>Estimates of the IFR have continued to fall over the year. The latest meta-study by Ioannidis (March 2021) estimates the average global IFR at 0.15%.
That’s completely off, and so obviously and indefensibly so that it discredits the entire thing, IMO. Maybe there are economic arguments that suggest that alternatives to lockdown could be better, but it would be irresponsible to update on that based on arguments made by a person who cites Ioannidis’s IFR estimates favorably. Ioannidis is a crackpot when it comes to Covid. It’s ironic that you write “This image is a good example of how distorted pro-lockdown arguments are.”
Also, from the anti-lockdown side I’ve always wanted to know how to justify letting hospitals get so overwhelmed that people will die of appendicitis – basic health care collapses for at least 2 weeks. Do we really want that if it’s avoidable? How would anyone feel as a doctor, nurse, caretaker, etc. if the government expects you to do triage under insane conditions when it’s totally avoidable? The anti-lockdown side has to engage with that argument. If you say the IFR is low enough that hospitals wouldn’t get overwhelmed without lockdowns, that’s simply not true and you’re engaging in wishful thinking or ideologically clouded thinking. I’m open to arguments that we should have a breakdown of civilization for 2+ weeks (and probably several times) if [edit] “more hidden” consequences are extremely catastrophic otherwise, but then one has to be honest about the costs of a no-lockdown policy.
Edit to add: It’s a strawman that policymakers compare lockdown to “do nothing.” And by now, even the people who initially got it wrong have understood that there are control systems, that many people will stop taking risks as they read about hospitals being overwhelmed. However, there’s a 2-week lag from infections to the peak of hospital overwhelm and if the government isn’t strict enough, you overshoot things really quickly. It can happen extremely fast. You cannot assume that people will always time their behavior the correct way to anticipate hospital overstrain that’s 2 weeks ahead. That’s what government is for.
Your arguments about health care systems collapsing in the absence of lockdowns are highly emotive but not factual. The experience from Sweden, from Serbia, from the US states which didn’t do second lockdowns, is that the health care systems didn’t collapse. You are arguing from the unexamined assumption that no lockdown means failed health care system and your assumption is empirically, provably false. Please update your views accordingly.
Now you’re moving goalposts. Of course you can find places that didn’t need lockdowns. I thought your position was that lockdowns were almost never/nowhere worth it. If your position is just “some locations didn’t need lockdown (e.g., the ones where governments decided not to do it)” – that’s extremely different. Whether lockdowns make sense is to be assessed case-by-case, because the virus (and new variants of concern) affected different locations differently.
In your other comment, you attribute a claim to me that I haven’t made (“you have provided zero support for your own claim that lockdowns do more good than harm”). All I did was saying that I’m already skeptical since you were making the opposite claim with extremely poor and flawed arguments; I didn’t sayI confidently disagreed with your conclusion. Pointing out the favorable mention of Ioannnidis’s 0.15% IFR estimate isn’t “nitpicking of your evidence.” It’s damning that you rely on a source that does this – it’s off by a factor of three to seven. After more than a year of the pandemic, you simply cannot be off about the IFR by this much without looking quite poorly. If someone (the person you were citing/recommending) writes an entire report on how bad lockdowns are but thinks the virus is at least three times less deadly than it actually is, this person seems incompetent and I cannot trust their reasoning enough to buy into the conclusion.
I see a lot of nit-picking of my evidence, but you have provided zero support for your own claim that lockdowns do more good than harm. I challenge you to come up with a published cost-benefit analysis that proves the same.
What would a good cost-benefit analysis include? There are a lot of harms caused by lockdowns. Some of them are difficult to quantify (eg my last point), but I think it’s reasonable to demand a cost-benefit analysis takes into account at least three of the following six harms (which are far from an exhaustive list):
Increased poverty is directly correlated to lower life expectancy, so we should measure the lost years of life from increased poverty. This is a very long-term effect, which will be doing harm for years to come.
Unemployment and financial problems are both ‘scarring’ (it takes a long time to dig yourself out) and both cause mental health effects. We should include the long-term mental health cost of increased unemployment and individual financial problems.
Where lockdowns include school closures, the long-term effect on children’s development and socialisation is extreme. We should include estimates of the lifetime impact on children, which will include shorter life expectancy. (Yes, shorter educations are correlated to future life expectancy.)
Additional mental health effects directly attributable to the lockdown including elevated rates of depression, stress and anxiety. Proper acknowledgement that some of these effects (eg increased alcoholism) have long-term effects which should be accounted for.
Lockdown sucks for everyone, even if still employed, not in school, and not suffering a formal mental health condition. We should acknowledge that this is a widespread disutility and deserves to be considered.
Lockdowns have set a deeply disturbing precedent that governments can remove almost all civil liberties when they declare there’s an emergency. This directly harms democracy and raises the risk of future loss of freedoms. (Yes this one is the hardest to quantify, but it’s important and I would like to see more people acknowledge it.)
An ideal cost-benefit analysis would acknowledge that benefits from lockdowns in terms of lives saved are uncertain and include a range of estimates, but if you find one that properly considers at least 3 of the above 6 points, I’ll accept it even if it has a point estimate for benefits. (Those using the initial Imperial College models should be at the top end of the range because the Imperial College figures are too high for all the reasons I’ve already said.) However, since you’ve said that “It’s a strawman that policymakers compare lockdown to “do nothing.”″ then I do expect your superior cost benefit analysis will compare lockdown to more reasonable restrictions, rather than a do nothing option.
So there it is. I challenge you: bring evidence or go home.
PS: If I seem to be beating the drum of long-term effects too hard, it’s because I’m still angry at the UK government’s (belated, poor-quality) excuse for a cost-benefit analysis which, among its many other failures, looked only at harm done over the next five years.
The report you’re linking to contains this:
>Estimates of the IFR have continued to fall over the year. The latest meta-study by Ioannidis (March 2021) estimates the average global IFR at 0.15%.
That’s completely off, and so obviously and indefensibly so that it discredits the entire thing, IMO. Maybe there are economic arguments that suggest that alternatives to lockdown could be better, but it would be irresponsible to update on that based on arguments made by a person who cites Ioannidis’s IFR estimates favorably. Ioannidis is a crackpot when it comes to Covid. It’s ironic that you write “This image is a good example of how distorted pro-lockdown arguments are.”
I have looked into IFR estimates quite a lot when I was following Covid and I won a large forecasting tournament (and got 3rd in the year-long version): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xwG5MGWsMosBo6u4A/lukas_gloor-s-shortform?commentId=ZNgmZ7qvbQpy394kG
Also, from the anti-lockdown side I’ve always wanted to know how to justify letting hospitals get so overwhelmed that people will die of appendicitis – basic health care collapses for at least 2 weeks. Do we really want that if it’s avoidable? How would anyone feel as a doctor, nurse, caretaker, etc. if the government expects you to do triage under insane conditions when it’s totally avoidable? The anti-lockdown side has to engage with that argument. If you say the IFR is low enough that hospitals wouldn’t get overwhelmed without lockdowns, that’s simply not true and you’re engaging in wishful thinking or ideologically clouded thinking. I’m open to arguments that we should have a breakdown of civilization for 2+ weeks (and probably several times) if [edit] “more hidden” consequences are extremely catastrophic otherwise, but then one has to be honest about the costs of a no-lockdown policy.
Edit to add: It’s a strawman that policymakers compare lockdown to “do nothing.” And by now, even the people who initially got it wrong have understood that there are control systems, that many people will stop taking risks as they read about hospitals being overwhelmed. However, there’s a 2-week lag from infections to the peak of hospital overwhelm and if the government isn’t strict enough, you overshoot things really quickly. It can happen extremely fast. You cannot assume that people will always time their behavior the correct way to anticipate hospital overstrain that’s 2 weeks ahead. That’s what government is for.
Your arguments about health care systems collapsing in the absence of lockdowns are highly emotive but not factual. The experience from Sweden, from Serbia, from the US states which didn’t do second lockdowns, is that the health care systems didn’t collapse. You are arguing from the unexamined assumption that no lockdown means failed health care system and your assumption is empirically, provably false. Please update your views accordingly.
Now you’re moving goalposts. Of course you can find places that didn’t need lockdowns. I thought your position was that lockdowns were almost never/nowhere worth it. If your position is just “some locations didn’t need lockdown (e.g., the ones where governments decided not to do it)” – that’s extremely different. Whether lockdowns make sense is to be assessed case-by-case, because the virus (and new variants of concern) affected different locations differently.
In your other comment, you attribute a claim to me that I haven’t made (“you have provided zero support for your own claim that lockdowns do more good than harm”). All I did was saying that I’m already skeptical since you were making the opposite claim with extremely poor and flawed arguments; I didn’t say I confidently disagreed with your conclusion. Pointing out the favorable mention of Ioannnidis’s 0.15% IFR estimate isn’t “nitpicking of your evidence.” It’s damning that you rely on a source that does this – it’s off by a factor of three to seven. After more than a year of the pandemic, you simply cannot be off about the IFR by this much without looking quite poorly. If someone (the person you were citing/recommending) writes an entire report on how bad lockdowns are but thinks the virus is at least three times less deadly than it actually is, this person seems incompetent and I cannot trust their reasoning enough to buy into the conclusion.
I will drop out of this discussion now.
I see a lot of nit-picking of my evidence, but you have provided zero support for your own claim that lockdowns do more good than harm. I challenge you to come up with a published cost-benefit analysis that proves the same.
What would a good cost-benefit analysis include? There are a lot of harms caused by lockdowns. Some of them are difficult to quantify (eg my last point), but I think it’s reasonable to demand a cost-benefit analysis takes into account at least three of the following six harms (which are far from an exhaustive list):
Increased poverty is directly correlated to lower life expectancy, so we should measure the lost years of life from increased poverty. This is a very long-term effect, which will be doing harm for years to come.
Unemployment and financial problems are both ‘scarring’ (it takes a long time to dig yourself out) and both cause mental health effects. We should include the long-term mental health cost of increased unemployment and individual financial problems.
Where lockdowns include school closures, the long-term effect on children’s development and socialisation is extreme. We should include estimates of the lifetime impact on children, which will include shorter life expectancy. (Yes, shorter educations are correlated to future life expectancy.)
Additional mental health effects directly attributable to the lockdown including elevated rates of depression, stress and anxiety. Proper acknowledgement that some of these effects (eg increased alcoholism) have long-term effects which should be accounted for.
Lockdown sucks for everyone, even if still employed, not in school, and not suffering a formal mental health condition. We should acknowledge that this is a widespread disutility and deserves to be considered.
Lockdowns have set a deeply disturbing precedent that governments can remove almost all civil liberties when they declare there’s an emergency. This directly harms democracy and raises the risk of future loss of freedoms. (Yes this one is the hardest to quantify, but it’s important and I would like to see more people acknowledge it.)
An ideal cost-benefit analysis would acknowledge that benefits from lockdowns in terms of lives saved are uncertain and include a range of estimates, but if you find one that properly considers at least 3 of the above 6 points, I’ll accept it even if it has a point estimate for benefits. (Those using the initial Imperial College models should be at the top end of the range because the Imperial College figures are too high for all the reasons I’ve already said.) However, since you’ve said that “It’s a strawman that policymakers compare lockdown to “do nothing.”″ then I do expect your superior cost benefit analysis will compare lockdown to more reasonable restrictions, rather than a do nothing option.
So there it is. I challenge you: bring evidence or go home.
PS: If I seem to be beating the drum of long-term effects too hard, it’s because I’m still angry at the UK government’s (belated, poor-quality) excuse for a cost-benefit analysis which, among its many other failures, looked only at harm done over the next five years.