As usual, herd immunity and targeted measures that acknowledge tradeoffs are deemed to fall short of a utopian and perfect approach that exists only in peoples’ heads, failing to clear hurdles that for some reason Lockdown 4ever is never required to.
“so-called herd immunity approach, which suggests allowing a large uncontrolled outbreak in the low-risk population”
This misleading framing implies that Lockdown ‘doesn’t allow’ outbreaks, but that’s false. It just pushes outbreaks mostly into working-class.
“Uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity(3) and mortality across the whole population.”
Younger cohorts suffer the least mortality. Effectively pushing infections elsewhere first can only raise overall mortality. This is just basic math.
“and overwhelm the ability of healthcare systems”
Again with this ‘overwhelm’ stuff. For crying out loud we only barely reached that constraint in a few places back in March/April, it’s a complete non issue now. Look at some graphs
“there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection”
Some immunity is better than none. The idea immunity needs to be infinite or it’s useless makes no sense. The fact of a handful of reinfections doesn’t totally overturn all immunity.
“the endemic transmission that would be the consequence of waning immunity”
If it’s endemic (which I agree to be likely) then it’s better that more have immunity, for at least some period, than if less have immunity. Lockdown doesn’t magically avoid this problem
“present a risk to vulnerable populations for the indefinite future”
Vulnerable populations are at risk for the indefinite future either way. Again there is a continued fallacy of finding other approaches to fall short of a standard that Lockdown doesn’t meet either.
“It would also place an unacceptable burden on the economy and healthcare workers”
Lockdown *doesn’t* place a burden on the economy and healthcare workers? Of course it does. Especially on the working class who physically can’t just ‘zoom’ their jobs, and become a servant caste.
“Prolonged isolation of large swathes of the population is practically impossible and highly unethical.”
On this I agree!
But Lockdown does that to *everyone*. The bizarre ethics that says it’s cool to do to *everyone* what it’s ‘unethical’ to do to only some, is bizarre.
“Such an approach also risks further exacerbating the socioeconomic inequities and structural discriminations”
Sorry, this is just too rich. Lockdown is outright class-warfare by the Zoom class against the AMZN-worker class. They don’t get to fucking posture about inequities
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A lot of localities evidently hide behind ‘CDC guidelines’ that they published as to when it’s ‘safe’ to do this or that. Those guidelines include a metric for daily positivity (testing) rate. Does that metric account for the false-positive rate inherent to the test?
If not, we will have set up a system where we have decided we ‘can’t’ open this and that until a number with an inherent noise-rate averaging X goes below X/2. A ‘benchmark’ that can, and will, never be reached.
If that’s the case (and I sincerely don’t know) then I can only say I am Opposed To More Testing. In fact, I would want as little testing as possible. Not because I don’t see the value of testing for pandemic control, but because (in that case) people have setup retarded metrics.
Bloomberg promotes this opinion piece (which I can't read, paywall, and don't wanna bother using real Bloomberg to find it) with phrases like 'Ending Covid-19 by Letting Everybody Catch It Is a Terrible Idea'.
This is the kind of straw man idiocy that characterizes Team Lockdown
This whole 'debate' is like two sides shouting at cartoons instead of, at least, shouting at each other
How exactly is the Barrington approach about 'letting everybody catch it'?
How exactly does Lockdown (or whatever Team Fight The Virus wants) 'not letting' people catch it?
Under the approach of 'Not Letting' people catch it, millions of people have caught it.
Team Lockdown (I'm just gonna call them that) pretends their strategy has a perfection which it doesn't, then faults other strategies for falling short of that perfection.
Why this constant motte-and-bailey switcheroo between some Platonic notion of ‘do masks help?’ pursued as an intellectual exercise purely for the love of knowledge, and the *actual experience* of Dumbass Mask Mandates, as they affect actual people
Hooray, yet another snide remark from a Smart Person who ‘doesn’t understand’ anti-mask POV, concedes in-passing (as if this is minor!) that some mask policies are Actually Dumb, as my elementary school age kid is forced to wear a ‘mask’ while running around a soccer field
Every Smart Person nods their head at ‘get the virus under control first’. Especially financebros. They’ve thought about it deeply and all of them know that everything else depends on ‘getting’ the virus under control. True! QED. So just decide to do that, and then do it.
Is ‘getting the virus under control’ an action, that you can say, with words?
Yes.
Therefore, the government Can Do It.
How could there be an action relatable using words that The Government couldn’t simply decide to do and then do? That’s like saying the government isn’t God