Holman Jenkins’s assessment of the status of COVID-19 in his regular Wall Street Journal column struck me as pretty fair:
Lockdowns at least are universally understood, even by the media, not to be a solution to the virus. Governments need strategies for coping while still having an economy, so people can eat and sustain themselves and receive services. Something else to get realistic about: Large classes of people, like the young, are at relatively low risk. By the laws of human nature, they will start behaving as if the disease is not a serious threat to them personally.
Countries that apparently suppressed Covid with strong measures to keep people apart now are experiencing outbreaks once people no longer find it tolerable or acceptable to be kept apart. Epidemiologists, to reconcile a desire to have both minimal spread and an economy, pushed aggressive testing, tracing and confining as the magic pill. It has not been terribly successful in most places, maybe from a lack of trying, maybe because elected officials realize voters are not up for having their lives disrupted because an app or an informant says they might have been exposed.
The progress of the disease in country after country seems idiosyncratic and perhaps less responsive to policy overtures than modelers and planners hoped.
Is he right? Wrong? Both? That last paragraph seems to me to be about right.
My own view is that the lockdowns were prudent for about the first three weeks of the outbreak here in the U. S. but became progressively less prudent the longer they were maintained. Here in Illinois I cannot relate the governor’s policies to anything.
One thing I have noticed is that here in the U. S. there’s a very close correlation between the number of deaths per million population and the state’s percentage of black and/or native American population. I have no idea whether that’s a coincidence, caused by racism, caused by the number of blacks and native Americans who are “essential” workers, an increased susceptibility to the disease among individuals in those groups, or what.
I think if he had added the notion that with something like 60% of workers deemed essential, and another x% non-compliant he would have it. That’s not a lockdown in the sense of preventing spread. It might have been somewhat rational in the sense of not overwhelming the health care system. Its nonsense in the sense of “stopping the virus.” That’s idiotic, as we have seen globally.
Obesity is an exacerbating factor, and blacks are more obese than whites, although my local Kroger has very many fat whites.
PS. Sinclair Davis of Catalaxy (Aussie blog) has compiled some statistics re covid. Our infection rate is relatively high compared to other countries, a little over 2% of the population, but the death rate among the infected is substantially lower than most countries, around 2.9%, especially European countries.
Besides obesity, another suggested factor is sunlight intensity. Covid, like influenza, seems to be a northern problem, especially for latitudes about 35N or S. Black skin doesn’t help either.
In my opinion, the pandemic is over. Most of the susceptibles have had the disease, and there aren’t enough left for a second wave. Covid may peak out below the 1957/58 Asian Flu.
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/10/01/some-preliminary-covid-statistics-and-thoughts/
I think that there is official policy and then there is what people do on their own. If you dont have a lockdown but people are still avoiding large groups, distancing and masking when needed, then you are still probably getting decent control. (Since we did not have testing available until pretty late we had no idea how widespread the disease was or its prevalence.) If you look at the southern hemisphere data it is interesting that they had essentially no flu season. Whatever they were doing largely eliminated it. It looks like somewhere between complete lockdown and doing nothing is pretty effective. I am guessing the above measures I mentioned are probably the key ones.
Steve
Oops, speaking of Covid another double blind, randomized, controlled study came out looking at HCQ for prophylaxis. It had no effect. To date, I am aware of no prospective study showing it has a positive effect.
Steve