Read on Twitter
Figured I'd reply to this. Will be brief. Basically, on the mortality point, granted, though I don't know what we do with that besides pursuing different quarantine strategies for old and young. It's clearly just a nasty disease for those with symptoms, even if you don't die. https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1247843274259382272
On the economic stuff, American GDP is heavily concentrated in big, dense cities, with lots of restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. And the evidence has grown that informal social distancing was happening before lockdowns, and that this distancing was very economically destructive.
I find the idea that you can lockdown the country until we "eradicate" the disease preposterous, in part because no Western country has seen anything close to exponential decay. But I don't understand how, if we stopped the lockdowns, we forestall major economic damage.
My whole point is that this economic damage was already happening. And I'd love to see the counterfactual. Sweden? They're definitely experiencing a severe recession, and maybe worse. Will they do better than the US, assuming they don't have another spike (big if)? Maybe?
The UK was allegedly pursuing a herd immunity strategy in mid March (before reversing course), but the evidence I've seen suggests their economy was in a free fall by then. Singapore? The most effective government in the world, authoritarian tracing, and it just re locked down?
If the argument is that there's a more effective (and practical) cocktail of responses, where you still get some economic damage, but you 1) don't get a full blown depression and 2) avoid a huge spike that induces a panic, which then affects the economy, I'm all ears.
One final point: I often disagree with Alex. Sometimes I really think he overstates things (we still don't have good all cause mortality figures for Europe for week 14, for instance). But one area of strong agreement: Many in the press screwed up reporting on the IHME model.
It was, at best, a clunky model for such a dynamic crisis. It claimed, from the very beginning, to incorporate "full social distancing" into its projections. Everyone: learn the purpose of these models or don't discuss them. A couple friends have gone full truther over that model
