I see that Holman Jenkins is thinking along lines similar to mine in his most recent Wall Street Journal column:
I joked the other day that the media doesn’t do multivariate, but it wasn’t a joke. Sometimes it imposes a hard cap on what we can achieve with public policy when the press can’t fulfill its necessary communication function.
This column isn’t about Sweden, but the press now claims Sweden’s Covid policy is “failing†because it has more deaths than its neighbors. Let me explain again: When you do more social distancing, you get less transmission. When you do less, you get more transmission. Almost all countries are pursuing a more-or-less goal, not a reduce-to-zero goal. Sweden expects a higher curve but in line with its hospital capacity. Sweden’s neighbors are not avoiding the same deaths with their stronger mandates, they are delaying them, to the detriment of other values.
The only clear failure for Sweden would come if a deus ex machina of some sort were to arrive to cure Covid-19 in the near future. Then all countries (not just Sweden) might wish in retrospect to have suppressed the virus more until their citizens could benefit from the miracle cure.
Please, if you are a journalist reporting on these matters and can’t understand “flatten the curve†as a multivariate proposition, leave the profession. You are what economists call a “negative marginal product†employee. Your nonparticipation would add value. Your participation subtracts it.
Let’s apply this to the U.S. Americans took steps to counter the 1957 and 1968 novel flu pandemics but nothing like indiscriminate lockdowns. Adjusted for today’s U.S. population (never mind our older average age), 1957’s killed the equivalent of 230,000 Americans today and 1968’s 165,000. So far, Covid has killed 57,000.
Before patting ourselves on the back, however, notice that we haven’t stopped the equivalent deaths, only delayed them while we destroy our economy and the livelihoods of millions of people.
That’s because public officials haven’t explained how to lift their unsustainable lockdowns while most of the public remains uninfected and there’s no vaccine.
An enormous amount depends on your objectives and even more on your assumptions. I have assumed that no vaccine will be available for the foreseeable future, that a lot of people will contract the disease, and a lot of people will die of it. I have also assumed that I am more susceptible to the virus than the average American due to my age but that may not be a good assumption. I think the biggest problem facing the health care system right now is lack of good treatment options for COVID-19. I hope those will become better but I don’t assume it.
Here in Illinois despite the “stay at home” directives we do not seem to be “bending the curve” meaningfully. Judging by their public statements, our political leadership seems to disagree with that. I’d like them to explain how increasing numbers of people in hospital on a daily basis, increasing number of people occupying ICU beds, with a flat number of those being COVID-19 patients is “bending the curve”.
Meanwhile the main prescription from policy makers is “double down”.
I’m generally skeptical of social science, but this research that reactions to Covid are more about ideology than facts strikes me as largely true for people who are very into politics – especially politicians.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/social-science-liberals-conservatives-covid-19/
Andy- We needed a paper for this? You can predict the conservative reaction to anything. Whatever Trump says they will believe. Liberals take the opposite side. That said, I would note that there arent too many atheists in the foxholes.
“Sweden’s neighbors are not avoiding the same deaths with their stronger mandates, they are delaying them, to the detriment of other values.”
This is an assumption. We dont really know that we end with the same number of deaths. It made it easier to explain flattening the curve. We like the shape of bell shaped curves so all of the curves had the downslope looking like the upslope. That is not actually what we are seeing in practice. I dont see any reason why some otherwise healthy 72 y/o, arbitrary age, who might have died this round has to die later on if they and family, friends are good about distancing and washing hands. If nothing else those who entered into the hospital later this round are clearly doing better.
Steve
My newest concern is do policy makers realize the model they were relying on (IHME) has serious errors in it.
Its death projections for today were 1250 — about half of reality.
The flaw is obvious — the models “downslope” is based on data from Wuhan and what the Chinese did. It also attributes all the reduction in transmission due to lockdowns.
The US (and all of Europe) is not doing what the Chinese did. Also the Chinese have been clear they don’t attribute their downslope to the lockdown by itself.
If the model is wrong — will anyone reconsider what they should do?
There is more than one model. They all make assumptions about behavior. For example in Ferguson’s model, the one they keep lying about, in his most optimistic assumptions about lockdown effects, travel restrictions, social distancing, etc, there would have been about 6000 deaths.
The problem as i see it is that the variables keep changing. I think that we have really knocked down the death rate a bit. We progressed from what the Italians did and are much more aggressive about proning and using Hi flow and other modalities. We are better at keeping people out of the ICU.
Also, to be fair, it is a new virus.
Steve
The fact no model – including the Imperial one has predicted China could reopen; or South Korea; Australia; New Zealand — and prob soon Singapore, Japan; says they are wrong about the most important thing of all — the effectiveness of different health measures.