Millhouse

I would have thought that the recording of deaths has a greater tolerance of 10%. The recording of the cause of death, testing vs. symptoms and dying due to other issues while sick being the main issues.

Anyway, I found 350 dead on the Office of Statistics website, against 35,000 dead. That looks like 1% to me and not 11% but who cares, it's still not many.

weasel decentral

You care obviously - you keep bringing it up

scrubbedexpat141

Interesting perspective - lockdown could give confidence that the world isn't going to end but take confidence away as all of the known and uknown unknowns.
Freedom could give confidence that the world will go back to work regardless, but knock confidence because of the fear and the knowne and unknown unknowns around the disease etc.

Lose lose?

csdf

In a non-lockdown world, hospitals would have filled up, given the rate of infection of this disease and the hospitalisation rates. I think in a world where all the hospitals are full (and I mean completely full), there would probably be some not inconsiderable economic, social and political repercussions to deal with.

scrubbedexpat141

Amen. Bought printer ink the other day and it's A: expensive and B: a shit home printer. Unfortunately the kind of investment to pen-mark documents and print in A3 to be able to read big sheets would be unwise and the printer would take up half the kitchen.

Good point.

tooboocoo

Except that:
1) hospitals HAVEN'T filled up in Sweden - the best-known non-lockdown example.
2) Not sure quite what you mean by "rate of infection", but all indications are now that the IFR is much lower than originally feared - probably by a factor of 10. The infamous "R0" has not been exponential for more than a day or two, in any country.
Your last sentence is certainly valid - there would be some repercussions. But the repercussions of 35% unemployment and empty state coffers for a decade or more are most likely far, far worse.

DXBtoDOH

We had global flu pandemics in the past.

Hong Kong flu epidemic in 1968 that killed between 1-4 million people globally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

The 1957-8 Asian Flu that killed at least 2 million globally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E...uenza_pandemic

Nations didn't shut down to the same degree we did this year, and health system didn't get overwhelmed in either instances despite excess deaths. As it turns out, neither did it this time around, with the Nightingale hospitals unused. We can also look to the Americans, who have practised a much looser form of social distancing than required in the UK, and their hospitals remained greatly underwhelmed. Even in New York City the hospitals never became overloaded. That suggests a great deal of existing capacity to handle hospitalisation.

csdf

For every Sweden, there's a Lombardy or Wuhan, where they did fill up. And now possibly Brazil. But anyway we can quote examples back and forth but we'll never really know until the epidemic is over.
Obviously when countries impose lockdown, the rate of infection drops, but we were talking about a world where they didn't impose any lockdowns. In that case the disease simply spreads at its unimpeded rate, which is apparently quite high. What matters in this strawman isn't the IFR, it's the hospitalisation rate, which low as it probably is, would still overwhelm hospitals if enough people get ill at the same time, which they would probably do if there were no lockdown in place.

csdf

It's fine. Nobody can really say one way or the other, until this epidemic is over and we have enough data to understand the true underlying infection and hospitalisation rates. My hunch is that things would have looked more like early days Wuhan or Lombardy, but we shall just have to wait and see.
Incidentally, a vaccine for Hong Kong flu was released four months into the epidemic, which presumably helped. Also, these were both influenza epidemics, for which there is some natural population immunity, unlike covid19.

DXBtoDOH

Sometimes I like you, Scamp. Other times I don't. And this is one of those times.

Drug overdose: cousin
Brain tumour: schoolmate. We were in the same house. Was 35. Left behind a wife and two young children.
Heart attack: university. Dropped dead in the middle of training. Also 35 (happened same year as above).
Brain aneurysm: university. Dropped dead a few years ago. Left behind wife.
Car accidents: 1) a kid from the village I grew up in. It was tragic. 2) someone from university. We'd long lost touch but I had known him.
Broken neck: coworker doing home repairs.
Leukemia: child of family friends

tooboocoo

Lombardy and Wuhan both had lockdowns, so I'm not sure how they help your arguments.
The key issue is that countries which lock down MAY have fewer deaths - direct deaths, that is. Deaths due to other health needs being neglected - as is already horrifyingly becoming clear in the UK - will counteract those "saved" lives. Countries that lock down, however, are DEFINITELY doing cataclysmic damage to their economies - no 'maybe' or 'perhaps' or 'could' about it.

martinbkk

Dude!

Time to move!

Maxima

The US provides some interesting lessons:

People were predicting Florida would collapse like NYC back in April due to a higher senior population, and closing down much later than Democrat states...

Nothing of that sort happened

When Georgia reopened in late April, we were hearing how Georgia would become a hotspot by mid May, nothing of that sort happened

Democrats are going crazy over NY's Governor Cuomo, even though NY was the worst affected state, helped by the states policy of returning positive nursing home patients back to their nursing homes.....

It is a political crisis in the US with one side refusing to wear masks and the other side predicting doom and mayhem and getting disappointed when their predictions don't materialize

Maxima

One side already realizes this. However the other side defends lockdowns by saying

1) No point in having a good economy if we are all dead
2) A bad economy never killed anyone

Both statements are wrong, but you can argue for the next few months about this and you will not be able to convince them that a bad economy has bad effects, including deaths.

DXBtoDOH

I never fail to be amused by those who say we've already destroyed so much of the economy so we might as well go ahead and destroy the rest