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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

> we have never really had much of a true lockdown here.

And parts of europe had more of a lockdown than the US and the population fatality rate is worse. I wonder if covid just doesn't care about lockdowns; the countries that haven't gotten hit badly are 1) an island. 2) an isolated continent. 3) an island 4) a country that sits on a peninsula that has a hugely militarized impermeable border. and 5) a group of islands. Even within the US, the state that has the lowest per capita covid rate... Is an island. Even at the micro level, the city in the bay area that is one of the least affected... Is an island.

On the other hand the UK has a higher CFR and a higher per population mortality than the US, so...

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Covid doesn't care about half-assed, poorly enforced lockdowns. China managed to control the virus pretty well it seems (after completely botching their early handling).

Lockdowns seemed to work in my country early in the pandemic. But in my country many covid measures are reliant on goodwill and voluntary compliance, so if morale drops (as you'd expect with extended lockdown), you expect lockdown effectiveness to drop as well.

It's also bad pretty much everywhere in Europe as well. During the first wave, everyone pointed to the Czech Republic as a country that'd done well. They currently have about the same Covid mortality rate as the UK in per-capita terms, last I saw, which had one of the deadlier outbreaks. (Also, the UK isn't much like an island in terms of connectivity to the rest of Europe, and that probably matters more than physical geography.)

I think to say lockdowns didn’t work raises the question - why did NYC cases & deaths peak only after all white collar workers stayed WFH for 4-6 weeks and the city looked like a ghost town?

It’s clear to me that keeping us out of offices and trains stopped the spread. Unfortunately it had been in the city for 2+ months prior and then ravaged the elderly & medical&front line workers who were out there dealing with it while we got to WFH.

Close, especially indoor contact, without masks, in cooler dry weather appears to be the recipe for disaster here.. ‘ We are seeing it play out in Wave 2 (or 3?) here as people have all gotten very sloppy, even if they are WFH.

From March-October in my social/family circle I knew 0 people with COVID. We were all at home, and people got scared straight pretty quick. Come summer things opened and cases dropped..

From early November to Christmas I knew 30+ people with COVID. Where did they get it? Kids came home from college with it. They went to bars indoors for hours. They dined indoors at restaurants.

> On the other hand the UK has a higher CFR and a higher per population mortality than the US, so...

B.1.1.7 variant. Coming (already in) the US.

It also correlates well with countries that habitually wear masks and avoid close personal contact when feeling unwell, which fits the data better as it removes the UK outlier.

So you are saying asymptomatic infections are not an issue?

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