Did you catch it ?

[PeterNSteinmetz]

To use a singular "study" to quantify a complex and currently ongoing situation does not do anyone any good. If the NYC-Tri-State transportation system was shutdown (quarantined) the 1st week in February, how would that have affected your study? Until SARS as run its initial course, no study is valid across all demographics. Same as any risk management conclusion or recommendation. Perhaps you are validating a specific point that I'm missing. But until all the data is in, validated and peer-reviewed, it's nothing more than opinion. The other side of the equation away from the medical side involves how the stay at home orders interact with the Constitution and B of R. From a legal stand point it's this route that will make it to court vs your study.

Agreed that the legal issues will need to be decided in court. Empirical evidence could play a part in it depending on the judge as the question will inevitably arise of what sort of evidence is required to suspend rights.

I think there is a meaningful distinction between "just opinion" and reasonable studies in preprint form. Clearly peer-reviewed is the standard (though still far from perfect) but it is possible to judge the quality of studies to a fair degree in preprint form. And a serious scholar going to the trouble of writing something up and posting it publicly with their name attached is better than "just opinion". Unfortunately Reilly's study is the only one to look at empirical data on this question so far. I am actually surprised that is the case as I would think that epidemiologists would be all over it. A bunch of modeling studies but I imagine we might agree on the limitations of those in inferring causality.

So based on the data which is presently available I think it is fair to say that a preponderance suggests that at least in the US coercive lockdowns have not decreased Covid-19 deaths or slowed their growth.

Of course that may need revision based on further data and analysis. I would be pleasantly surprised if such future studies arrive, but I do wonder if they will. I have not been able to find such a study of SARS or MERs. Maybe this time will be different as you suggest -- I hope so.

Sadly I think public policy is often driven primarily by things other than facts and analysis. And certainly in the case of Covid-19 the government made recommendations based on little to no actual data. I am not aware of any formal cost-benefit or risk analysis for the lockdown which were performed in the state of Arizona before the order came out. And Ioannidis at Stanford warned that politicians were making decisions based on inadequate information.

And fun about don't assume people are pilots I would not have expected that but I suppose maybe there is a different connection to aviation?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

<deleted ad hominem attacks> What is or is not perceived as a threat by others has absolutely nothing to do with what the law says you can or cannot do.

If you show up brandishing a gun in a public place where brandishing a gun is not the norm, there will be people who will perceive that as a threat. Not talking about law here, not talking about what's right here, just talking about reality. It is what it is and their perception is just as valid as yours.

Please let's avoid the personal attacks, ok? (I don't imagine you meant any offense and were excited.)

What you say is true and I understand this perfectly well actually. Some people are threatened by or are afraid of guns per se. I don't think that is necessarily a reason to refrain from the use of firearms to make a point about the government. It sounds like we agree that the Covid-19 protestors had the right to carry their long guns.

Whether such protest with long guns makes the point effectively I view as a matter of tactics which is actually debated extensively within even the open-carry community. I suspect that such carriage does serve to remind our elected officials that American citizens are armed, they are armed for a reason, and that does serve as a deterrent to unjustified seizures of power.

I could go on but fear this is treading on exclusively on political ground. If you want to discuss gun politics with me, happy to do so, but let's do it in PMs here or another forum.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Key words. They're not. There are a lot of people looking for their 15 seconds right now. Outside of PoA who else publically promotes this study?

You are correct, perhaps the exposure has been limited. A few sites have picked it up. I know he is publishing a follow-on for Spiked.

This is my entire point. Cant count the chickens until they hatch.

I guess we disagree a bit there. I think given the enormous ongoing damage, we need to count'em now as best we can and act. And I regard repealing coercive actions as something that can be justifiably done on the basis of much less complete information than enacting the coercive actions in the first place.

The damage they caused was miniscule compared to SARS-2.

Good point.

You need to get out more. There's more to PoA than COVID discussions and flying somewhere for breakfast.

Do tell. What do you suggest to also look at that might be of interest.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Very good points about the limitations of the data and I suppose it is possible we will never know how badly the data was messed with and then maybe I can never win the internet :emoji854: thanks.

I suspect a real possibility is that none of the coercive interventions have mattered but that people voluntarily choosing to distance, especially those who are vulnerable, will have a useful impact.

This would mean that things will go along at some sort of tolerable level from a resources perspective and we will never see a difference between states with coercive and non-coercive measures.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

There was NO attack in anything I wrote.

I’m glad to hear you did not intend it that way.

well there's probably not much you and I are ever going to see eye to eye on.

I would hope not but that could be true. Very different perspectives may explain some of the apparent difficulties we have had with communication here as of late. I actually enjoy discussing with people with very different perspectives to expand my horizons a bit so long as it is done politely and respectfully.

Food for thought that, don't you think?

Yes definitely. Just let me know if you like to discuss off forum.

but I would offer that its entirely possible that you suspect wrong.

Certainly, my level of confidence when I say I suspect something is much lower than when I say something like “it is probable” or “likely” or “there is no empirical evidence”. A much softer call.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Thanks for the offer. But I don't enjoy discussions of politics with my wife who is like minded and who loves me. So I definitely don't enjoy them with people who aren't like minded and who don't love me.

I respect your desires. People differ a lot in this. I enjoy political discussions and always have. Picked it up at home as a kid I think. My parents often engaged in these and had many very enjoyable guests with whom they would discuss. Have to restrain myself here lest the moderators boot me :emoji18:

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I think that is what happened in the beginning as the first data that "hatched" was predicting 2+ million dead. So what would you have done differently in the beginning?

My decision making in such a circumstance is based on a respect for the rights of people to act freely so long as they don’t threaten to or actually harm others - a very rights based approach. I would evaluate whether we have enough information to conclude that a person walking around in a public space with an unknown SARS Cov-2 infection status is clearly an imminent threat of or actually causing serious harm to others. This would be my primary determinant of whether to take coercive measures against citizens in general.

With respect to other non-coercive measures - making recommendations to the public, shutting down publicly owned transportation (like buses and subways), offering aid, my standard would much more of a preponderance of best evidence standard, rather than clear harm or threat.

Speculating on the beginning is a bit of applying the retrospectocope, but I will try.

Very early on we were looking at something possibly coming our way with maybe multiple millions dead and a fairly unknown contagion level. Would fail to meet to clear standard I think and I would have say, wow, maybe we need to start preparing for something and watch very carefully here.

By mid-February we have some more information. Perhaps not quite so deadly as feared and spread so far is limited, but it is here. I might consider shutdowns of publicly owned transportation and would certainly make recommendations, but no coercive measures because not clear enough for that.

By early to mid-March, we have Fauci saying lockdowns needed and Ioannides at Stanford we don’t have enough information. I think I would say not clear enough for coercive measures. Definitely ramp up public information and recommendations and close crowded publicly owned transportation.

This type of approach runs a risk that if one runs into a truly dangerous extremely contagious pathogen one might react more slowly and it would cause greater harm. On the other hand, such pathogens are considerably less likely to arise and will often give off stronger signs of their danger.

So my approach is erring on the side of freedom if errors must be made. I believe that results in better overall outcomes in the long run, in part because when we are freer we are better able to prepare for and adapt to the unexpected. I think my approach would be fairly different from what has transpired.

Try perusing the Mx Bay or Avionics Upgrade forums for some spine tingling discussions on the statistical analysis of installing non-TSO parts on a TC'd aircraft, or my favorite, who can legally touch up the paint on a prop.....

Thanks I’ll may enjoy some of those.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

And now we see that up to 70% of excess deaths in NY may be due to things other than Covid-19.

"Of these deaths, only 43% in Scotland and England and Wales, 49% in the Netherlands and 30% in New York state were attributed to Covid-19 leaving a number of excess deaths not attributed to Covid-19."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.21.20073114v2

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Huh.

As an aside, I only skimmed the article, but saw no reference to the 70% in your quote for New York, just that 27% of the excess deaths in the state weren't attributed to Covid-19 - and with 37% of those excess deaths in NY City not attributed to COVID-19. Might be an inadvertent flip of the ratios? (Might also be I read it wrong.)

Thanks for noting that. Appears there is a disconnect between the abstract on the preprint site (which I used for posting here) and the abstract in the pdf and numbers that one downloads. Most likely the latter are more correct than the abstract on the preprint site.

To figure this out, it will likely be necessary to download their data (which is available and analyze it separately). I can't do that right now since I am working on the statistical analysis of the effects of coercive interventions, but will check again later for an update on the preprint. (Of course, perhaps some of the other posters like to get the data and figure out which is correct.)

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

And a modeling study predicting there will be an excess of 33,890 deaths due to cancer in the US in the next year because of the responses to Covid-19. "the model estimated 6,270 excess deaths at 1 year in England and 33,890 excess deaths in the US." This is for cancer only. In preprint form at this time.

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._and_multimorbidity_in_the_COVID-19_emergency

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

I don't have a political agenda. But I have also not seen data that definitively counts victims of the lockdown itself other than by pure speculation.

Sort of going from one extreme to another here and really a false dichotomy. There are a number of studies that have look at this question and provided informed estimates, which is not the same as "pure speculation". For example, the number of excess cancer deaths in the UK and US was estimated this way. But I am curious how you "definitely count"? Would number of deaths over the number expected in a given week or month count, as has been done for total mortality here in the US? Or would that not be definitive enough?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

To clarify, I was NOT endorsing passing such laws. The claim made was get rid of the lockdowns and people will take it upon themselves to just take reasonable precautions on their own. I disagree with that statement and my comments were in the context of lots of people will not take said precautions unless you make law and threaten them with jail time and/or large fines. That is not the same as me saying I endorse or desire said laws. I do not.

If you look at the flip side of the timeline, back at the beginning, the mobility data show that people were definitely reducing their mobility 1-2 weeks prior to the coercive lockdowns in most states. Now that may have been because they were scared by the news and following recommendations earlier. The mobility had been slowly drifting back up prior to the elimination of the lockdowns.

Graph below related to a paper, but for interest here in the meantime (mobility data derived from queries for driving directions to Apple Maps).

(Tongue in cheek) Looking at this again now, I realize that if you just want to argue on the basis of temporal correlation, you could try and make the argument that imposing the lockdowns caused people to start being less observant of social distancing. (Of course, that is unlikely to really be the explanation.)

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-borough...lizations-are-from-people-sheltering-at-home-

This is a very interesting report. Suggests that perhaps the people who are sheltering at home are being infected by the essential workers which come to their houses.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Indeed.. and I wonder how aggressive people are treating the "stay at home order"

If you have a look at the graph I posted before (available at http://steinmetz.org/peter/Medical/MobVsLockdown.png) you can see that people were fairly aggressive (40-50% reductions) initially about 1-2 weeks before the lockdown orders. Then it has been drifting back, depending on state. Some are nearly back up now to baseline levels.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

'm not for allowing people to make choices for themselves that puts myself or my family at increased risk of harm. This is why its illegal to drink and drive. If we're going to decide to just do away with all current shelter and distancing orders and simply let the citizens choose for themselves if they want to distance or not, we run the risk of running out of hospital beds and resources. That puts people at risk who otherwise were not at risk.

The risk to you of a person of unknown COVID-19 status interacting with you casually on the street once a day is about the same as the normal risks of living. And you have control over whether that happens or not. Other people not social distancing is not a risk to you at more than a de-minimus level. There is no real self defense argument for these coercive social distancing restrictions.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Another potential path:

If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections Would Plummet, New Study Says
There’s compelling evidence that Japan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian locales are doing it right and we should really, truly mask up—fast.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/masks-covid-19-infections-would-plummet-new-study-says

The study:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13553.pdf

I also posted the abstract in another thread:

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/to-mask-or-not-to-mask.124591/page-8#post-2919359

A modeling study but not empirical evidence on the possible benefits of the public wearing cloth masks.

As we have been discussing in the masking thread, the reviews of the evidence regarding whether the public wearing cloth masks are at best mixed, and in my opinion, actually quite weak evidence that this will help slow the spread.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

As I understand it, the public-health purpose in prolonging the pandemic is to keep the peak of the cases-vs-time curve from exceeding the capability of the health-care system to cope with it. So far, it appears that most localities have achieved that goal, but some just barely.

There is no good empirical evidence that the coercive lockdowns have decreased the number of cases or deaths in the US. There are two recent studies which claimed that cases were decreased, and though I have not yet reviewed them personally, collaborators tell me they are pretty badly constructed and likely would not count as good evidence. But I will have to review personally.

So leaving those aside for the moment, it is hard to see how if neither cases nor deaths have been affected one would show that the pandemic has even been prolonged by the coercive lockdowns.

More broadly, let’s assume the pandemic was prolonged, the so called “flattening of the curve”. If that doesn’t ultimately result in shortened duration of illnesses or deaths due to Covid 19, does it matter that the curve was flattened?

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

A projected 1.2 million child deaths due to effects of Covid-19 on healthcare - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3576549 . Preprint with The Lancet.

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

Another interesting article on the lockdown idea - https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

 

[PeterNSteinmetz]

You're showing your bias here by misrepresenting what this paper/model represents. The model they use also accounts for reallocation of medical resources needed to address COVID19, not just under utilization of medical resources. Also, you are conflating "lockdown" with voluntary individual decisions to not seek medical care due to (often wrongly) perceived risk.

You are correct that the article does not separate the effects of coercive lockdowns versus voluntary actions of individuals. Thanks and sorry for any confusion. I modified my original post to more closely reflect the title and abstract from the original article.

This article has been interpreted by the mainstream media as saying something about lockdowns, see for example The Telegraph with the headline "Unicef warns lockdown could kill more than Covid-19 as model predicts 1.2 million child deaths" but I agree that is not precise. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...ckdown-could-kill-covid-19-model-predicts-12/)

I don’t think most people make a strict distinction between voluntary social distancing and the coercive lockdowns undertaken by governments. It is a subject of great interest to me and perhaps others here, but I think many people think of all actions which happened as part of the responses to Covid-19 as “the lockdown”.