Grass roots ‘lockdown’

[Loki]

@jon-nyc said in Grass roots ‘lockdown’:

The 'children don't give it to adults' hypothesis strikes me as confusing absence of evidence for evidence of absence. But I haven't much looked into it.

I thought Sweden's calculation with respect to schools was more on the economic and social benefits of providing child care.

First I heard of the notion.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/should-schools-reopen-kids-role-pandemic-still-mystery#

[Jeffrey]

Jon - Your numbers seem roughly correct. Not sure how many left the city. Exposure death rate seems to be between .5 and 1 percent. Not sure how to factor in nursing home spread.

[Jeffrey]

Loki - Yes, your article mentions that the Dutch are reopening elementary schools based on the theory that children don’t infect adults. Closing schools helps primarily because then parents don’t contact each other at pick up etc. At least that is the theory. We will know in 4-6 weeks.

[Horace]

As numbers go, fatality rates are among the most misleading, considering the population characteristics of the folk in the numerator.

[Jeffrey]

Horace - Yes, but people who have it and recover suggest it is like having a triple flu for 3 weeks. There are plenty of reasons not to want to get it, esp. before they know how to treat it, beyond not dying.

What if they “reopen the economy” and no one comes?

[Horace]

At some point the numbers will tell us we've reached herd immunity. Then people will go out again. Hopefully masks will remain fashionable.

[Jeffrey]

Jon - While I said people were more compliant now than a month ago, nearly everyone I know or see takes risks (e. g. elevator usage) that I consider very very risky. I suspect the virus at this point is endemic and persistent and cannot be driven from the human population. Even if the whole US went into 6 month Wuhan level lockdown, the second we had international travel it would come back. I am not sure any lockdown could nuke the virus. It was just to buy us some time.

[Jeffrey]

Horace - US herd immunity would require about 1 mill US deaths, in the absence of a vaccine or treatment, even if you use low fatality numbers. And we don’t know that exposure gives lifetime immunity - might be only 2-3 years or some other limited time.

[jon-nyc]

The places that successfully nuke the curve keep travel restrictions in place for precisely that reason - not a ban necessarily, but mandatory isolation.

[Jeffrey]

Other than New Zealand or Taiwan or other island - where have such travel restrictions worked? The illegal immigration debate is over the fact that millions walk into our country by foot. Whether you think this is good or bad or just what happens, it doesn’t support a “ nuke the curve and ban entrance” strategy for the US.

[jon-nyc]

I think we need to wait to see how it does in bigger places. Lots of countries, maybe most, have a version of it now. China for example. Israel implemented it early, but it might as well be an island nation with a single airport. Korea will be more interesting.

[jon-nyc]

Showed up in my twitter feed this morning. Click through and read the thread.