Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[LuckyR]

Yeah I think generally the approach was right but was enacted far too slowly. There was a political inertia, often ideologically informed that mean lockdowns would have been more effective if implemented earlier.
Look at the low impacts in New Zealand and Japan compared to the UK - all three Island nations, where isolation was easy.

It's like you haven't looked at the data for two years. Japan's excess death rate was initially much lower than the UK (and Australia for that matter) but has since rocketed and is now almost overtaken the UK. Japan is far more comparable with the UK (than Australia) having similar population densities.

Why are many people so focused with the initial impacts of lock down and not taken the time to look at more recent data and the longer term impacts of covid policies?

Stop playing games and look at the numbers

Deaths per million population

Japan 595
UK 3,389

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

[Lagayascienza]

That's true. We do have to look at excess death rates. But how do we tease out the cause of those excess deaths? And what would the excess death rates have been like if we had not stopped COVID? There would have been not just the deaths from COVID itself, but from the increased morbidity that would have ensued in those who who got sick and recovered and in those who lost family and friends to COVID and the disruption that would have caused to survivor's lives and to the economy?

If we look back in history to the "calamitous 14th Century" when one third to one half of Europe's population was wiped out by plague, we can get an idea the dire economic consequences of a pandemic that, without modern medical science, was allowed to run its natural course.

I don't think we can say that it would have been better not to have had lockdowns and mask mandates. What we can say is that many are alive today who would not have been without the lockdowns and masks, and their deaths, millions of them, would have had far reaching consequences.

[Fried Egg]

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Thanks, that is the indeed the point I've been trying to make. That and the fact that we need to start looking at the bigger picture, looking not only at the the immediate impacts of lockdown policies but the longer term consequences for society.

What I find extraordinary is the mantra still wheeled out: "just following the science". That only even begins to make sense if one believes there is an overwhelming scientific consensus. But as people have said here and elsewhere, the pandemic caught everyone by surprise, no one really knew what to do at first. So how can there possibly have been anything approaching a scientific consensus? But of course there wasn't. There was a social consensus based on a moral group think where "just following the science" was one of their mantras.

Dissenters were then ignored or dismissed out of hand, even if they were fully qualified scientists. What was important was presenting a clear and simple message even if that meant sometimes distorting the facts and outright "white" lies.

We never really considered at the time what the negative consequences of lockdowns might be and even today (with the ongoing enquiries) we are barely touching on this question. There are exceptions though. Such as Professor Mark Woolhouse (a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) who said: "The harms of the social distancing measures – particularly lockdown, the economic harms, the educational harms, the harms to access to healthcare, the harms to societal wellbeing … just the way we all function … mental health – were not included in any of the work that SPI-M-O did and, as far as I could tell, no one else was doing it either." Although Woolhouse told the inquiry that he supported lockdown at the time, with hindsight he questioned whether the measures were entirely necessary, before adding that lockdown was “a failure of public health policy”.

If we look back in history to the "calamitous 14th Century" when one third to one half of Europe's population was wiped out by plague, we can get an idea the dire economic consequences of a pandemic that, without modern medical science, was allowed to run its natural course.

Indeed. And I have often wondered what would have happened had the pandemic occurred only 20 years earlier. Before the ability to work from home had become widespread would it have even have been economically feasible to have lockdowns like we did? I suspect not and we would have had to adopt a more targeted approach.

I don't think we can say that it would have been better not to have had lockdowns and mask mandates.

I think it would be good if more people started even asking the question.

[Sculptor1]

Yeah I think generally the approach was right but was enacted far too slowly. There was a political inertia, often ideologically informed that mean lockdowns would have been more effective if implemented earlier.
Look at the low impacts in New Zealand and Japan compared to the UK - all three Island nations, where isolation was easy.

It's like you haven't looked at the data for two years. Japan's excess death rate was initially much lower than the UK (and Australia for that matter) but has since rocketed and is now almost overtaken the UK. Japan is far more comparable with the UK (than Australia) having similar population densities.

Why are many people so focused with the initial impacts of lock down and not taken the time to look at more recent data and the longer term impacts of covid policies?

Stop playing games and look at the numbers

Deaths per million population

Japan 595
UK 3,389

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Deaths per million population is an accurate method of determining the IMPACT of COVID on the country.
Exces deaths amy reflect a lorge range of other factors. But by all means give us those numbers. If you have a the stats the might represent something better then link them.
But a childish attack it not going to work.

[Pattern-chaser]

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Thanks, that is the indeed the point I've been trying to make. That and the fact that we need to start looking at the bigger picture, looking not only at the the immediate impacts of lockdown policies but the longer term consequences for society.

What I find extraordinary is the mantra still wheeled out: "just following the science". That only even begins to make sense if one believes there is an overwhelming scientific consensus. But as people have said here and elsewhere, the pandemic caught everyone by surprise, no one really knew what to do at first. So how can there possibly have been anything approaching a scientific consensus? But of course there wasn't. There was a social consensus based on a moral group think where "just following the science" was one of their mantras.

Dissenters were then ignored or dismissed out of hand, even if they were fully qualified scientists. What was important was presenting a clear and simple message even if that meant sometimes distorting the facts and outright "white" lies.

I would add this comment. At the start, when we had no information at all that was specific to COVID19, the scientists were still in a better position to advise than anyone else. They had some knowledge of previous epidemics and pandemics, and were able to make educated guesses as to what might help. Later, as data was collected and analysed, they were able to formulate better advice and strategies.

As a result of their advice, doctors started to get the sort of filth on social media that is normally reserved for women or people of colour! Death threats became the order of the day. One doctor (at least) in the UK received a serious death threat, and I think there may actually have been an arrest in that case. I don't remember accurately.

And there is one prominent issue that has not yet been aired in this topic. At the start, when people were scared, and our government were desperate to reassure us that they were in control of the situation*, they ejected many old people from hospital beds, so that they could show to the press pictures of empty beds, awaiting your loved ones if they were unfortunate enough to catch COVID19. Those ejected people, even those of them who had *already tested positive* for COVID19, were sent out to care homes, to seed these sanctuaries of vulnerable old folk with a deadly disease. Even now, there is no talk of charging our senior politicians with murder or manslaughter. They killed as many as 30,000 (?) old people this way, and quite a few care-home carers too.

This was done against the screams of "No!" from our medical experts, doctors, and nurses. They knew what would happen, and they told the politicians so. But the politicians, or murderers, as we might call them, ignored this advice, all for a photo-opportunity.



* — they weren't!

[Pattern-chaser]

Later on came the vaccines, and with them, the anti-vaxxers and Libertarians squealing "coercion", in the face of 10,000s of deaths... It was a time when the people of the *world* needed to co-operate, in the face of a serious and deadly pandemic!

We were very lucky it was COVID19 that spread to become a pandemic, as the kill-rate was only about 1 in 1000. A previous SARS epidemic, a few years before, was contained. But its kill-rate was 1 in 100, or even 1 in 10! At worst, if the "1 in 10" is not too much of an exaggeration, 800,000,000 humans could have died. More than twice the population of the USA. A sobering thought...

[Fried Egg]

Deaths per million population is an accurate method of determining the IMPACT of COVID on the country.
Exces deaths amy reflect a lorge range of other factors.

My whole argument here is that we are often not considering the collateral damage that lockdowns can cause. Therefore if one is myopically focused only on deaths attributed to covid itself, one is never going to see the bigger picture. That is why I prefer to look at the excess mortality rates and especially over a long period of time because I believe that many of the consequences of lockdowns are not felt immediately, certainly not in terms of deaths. If I don't get diagnosed with a tumour today I'm not necessarily going to die tomorrow but chances are I will die years sooner than I might otherwise. My contention is that, in the UK, many people didn't get conditions diagnosed and treated during the height of the pandemic as they were deterred from using it's services. Lockdowns might well have spared some lives in the short terms but at what cost? That is the question.

I'm not able to post links on this forum but I got my data about the excess death rate comparison between UK and Japan from the ourworldindata[dot]org website. I looked up the "Excess mortality: Cumulative deaths from all causes compared to projection based on previous years" dataset in which you can compare any number of countries from the beginning of the pandemic until now.

Ultimately though, I don't really know much about Japan's covid handling policies. I only brought up comparison with Japan as you mentioned their figures were so much better than ours (and it's not that much better when you look at the cumulative excess death rates).

At the start, when we had no information at all that was specific to COVID19, the scientists were still in a better position to advise than anyone else. They had some knowledge of previous epidemics and pandemics, and were able to make educated guesses as to what might help. Later, as data was collected and analysed, they were able to formulate better advice and strategies.

I'm not criticising science or scientists in general, only pointing out that there was no clear scientific consensus as was claimed by many at the time.

And there is one prominent issue that has not yet been aired in this topic. At the start, when people were scared, and our government were desperate to reassure us that they were in control of the situation*, they ejected many old people from hospital beds, so that they could show to the press pictures of empty beds, awaiting your loved ones if they were unfortunate enough to catch COVID19. Those ejected people, even those of them who had *already tested positive* for COVID19, were sent out to care homes, to seed these sanctuaries of vulnerable old folk with a deadly disease. Even now, there is no talk of charging our senior politicians with murder or manslaughter. They killed as many as 30,000 (?) old people this way, and quite a few care-home carers too.

Yes, I know. A tragedy that we had full lock down measures and yet still failed to protect the most vulnerable (for reasons you state above).

Later on came the vaccines, and with them, the anti-vaxxers and Libertarians squealing "coercion", in the face of 10,000s of deaths... It was a time when the people of the *world* needed to co-operate, in the face of a serious and deadly pandemic!

You refer to the vaccine mandates? Fortunately we pretty much avoided those almost completely (except for hospital staff I believe?). I don't believe there was any justification for those given how ineffective the vaccines were at actually stopping you catching it (and spreading it). I'm not an anti-vaxxer (I had my three doses) and do think they seem to make the effects of getting milder so I'm not saying that I think they were not advisable. I just don't think there was any justification for making them mandatory.

[Lagayascienza]

That's like saying there is no justification in isolating those carrying any disease no matter how contagious and deadly. Isolation is the most effective way of containing any deadly and highly contagious disease and so isolation is justified. Especially until effective vaccines become available. And vaccines are only effective at containing contagion if nearly everyone takes them. The loony libertarians and anti-vaxers are just selfish hedonists.

[Pattern-chaser]

I don't believe there was any justification for those given how ineffective the vaccines were at actually stopping you catching it (and spreading it).

Vaccines reduced the risk of death-by-COVID by 40–70%, depending on the number of doses, the vaccine type, and other stuff.

Protection "against infection and onward transmission" was between 30% and 70%, again depending on doses, and so on.

This is not perfection, by a long way, but it seems to offer a worthwhile level of protection. I think you dismiss these vaccines too easily. They were developed in a helluva hurry, and their effectiveness (such as it is) is a proud testament to the anonymous scientists who created them.

But more cynically, I wonder how much Big Pharma made out of selling them?

[Fried Egg]

That's like saying there is no justification in isolating those carrying any disease no matter how contagious and deadly. Isolation is the most effective way of containing any deadly and highly contagious disease and so isolation is justified. Especially until effective vaccines become available. And vaccines are only effective at containing contagion if nearly everyone takes them.

Isolating someone you know to be infected is a different matter. For much of the pandemic one had to produce a negative test before one could travel for instance. That's quite different from mandating the vaccine.

For one thing the vaccines in the case of covid were not effective at containing the contagion and this had nothing to do with how many people had had them. This was largely because the virus kept mutating and the vaccines were always well behind and playing catch up. At any given time, people were receiving a vaccine targeting a previous (and no longer dominant) strain. Again, that is not to say there was no benefit in taking them, I believe they may help reduce the severity of the symptoms when you do catch it (which for the most vulnerable could be life saving).

The problem with mandatory vaccines for covid are these:

• Most young and healthy people simply don't need to be vaccinated for what is largely going to be a mild illness if they do catch it.
• It is no entirely without risk. Some people have suffered bad side effects (such as Myocarditis).
• The benefits of vaccinations don't last very and in many ways actually catching covid is more effective than another dose of the vaccine (although this doesn't count for some reason?)

The loony libertarians and anti-vaxers are just selfish hedonists.

There's no need for name calling. I'm not going to call those embracing these restrictions power grabbing authoritarians.

I think you dismiss these vaccines too easily.

I'm not dismissing vaccines. I'm dismissing vaccine mandates.

[Lagayascienza]

The average person has to trust the science. There is nothing else. Except perhaps for witch-doctors and conspiracy theorists. If everyone had listened to the conspiracy theorists, loony libertarians and anti-vaxers on social media and ignored the lockdowns and mask mandates, the death toll would have been very much worse than it was in my country.

7,010,681 people have died of COVID worldwide. Of the 704,753,890 cases globally, 675,619,811 have recovered, in large part due to vaccines which have been proved to greatly limit the morbidity and mortality associated with the disease. Without them the death toll would likely have been in the many tens of millions.

I'm proud of the fact that most people in my country had the good sense to listen to the scientists and that we were able to keep the death rate to a very low 937 per million. It is very likely that I, or some my old friends and family, would now be dead if most of my countrymen and women had not taken the science seriously.

Yes, in retrospect, it is possible to pick holes in the details, but there is no doubt that science saved many millions from this disease. There will undoubtedly be similar challenges in the future and the best we'll be able to do is go with the science. Science isn't perfect. It will always be a work in progress, but its trajectory is upwards. And it is the only protection we have against the next pandemic.

[Pattern-chaser]

I don't believe there was any justification for those given how ineffective the vaccines were at actually stopping you catching it (and spreading it).

I think you dismiss these vaccines too easily.

I'm not dismissing vaccines. I'm dismissing vaccine mandates.

It didn't seem so from your words, above. Sorry if I misunderstood.

[LuckyR]

It's like you haven't looked at the data for two years. Japan's excess death rate was initially much lower than the UK (and Australia for that matter) but has since rocketed and is now almost overtaken the UK. Japan is far more comparable with the UK (than Australia) having similar population densities.

Why are many people so focused with the initial impacts of lock down and not taken the time to look at more recent data and the longer term impacts of covid policies?

Stop playing games and look at the numbers

Deaths per million population

Japan 595
UK 3,389

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Deaths per million population is an accurate method of determining the IMPACT of COVID on the country.
Exces deaths amy reflect a lorge range of other factors. But by all means give us those numbers. If you have a the stats the might represent something better then link them.
But a childish attack it not going to work.

Okay I guess you don't understand the point. Which is fine, there's plenty of factoids I don't know about either, but not acknowledging is "childish". Look it up and learn something.

[LuckyR]

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Thanks, that is the indeed the point I've been trying to make. That and the fact that we need to start looking at the bigger picture, looking not only at the the immediate impacts of lockdown policies but the longer term consequences for society.

What I find extraordinary is the mantra still wheeled out: "just following the science". That only even begins to make sense if one believes there is an overwhelming scientific consensus. But as people have said here and elsewhere, the pandemic caught everyone by surprise, no one really knew what to do at first. So how can there possibly have been anything approaching a scientific consensus? But of course there wasn't. There was a social consensus based on a moral group think where "just following the science" was one of their mantras.

Dissenters were then ignored or dismissed out of hand, even if they were fully qualified scientists. What was important was presenting a clear and simple message even if that meant sometimes distorting the facts and outright "white" lies.

We never really considered at the time what the negative consequences of lockdowns might be and even today (with the ongoing enquiries) we are barely touching on this question. There are exceptions though. Such as Professor Mark Woolhouse (a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) who said: "The harms of the social distancing measures – particularly lockdown, the economic harms, the educational harms, the harms to access to healthcare, the harms to societal wellbeing … just the way we all function … mental health – were not included in any of the work that SPI-M-O did and, as far as I could tell, no one else was doing it either." Although Woolhouse told the inquiry that he supported lockdown at the time, with hindsight he questioned whether the measures were entirely necessary, before adding that lockdown was “a failure of public health policy”.

If we look back in history to the "calamitous 14th Century" when one third to one half of Europe's population was wiped out by plague, we can get an idea the dire economic consequences of a pandemic that, without modern medical science, was allowed to run its natural course.

Indeed. And I have often wondered what would have happened had the pandemic occurred only 20 years earlier. Before the ability to work from home had become widespread would it have even have been economically feasible to have lockdowns like we did? I suspect not and we would have had to adopt a more targeted approach.

I don't think we can say that it would have been better not to have had lockdowns and mask mandates.

I think it would be good if more people started even asking the question.

Following the science is perfectly fine for fulfilling the first step of what should have been a two step process. True, there were a variety of opinions in the scientific community and true there was a lack of specific experience. But there's a reason public health people are expert at public health (not virology, epidemiology etc). It's not like the discenting opinions didn't also suffer from a lack of specific experience.

Once the scientific opinion on the optimal plan (acknowledging the amount of educated guesswork baked into it) without taking into account educational, economic and other social factors, then the second step of balancing the scientific view with other perspectives should have occurred to arrive at a final plan (that may differ from purely "following the science").

[Sculptor1]

Stop playing games and look at the numbers

Deaths per million population

Japan 595
UK 3,389

"look at the numbers?", seriously? You do understand that when comparing different countries, with different systems, excess death numbers are far more accurate than COVID death numbers, right?

Deaths per million population is an accurate method of determining the IMPACT of COVID on the country.
Exces deaths amy reflect a large range of other factors. But by all means give us those numbers. If you have a the stats the might represent something better then link them.
But a childish attack it not going to work.

Okay I guess you don't understand the point. Which is fine, there's plenty of factoids I don't know about either, but not acknowledging is "childish". Look it up and learn something.

I was answering a claim that Japan had dealt with COVID worse than UK.
What do you not understand about THAT?
I aksed you for an alternative way to assess this claiim. You have not come up with the goods.
Until you do run along and do not be childish.

If this was not a moderated forum I might say something stronger than put up or shut up.
But it seems clear that once again you have nothing to offer here.