Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Yes, although I do think Dorsey's treasured mountain hiking roads are mostly collateral damage in all this, if we close bars/pubs but opened parks and other outside places, what we are likely to see is people starting to use the latter as places to socialise, making them the primary way of spreading the disease.

But we have closed bars and pubs in this country and kept parks and outdoor places open and people haven't used it to socialise generally. People use it for exercise.

Even last weekend despite the annoyance and pictures on social media the data that's come out since says the numbers of people travelling and mixing was similar to the last few weekends: people didn't do it. Because their calculus, to use DG's phrase, was different: the rules weren't clear, it doesn't feel like it's safe for them or others to go out or mix so they stayed in.

To go back to the point I made back during Easter Egggate. The rules almost matter less than communicating to people why they're in place, because if people understand what's happening and why they'll change their behaviour - in the UK restaurants saw an 80% decline in people going before lockdown was ordered. This is also why I'm not sure that just re-opening and everything will spring back, I think people need to feel safe before they'll start changing the behaviour we've adopted in lockdown.

I think this also goes to my annoyance about the lack of transparency and the comms - I think in general governments should treat their citizens like adults, but especially at this point - so explain what you're doing and why and what people need to do, rather than the old-fashioned anonymous briefings etc. And you also need to be clear because people will use their brain's and assess whether or not x action is going to help. Obviously there'll always be some idiots or people who don't care.

But in Georgia it seems crazy that 1,000 acre state parks would be closed, but restaurants or bars with a few sq m are open. And I struggle to see how that could, on any level, be a policy driven by controlling the epidemic. This may just be the way AR is telling it but it sounds like they're actually prioritising re-opening the highest risk areas first

And that does undermine the rules in Georgia generally because it doesn't seem to me like they're being motivated by controlling this disease.

[Syt]

Playing devil's advocate, the only reason I could see is if you're worried that people get together in remote, unobserved areas in large groups. "Can't party in town, so we party in the woods! Yeehaw!"

[Zanza]

Dorsey's point about avoiding unnecessary restrictions is not insane. Climbing may not be the most vital thing, but it's clearly important to Dorsey, and to this foreigner it seems like a bizarre thing to restrict outdoor activities of that kind given what else is allowed. And of course the wider point is relevant to large number of people, some of whom (eg abused kids who only get away from hell by going to school) may be more emotionally attractive to the Languish crowd.

I concur.

[Tamas]

I am sorry but Dorsey is not standard Languish. At least I hope not all of you are sockpuppet-operators making up false identities and personalities.

[celedhring]

I am sorry but Dorsey is not standard Languish. At least I hope not all of you are sockpuppet-operators making up false identities and personalities.

We are all Dorsey's sockpuppets. 

[garbon]

I am sorry but Dorsey is not standard Languish. At least I hope not all of you are sockpuppet-operators making up false identities and personalities.

What's next - Martinus is peak Languish?

[Sheilbh]

Interesting piece on lockdown in the US - and this chimes with what I've seen in the UK too:

Lockdown reveals a US civil fabric healthier than many thought
Civic compliance has given the lie to doom-laden visions of cultural decline
JANAN GANESH Add to myFT

In Michigan, gun-toting men demand the reopening of businesses. In Florida, gym regulars do roadside push-ups to protest at the closure of their facilities. In California, Tesla starts its car plant again in the teeth of local restrictions. If impatience to resume normal life builds as spring becomes summer, the past few days will be remembered as the inflexion point.

Until such time, though, the dissent is more striking for its smallness and slowness in coming. All of the flash points above stand out in a wider context of general compliance.

For upwards of two months now, people in the US and other democracies have mostly gone along with mass confinement and economic torpor. They have done so on the guidance of a political class they are meant to despise and unelected experts that they are assumed to mistrust.

It has been likened to wartime discipline, but this is to undersell it a tad. Wars at least give us an enemy with a name and a face to unite against. The virus is invisible and, except for those of a medical ken, hard to understand. The show of civic togetherness is all the more impressive for that.

Nor can it be said that people have had no other choice. Had, say, one-fifth of the population bucked the rules, the government would have been left with very little recourse. Unable to police that many, the choice would have been martial law or some degree of capitulation. Civilised order ultimately rests on consent. We are forced to entertain the possibility that society is in better shape than billed. This stark news I address to conservatives but also to the left, as both sides have come to traffick in versions of cultural declinism.

For the first, the problem is several decades of irreligion, permissiveness and the debasement of a national way of life through immigration. For the second, the problem is several decades of unfettered markets and the commodification of people. But both converge on the same bleak picture: an atomised and decadent society, less than the sum of its parts, brittle for all its outward riches. Both are nostalgic for the mid-20th century, when most western nations were more homogenous and more equal.

Theirs is an analysis that makes intuitive sense. In fact, it is strange that it is not true. If liberalism means anything, it is that society has limited claims on the individual. Collective action must therefore be harder to pull off.

And yet if it were as straightforward as that, the past two months would have been much uglier. We should have seen more resistance, more quickly, to a lockdown that has no precedent in peacetime. And cities, those pits of liberalism, should have been the most anarchic. The Republican senator Ted Cruz once referred to "New York values", which he implied were selfish and nihilistic. Well, the city has been the worst-afflicted part of the US, and it has not yet curdled into a Hobbesian free-for-all.

At the least, I expected public pressure for a more bespoke shutdown, isolating the old and the otherwise vulnerable. In fact, we are seeing almost the opposite clamour. By two to one, Americans worry that restrictions will be lifted too soon, not too slowly. That margin is unchanged since early April. Many did not even wait for their state governor's edict before cloistering themselves.

The dissenters are real and it takes only a small number to undo a whole nation's public health efforts. They may yet multiply to ruinous effect. But their photogenic gatherings fool us that they, not general obedience, has been the story. And it is obedience that, at least in the US, is achieved through mutual social pressure as much as through uniformed agents of state. The lightness of policing in Washington, capital of the world's most militarised democracy, has been scarcely believable.

As the shutdown eases, it is natural to anticipate better days. But in one sense, there is good news already behind us. The shutdown was a test of the social fabric's tensile strength. The cloth is still in one piece. Fiscal support helps, as does fear of infirmity or death. But there are cultural pessimists who would not have predicted such discipline, even with these things.

It turns out that liberalism does not by definition breed egoism and irresolution. A lot of the easy calumnies against it ("We could never fight a war now") appear less certain. And if the "horizontal" bond among citizens is a bit stronger than assumed, so is their "vertical" cord with government. Anti-elitism — the spirit of the age, we thought — is broad but it can also be shallow, or at least selective. The speed with which people deferred to the medical and bureaucratic establishment was telling. The crisis has found nothing more wanting than our cynicism.

Edit: Sort of relatedly - I love this polling. I don't think I've ever seen so little trend - especially over probably the biggest change to people's lives that government's done in our lifetime

[The Larch]

Anti lockdown groups are indeed small, yes, but they're extremely loud and wield an undue influence over decision makers. Yes, society is more resilient that what you'd expect, but malfeasants are insidious and are more than able to erode the measures that have to be taken to manage such a crisis.

[Josquius]

Just what is happening in Russia?
For a long while it seemed they had largely held it off, albeit with some probable shifty cover up business going on, now they're admitting to really high numbers which suggests their actual numbers could be beating the US

[HisMajestyBOB]

Anti lockdown groups are indeed small, yes, but they're extremely loud and wield an undue influence over decision makers. Yes, society is more resilient that what you'd expect, but malfeasants are insidious and are more than able to erode the measures that have to be taken to manage such a crisis.

Especially when one of those groups wields actual power and has no concern for human life.

[Sheilbh]

Public Health England have approved an antibody test developed by Roche - it's not doable at home as pinprick test as it's basically a blood test so it gets taken by a nurse and sent to a lab. But 99.8% accuracy so it can be used for individuals not just surveys.

[DGuller]

Just what is happening in Russia?
For a long while it seemed they had largely held it off, albeit with some probable shifty cover up business going on, now they're admitting to really high numbers which suggests their actual numbers could be beating the US

It's hard to tell because it's hard to trust their numbers, but one possible explanation could be extensive testing.  If you do trust their numbers, and it's a big if, they conducted an enormous amount of tests compared to their confirmed numbers, and their case fatality rate is many times lower than for any other major country.

[The Brain]

I am sorry but Dorsey is not standard Languish. At least I hope not all of you are sockpuppet-operators making up false identities and personalities.

Like Ed himself, his vast army of sockpuppets will return in the hour of our greatest need.

[Josquius]

Public Health England have approved an antibody test developed by Roche - it's not doable at home as pinprick test as it's basically a blood test so it gets taken by a nurse and sent to a lab. But 99.8% accuracy so it can be used for individuals not just surveys.

That 0.2% being false positives or negatives?

Even with such a small flaw in accuracy I can see potential for both to be dangerous depending on the situation

[Sheilbh]

Public Health England have approved an antibody test developed by Roche - it's not doable at home as pinprick test as it's basically a blood test so it gets taken by a nurse and sent to a lab. But 99.8% accuracy so it can be used for individuals not just surveys.

That 0.2% being false positives or negatives?

False positives, I think. So if someone has had it, it's 100% accurate but if someone hasn't had it it's 99.8% accurate.