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Thank you! Everyone I see saying "But what about Sweden" really means "let's do nothing". They skate over everything else that Sweden does - unemployment insurance, universal healthcare, and better compliance with the restrictions they do have.

Yes, it seems to me that total lockdown is the last resort of the unprepared.

Exactly, this should be highlighted. The rhetoric seems intended to distract from this fact. How much money does the CDC receive each year?

> We should stop talking about "lockdowns", and possibly never should have thought that way. The question is over restrictions, WHAT restrictions should we have, what alterations to usual way of doing things.

Agreed, but there needs to be a discussion about what an acceptable amount of cases is as well. Because the strategy seems to be eradication, which is ridiculous. As soon as any restrictions are eased there is much hand wringing the second case counts go above some very low but arbitrary level.

Why wouldn't herd immunity be an acceptable condition for the part of the population that aren't at risk to develop a severe condition? The balance is protecting those at risk all the while allowing those that aren't to continue working as normal.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I misread. You're not against the idea, it just doesn't inform us as to how to balance our policies.

Shouldn't we simply be optimizing for cases in hospitals?

>It's a huge mistake to think the choices are "lockdown" or nothing.

Completely agree. Lockdowns and "shelter-in-place" orders were a reasonable response in March when we had no idea what we were dealing with and had to preserve the integrity of the hospital system. But they were never going to be sustainable for more than a few weeks.

The next step, closing "non-essential" business and limiting gatherings, is a logical progression, and is something that can be tweaked and tightened/loosened as the data indicate.

Then we have masks, social distancing, and frequent hygiene. This should continue indefinitely, at least until a vaccine has been widely distributed. I'm shocked by the opposition to this.

> “...closing ‘non-essential’ business and limiting gatherings, is a logical progression...”

you’re advocating lockdown. we only need to curtail (not completely shut down) socializing-oriented businesses like bars/clubs, not ‘non-essential’ businesses. we should advocate for, rather than try to coerce, limiting large private indoor gatherings and being responsible when gathering.

> “Then we have masks, social distancing, and frequent hygiene...”

only social distancing is needed, but you can’t mandate these things in any case. only social pressure works on the level of groups and communities. masks and over-cleaning are effective only on the (in some cases very slim) margins. don’t breath into each other’s faces and we’ve done the majority of what is effective, rather than ritualized compliance signals.

Again, even the mythical Sweden bans gatherings of more than 50 people, with criminal penalties for non-compliance.

Do you consider that a "lockdown"?

To me, "lockdown" -- a word I had previously heard mostly in reference to prisons -- means absolute cancellation of all social life, the word implies an absolute and universalism. That is not possible on an indefinite ongoing basis.

But we absolutely need restrictions. I'm not ready to say right now exactly what those restrictions should be -- they need to be based on science that we haven't done enough of, and they probably need to change as we learn more about things and as we observe how different restrictions (as well as different accomodations like improved ventilation) effect spread (which may be different from one society to another). We have barely yet begun to take seriously the need to seriously figure out what to do, instead of arguing about "lockdown" vs "do nothing".

To my reading, you are still engaged in that odd dichotomous debate, advocating the "do pretty much nothing" approach, absoultely confident (based on what science?) that this is sufficient.

> "To my reading, you are still engaged in that odd dichotomous debate..."

it's uncharitable to project. you're also trying to coerce my position into "do nothing", which is not only uncharitable but incorrect. "do only things that have meaningful, not mollifying, effect" is more correct.

> "But we absolutely need restrictions."

that's cart before horse, an overly confident a priori assertion, rather than an empirically-backed deduction, like much of the discussion around "the science".

> "...they need to be based on science..."

science will expand our body of knowledge in time, but science is not unassailable (science doesn't create truth, only reflects incomplete shades of it back to us), and an unrealistic faith in science to settle decision-making under uncertainty today simply doesn't help. it just plays into media partisanship, as an unwarranted appeal to authority to coerce others' behaviors (i.e., an application of power) irrationally. in 20-50 years, science might tell us what the best course of action might have been, but it won't settle the debate in this moment.

but luckily we already have plenty of information to make informed decisions, even if much of that information is imperfect. and note that it's not the complicity rituals we've bought into from our "leadership".

for instance, it was clear as early as february that the elderly were at much heightened risk. we should have locked down elderly care facilities and bubbled them, employing a tiny fraction of the $2T in economic aid spent already (in the US) rather than largely wasting it on further enriching the already wealthy. that would have reduced fatalities by on the order of ~60%. a meaningful effort, rather than safety theater.

it was clear around march that those with co-morbidities were also at heightened risk. that's harder, but getting that information out to the public changed the behavior of those at risk without the need for lockdowns for everyone. people are capable of making informed decisions with trustworthy information. it's (partisan and media-fueled) propaganda that's made it difficult to tease out what's reliable and trustworthy, cornering us into largely ineffective, performative mitigations (i just heard a woman on npr proclaim "i don't just wash for 20 seconds, i wash for 30 seconds!" as if that makes any difference to anything other than her own self-righteous ego and npr's editorialized virtue signaling).

it was clear that the trajectory of the virus was more flu than black death, deadly to less than 1% rather than 30-60%, despite the hyperbolic rhetoric around "exponential" growth (actually sigmoidal/logistic). if it had it been a new black plague, it would have been quite obvious early on, and people's behavior would have swiftly adapted out of self-preservation without requiring martial law.

it's clear that a few simple mitigations (distancing, avoiding large gatherings) can keep the infection rate largely under control, which is about the best we can do without destroying entire societies, governments, and economies (which we seem wont to do anyway).

life is an endless series of cost-benefit tradeoffs. we accept risk and death every day, not attempting to save every single life at all costs. if we did, we'd spend every excess dollar beyond water, food, shelter, and clothing on potentially preventable causes of mortality like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease[0], but we don't. it's irrational to act differently for a novel virus that isn't very deadly, all things considered.

lies told by the "left" are no better than the lies told by the "right". and the whole left-right dichotomy is a misdirection perpetrated by both to blinder our thinking in ways that benefit only the entrenched powers. in other words, break free and stop parroting phrases like "based on science" and apply your brain to understanding how to independently make decisions under uncertainty and with imperfect information. that's a true super-power.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

if I'm a priori suggesting that we surely need some restrictions although I can't commit now to exactly what we'll need for the course of the pandemic -- then you are a priori suggesting that we don't, right?

But we're not going to resolve this here.

I am curious about one thing specifically though, my one question you didn't respond to. The person you were responding to said we didn't need lockdown, but we did need some restrictions to nonsesential businesses.

But you replied that closing down nonsessential businesses was in fact "lockdown".

If that's lockdown, do you think Sweden's restrictions of gatherings over 50 people (with criminal penalties for violating) is also "lockdown"? If so, contrary to popular conception, it would turn out that Sweden actually engaged in "lockdown" all along after all, I guess? And do you think even Sweden basically over-reacted?

> "...then you are a priori suggesting that we don't, right?"

no, because it was based on incorporating the wealth of (imperfect) information that we already have. your statement started with "But we absolutely need restrictions" and then essentially said "not enough data", which makes that statement an a priori presumption. it could be that no restrictions are worth it, but your statement already ruled that out without rationale. mine didn't rule out restrictions, but rather advocated limited and targeted (high bang-for-buck) measures.

as for the rest, a semantic argument over "lockdown" seems unlikely to be fruitful, for an overly-curt phrasing on my part (as in, losing essential nuance for the sake of expedience). i'd generally agree that an indoor social gathering of sufficient density can raise transmission risk, but an arbitrary cutoff is not so useful. 50 people in a house is different from 50 people in a performance hall. incidentally, that's why distancing is a better general rule of thumb, because it concerns density directly (masks, for instance, don't).

and it's not about overreaction but rather precision and efficacy. once you institute a law with stiff penalties, you're raising the spectre of use of force against the populace, which, in a democratic society, should be reserved for the most extraordinary of circumstances, like existentially-threatening insurrections (e.g., civil war, plotting against a governor, etc.), not, relatively-speaking, small parties (or low-risk businesses for that matter). when provided reliable information and not overwhelmed by distortionary narratives, people will generally make reasonable estimations of risk relative to their idiosyncratic risk tolerances, and act accordingly.

all the rest is rhetoric trying to ramp up tensions and fears so that power can be coalesced and exerted. we just don't need to feed that beast in this case (or in most cases, 9/11 being another prominent example).

I think this is the first time i've seen someone say that Sweden's approach involved unnecessary restrictions, but it's an opinion. Maybe lots of people think this I just haven't been talking to them.

We agree that "limited and targeted (high bang-for-buck) measures" are called for, I guess we just disagree on what sorts of things they plausibly should be? I'm not sure why you are making this into a disagreement on 'a priori' or whatever.

The thing with a 50-person limit is it is easy to understand and easy to comply with. A limit about number of people per cubic meter... the harder it is to know if you are doing it or not, the lower compliance there will be, whether voluntary or with penalties. It makes sense to approximate for comprehensibility -- since it's based on imperfect data in the first place, we certainly don't know the exact risk level of various densities or types of gatherings, only guesses based on imperfect data. (It would be really good to be investing in trying to get better guesses.) It's already an approximation no matter what. That doesn't mean it won't be effective at limiting infection, it is not damned by being an approximation, whether expressed in terms of people per cubic foot or no gatherings over 50 people.

Telling people "hey, just a as a rule of thumb you should 'distance', to whatever degree you think appropriate, but it's up to you" will, I am pretty confident, have very little effect on anyone's behavior. At least not in the U.S. Maybe in Sweden.

it's not a disagreement so much as an (perhaps pointed) observation. a priori matters because it's often used to erroneously present beliefs as truths while eliding critical assumptions, for instance, saying "I am pretty confident [distancing recommendations will] have very little effect on anyone's behavior" without providing any further rationale.

it's also erroneous to take objections about that particular restriction as blanket evidence for believing sweden is being heavy-handed overall. that's dichotomous thinking, setting up a false dichotomy and then shoving the opposing position into (what you believe is) the unfavorable corner (for the second time).

the point was that that particular restriction was misguided, not its goal of containing the highest likelihood transmission vector, the large private social gathering. the excuse of being easy to understand is exactly how we get bad legislation with numerous unintended consequences that just beg for more (poor) legislation to patch the ever-incresing follow-on consequences, rather than doing the harder work of being as precise and efficacious as possible the first time (and every other time).

these are not only erroneous but also ineffective approaches to argumentation. you don't get better rationale, better positions, and better policy from employing such tactics. and yes, we do just disagree on what the best measures are, but that's also the important bit.