"A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.
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@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
How long were the lockdowns?
In New York State it lasted 8 weeks. I don’t think it was a policy failure here, given (1) the severity of the initial outbreak in NYC, and (2) how little we knew at the time.
In other states it probably was a failure. At least in hindsight.
That’s disingenuous at best. NY entered Phase 1 of their reopening plan. 1 person per elevator and 25% building capacity with many nonessential businesses still shut down is hardly ending the lockdowns. The last COVID restrictions in NY were not lifted until summer of 2021….
@LuFins-Dad which sort of begs the question: "What is a 'lockdown'?"
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Social distancing /= lockdown.
True it was a phased reopening. But by July even most cultural institutions were allowed to reopen. Schools too.
To the point of the thread, the interventions with large collateral costs really ended pretty soon.
Broadway closed the entire year, there’s some economic damage there.
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How long were the lockdowns?
In New York State it lasted 8 weeks. I don’t think it was a policy failure here, given (1) the severity of the initial outbreak in NYC, and (2) how little we knew at the time.
In other states it probably was a failure. At least in hindsight.
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
How long were the lockdowns?
There were three separate ones. My mother went into a nursing home right as the first one kicked in, although she was probably only partially aware of what was going on.
My recollection of the following couple of years was that the level of restriction seemed to vary significantly depending on the local conditions, so in late 2020 I had a friend in Wales who was at home 100% of the time, whereas my brother in Manchester, who admittedly works in an area designated as an essential service, was pretty much working as usual, and traveling around quite a bit.
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Social distancing /= lockdown.
True it was a phased reopening. But by July even most cultural institutions were allowed to reopen. Schools too.
To the point of the thread, the interventions with large collateral costs really ended pretty soon.
Broadway closed the entire year, there’s some economic damage there.
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
Broadway closed the entire year, there’s some economic damage there.
Schools were closed longer, iirc.Weingarten (president of American Federation of Teachers) lobbied to keep them closed, iirc.
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We had a hybrid model that meant the kids started going back in September 2020 but with reduced class sizes and working partially from home.
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Not statewide. Our district was only closed spring of 2020. The city stayed closed for 2020-2021 I believe.
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
Not statewide. Our district was only closed spring of 2020. The city stayed closed for 2020-2021 I believe.
Yes, I seem to recall that N.Y.C. didn’t reopen until September, 2021 and even delayed then, but that’s on the city not on the state.
However, did your schools fully reopen for in-person learning in the fall of 2020? Or was it a hybrid model? Here we had the choice of 2 days in-school/3 days remote or you could choose a full-time remote. It was Luke’s senior year. He was essentially done and most of the important classes were disrupted by the disjointed schedule so we opted for remote, but I would still argue that a part time schedule is still a type of lockdown.
The Brad
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@Horace said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
I remember well the tenor of conversation here on TNCR at the time. The full-stop fear of getting sick was thick in the air, and the pricelessness of human life was an idea taken seriously.
I’ll cop to the former, the transplant physicians were genuinely worried it would be a death sentence for us. Indeed for many it was and still is. I had a transplant friend die of Covid as recently as April 15th (some 2 days before I tested positive).
I don’t remember anyone here adopting the latter view.
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
@Horace said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
I remember well the tenor of conversation here on TNCR at the time. The full-stop fear of getting sick was thick in the air, and the pricelessness of human life was an idea taken seriously.
I’ll cop to the former, the transplant physicians were genuinely worried it would be a death sentence for us. Indeed for many it was and still is. I had a transplant friend die of Covid as recently as April 15th (some 2 days before I tested positive).
Your fear of getting sick was understandable, but it wasn't just you.
I don’t remember anyone here adopting the latter view.
It was prevalent here.
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I admit to getting sucked in.
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There was a huge amount of uncertainty. Managing a pandemic with 20/20 hindsight is real easy.
I remember in March/April 2020 leaving the mail in the sun-room to decontaminate for 24 hours. It seems ridiculous now. I got yelled at by a pedestrian when I cycled past them for being within 8 feet, then around the next corner I saw a bunch of older guys jogging and thinking they were crazy for getting so close.
Even now, things vary - we have the husband of a liver transplant survivor working here - he still never meets anyone in person and wears a mask at all times when he leaves his office. Ironically, his wife ended up giving him covid.
I was only joking
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There was a huge amount of uncertainty. Managing a pandemic with 20/20 hindsight is real easy.
I remember in March/April 2020 leaving the mail in the sun-room to decontaminate for 24 hours. It seems ridiculous now. I got yelled at by a pedestrian when I cycled past them for being within 8 feet, then around the next corner I saw a bunch of older guys jogging and thinking they were crazy for getting so close.
Even now, things vary - we have the husband of a liver transplant survivor working here - he still never meets anyone in person and wears a mask at all times when he leaves his office. Ironically, his wife ended up giving him covid.
@Doctor-Phibes I get the panic… I was pulled in, too. Wiping down groceries with Clorox wipes in a decontamination room…
That doesn’t alleviate our public health experts for critical failures and our governments for allowing our rights to be infringed on because of those public health failures.
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@Doctor-Phibes I get the panic… I was pulled in, too. Wiping down groceries with Clorox wipes in a decontamination room…
That doesn’t alleviate our public health experts for critical failures and our governments for allowing our rights to be infringed on because of those public health failures.
@LuFins-Dad said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
@Doctor-Phibes I get the panic… I was pulled in, too. Wiping down groceries with Clorox wipes in a decontamination room…
That doesn’t alleviate our public health experts for critical failures and our governments for allowing our rights to be infringed on because of those public health failures.
Well, to be fair they were operating under a lot of uncertainty too. However. the initial post in this thread was about the UK , and I'd characterise the behaviour of that government as disgusting. Drinks parties at No. 10 while the rest of the country was forcibly being isolated. Contracts for safety equipment being awarded to friends and family of senior politicians without any tendering process despite them being incapable of delivering and having insufficient expertise. Senior government ministers driving hundreds of miles for 'child care' and 'to test out my eyesight'. I could go on.
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There was a huge amount of uncertainty. Managing a pandemic with 20/20 hindsight is real easy.
I remember in March/April 2020 leaving the mail in the sun-room to decontaminate for 24 hours. It seems ridiculous now. I got yelled at by a pedestrian when I cycled past them for being within 8 feet, then around the next corner I saw a bunch of older guys jogging and thinking they were crazy for getting so close.
Even now, things vary - we have the husband of a liver transplant survivor working here - he still never meets anyone in person and wears a mask at all times when he leaves his office. Ironically, his wife ended up giving him covid.
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@Copper said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
I think I thought the collateral costs were staggering at the time. And we aren’t finished paying yet.
True but you thought the flu was worse. I don’t know how you thought that, but you did. And for someone who sincerely believed that, pretty much any public mitigation efforts would be overkill
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
True but you thought the flu was worse.
I thought that right up until it wasn't, which was, if I remember correctly, several months into the race.
Most people conceded the race to covid too early.
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@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
True but you thought the flu was worse.
I thought that right up until it wasn't, which was, if I remember correctly, several months into the race.
Most people conceded the race to covid too early.
@Copper said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
@Jon said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
True but you thought the flu was worse.
I thought that right up until it wasn't, which was, if I remember correctly, several months into the race.
Then apparently you still don't understand the time difference between reported numbers and real-time fatalities.
Please love yourself.
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The lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the sanctimonious finger pointing at those who were against them, are historical facts. We all took a test and we all turned in our results. People differ.
@Horace said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the sanctimonious finger pointing at those who were against them, are historical facts. We all took a test and we all turned in our results. People differ.
Don't forget the the plandemic people, many of whom are presumably still inhabiting a world where it was all a vast conspiracy conjured up by Bill Gates and his nanobots. And then there's the people who think the vaccines were more dangerous than Covid, and were a government plan to do something or other. People do indeed differ.
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@Horace said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the sanctimonious finger pointing at those who were against them, are historical facts. We all took a test and we all turned in our results. People differ.
Don't forget the the plandemic people, many of whom are presumably still inhabiting a world where it was all a vast conspiracy conjured up by Bill Gates and his nanobots. And then there's the people who think the vaccines were more dangerous than Covid, and were a government plan to do something or other. People do indeed differ.
@Doctor-Phibes said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
@Horace said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
The lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and the sanctimonious finger pointing at those who were against them, are historical facts. We all took a test and we all turned in our results. People differ.
Don't forget the the plandemic people, many of whom are presumably still inhabiting a world where it was all a vast conspiracy conjured up by Bill Gates and his nanobots. And then there's the people who think the vaccines were more dangerous than Covid, and were a government plan to do something or other. People do indeed differ.
There’s a difference between people one interacts with daily, and giggle targets one unearths by digging through the internet. What I described was totally mainstream.
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Oh hindsight. What does this mean, the next global pandemic folks will say we shouldn't lock down then realize later we should've. I think the biggest lessons from COVID are knowing which populations are truly the most vulnerable (elderly, obese, etc) and focusing efforts there, but then again... don't forget what we were going through in the Spring of 2020.
Mobile morgues. Make-shift hospitals. Mass graves.
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Oh hindsight. What does this mean, the next global pandemic folks will say we shouldn't lock down then realize later we should've. I think the biggest lessons from COVID are knowing which populations are truly the most vulnerable (elderly, obese, etc) and focusing efforts there, but then again... don't forget what we were going through in the Spring of 2020.
Mobile morgues. Make-shift hospitals. Mass graves.
@89th said in "A policy failure of gigantic proportions”.:
Oh hindsight. What does this mean, the next global pandemic folks will say we shouldn't lock down then realize later we should've.
I can’t speak for anybody else, but what it means for me is that I’ll continue to treat everything on a case by case basis, rather than applying an incoherent rule learned from a vaguely rhyming history. I will continue to roll my eyes at the sanctimonious masses leaping at the opportunity to divide people into good vs evil groups. And I will continue to lean heavily towards a principle of personal liberty.
Education is extremely important.
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Perhaps I'm reading that article wrong. I don't think it diminished or underestimated the severity of the pandemic. The point is the lockdowns made little difference in making it better, and made a lot of difference in making the whole time worse.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
