[HN Gopher] Pandemic policies must be evaluated on all costs and...
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       Pandemic policies must be evaluated on all costs and benefits, not
       only Covid-19
        
       Author : mrfusion
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2021-06-24 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (collateralglobal.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (collateralglobal.org)
        
       | morsch wrote:
       | _School closures have had virtually no benefits and significant,
       | though largely unmeasured, costs._
       | 
       | I don't know if there being no benefit is the consensus in other
       | places, but it's not the consensus where I live. Yes, the risk to
       | healthy kids themselves is small though non-zero, but kids a) do
       | get the disease and b) are roughly as infectious as adults,
       | especially particularly older kids.
       | 
       |  _Still, many leaders have embraced Zero-COVID-19 policies going
       | forward, advising against resumption of normal activities even
       | after widespread immunity._
       | 
       | Really? Which leaders? Haven't almost all countries affected by
       | Covid reopened most of the way before the number of new
       | infections reached zero? I don't think zero covid had any impact
       | beyond being a talking piece. And how does widespread immunity
       | figure in? Zero covid (and "no covid", another different but
       | related proposal which they conflate) came up in Dec 2020/Jan
       | 2021, when no place on Earth had anything like widespread
       | immunity even in sight.
       | 
       |  _Some economists initially believed that shelter-in-place orders
       | would save lives and benefit the economy._
       | 
       | I doubt very many economists believed that NPIs in and of
       | themselves benefit the economy. But the damage to the economy
       | from a pandemic that rages uncontrolled is also massive. That
       | said they refer specifically to shelter in place mandates, which
       | is an extreme measures that we here mostly avoided apart from a
       | few weeks of nightly curfew out of months of NPIs.
        
         | gwoplock wrote:
         | > Really? Which leaders? Haven't almost all countries affected
         | by Covid reopened most of the way before the number of new
         | infections reached zero? I don't think zero covid had any
         | impact beyond being a talking piece. And how does widespread
         | immunity figure in? Zero covid (and "no covid", another
         | different but related proposal which they conflate) came up in
         | Dec 2020/Jan 2021, when no place on Earth had anything like
         | widespread immunity even in sight.
         | 
         | I believe Australia is taking this approach.
        
           | dbetteridge wrote:
           | Federally and in NSW the official policy is doing 'active
           | suppression' aka use contact tracing and lockdowns to control
           | the disease and if it is eliminated then that's ideal, the
           | other states are zero COVID to the point of locking down over
           | single digit cases (unlinked) at least till vaccinations
           | reach a high enough level.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-24 23:02 UTC)