The Lock Down Saves Lives

[Bryce]

Even though almost 1,400 deaths have been attributed to the coronavirus (Covid-19) in the State of Michigan during the month of March, according to The Detroit News, 2,613 fewer Michigander's have died than is average for March, 2020. So, without a pandemic going on, a "Stay At Home" order and overall business shut down would save an average of 4,013 Michigan lives each March. Yet, we don't shut the State down every March. Why?

Living life is chock full of risks. Each of us manages those risks, on a cost to value basis, each day. As parents, we continually mitigate risks for our children. As spouses, we try to help manage risks for our partner.

I know there is a chance that I will be involved in a car accident on my way to work each day. Yet, I drive to work because providing for my family outweighs the risk of being involved in a car crash. When we get on a aircraft, we know there is a chance it will crash and we will be killed. Yet, we do so, either to work, visit a relative or go on a nice vacation. Every year, a number of golfers get struck by lightening. Most golf courses I see look pretty busy under normal circumstances. Hell, people jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

If saving lives is the main objective of this shutdown, we should just stay shut down all the time. Or, can we make smart decisions on how to mitigate the risk of infection for ourselves and our family and let normal life continue?

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Even though almost 1,400 deaths have been attributed to the coronavirus (Covid-19) in the State of Michigan during the month of March, according to The Detroit News, 2,613 fewer Michigander's have died than is average for March, 2020. So, without a pandemic going on, a "Stay At Home" order and overall business shut down would save an average of 4,013 Michigan lives each March. Yet, we don't shut the State down every March. Why?

Living life is chock full of risks. Each of us manages those risks, on a cost to value basis, each day. As parents, we continually mitigate risks for our children. As spouses, we try to help manage risks for our partner.

I know there is a chance that I will be involved in a car accident on my way to work each day. Yet, I drive to work because providing for my family outweighs the risk of being involved in a car crash. When we get on a aircraft, we know there is a chance it will crash and we will be killed. Yet, we do so, either to work, visit a relative or go on a nice vacation. Every year, a number of golfers get struck by lightening. Most golf courses I see look pretty busy under normal circumstances. Hell, people jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

If saving lives is the main objective of this shutdown, we should just stay shut down all the time. Or, can we make smart decisions on how to mitigate the risk of infection for ourselves and our family and let normal life continue?

Not overburdening the healthcare system was the main objective. Saving lives is a side effect. They lit their hair on fire because the influx of patients on top of normal patient loads would have been a disaster especially without distancing.

[bmw]

Not overburdening the healthcare system was the main objective. Saving lives is a side effect.

That's simply not true - at least not in Michigan, according to the exact language in the stay-at-home executive order:

To suppress the spread of COVID-19, to prevent the state’s health care system from being overwhelmed, to allow time for the production of critical test kits, ventilators, and personal protective equipment, and to avoid needless deaths, it is reasonable and necessary to direct residents to remain at home or in their place of residence to the maximum extent feasible

Those are either all co-equal, or if you consider that an ordered list, then suppressing the spread of the virus was the primary objective.

Besides - if preventing the healthcare system from becoming overburdened was the main objective, this order need not have been extended all the way through the end of the month. Is there evidence of a single person that needed a ventilator not having access to one? Dr. Fauci said just two nights ago that to his knowledge, not one single person in the entire US has gone without one that needed one.

[bmw]

To Byrce's point - the reason everything got shut down and remains shut down is because the mainstream media won the narrative - basically, that every human being is as deadly to another human being as if we were all radioactive.

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To Byrce's point - the reason everything got shut down and remains shut down is because the mainstream media won the narrative - basically, that every human being is as deadly to another human being as if we were all radioactive.

When you get the information that it could happen loudly from Peter Navarro in January and nobody pays attention and you insist that the whole thing is no big deal and it won’t effect anything and spend a month and a half (!) not getting out their looking decisive and getting the people prepared for what is likely coming so they do so in a calm and orderly fashion you lose the narrative. That’s squarely on the administration. They fucked that part up. They could have easily controlled it.

We are following the 1918 pandemics playbook very closely. They took many of the same actions we are now including closing down businesses, prohibiting gatherings and closing schools. The government didn’t panic based on a media narrative. They asked epidemiologists how do we slow the spread of this and this is the answer they came back with.

[bmw]

Except that this is much closer in scope to the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu.

The 1918 flu had an actual mortality rate of 2.5%. The 1969 Hong Kong flu was 0.5%. We currently are basing policy on REPORTED case to death ratios as opposed to actual. Interesting to me how policy is sometimes arbitrarily based on modeling (such as the models that showed up to 250k deaths in the US) and other times based just on actual reported data (such as a 2.5% mortality rate). If you did the exact opposite of this, and used actual deaths and modeled mortality rate based on what we think is the actual infection rate, both numbers would be significantly lower.

To this day I stand firmly by my position that the reaction to this was significantly overblown (at least by state governors).

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Except that this is much closer in scope to the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu.

The 1918 flu had an actual mortality rate of 2.5%. The 1969 Hong Kong flu was 0.5%. We currently are basing policy on REPORTED case to death ratios as opposed to actual. Interesting to me how policy is sometimes arbitrarily based on modeling (such as the models that showed up to 250k deaths in the US) and other times based just on actual reported data (such as a 2.5% mortality rate). If you did the exact opposite of this, and used actual deaths and modeled mortality rate based on what we think is the actual infection rate, both numbers would be significantly lower.

To this day I stand firmly by my position that the reaction to this was significantly overblown (at least by state governors).

They have to use worst case scenarios in their calculations... underreacting would be worse than overreacting.

[km1125]

Except that this is much closer in scope to the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu.

The 1918 flu had an actual mortality rate of 2.5%. The 1969 Hong Kong flu was 0.5%. We currently are basing policy on REPORTED case to death ratios as opposed to actual. Interesting to me how policy is sometimes arbitrarily based on modeling (such as the models that showed up to 250k deaths in the US) and other times based just on actual reported data (such as a 2.5% mortality rate). If you did the exact opposite of this, and used actual deaths and modeled mortality rate based on what we think is the actual infection rate, both numbers would be significantly lower.

To this day I stand firmly by my position that the reaction to this was significantly overblown (at least by state governors).

While I agree overall with your perspective, I don't agree that it was all overblown. I think there was a critical need for a shutdown for a short period of time. This would allow the medical community to prepare (free up beds), get the supply chain running (especially for PPE) and get some testing ramped up and give the medical community some time to see what treatments actually work (like they're learning now that ventilators might be more damaging in some situations). That time also allowed a lot of the caretaking to be absorbed by folks - wearing masks and gloves and avoiding unnecessary exposure.

However, now I think we've 'jumped the shark' with (half) Whitmer's last move. Locking down tighter is NOT the solution. I would think a gradual re-opening of the economy is now due. Let any company that operates with limited congregated staff start getting back to work - builders, lawncare, etc