Are lockdowns justified?

[arewethereyet]

Maybe Ted Nugent should move to Croatia. He thinks that the name COVID 19 means there were 18 other COVIDS before it.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ted-nu...ovid-1-18/

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

(Didn’t want to quote all that mess)

FA points out that the low end of the vaccines’ effectiveness is 68% and the high end is 95% and questions whether this will be enough to end the pandemic.

His numbers give a median value of around 80%. This is significantly higher that the number of infected/recovered people to establish herd immunity (generally stated as about 70%). So, the answer seems to be ‘yes’. Inoculating 70% of a population with a vaccine that is 80% effective will be enough to end the pandemic.

As to the inevitable objection, ‘Why don’t we wait for herd immunity to kick in on its own?’, it’s worth noting that smallpox killed at least 300 million people (possibly as many as 500 million) in the 20th century alone. Herd immunity never kicked in. Smallpox was stopped by ...wait for it...an aggressive vaccine inoculation programme.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Maybe Ted Nugent should move to Croatia.  He think that the name COVID 19 means there were 18 other COVIDS before it.  

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ted-nu...ovid-1-18/

There was never a time when Ted Nugent wasn’t stupid.

Boru

[Irreligious Atheist]

I don't like the school closures. Schools to be closed after spring break here in Ontario, possibly for the rest of the school year. They were just saying a couple days ago that schools were safe and were going to remain open during the lockdown, and then changed their minds just like that for whatever reason. Kids do way better in person. My kids' high school hasn't even had a case in a couple of months.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Too Bad

[arewethereyet]

I don't like the school closures. Schools to be closed after spring break here in Ontario, possibly for the rest of the school year. They were just saying a couple days ago that schools were safe and were going to remain open during the lockdown, and then changed their minds just like that for whatever reason. Kids do way better in person. My kids' high school hasn't even had a case in a couple of months.

Whatever reason?

Ontario schools moved to online only after April break – Kingston News (kingstonist.com)

“We are seeing a rapidly deteriorating situation with a record number of COVID cases and hospital admissions threatening to overwhelm our health care system,” said Premier Ford. “As I have always said we will do whatever it takes to ensure everyone stays safe. By keeping kids home longer after spring break we will limit community transmission, take pressure off our hospitals and allow more time to rollout our COVID-19 vaccine plan.”

[FlatAssembler]

(Didn’t want to quote all that mess)

FA points out that the low end of the vaccines’ effectiveness is 68% and the high end is 95% and questions whether this will be enough to end the pandemic.

His numbers give a median value of around 80%. This is significantly higher that the number of infected/recovered people to establish herd immunity (generally stated as about 70%). So, the answer seems to be ‘yes’. Inoculating 70% of a population with a vaccine that is 80% effective will be enough to end the pandemic.

As to the inevitable objection, ‘Why don’t we wait for herd immunity to kick in on its own?’, it’s worth noting that smallpox killed at least 300 million people (possibly as many as 500 million) in the 20th century alone. Herd immunity never kicked in. Smallpox was stopped by ...wait for it...an aggressive vaccine inoculation programme.

Boru

I don't think it is fair to bring up smallpox vaccination here. You need to understand that smallpox was the only virus in human history we eradicated via vaccination. You need to consider there are many diseases we tried to eradicate via vaccination and failed. Furthermore, smallpox is a DNA virus, which almost never mutates. COVID is an RNA virus, which means it will mutate. So, a vaccine which is 80% effective this year will probably be far less effective the next year. A lot better comparison is comparing COVID vaccines to influenza vaccinations.

---

I don't like the school closures. Schools to be closed after spring break here in Ontario, possibly for the rest of the school year. They were just saying a couple days ago that schools were safe and were going to remain open during the lockdown, and then changed their minds just like that for whatever reason. Kids do way better in person. My kids' high school hasn't even had a case in a couple of months.

Whatever reason?

Ontario schools moved to online only after April break – Kingston News (kingstonist.com)

“We are seeing a rapidly deteriorating situation with a record number of COVID cases and hospital admissions threatening to overwhelm our health care system,” said Premier Ford. “As I have always said we will do whatever it takes to ensure everyone stays safe. By keeping kids home longer after spring break we will limit community transmission, take pressure off our hospitals and allow more time to rollout our COVID-19 vaccine plan.”

Assuming COVID is spread only by droplets, that it is not airborne, closing schools does not make a lot of sense. Children who get COVID almost always have no symptoms whatsoever, they do not cough when they have COVID to spread the aerosol.

---

Trumpist is becoming a catchall term for right wing nutjobs. A person is definitely a right wing nutjob if they think that anyone should die for the dow. Wanna know what shut our economy down, over here in the US? Not mask mandates. Not occupancy limits. Same thing that killed half a million of us. Covid.

Plague.....not....good....for...economy.

Well, yes, plague is not good for the economy. However, lockdowns also do damage to the economy and mental health, and it is unclear whether they help against COVID. If they do help, they help the rich at the expense of the poor. Rich people do jobs which can be done from home. Poor people do not. In lockdowns, many poor people will do delivery work, meeting even more people than usual and get infected by COVID which they otherwise would not. "Check your privilege." may be a good response to those advocating lockdowns.

---

So we have established Croatia is full of morons.

Every country is. However, Croatia, as well as most of the Eastern Europe, is doing well on International Science Olympiads. At the International Olympiad in Informatics, for example, we are doing better than Canada and Finland: https://stats.ioinformatics.org/countrie...total_desc

[The Grand Nudger]

---

Trumpist is becoming a catchall term for right wing nutjobs.   A person is definitely a right wing nutjob if they think that anyone should die for the dow.  Wanna know what shut our economy down, over here in the US?  Not mask mandates.  Not occupancy limits.  Same thing that killed half a million of us.  Covid.  

Plague.....not....good....for...economy.

Well, yes, plague is not good for the economy. However, lockdowns also do damage to the economy and mental health, and it is unclear whether they help against COVID. If they do help, they help the rich at the expense of the poor. Rich people do jobs which can be done from home. Poor people do not. In lockdowns, many poor people will do delivery work, meeting even more people than usual and get infected by COVID which they otherwise would not. "Check your privilege." may be a good response to those advocating lockdowns.

Doesn't sound like a lockdown, what with all the poor people working, dying for the dow, eh? I'm glad that you're not so lost in the sauce that we can agree that plagues are bad for the economy. Didn't have to happen to us, could have taken it seriously and minimized the loss of life and financial damage - but we didn't do that. We bullshitted ourselves, each other..and you, apparently.

Half a million dead consumers. If you want to appeal to my inner profiteer by wondering whether life is worth less than the economy, it's going to be pretty useless to switch gears to culture warring, don't you think? If something is killing my human turnips, that's a problem for me as a human turnip farmer.

[Abaddon_ire]

Covid-19 could be wiped out if idiots didn't insist on sabotaging such efforts.

Assuming COVID is spread only by droplets, that it is not airborne, closing schools does not make a lot of sense. Children who get COVID almost always have no symptoms whatsoever, they do not cough when they have COVID to spread the aerosol.

Droplets are airborne. Look up what a aerosol is.

Well, yes, plague is not good for the economy. However, lockdowns also do damage to the economy and mental health, and it is unclear whether they help against COVID. If they do help, they help the rich at the expense of the poor. Rich people do jobs which can be done from home. Poor people do not. In lockdowns, many poor people will do delivery work, meeting even more people than usual and get infected by COVID which they otherwise would not. "Check your privilege." may be a good response to those advocating lockdowns.

Delivery drivers do not meet more people than usual people, nor breach distancing rules. They are instructed not to do so.

Every country is. However, Croatia, as well as most of the Eastern Europe, is doing well on International Science Olympiads. At the International Olympiad in Informatics, for example, we are doing better than Canada and Finland: https://stats.ioinformatics.org/countrie...total_desc

What is the relevance of an obscure festival of math nerds to any of this?

[FlatAssembler]

Covid-19 could be wiped out if idiots didn't insist on sabotaging such efforts.

How do you know? Many people say hunger in the world could be solved if idiotic/evil capitalists were not sabotaging such efforts.

Droplets are airborne.

Are you joking? COVID-19 presumably cannot survive outside of a droplet, much larger than the virus itself. That is supposedly why cotton masks (with pores much larger than the virus) work against COVID-19. And the corollary of that is that asymptomatic transmission of COVID is rare.

Delivery drivers do not meet more people than usual people, nor breach distancing rules. They are instructed not to do so.

So what if they are instructed not to do so? It is still going to happen.

What is the relevance of an obscure festival of math nerds to any of this?

What do you mean it is obscure?