COVID-19: Unwinding the Lockdown and Long Term Epidemic

[Mister Imperceptible]

The Divide and Conquer being conducted by the elites at the moment is sinister and brilliant. Never mind the crashing global economy and full blown oligarchic looting. Pay attention to the Virus and the Race War!

[Laura Ingalls]

Rodney King wasn't just about Rodney King and I think these riots weren't just about George Floyd. Things are always too complex to reduce to single issue causation. However, I think they were mainly due to George Floyd (I don't see LeBron James coming out to support those who merely can't pay their rent) and would have taken place irregardless of whether the country was in lockdown. His death was beyond abhorrent. But bumping a thread in order to take a victory lap for predicting a thoroughly predictable rise of social disorder due to a continued lockdown that was precipitated by a murder who's antecedents were not primarily based in the lockdown itself? There's some abhorrence to be found in that as well.

Yep. Minneapolis cops have been racist @sshats a long time. A couple of years ago they killed a black guy in his car that wasn’t even in Minneapolis. The East Lake St. Cub store has been dirty and gross a long time (30 years?) but it’s still there because there are not many other options nearby. Everybody that shops there knows nearly every other grocery store in the metro is cleaner and cheaper and less predatory.

Both seem like easy targets of a populace that is increasingly time “affluent”and food and housing insecure.

[thrifty++]

I would say that the high unemployment does have something to do with the extent of the riots.

When people are unemployed they are already angry anyways and have nothing to lose by going out and rioting. They are not focussed on any repurcussions of being involved in something like this (like losing your job). And also have time to be involved in rioting. I would say that there would still have been riots over what happened but not of the same extent and scale.

I think the lockdowns do save lives. Many countries have demonstated that. Including NZ. We are down to only 1 remaining active case. Only 22 people died. We will have eliminted it completely soon. However the lockdown was very extensive and swift and early on. A rapid 48 hour notice widespread lockdown early on in the piece. Everything was immediately shut by law, even takeaways. Many other places had later or less extensive lockdowns. That will be why there are still lots of deaths, Here it didnt need to be overly policed as the vast majority just complied. Much easier to manage in a small country where people trust the govt though. This would never have been possible in USA regardless of who the govt was. You can see the scale of the discenion over lockdown vs no lockdown everywhere. Nothing like that happened here. And so hard to manage such a large and populous democratic country. It was always going to be incredibly difficult regardless of how it was managed. There are probably still less deaths in all of the countries though as a result of lockdowns even if they were later or less extensive.

The economy is still stuffed here though. But then, I was reading an analysis from the Univerisyt of Cambridge that projected that a lack of lockdown woudl also have stuffe the economy, and even worse than having a lockdown. BUt then it looks liek Sweden's economy grew in the first quarter. So maybe lockdowns have been really damaging the economy more than doing nothing, But then Sweden has one of the highest death rates per capita in the world. And infections and deaths exponentially in excess of Norway and Finland. What a crappy situaton the world has had to deal with, with assessing the economy vs loss of lives. Once the virus got out fo China this dealt the planet with a really crap situation to manage with no adequate solutions.

[chenda]

@thrifty I recall us discussing last year the merits of NZ in the event of a global crisis. It was all very hypothetical back then but it seems it has past mustered as we thought. Have you experienced any major shortages?

[thrifty++]

@chenda - yes I think its true, It is really quite a safe haven here for many reasons. In a sense I feel like I am finally "getting my money's worth" for living in such a high cost of living and low income place.

We havent experienced any shortages that I am aware of. Food is really abundant here so I was never realy worried about that. I think given the varied topography and climates we are pretty much self sustaining for food here. i think everything else we need has been getting through also. If its not made here it has still been getting shipped in. Like non food goods.

But the economy is definitely damaged. A lot of economic commentators have been opining that NZ will be worse hit than other developed countries because of the scale of the lockdown we have had compared to everywhere else. But who knows, they are staring at crystal balls. I guess at least the economy is very open again. Everything has been open for a while now.

We havent had any new virus cases for 9 consecutive days now. One active case seems to be lingering but I am pretty sure it will be completely eliminated here within a weeks time.

[Mister Imperceptible]

@Augustus

Our robber baron economy and slowing trade/de-globalization in the face of zero interest rates and China having built to overcapacity already assured this decade was going to be a disaster. The difference is that the elites now have a scapegoat, and an excuse to bailout out zombie megacorps while small businesses go to the wall. All of the coffee shops close but only Starbucks will re-open and all the mom and pops go to the wall. So as a small businessman your anger is justified but as RJ has said, this was coming, coronavirus or no. Normalcy bias is indeed not your friend. Welcome to the Thunderdome, hope you are preparing.

[Jason]

My understanding is that Minnesota, despite its commonly being referred to as a nice place to live, has the highest income discrepancy between African Americans and whites of any major city in the US. Those who study riots acknowledge it is never merely about one thing. It takes a confluence of circumstances to detonate one and the lockdown definitely played a role in what's going on. But there are powerful themes here - racism/income inequality/police relations that pre-date the lockdown. You also have circumstances that are specific to the lockdown - financial exigencies/people with nothing to do. The cop and George Floyd once worked together. It was a stew comprised of every macro and micro ingredient one could think of. And now like everything else its subject to the obfuscation tactics of being blued and red. The headlines are "protests sweep nation" sometimes with specific reference and sometimes without specific reference to the what the protests are addressing. Is it a BLM wave or is it something else in the guise of BLM? It seems to be both simultaneously.

[chenda]

Great depression -> riots -> Hitler. Mao came up the same way, so did Stalin and Mussolini. I've been saying this since the lockdowns started. Idle hands.

Hitler yes (voted into office) not the other three. Maybe irrelevant to the point your making but Chenda likes to nitpick at times...

[Jason]

I've been saying this since the lockdowns started. Idle hands.

Irony noted.

[chenda]

This is why the lock down was a dumb fucking idea and why I've been saying it since the beginning.

Are you qualified to make this judgement ? I assume your medically trained and have some expertise in public health or are a scientist. And I'm thinking experts probably won't know for years after how effective or necessary lockdown was/is.

[chenda]

Do I need to be medically qualified to fear that massive unemployment will lead to riots, civil and international war?

No, your concerns are very legitimate, indeed I share them. But letting the virus run amock may have been even worse. Criticising lockdown is easy, it would seem much harder to find an alternative.

[Laura Ingalls]

@Jason

Minnesota Nice isn’t really nice it all. It is about being outwardly polite but covertly passive aggressive. It’s about keeping the social conventions somewhat secret so that you don’t know the rules. It also about having lots of rules (actual laws and regulations and just social rules too).

Twin Cities have lots of beautiful nature, architecture, art, yummy food, music but not really as open to outsiders as a city full of immigrants could/should be. I says that as a white person that has lived her entire life in the Midwest (five states total).

[Seppia]

@Augustus
I'm starting to think that you may be right with regards to the USA situation (incompetent leadership + zero safety net + very high inequality + uneven healthcare standards).
I'm still convinced that the heavy covid suppression was the right approach (in terms of damage minimization) both in Asia and Europe, because there's never the coalescence of the 4 elements I listed above.
Some examples
Singapore: extreme inequality and zero safety net but very competent leadership and high healthcare standards
Italy: incompetent leadership and somewhat uneven healthcare standards but relatively low inequality and a great safety net
etc

[Jason]

@Jason

Minnesota Nice isn’t really nice it all. It is about being outwardly polite but covertly passive aggressive. It’s about keeping the social conventions somewhat secret so that you don’t know the rules. It also about having lots of rules (actual laws and regulations and just social rules too).

I'm from the East coast so we just tell each other to go eff themselves and no one blinks. I had a friend who grew up in the South and explained to me the convention/concept of decorum and how it functions in Southern society. I guess it's similar in Minnesota which I'm only familiar with throughMary Tyler Moore and Fargo.

[chenda]

@seppia - I'm pretty sure Singapore has a good safety net and high living standards, although apparently it overlooked its migrate workers who were crammed into overcrowded dormitories (although they were by no means the worse) which weakened its lockdown. Actually surprising seeing its rules by an authoritarian regime which treats its citizens like children (they've even tried to regulate dating to breed more intelligent children) and controls almost every aspect of life. You would have thought they would be more on the ball.

Its seems parts of the US and some other countries adopted, by accident or design, a half-arsed lockdown, which brought it the worse of both worlds, high economic damage and a prolonged infection rate.

[jacob]

From a point of pure scientific curiosity, the goods news is that eventually there enough of the dynamics and parameters of the pandemic will be understood to allow proper backcasting and playing what-if scenarios.

[classical_Liberal]

I believe that is the physicist's way of saying, hindsight is 20/20.

[classical_Liberal]

I agree that COVID, shelter-in-place orders, increased unemployment and economic insecurity, lack of entertainment options, were all large contributors to the perfect storm of national social unrest. That's not to say that the underlying justified anger and systemic racism isn't real. It's just that the human condition is a complex one, and the conditions resulting from a COVID lockdown were a great incubator.

wrt to @LI observations of minneapolis, which are very astute, I'd like to add. It's also an extremely socially liberal area that rivals a southern California college campus.

[jacob]

@cL - Sort of. But more precisely, the biggest source of uncertainty in predictions of adaptive systems involving humans is usually the human response and not the underlying disease dynamics. This makes it difficult to predict trajectories in advance. However, in retrospect, because humans (countries) reacted in many different ways(*), backcasting will make it possible to figure out how the epidemic interacted with human adaptions which in turn will make it possible to tell the relative effectiveness of those reactions.

(*) Essentially providing real-time A/B testing of various path choices---it's more complicated than this, but that's the general spirit.

[Laura Ingalls]

I'm from the East coast so we just tell each other to go eff themselves and no one blinks. I had a friend who grew up in the South and explained to me the convention/concept of decorum and how it functions in Southern society. I guess it's similar in Minnesota which I'm only familiar with throughMary Tyler Moore and Fargo.

Some people call it Minnesota Ice. Air of superiority along with a preoccupation with hockey and walleye. I noticed that in my professional life that as the “expert” in the room Minnesota you were not to be questioned (nor where you supposed to question your supervisor). Same job in Wisconsin it was much more of a team building project and it was not a good idea to alienate the person across the table because they were your neighbor, bartender, spouse’s coworker, kid’s sports coach, or your dog’s vet. In Minnesota it seemed you could only recognize one role at a time like that was an ironclad rule.