One issue that often gets ignored in these discussion is the complete lack of efficacy of the kind of "social distancing" that is happening now. The laughable 6 feet of distance, the 50% reductions in restaurant capacity or the funny direction arrows you see on the floor in supermarkets are completely devoid of any scientific justification. It's a marriage of magical thinking and political safety theatre.
I went skiing today and there is a 30% reduction in lift capacity, enforced to "save lives". This is beyond stupid. Between the burning UV light and the strong wind a virus is about as durable as a fart in a windstorm. And of course, people who feel sick usually don't go skiing and most people who ski are not vulnerable to Covid due to their average young age and good health condition.
In a sane world there would be no "distancing", aside from keeping the sick elderly isolated from the general population.
The way such issues are usually seen, I believe, is by the capacity of the intensive care units in hospitals. All those distancing measures, wearing masks, closing restaurants, large events, etc., the main purpose is to avoid that the hospitals would be overwhelmed. Keeping a phenomenon with exponential potential under control leaves very little options, sadly.
I'm not sure risk is the right lens here. People are not great at evaluating risk and I'm not sure actual risk has been that closely correlated with de-jure and de-facto changes. With vaccines avaialble I think there's a different lens. People will start relaxing their personal precautions once they or their close contacts they are concerned about are vaccinated. And I think societies restrictions will lift ~1 month after the vaccine is generally avaialble to anyone who wants it. It won't matter what the risk looks like at the time (hopefully lower, but with more transmissible and a large refuse to vaccinate group it's possible not as much lower as we'd like). If cases crater before then maybe things relax more earlier, but I expect masking restrictions for ex. to stay around till about then irregardless of actual risk level.
Once the vaccine is generally available I predict the moral onus is going to shift rapidly to personal responsibility from societal accomadation.
I think you underestimate how much social distancing right now is motivated by desire to protect oneself and one's friends and family rather than unspecified vulnerable persons. As people become vaccinated, they will become bolder in engaging in various activities, especially crowded social gatherings. As more and more people do so, such large gatherings will return to being socially acceptable and we will return to normal fairly quickly. Even many non-vaccinated persons may take social cues from vaccinated people and become bolder in their activities.
I think an instructive example is peanut allergies. How many non-allergic persons limit their peanut consumption because someone near them might be allergic to peanuts? At most, someone might do so if specifically asked by someone that is allergic.
The examples you mention in your first paragraph are regulations imposed on businesses, of which people are far more tolerant because they don't see the costs that eventually get imposed on themselves, e.g., in higher prices. People are far less inclined to refrain from "normal" life activities to help unspecified, invisible strangers.
There is a "Do Always Resuscitate". It's called cryonics, you don't even need that much money because you can use life insurance to pay for it. Though you might not buy the claims. I wish you luck if that is your path.
“(There are other subsets where I could actually get into “trouble” for even mentioning that we might consider accommodating them more. As they are besides the point of this post, I won’t mention them here.)” I am reminded that Bryan Caplan recently bet that he would not be “canceled” in the next ten years. If he emulates your intelligent prophylaxis, he is well placed to win this bet.
I would consider the best threshold to somewhere near a point of diminishing returns, but we don't know where that point lies on the spectrum of risk.
Risk has been dropping dramatically as the population accumulates immunity and at some point the reduction in risk with each passing day will become smaller and smaller (like an inverted logistic curve with X = time and Y = risk). To put it another way, the cost (e.g., time spent distancing) per unit of risk reduction will begin to increase significantly at some point on this spectrum. As you say, we may reach this once everyone who wants a vaccine has one and the only people remaining are anti-vaxxers and the small group of people who can't get the vaccine for health reasons, but we don't know exactly where on the spectrum of risk we may begin to see the point of diminishing returns. It might be when the risk is at 30%, 10%, or 3%. For that reason, I don't think it makes sense to choose a threshold between 100% and 0% because we don't know the costs of getting to these points. We might get to 3% by December 2021 or we might never get there. So, I'd say the best time to stop accommodating Covid risk is when we're near that point of diminishing returns.
Another possible strategy is to simply set a "budget" for the costs and let the population adapt to that. For example, if we say "On January 1, 2022 we go back to normal, so make sure you get your vaccine or find some other solution to the Covid thing by then." then people may respond to that in a way that actually causes us to reach that point of diminishing returns sooner than we would otherwise by "steepening" that inverse logistic curve.
Do the risk numbers refer to risk before or after going back to normal? (I am assuming they include risk of being infected).
Anyway, the point may be moot. With spring and vaccinations pushing in the same direction, in the US you may cross multiple thresholds in few weeks (not in few weeks from now, but within few weeks of each other at some point between mid-March and end-June). This would barely give time to make sure that risk has actually gone down by a factor 3 (as opposed to random fluctuations) before it goes down by factor 10. And hopefully, if the vaccine resistance issue is not too bad, next winter risk will never go up to more than 1/10 the current value.
I don’t see how the answer can be other than “ it depends.” The most important unknown factor is the extent to which COVID-19 and its variants will be domesticated by vaccines. If we knew that the answer was “same as the flu,” then I would pick 10-30% (I. e. a few times more damaging than flu).
As we don’t yet know the answer to that question, and will know much more by the time the COVID damage level gets down that low, it’s just premature to answer.
People who get covid don't just recover or die. More people have long lasting problems including diabetes, cardiovascular issues, kidney problems, mental problems, hearing loss, etc. Many of the things normally related to aging are exacerbated or caused by covid for far more people than die of it.
Letting covid run would be a a really ineffective euthanasia scheme, completely counterproductive to solving the aging issues you talk of.
My answer to Robin's tweet is 30% -- it's a bit hard to translate the question of "average risk" to various scenarios, and "back to normal" means something different for each individual than for policy. But if we rewound time to Feb 2020 and you could convince me that a given person's risk was only 30% of what I understood it to be then, I'd say we shouldn't close schools, bars, etc. (but that many people should shift their behavior to reduce their own risk, and additionally, healthy/young people should made moderate changes like avoiding packed crowds and not kissing friends hello etc.)
One issue that often gets ignored in these discussion is the complete lack of efficacy of the kind of "social distancing" that is happening now. The laughable 6 feet of distance, the 50% reductions in restaurant capacity or the funny direction arrows you see on the floor in supermarkets are completely devoid of any scientific justification. It's a marriage of magical thinking and political safety theatre.
I went skiing today and there is a 30% reduction in lift capacity, enforced to "save lives". This is beyond stupid. Between the burning UV light and the strong wind a virus is about as durable as a fart in a windstorm. And of course, people who feel sick usually don't go skiing and most people who ski are not vulnerable to Covid due to their average young age and good health condition.
In a sane world there would be no "distancing", aside from keeping the sick elderly isolated from the general population.
The way such issues are usually seen, I believe, is by the capacity of the intensive care units in hospitals. All those distancing measures, wearing masks, closing restaurants, large events, etc., the main purpose is to avoid that the hospitals would be overwhelmed. Keeping a phenomenon with exponential potential under control leaves very little options, sadly.
I'm not sure risk is the right lens here. People are not great at evaluating risk and I'm not sure actual risk has been that closely correlated with de-jure and de-facto changes. With vaccines avaialble I think there's a different lens. People will start relaxing their personal precautions once they or their close contacts they are concerned about are vaccinated. And I think societies restrictions will lift ~1 month after the vaccine is generally avaialble to anyone who wants it. It won't matter what the risk looks like at the time (hopefully lower, but with more transmissible and a large refuse to vaccinate group it's possible not as much lower as we'd like). If cases crater before then maybe things relax more earlier, but I expect masking restrictions for ex. to stay around till about then irregardless of actual risk level.
Once the vaccine is generally available I predict the moral onus is going to shift rapidly to personal responsibility from societal accomadation.
I think you underestimate how much social distancing right now is motivated by desire to protect oneself and one's friends and family rather than unspecified vulnerable persons. As people become vaccinated, they will become bolder in engaging in various activities, especially crowded social gatherings. As more and more people do so, such large gatherings will return to being socially acceptable and we will return to normal fairly quickly. Even many non-vaccinated persons may take social cues from vaccinated people and become bolder in their activities.
I think an instructive example is peanut allergies. How many non-allergic persons limit their peanut consumption because someone near them might be allergic to peanuts? At most, someone might do so if specifically asked by someone that is allergic.
The examples you mention in your first paragraph are regulations imposed on businesses, of which people are far more tolerant because they don't see the costs that eventually get imposed on themselves, e.g., in higher prices. People are far less inclined to refrain from "normal" life activities to help unspecified, invisible strangers.
Deleted. Not a point anyone wants to read.
There is a "Do Always Resuscitate". It's called cryonics, you don't even need that much money because you can use life insurance to pay for it. Though you might not buy the claims. I wish you luck if that is your path.
Re: grabby aliens (sorry for topic change - shoulda had the AMA :-)
Why should we believe the premise that grabby aliens prevent other alien civilizations from arising inside their sphere of influence?
“(There are other subsets where I could actually get into “trouble” for even mentioning that we might consider accommodating them more. As they are besides the point of this post, I won’t mention them here.)” I am reminded that Bryan Caplan recently bet that he would not be “canceled” in the next ten years. If he emulates your intelligent prophylaxis, he is well placed to win this bet.
I would consider the best threshold to somewhere near a point of diminishing returns, but we don't know where that point lies on the spectrum of risk.
Risk has been dropping dramatically as the population accumulates immunity and at some point the reduction in risk with each passing day will become smaller and smaller (like an inverted logistic curve with X = time and Y = risk). To put it another way, the cost (e.g., time spent distancing) per unit of risk reduction will begin to increase significantly at some point on this spectrum. As you say, we may reach this once everyone who wants a vaccine has one and the only people remaining are anti-vaxxers and the small group of people who can't get the vaccine for health reasons, but we don't know exactly where on the spectrum of risk we may begin to see the point of diminishing returns. It might be when the risk is at 30%, 10%, or 3%. For that reason, I don't think it makes sense to choose a threshold between 100% and 0% because we don't know the costs of getting to these points. We might get to 3% by December 2021 or we might never get there. So, I'd say the best time to stop accommodating Covid risk is when we're near that point of diminishing returns.
Another possible strategy is to simply set a "budget" for the costs and let the population adapt to that. For example, if we say "On January 1, 2022 we go back to normal, so make sure you get your vaccine or find some other solution to the Covid thing by then." then people may respond to that in a way that actually causes us to reach that point of diminishing returns sooner than we would otherwise by "steepening" that inverse logistic curve.
Do the risk numbers refer to risk before or after going back to normal? (I am assuming they include risk of being infected).
Anyway, the point may be moot. With spring and vaccinations pushing in the same direction, in the US you may cross multiple thresholds in few weeks (not in few weeks from now, but within few weeks of each other at some point between mid-March and end-June). This would barely give time to make sure that risk has actually gone down by a factor 3 (as opposed to random fluctuations) before it goes down by factor 10. And hopefully, if the vaccine resistance issue is not too bad, next winter risk will never go up to more than 1/10 the current value.
I don’t see how the answer can be other than “ it depends.” The most important unknown factor is the extent to which COVID-19 and its variants will be domesticated by vaccines. If we knew that the answer was “same as the flu,” then I would pick 10-30% (I. e. a few times more damaging than flu).
As we don’t yet know the answer to that question, and will know much more by the time the COVID damage level gets down that low, it’s just premature to answer.
People who get covid don't just recover or die. More people have long lasting problems including diabetes, cardiovascular issues, kidney problems, mental problems, hearing loss, etc. Many of the things normally related to aging are exacerbated or caused by covid for far more people than die of it.
Letting covid run would be a a really ineffective euthanasia scheme, completely counterproductive to solving the aging issues you talk of.
Deleted. Bad argumentation not a point that needs making
These are insightful points and questions.
My answer to Robin's tweet is 30% -- it's a bit hard to translate the question of "average risk" to various scenarios, and "back to normal" means something different for each individual than for policy. But if we rewound time to Feb 2020 and you could convince me that a given person's risk was only 30% of what I understood it to be then, I'd say we shouldn't close schools, bars, etc. (but that many people should shift their behavior to reduce their own risk, and additionally, healthy/young people should made moderate changes like avoiding packed crowds and not kissing friends hello etc.)