It's not contrarian. It's what many epidemiologists have been saying since February. People are just having trouble processing the almost inevitable death toll Covid-19 will bring, basically no matter what we do.

People should listen to this podcast with regards to decision making and risk.

https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Podcast...the-Other-Side

Maybe just contrarian for this thread

Cool graphing tool;
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/...&values=deaths

Not really contrarian - a silly mainstream misconception, including among experts (e.g. UK). Herd immunity is the most destructive approach by far on every single level: freedom, suffering, death, morbidity, economic consequences, days of normal life lost, tail risk exposure. There absolutely zero positives to herd immunity strategies. And there are simple alternatives. Eradication is easy with the will and correct strategy.

Here's a picture for the silly and the irrationally defeatist for whom the correct strategy isn't obvious



Add "contact trace and isolate" to that list. It's that simple. It's been demonstrated in every type of country in the world, small to large, poor to rich, good medical systems and bad, open societies and closed, Western and Asian. It's not theoretical. The defeatist "herd immunity" strategy is one of the most toxic and deadly ideas to come out of expert deliberations in a long time.

I did enjoy the quote from that site:

I don't even think the suggestions are wrong (lockdown, travel restrictions, massive testing, masks). They all make good sense. I would feel better if the US in particular had done or was doing a better job providing for massive testing and requiring masks, for example.

And yet, defeatist or not, it doesn't seem like we are going to do those things well, here. I mean, I am personally doing all those things except testing, but it seems unlikely they will be implemented nationally in any way that would lead to crushing covid. So, that is one reason why it is interesting to look at arguments and data about the consequences of not doing so, at least. Anyway, I didn't link the Foreign Affairs article as an endorsement, but rather out of interest. Maybe I should have said "contrarian" in the sense that it runs counter to my intuitions (or should I say "common sense"?) but still seemed worth a read.

So if 10% of experts have a great strategy (and none of those in the positions that matter), the experts get a win? Seems silly/lazy on your part. The guy running it is also a physicist, not an epidemiologist. So not an expert, just a guy with a working brain.

They're not even being tried because the experts haven't pushed them. In the UK they deliberately avoided an eradication strategy because their faulty modelling told them they couldn't get R0 below 1, and they trusted the faulty modelling over common sense.

Sure, but we already know the consequences of not going for an eradication strategy: many months (4-9) of major disruption to normal life and normal economic activities as attempts to "flatten the curve" so that hospitals don't get overrun (and 3+% of the population dies) keep everyone in a kind of half lockdown and suppress normal activity. Economic effects are catastrophic as this prolonged lockdown kills business confidence, risk taking and hiring. Tail risks (mutations to deadlier/no vaccine strains, immunity doesn't work or last) get amplified for no good reason. In this "herd immunity" scenario, about 2 million people also die, around 700 9/11s, or 50 Vietnams (US casualties), with significant morbidity among survivors.

So we know the outcome pretty clearly. UK expert who are advocating herd immunity think 6-18 months of moderate restrictions (with periods of severe restrictions) are the likely outcome before herd immunity is achieved.
They're really just piling up the dead for no good reason. The Financial Times estimates there's little economic benefit to their approach.

Saying something happens very infrequently is not the same as saying it's 'no big deal'

Mark Emmert, the CEO of the NCAA, said it is very unlikely that there will be college sports while campuses are closed.

I didn't think I'd ever say this, but thank God Trump is in charge. Could you imagine the reaction in Texas if Obama tried to take away their football?

meh I don't usually get out of bed for less than a million

On the strategy points, much as I would have liked the UK (and others) to at least have tried to go to war on the virus, it's is most likely that eradication wasn't possible* in practice in the major western liberal democracies and that a more practical approach was the main game in town - that's why, with some weak counter-examples, all the major western countries have followed a management strategy while developing the necessary systems and hopefully treatments/vaccines. Unfortunately a very incompetent management strategy in some cases.

Far too many talking as if it's over and settled but I don't think we will have a proper handle on how it's panning out until we get through the winter. Hopefully a vaccine will emerge so fast that we will never really find out but I wouldn't bet much on it.

*despite all the guts and thunder, the only really substantive difference I have with with TS is that he think countries like the UK could have imposed an effective lockdown without the consent of the people. We have other serious disagreements but they belong in a different forum.

Really nice of them to produce this pretty graph now, but where were these soothsayers in January?

Herd immunity is only possible with a vaccine. That concept only exists thanks to vaccines.

If Norway have an increase of 650% DPM in a second wave and you add that to their DPM from the first wave, they still have less DPM than Sweden suffered in just the first wave alone.

"In 1979, the World Health Organization announced the global eradication of smallpox. It is the only human disease to be eradicated worldwide."

So you are saying that covid will be eradicated with a vaccine I assume? How long do you think thats going to take for western world.

So your suggestion, everyone wears masks, no more than 10 people meetings. Boarders closed. No bars, no nightclubs, no concerts, no sporting events etc until enough people has been vaccinated in that region. Whats your guess how long would that have to last? 1 year? 2 years ? (if you get a vaccine and give it to 100,000 people everyday its still going to take more than 3 months to give it everyone if the population is 10 million). You really think thats going to be best solution even if it works ? Your soluation means +10% unemployment.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/...t-and-suicide/

"The researchers found that there had been an increase in the relative risk of suicide associated with unemployment across all regions of 20% to 30%. There were an estimated 233,000 suicides a year between 2000-11, of which around 45,000 could be attributed to unemployment. In 2007, the year before the crash, there were 41,148 identified cases of suicide. In 2009, this number had risen to 46,131 – an increase of 4,983 or 12%."

They are btw not 80 year olds who have outlived their life expectancy. (yea it really matters).

No country is able to produce that without a vaccine that works 100%.

You don't need a vaccine for eradication. You need the lockdowns that have already been done, done competently (contact tracing and isolation as the biggest thing), and we'd have all eradicated the virus already. The US for example would have zero virus right now if the experts hadn't comically screwed the pooch on the early testing ramp.

From Fauci's testimony, at the least the US will be moving in that direction now. The reason eradication hasn't happened for other infectious diseases before is because there were never global lockdowns.

0 ? are u crazy, no country has been at 0 after being at 1 (New zealand has new cases again, after days of not having.). There cant be a global lockdowns people have a right to come back to their home country and actually have a constitutional right to leave and come back in the western world. Do you think any western country is allowing their goverment to take over their freedome ? for example if u get sick u get sent to a special place to recover with rest of the sick, away from your family even if you have mild symptoms, thats not going to happen in west. So you are just talking fairytales.

I have little sympathy for your views because I've seen eradication work perfectly. I'm in a Western country full of freedom loving people that has reopened with no fear of corona any more because they had a non-****** eradication strategy (discussed plenty above, but mainly contact tracing and self isolation). I'm in a county of 400K people, near northern Italy (the hotspot in Europe that infected everywhere else), that has been infection free for 21 days because the experts setting the strategy weren't human trash like they are in the UK and the US. There are 20+ countries in a similar excellent situation.

None of this successful eradication involved taking people away from their families. Or locking the populace inside their houses, unable to leave. Enforced distancing outside and self isolation of infected and their contacts, mandated by large fines and prison, is plenty. It works great, and its impact decreases to near zero over time as eradication works. Currently there are a few thousand people in self isolation, compared to many millions living their lives freely, going to cafes and bars.

Plenty of countries will be at zero (excluding isolated incoming foreigners who don't count) and living their lives normally, while cuck defeatist countries have months of rolling lockdowns and full hospitals, fear, and inability to fully restart your economy, leading to continued and long lasting dire economic and social effects.

if you expect anyone to read your weirdo ideas going forward you shouldn't start with building strawmen like this

Your country is montenegro ? The country in europe that was the last one to get a case pretty much ? I dont claim its hard to get the cases to 0 when you have had very low case numbers, im saying its impossible to keep it at 0.

Oh wait its Malta, 506 confirmed cases. Great example of your strategy. Still getting new cases, what a surprise.

this is what all of asia did... in january... guess how they are doing compared to the west right now?

The west has been exposed for the sham that it is. Take that exceptionalism and shove it

Neither are anywhere near Northern Italy.

There are 20+ countries that have crushed this with a non-idiot strategy. They range from the largest country in the world to the smallest, from the first infected to the last infected. Claiming anything special about the countries that eradicated this is silly. It's all about the strategy and nothing else. Eradication is simple and straightforward.

The notion that eradiction is impossible since incoming travelers (tested in quarantine) add 10 a day to the case numbers is pretty ridiculous.

The West is definitely exceptional - there's a reason China has to steal all their tech rather than develop it indigenously - but it's certainly less exceptional since left wing thinking and defeatism has taken hold.