaviour around the restrictions so you can still fit in the things you did before or some iteration of it - essentially cancelling out the new restrictions (hypothesis 2).

Absolutely. A small example, early in the lockdowns I had to go to a construction site to install network equipment. On site you needed to wear mask, face shield, glasses, hard hat, rubber gloves, safety vest just to get on site. Literally everyone on site would strip everything off as soon as they were even somewhat alone or even just standing in a corner. You simply can't wear all that shit, everything is fogged up and you can't even see what you're doing. Last week I went back on site because they finished construction on a couple more levels of the building and now they only require mask, and hard hat and safety vest. Everyone I saw was compliant because it's actually doable.

 

[MaxMMA]

Oh so you mean that wearing masks, and closing small businesses while allowing a morbidly obese population to continue to gather in mass at places like walmart, homedepot, sporting events, political rallies/riots, etc, isn't effective?

Almost feels like that should be common sense.

 

[nostradumbass]

15 days to slow the spread.

 

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Comparing us to South Korea doesn't work, very different cultures. On the last night before the first lockdown half of the country here piled into their local pub for one last night out (then cases predictably skyrocketed), I don't think you'd get Koreans doing that.

I use the same argument when I say Democratic Socialism wont work in the U.S. after people try to explain how "well" it works in Norway

 

[Sano]

I appreciate your analysis. Do you happen to know of any research that demonstrates lockdowns to be effective?

The majority shows that lockdowns, as an umbrella term for strict mitigation strategies which include closing down non-essential business, lower the rate of transmission. The problem is that there's no single definition, and there's a lot of caveats.

If you're asking whether social distancing, preventing large gatherings and reducing social interaction and mobility lowers the spread, then we don't have to define terms. That would be an unequivocal yes.

 

[chardog]

I like working from home

been doing this for 15 or so years...... it's amazing.

car service once a year

lower car insurance prices

gas once a month

car forever low milage, my 2006? minivan has like 70K miles, and being a toyota........ it'll last me forever, however that cybertruck....

PJ's all day long

walk kids to school

downside is that if I were young, horny, and single, it would totally suck. It's near a year now, without fucking, I'de be on suicide watch, rage against the machine, peacefully protesting just to get some tail.