Why did we lock down to begin with?

[jfrog]

Originally Posted by Jito463

Again, I said "assuming the numbers are accurate and true", which is hardly a guarantee. That said, I haven't paid too much attention to Italy. I let them deal with their own situation.

You can't say this thing cannot get bad without any knowledge of Italy.

Perhaps for a time, I couldn't say for certain, but what I do know is that their statistical "models" all predicted it would be far, far worse than it was, and that was after factoring in the whole lock down and "social distancing".

To my knowledge there were no statistical models at that time. The important point of NYC is that they literally were growing exponentially. NY - mostly NYC were doubling cases every 2-3 days. Then deaths started growing exponentially every 4-5 days.

I think the problem is that most people don't have a good concept of what exponential growth actually means.

Do you really think their UNDER reporting the number of deaths? Seriously?!

If you mean all-in, no one has any idea. There is a factor that lowers the number of deaths though - people dying at home that are not tested (happens quite a bit) are not typically included in Covid totals.

Just as an aside, I have a toll bridge in the Sahara desert I'm interested in moving. Could I tempt you to buy it from me?

Why are you basing your belief that deaths are only being overcounted on anything except facts. More importantly, how should someone that has covid and dies of a heart attack be counted? How is someone that has the FLU and dies of a heart attack counted? Do you even know?

Funny you should mention that. I highly recommend watching the video of the two doctors from California. It's a little over 51 minutes long, but well worth the watch. I even found another copy of the video, and posted the link in Esaias' thread.

Watched them like a week ago. I agree with them that deathrate is overestimated. I think their math is still off and that they are greatly underestimating the actual deathrate. Their best point which was not something they explicitly stated was that to really understand the deathrate you have to understand how many people actually have it. It's just their calculation on that while the best I'd seen up to that point was crude and bound to overrepresent the actual population of people with the virus.

Speaking of those 2 doctors though - they were for social distancing - just not all out lockdown.

That's not what I said. I said they would have been better off, I never said "it wouldn't have been so bad". Those do not automatically mean the same thing. You literally quoted me above your comment, and still you misrepresented what I wrote.

Okay then how does saying they would have been better off add anything to a discussion about how bad New York City got? Remember the goal is talking about how bad NYC got is to serve as an example that this virus does have the potential to get really bad in reality - not theoretically - and possibly not everywhere - but that in some real locations it actually does get really bad.

If anyone is guilty of cognitive dissonance, it's you. Right after you make the claim that the hospital situation was horrible:

Saying something was really bad and would have been a bit better if X didn't happen isn't cognitivie dissonance - it's simple truth. It's the kind of statement you would accept in any other circumstance without batting an eye.

You then concede my point that they didn't need all the ventilators they had

Sharing ventalitors is not something you ever want to do - it's a measure of desperation that they were doing that.

So which is it? Did they lock down in time, or were they overwhelmed?

Both. Locked down just in time stopped the exponential growth which kept it from overwhelming every hospital in the city. That doesn't change that part of the reason they locked down was that some of their hospitals were starting to get overwhelmed. Those are not incompatible statements.

I'll grant you the first two as likely true, but not the latter two. Based on the numbers of people who have been tested positive for antibodies, and yet never even knew they had it, the mortality rate is highly over stated.

That's a belief we both share - possibly the extent of that overstating is a different story but the mortality rate in pandemics is always overstated at the start as we never have good data early on about the extent of the virus in the broader population. This is well known to epidemiologists - the people that actually study this stuff for a living.

Where we disagree is that while I believe the virus mortality rate is lower than initially speculated - I believe it is still a significantly higher mortality rate than the flu. You see how those 2 things can both be true?

As such, there's no facts to support the claim that we must socially isolate ourselves.

The facts:
1. When left unchecked the virus and corresponding death toll grew exponentially (See NYC, See Italy).
2. Hospitals in Italy were overwhelmed.
3. Some hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed.
4. Exponential growth of cases and deaths stopped after lockdowns were implemented.
5. Sweden - a country that didn't lock down - is still practicing a lot of social distancing and while it's too soon to call it successful, they certainly aren't having the kind of catastrophic results many predicted.
6. Perhaps the most telling fact of all, there is not a single success story of a place that did not social distance at all.

Again, I would point you to the video of the two immunologists discussing their own situation, as well as the situation in NY. Much of the same points I've been making (and have made pretty much all along) is supported by their research.

They support social distancing though. So why don't you?