For a start, it has become clear that there is no such thing as “the science” when it comes to Covid-19. Immunologists have different views about infection rates and possible mortality outcomes in the same way that monetarists and Keynesians differ over economics.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Imagine that …
… The past three months have proved it: the costs of lockdown are too high | Business | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Larry Elliott is an economist, not an epidemiologist. But he ought to be able to understand modeling, because economistsdo this too. Modeling is for predicting the future and understanding intricacies. It is not a science that proves things, at least for a time until another Einstein comes along. No epidemiologist thinks it is. The models epidemiologists have been applying, have been shown just last week, by epidemiologists, to alter too drastically with suppositional input. That's predicting the future for you. It is also epidemiology doing a fine job, brainstorming.
ReplyDeleteThe immunologists that he speaks of, trying to get a handle on infection rates, are zeroing in on huge numbers contracting the virus, far more than tested, like 10 times or more in European countries. We'll then see how far the actual deaths from covid-19 exceeds these early counts we have on death certificates.
On the warmer weather having anything to do with the spread of the virus, it thrives at 90-104 degrees. It needs like a human host. It degrades over time on surfaces, until a week later, for most surfaces, it is not longer infectious.
When we look back at what the safe distancing and masks, there is a tremendous savings of lives that has been accomplished. Every study shows this. At its base, it like science caught up with common sense. It's the deadly peculiarities that need further study. To frame this in a different number than we are used to, death victims of the virus lost over a decade each of their lives because they could not survive the ordeal -- not counting those who were so weakened by the virus that they caught something else and died, or who in the future will be so disabled as to catch something else and die.
The virus has affected economics. Duh. Elliott explains things fairly well as far as how we interact in order to keep the economy, at least as it used to be, operating -- common sense. But no economist has any expertise in deciding who should die for the status quo. The virus is just a brainless virus, and has no design to pit economists against "immunologists". But, if it could strategize, this is precisely what it would do, get economic "experts" telling people to keep the staus quo though thick and thin -- while it does the thinning, its expertise.
Elliott's argument has a hole in it when he says that young people "know they are low risk and will do their own cost-benefit analysis." Young people are at a lower risk of dying from the virus, not from getting the virus, or not significantly as far as we yet know. There's a slippery slope that Elliott did not go down, because it has nothing to do with his expertise, to say that we should allow young people to go out there, catch the virus, become superspreaders, then come home and kill the rest of us. It's a dopey deadly cost-benefit analysis.
How can we get people to become mass murderers during a pandemic? By having them "travel to work on buses or commuter trains, spend eight hours with their colleagues at the office, spend their lunch hour doing a bit of shopping, and head off in the evening to the pub, the theatre or the football."
We are now feeling able to re-open -- tentatively -- because of science (no help from economists) and that's why the scientists have been working so diligently. Masks must be worn, safe distances kept (12 feet is better than 6, under 3 feet is meaningless), spreaders must be identified, procedures developed, and so forth. Meat-packers catch the virus, unauthorized prom goers catch it, we get it, we get it, but what can we do, and how can we do it? While scientists are trying to deliver a vaccine, some economists, and hair dressers for that matter, have nothing better to say than, "Can we just go back to work anyway?"
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ReplyDeleteAnother issue, Rus, concerns the physiological damage even mild cases of covid-19 seem to inflict on some recovering or recovered patients. We don't know the extent yet or even how long-lasting the damage may prove to be, but it's of increasing concern to the medical profession
ReplyDeleteHi Lee -- It'll be a heavy toll for sure. At the other side of the respirator is someone not getting enough oxygen. That results, for one or at least, in organ damage and failure, including the brain, heart, liver. The point of oxygen.
ReplyDeleteThough still in the realm of 'unknown but possible',it may not be just lack of oxygen, but actual viral replication in the brain:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ft.com/content/e5f20455-4422-4eea-9c51-b083040a0878
Also other forms of organ damage not directly related to lack of oxygen. (I'll have to go back and search out some links.)
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