There is the perverse relation that sooner lockdowns are more effective but less politically defensible. It can even backfire—the good outcome of Slovakia in first wave was ironically used as “evidence” by people saying that covid is harmless or completely made up.
Good data is hard to get. First, too many things happen at the same time, it is hard to separate their effects. For example, I find it quite likely that closing schools makes a huge difference. It is one of those things Slovakia did immediately in spring, and refused to do in autumn—but as they say, correlation is not causation; and you can’t make people do controlled experiments. We used to believe at the beginning that kids are immune to covid. Now it seems more like they are asymptomatic but spread the virus… although not enough good data here either. If that is true, then lockdowns while schools are open (and school attendance is mandatory) are completely insane.
Second, people are busy. Like, in spring in Slovakia we pretty much knew who got infected by whom; and when a person died, it was possible to have a wide debate whether a person who had X and Y and covid should actually be counted as “killed by covid” or something else. Now, the hospitals are unable to take care of all the sick people, so no one bothers doing autopsies. Which leads to all kinds of complaints about methodology of calculating actual covid deaths. Okay, but...
...there is something wrong about the chain “too many dead to count properly” → “dead not counted properly” → “we do not have solid data” → “so, maybe no one really died, or only few”. Like, each step is defensible separately, but the entire chain definitely is not. Well, there are attempts to justify the entire chain, like attributing the excess deaths directly to lockdowns. Which doesn’t quite explain why those people, presumably dying from poverty or depression, need so many ventilators. And the death toll of lockdowns is also ambivalent: more people dying from poverty and depression, but fewer by traffic accidents or flu. Another data point from Slovakia: during spring 2020, the total mortality was lower than during the same periods of previous years, i.e. the lockdowns were net life savers, at least in short term.
We do have an oximeter at home, still unpacked. I hope it stays that way.
There is the perverse relation that sooner lockdowns are more effective but less politically defensible. It can even backfire—the good outcome of Slovakia in first wave was ironically used as “evidence” by people saying that covid is harmless or completely made up.
Good data is hard to get. First, too many things happen at the same time, it is hard to separate their effects. For example, I find it quite likely that closing schools makes a huge difference. It is one of those things Slovakia did immediately in spring, and refused to do in autumn—but as they say, correlation is not causation; and you can’t make people do controlled experiments. We used to believe at the beginning that kids are immune to covid. Now it seems more like they are asymptomatic but spread the virus… although not enough good data here either. If that is true, then lockdowns while schools are open (and school attendance is mandatory) are completely insane.
Second, people are busy. Like, in spring in Slovakia we pretty much knew who got infected by whom; and when a person died, it was possible to have a wide debate whether a person who had X and Y and covid should actually be counted as “killed by covid” or something else. Now, the hospitals are unable to take care of all the sick people, so no one bothers doing autopsies. Which leads to all kinds of complaints about methodology of calculating actual covid deaths. Okay, but...
...there is something wrong about the chain “too many dead to count properly” → “dead not counted properly” → “we do not have solid data” → “so, maybe no one really died, or only few”. Like, each step is defensible separately, but the entire chain definitely is not. Well, there are attempts to justify the entire chain, like attributing the excess deaths directly to lockdowns. Which doesn’t quite explain why those people, presumably dying from poverty or depression, need so many ventilators. And the death toll of lockdowns is also ambivalent: more people dying from poverty and depression, but fewer by traffic accidents or flu. Another data point from Slovakia: during spring 2020, the total mortality was lower than during the same periods of previous years, i.e. the lockdowns were net life savers, at least in short term.
We do have an oximeter at home, still unpacked. I hope it stays that way.
-