Discussion about this post

User's avatar
RobinHanson's avatar

I made neither of those claims.

Expand full comment
Andrew Luscombe's avatar

Well I read two pages and found too many mistakes to be worth continuing.

South Korea has had numerous restrictions and a provincial "lockdown" to get on top of its peak, and still has some cbusinesses closed by government decree.

It is obvious from the different levels of peaks in different countries that nowhere has the virous burnt itself out, and that restrictions have succeeded in supressing the outbreak in many places.

All countries used testing at and beyond their capacity - many countries testing capacity was just overwhelmed. The countries that started preparing in January did best. If it got to March and you hadn't done huge preparation basically you were stuffed and no test and trace strategy had a hope. It's ridiculous to think that at the end of March you could just choose "lockdown" or "test and trace" and nearly everyone chose wrong.

The public started shutting down prior to governments in most western countries. There was a media fuelled panic, and governments tagged along. The declaration of shutdowns in fact stopped further public shutting down. Most shutdown declarations required most people to keep working, and gave those employees a feeling of protection and confidence to continue which would not have existed otherwise. Business activity in most states stopped decreasing when the lockdowns were declared - nearly all of it happened prior.

Expand full comment
17 more comments...

No posts