Coronavirus Outbreak

[TigerTone]

I'm in the St George area.
The hair-dresser/baber shop was in Canterbury - Clemton park.
Was meant to be in the medical centre but not sure it would've coped with all the people. So i'm assuming that's why they moved it to the shop around the corner.

 

[Mighty_Tiger]

or example, do you believe that lockdowns stop deaths from mental health issues? Do lockdowns stop deaths from domestic violence? Do lockdowns prevent deaths from reducing the number of people getting their skin checked for melanoma? What are the long-term issues from locking down schools? Would we expect children from affluent families having better long-term health outcomes then children from less affluent families?

I just want to clarify this discussion firstly. It's an opinion piece. I completely understand your point here. My only point is that these factors cannot be measured accurately. So we aren't going to get a factual point 5.6 is the correct amount to lockdown and 7.8 is too strict.

My take is that lockdowns suck for society and they cost more and more the longer and more frequently they go on. So the more you use them the more they cost. I think society will therefore accept lockdowns less and less over time.

You then balance that against how dangerous COVID is, how infectious it is and the costs to the health care system compared to the costs you are talking about.

At the end of the day it's a subjective decision. I think the new variant is going to be hard to contain and it's going to get out regularly. I think lockdowns are going to start to be less effective and cost more and more.

So people are going to want less and less restrictions going forward.

Interesting view. Places which have been locked down move towards them faster over time for shorter periods to prevent long term pain. More people adhere over revolt. Reality is lockdowns will happen consistently in areas willing to apply them. Look at VIC they reacted same say and its locked and loaded, in 7 days they will be let lose whilst Sydney will remain locked down potentially till the end of the year. People know if they take the short term hit despite hating it’s a heap better than the alternative which they will never win.

Gladys says x amount must be vaccinated but what many fail to realize is you need both shots which is impossible to hit in 3 weeks let alone 8-12 weeks. Contact tracing is stuffed for nsw with 30-50 cases daily unknown & 30-50% infectious at 1 point daily. Despite that they still think school hubs etc will work.

 

[Radoush]

or example, do you believe that lockdowns stop deaths from mental health issues? Do lockdowns stop deaths from domestic violence? Do lockdowns prevent deaths from reducing the number of people getting their skin checked for melanoma? What are the long-term issues from locking down schools? Would we expect children from affluent families having better long-term health outcomes then children from less affluent families?

I just want to clarify this discussion firstly. It's an opinion piece. I completely understand your point here. My only point is that these factors cannot be measured accurately. So we aren't going to get a factual point 5.6 is the correct amount to lockdown and 7.8 is too strict.

My take is that lockdowns suck for society and they cost more and more the longer and more frequently they go on. So the more you use them the more they cost. I think society will therefore accept lockdowns less and less over time.

You then balance that against how dangerous COVID is, how infectious it is and the costs to the health care system compared to the costs you are talking about.

At the end of the day it's a subjective decision. I think the new variant is going to be hard to contain and it's going to get out regularly. I think lockdowns are going to start to be less effective and cost more and more.

So people are going to want less and less restrictions going forward.


Interesting view. Places which have been locked down move towards them faster over time for shorter periods to prevent long term pain. More people adhere over revolt. Reality is lockdowns will happen consistently in areas willing to apply them. Look at VIC they reacted same say and its locked and loaded, in 7 days they will be let lose whilst Sydney will remain locked down potentially till the end of the year. People know if they take the short term hit despite hating it’s a heap better than the alternative which they will never win.

Gladys says x amount must be vaccinated but what many fail to realize is you need both shots which is impossible to hit in 3 weeks let alone 8-12 weeks. Contact tracing is stuffed for nsw with 30-50 cases daily unknown & 30-50% infectious at 1 point daily. Despite that they still think school hubs etc will work.

Mate do you think those close contact drive thru testing sites mite be the problem thousands aday going there easy to past it around

 

[Merlot]

ozstrailians wouldnt revolt if their mothers were dragged out onto the streets

 

[Mighty_Tiger]

or example, do you believe that lockdowns stop deaths from mental health issues? Do lockdowns stop deaths from domestic violence? Do lockdowns prevent deaths from reducing the number of people getting their skin checked for melanoma? What are the long-term issues from locking down schools? Would we expect children from affluent families having better long-term health outcomes then children from less affluent families?

I just want to clarify this discussion firstly. It's an opinion piece. I completely understand your point here. My only point is that these factors cannot be measured accurately. So we aren't going to get a factual point 5.6 is the correct amount to lockdown and 7.8 is too strict.

My take is that lockdowns suck for society and they cost more and more the longer and more frequently they go on. So the more you use them the more they cost. I think society will therefore accept lockdowns less and less over time.

You then balance that against how dangerous COVID is, how infectious it is and the costs to the health care system compared to the costs you are talking about.

At the end of the day it's a subjective decision. I think the new variant is going to be hard to contain and it's going to get out regularly. I think lockdowns are going to start to be less effective and cost more and more.

So people are going to want less and less restrictions going forward.


Interesting view. Places which have been locked down move towards them faster over time for shorter periods to prevent long term pain. More people adhere over revolt. Reality is lockdowns will happen consistently in areas willing to apply them. Look at VIC they reacted same say and its locked and loaded, in 7 days they will be let lose whilst Sydney will remain locked down potentially till the end of the year. People know if they take the short term hit despite hating it’s a heap better than the alternative which they will never win.

Gladys says x amount must be vaccinated but what many fail to realize is you need both shots which is impossible to hit in 3 weeks let alone 8-12 weeks. Contact tracing is stuffed for nsw with 30-50 cases daily unknown & 30-50% infectious at 1 point daily. Despite that they still think school hubs etc will work.


Mate do you think those close contact drive thru testing sites mite be the problem thousands aday going there easy to past it around

Not if they are setup correctly.
People should be staying in their car and not leaving them. Whole purpose of it being drivethru. The nurses performing the testing are well protected. The marshals are also protected. The cars have distance between windows etc as well.

 

[mike]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession actually saved lives

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession saved lives?

If that was the health advice from the health professionals, but it’s not.

All Foster had done is built a conformation bias model that gives the outcome Foster wants. Foster has not tried to think outside the box. Foster is an economist, that’s the only tool available to Foster.

Fortunately those in charge also listen, for the most part, to health advice from health professionals.

 

[Tiger Beach]

It is a well known psychological tactic to create heroes to influence the behaviour of others

At first it was the front line health professionals and it largely still is unless they want to resist the jab or express an alternate view to the prevailing narrative, then they quickly become zeroes

Those getting jabbed are feted as heroes also, you see it all the time in this very forum - “doing my bit for Australia”, “proud of my son/daughter”, “well done mate”. There are whole ad campaigns built on this, celebrities push it in the same manner, so do most large corporations

The question is why? One possibility is that they genuinely fear the virus and are concerned for their fellow humans’ health. That could be so but celebrities are among the most self centred individuals in society and major corporations are rarely concerned with the average Joe except for appearances sake. For example, consider Woolworths, they sell cigarettes, alcohol and own hotels that inflict misery on families with gambling addiction issues. Yet they express a concern which at best is disingenuous, at worst manipulative

I post this not for those committed to the very well crafted narrative that is corona, nor for the vaxxed who have made their (hopefully well considered) choice

I don’t seek to tell anyone what to do, it’s their choice. I do encourage everyone to choose wisely after they have extensively weighed up the pros and cons and considered various opposing views on the matter

Don’t just do it to avoid not fitting in or because Scotty Cam told you to

 

[mike]

It is a well known psychological tactic to create heroes to influence the behaviour of others

At first it was the front line health professionals and it largely still is unless they want to resist the jab or express an alternate view to the prevailing narrative, then they quickly become zeroes

Those getting jabbed are feted as heroes also, you see it all the time in this very forum - “doing my bit for Australia”, “proud of my son/daughter”, “well done mate”. There are whole ad campaigns built on this, celebrities push it in the same manner, so do most large corporations

The question is why? One possibility is that they genuinely fear the virus and are concerned for their fellow humans’ health. That could be so but celebrities are among the most self centred individuals in society and major corporations are rarely concerned with the average Joe except for appearances sake. For example, consider Woolworths, they sell cigarettes, alcohol and own hotels that inflict misery on families with gambling addiction issues. Yet they express a concern which at best is disingenuous, at worst manipulative

I post this not for those committed to the very well crafted narrative that is corona, nor for the vaxxed who have made their (hopefully well considered) choice

I don’t seek to tell anyone what to do, it’s their choice. I do encourage everyone to choose wisely after they have extensively weighed up the pros and cons and considered various opposing views on the matter

Don’t just do it to avoid not fitting in or because Scotty Cam told you to

Talk to your doctor, they will give you the best advice for you.

 

[Furious1]

At the end of the day i don't see it any different to smokers. They are banned from areas to protect the majority and i think people who haven't been vaccinated will end up the same. Social outcasts.

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

Just had my 1st pfizzer vax ..
All good

Glad to hear all is good. ?

Gave me the munchies if anything

That wouldn't have had anything to do with the half dozen tunes you played on the Orchy sax beforehand would it?

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

It is a well known psychological tactic to create heroes to influence the behaviour of others

At first it was the front line health professionals and it largely still is unless they want to resist the jab or express an alternate view to the prevailing narrative, then they quickly become zeroes

Those getting jabbed are feted as heroes also, you see it all the time in this very forum - “doing my bit for Australia”, “proud of my son/daughter”, “well done mate”. There are whole ad campaigns built on this, celebrities push it in the same manner, so do most large corporations

The question is why? One possibility is that they genuinely fear the virus and are concerned for their fellow humans’ health. That could be so but celebrities are among the most self centred individuals in society and major corporations are rarely concerned with the average Joe except for appearances sake. For example, consider Woolworths, they sell cigarettes, alcohol and own hotels that inflict misery on families with gambling addiction issues. Yet they express a concern which at best is disingenuous, at worst manipulative

I post this not for those committed to the very well crafted narrative that is corona, nor for the vaxxed who have made their (hopefully well considered) choice

I don’t seek to tell anyone what to do, it’s their choice. I do encourage everyone to choose wisely after they have extensively weighed up the pros and cons and considered various opposing views on the matter

Don’t just do it to avoid not fitting in or because Scotty Cam told you to

If you're doing anything because Scott Cam told you to, Coronavirus is least of your worries.

 

[mrem]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession actually saved lives

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession saved lives?

If that was the health advice from the health professionals, but it’s not.

All Foster had done is built a conformation bias model that gives the outcome Foster wants. Foster has not tried to think outside the box. Foster is an economist, that’s the only tool available to Foster.

Fortunately those in charge also listen, for the most part, to health advice from health professionals.

In regards to the relationship between recessions and health outcomes you could consider
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12889-016-2720-y.pdf
http://rricketts.ba.ttu.edu/sullivan_vonwachter_job%20displacement%20and%20mortality_qje.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12230
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880023/?utm_source=fbia
https://businesslaw.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/09/129339-AJLE-Vol-23-No-2-2020-2527-FINAL.pdf

for a paradox consider
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Ruhm_Are_2000.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mateusz-Filipski/publication/46554066_Why_Are_Recessions_Good_for_Your_Health/links/02e7e527b3d08da938000000/Why-Are-Recessions-Good-for-Your-Health.pdf


For a more rounded discussion you should also read the references in each paper.

The links I provided are mostly highly cited studies. Of course I have not posted the entirety of the research. I believe from the balance of evidence that recessions have a negative impact on health outcomes. I would be interested to know why you don't believe there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes.

Simply focussing on daily Covid numbers as a gauge of policy effectiveness is incredibly myopic and dangerous. I am hoping we can have a more holistic discussion, which is why I provided the link originally. I am more than happy to read any well thought out research in this area. I must stress however, this is not a discussion of lockdowns vs no lockdowns, but rather a discussion on mitigation vs elimination.

I would also be interested in the methods that Foster has used that you believe lead to spurious results and what methods she should have used instead? Particularly the methods from this paper
https://clubtroppo.com.au/files/2021/04/THE-COSTS-AND-BENEFITS-OF-A-COVID-LOCKDOWN-6.pdf

 

[hobbo1]

Just had my 1st pfizzer vax ..
All good

Glad to hear all is good. ?

Gave me the munchies if anything

That wouldn't have had anything to do with the half dozen tunes you played on the Orchy sax beforehand would it?

That was 25 years ago .. ahh the memories!

 

[earl]

Gladys says x amount must be vaccinated but what many fail to realize is you need both shots which is impossible to hit in 3 weeks let alone 8-12 weeks. Contact tracing is stuffed for nsw with 30-50 cases daily unknown & 30-50% infectious at 1 point daily. Despite that they still think school hubs etc will work.

I stated my opinion on lockdowns was subjective. It's not factual. It's a subjective assessment of human behavior. I don't expect anyone to agree with my subjective opinion.

Your point above is spot on. This is a disaster that may get significantly worse especially if they try and relax the lockdown.

You have to get vaccinated but the reality is you have to be fully vaccinated and give it a couple of weeks past the last vaccine.

I don't know what the NSW govt is going to do but there are going to be increasing deaths as COVID spreads. The delta variant is about twice as infectious.

I should add that one dose does provide additional protection but this strain is much more contagious so if you think one dose means you are safe it isn't true.

 

[earl]

All Foster had done is built a conformation bias model that gives the outcome Foster wants.

Yep. Please don't go and look for proof to back up your opinion. You have to look at the facts of the issue and go from there.

That report was nonsense and that is why no one cares about it. It's dribble.

 

[earl]

It is a well known psychological tactic to create heroes to influence the behaviour of others

At first it was the front line health professionals and it largely still is unless they want to resist the jab or express an alternate view to the prevailing narrative, then they quickly become zeroes

Those getting jabbed are feted as heroes also, you see it all the time in this very forum - “doing my bit for Australia”, “proud of my son/daughter”, “well done mate”. There are whole ad campaigns built on this, celebrities push it in the same manner, so do most large corporations

The question is why? One possibility is that they genuinely fear the virus and are concerned for their fellow humans’ health. That could be so but celebrities are among the most self centred individuals in society and major corporations are rarely concerned with the average Joe except for appearances sake. For example, consider Woolworths, they sell cigarettes, alcohol and own hotels that inflict misery on families with gambling addiction issues. Yet they express a concern which at best is disingenuous, at worst manipulative

I post this not for those committed to the very well crafted narrative that is corona, nor for the vaxxed who have made their (hopefully well considered) choice

I don’t seek to tell anyone what to do, it’s their choice. I do encourage everyone to choose wisely after they have extensively weighed up the pros and cons and considered various opposing views on the matter

Don’t just do it to avoid not fitting in or because Scotty Cam told you to

Talk to your doctor, they will give you the best advice for you.

Please do not listen to the fools. Go and visit your GP.

The facts are the facts. There is no point arguing about the facts.

I guarantee there are more deaths coming for the unvaccinated. Do not let them lie and tell you that people are dying of heart attacks and not COVID. COVID is killing them.

Their hearts give up from the stress that COVID is putting them under. It's that bad. It ain't a joke. It doesn't care about your silly political ideas. It will kill heaps of people. It will make heaps of people extremely sick.

 

[TillLindemann]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession actually saved lives

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession saved lives?

If that was the health advice from the health professionals, but it’s not.

All Foster had done is built a conformation bias model that gives the outcome Foster wants. Foster has not tried to think outside the box. Foster is an economist, that’s the only tool available to Foster.

Fortunately those in charge also listen, for the most part, to health advice from health professionals.

In regards to the relationship between recessions and health outcomes you could consider
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12889-016-2720-y.pdf
http://rricketts.ba.ttu.edu/sullivan_vonwachter_job%20displacement%20and%20mortality_qje.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12230
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880023/?utm_source=fbia
https://businesslaw.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/09/129339-AJLE-Vol-23-No-2-2020-2527-FINAL.pdf

for a paradox consider
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Ruhm_Are_2000.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mateusz-Filipski/publication/46554066_Why_Are_Recessions_Good_for_Your_Health/links/02e7e527b3d08da938000000/Why-Are-Recessions-Good-for-Your-Health.pdf


For a more rounded discussion you should also read the references in each paper.

The links I provided are mostly highly cited studies. Of course I have not posted the entirety of the research. I believe from the balance of evidence that recessions have a negative impact on health outcomes. I would be interested to know why you don't believe there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes.

Simply focussing on daily Covid numbers as a gauge of policy effectiveness is incredibly myopic and dangerous. I am hoping we can have a more holistic discussion, which is why I provided the link originally. I am more than happy to read any well thought out research in this area. I must stress however, this is not a discussion of lockdowns vs no lockdowns, but rather a discussion on mitigation vs elimination.

I would also be interested in the methods that Foster has used that you believe lead to spurious results and what methods she should have used instead? Particularly the methods from this paper
https://clubtroppo.com.au/files/2021/04/THE-COSTS-AND-BENEFITS-OF-A-COVID-LOCKDOWN-6.pdf

You are presenting a false choice between health and the economy.

Of course, in a vacuum, a recession would have worse health outcomes for many people than a booming economy.

But every single country than has gone soft on covid has had bad economic outcomes as well. i.e. in trying to put the economy ahead of health, you end up with a trashed health system AND a trashed economy.

 

[mike]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession actually saved lives

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

Wow, a pretty aggressive response here. I'll do my best to respond to the questions.

1. How do you define better? Is it simply number of deaths due to Covid? If that was the only metric, the optimal policy response would, at the beginning of the crisis, weld everyone's door shut and only let people out when the virus has been totally eradicated. As this didn't happen, one could suggest metrics other than Covid deaths should be included to determine 'better'. The report I attached was looking at metrics other than Covid deaths to determine optimal policy response. That is why I welcomed it into the discussion.

You talk about intellectual dishonesty, I would suggest that basing arguments on univariate correlations for an undoubtedly multivariate problem could also be classified as intellectually dishonest. These figures you show are only Covid deaths and they do not take into account population density, the number of positive cases within a community before Covid was known, structure of the health system, general health of the population, deaths from non-covid reasons etc. The figures you provide above tell me very little about the success of lockdowns.

I should also stress the report does not propose no lockdowns, but rather tries to estimate the differences between mitigation vs. elimination strategies.

2. This is the bio of the author. I'll let you judge her research credentials. Note, Quantitative Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are A* journals which are the highest ranked journals as judged by the Australian Business Deans Council. As to her biases, I can't answer that.


Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having joined UNSW in 2009 after six years at the University of South Australia. Formally educated at Yale University (BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics) and the University of Maryland (PhD in Economics), she works in diverse fields including education, social influence, corruption, lab experiments, time use, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Her research contributions regularly inform public debates and appear in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets (e.g., Quantitative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Journal of Economic Psychology, Human Relations). Her teaching, featuring strategic innovation and integration with research, was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, Professor Foster has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community. As one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, her regular media appearances include co-hosting The Economists, a national economics talk-radio program and podcast series premiered in 2018, with Peter Martin AM on ABC Radio National.

Foster has been pushing this view since day 1 of the Pandemic, around March 2019. It’s changed slightly and Foster has accepted lockdowns as long as they are targeted but that wasn’t always the case.

I’ll say what I said then, I would never take health advice from an economist. They are like a tradesman when your only tool is a hammer, you treat everything as if it was a nail. I’ll be sticking with the health professionals advice.

Are lockdowns the way out of the current outbreaks? My view is not on their own, vaccinations will be the main defence moving forward and the way out of lockdowns. That is the current advice from the health professionals.

Maybe you should be listening to her if she was talking about the pandemic in March 2019! Haha.

Why begrudge the poor economist? Couldn't you say the same about health professionals? Is there a relationship between economic growth and health outcomes?

The economy will still be there, some of us may not be if we take an health advice from economists.

Nobody is suggesting you should take health advice from an economist. Should we be taking economic advice from a health officer?

We can always rebuild an economy (the economists can be in their element), you can’t do that if you are dead.

What if there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes?

Then you build in more support for those that need it.

Wow, that simple!
Do you think it would be good to try to prevent a recession? or at least mitigate one?

Not if it means killing people to do it.

What if mitigating a recession saved lives?

If that was the health advice from the health professionals, but it’s not.

All Foster had done is built a conformation bias model that gives the outcome Foster wants. Foster has not tried to think outside the box. Foster is an economist, that’s the only tool available to Foster.

Fortunately those in charge also listen, for the most part, to health advice from health professionals.

In regards to the relationship between recessions and health outcomes you could consider
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12889-016-2720-y.pdf
http://rricketts.ba.ttu.edu/sullivan_vonwachter_job%20displacement%20and%20mortality_qje.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12230
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880023/?utm_source=fbia
https://businesslaw.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/09/129339-AJLE-Vol-23-No-2-2020-2527-FINAL.pdf

for a paradox consider
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Ruhm_Are_2000.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mateusz-Filipski/publication/46554066_Why_Are_Recessions_Good_for_Your_Health/links/02e7e527b3d08da938000000/Why-Are-Recessions-Good-for-Your-Health.pdf


For a more rounded discussion you should also read the references in each paper.

The links I provided are mostly highly cited studies. Of course I have not posted the entirety of the research. I believe from the balance of evidence that recessions have a negative impact on health outcomes. I would be interested to know why you don't believe there is a relationship between recessions and health outcomes.

Simply focussing on daily Covid numbers as a gauge of policy effectiveness is incredibly myopic and dangerous. I am hoping we can have a more holistic discussion, which is why I provided the link originally. I am more than happy to read any well thought out research in this area. I must stress however, this is not a discussion of lockdowns vs no lockdowns, but rather a discussion on mitigation vs elimination.

I would also be interested in the methods that Foster has used that you believe lead to spurious results and what methods she should have used instead? Particularly the methods from this paper
https://clubtroppo.com.au/files/2021/04/THE-COSTS-AND-BENEFITS-OF-A-COVID-LOCKDOWN-6.pdf

I've had the displeasure of following Foster for a while now. There was only ever going to be one outcome from Foster's modelling. It's boring and predictable. Fortunately most agree.

If you really want to get your teeth into something, then perhaps think about why Australia still does not have dedicated quarantine facilities away from the most economic important and populous cities in the nation. Had this been in place there would be no need for any lock-down what-so-ever or this discussion. It's not like the politicians were not warned prior to Covid. It's now been 16 months on and still zipO. Covid will not be the only outbreak like this and the next one may be much more deadly and we are still are not prepared.

 

[nuggetron]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

aus and NZ islands
sweden significantly colder - does this have an impact?
GB hottest days on record - does this have an impact?

its far too hard to compare countries on the opposite side of the earth with soft borders, aus and NZ are decent comparisons; stones throw away, both islands

 

[earl]

Australia wide, we have responded to outbreaks by activating lockdowns. This research suggests lockdowns has cost more lives than it has saved. Thus proposing an alternative view.

The report is therefore to me nonsense.

Put it this way how would we be going now without those lockdowns. Go look at the mortality rate across the world.

You have to be able to critically evaluate reports and data. Cherry picking stuff to make up a story to suit your argument is dumb.

Science is about discovering reality. That is it.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Check it out for yourself. Just filter on deaths per million people.

Sweden:- 1,438
Australia:- 36
New Zealand:- 5
Britain:- 1,904

To me it's pretty clear cut.

Maybe I'll rephrase this:-

1. Do you believe the countries with lesser lockdowns (note lockdowns have been everywhere it's a matter of scale) have performed better ? Can you justify that opinion when you look at the figures above ?
2. Do you believe some random report where you do not know the bias of the people involved or how well researched that report is over the raw data which appears pretty conclusive ?

So assuming the vaccination rate remains the same lockdowns have to be used. The thing is and this is the reason I mention vaccines the picture changes completely dependent on how many people are vaccinated.

aus and NZ islands
sweden significantly colder - does this have an impact?
GB hottest days on record - does this have an impact?

its far too hard to compare countries on the opposite side of the earth with soft borders, aus and NZ are decent comparisons; stones throw away, both islands

You know what you can't get around though. Those figures are damming. I mean it ain't close.

It is extremely hard to do comparisons but those aren't cherry picked data like that dodgy report. Those are cold hard facts. They are people dying. Those figures are also significant.

I'm not a big fan of lockdowns. They hurt a lot. At the end of the day though countries with lesser levels of lockdowns have suffered more deaths.

We should also add the stock market has boomed. It's boomed no matter where you are. It's boomed in a pandemic.

So it's pretty hard to state lockdowns have devastated economies as well.

It's like the evidence is clearly painting a picture and the picture is lockdowns have worked exceptionally well.

I said earlier my subjective opinion is that are going to work less and less over time especially because we have a strain that is twice as contagious. To add to that the vaccinated are going to be in the majority and lockdowns are now there to protect the unvaccinated.