Hopkins meta study show Covid lock downs nearly useless

[pmv]

The entire study does not even pass the sniff test. Viruses are not magic. We pretty much know how they are transmitted. So unless you can show me some theory that explains how viruses can travel long distances all on their own then stopping people from moving about stops the virus from moving about. It is really that simple. The only thing this study might be able to show is that a large number of people didn't comply with lockdown restrictions, or that the restrictions we put in place were not strong enough.

As I recall they would report statistics like the "average number of daily contacts" of people, and you could see those decline in line with restrictions. Of course you can't ever get it down to zero, and there's a price to pay in terms of other health problems and economic damage, but it's a trade-off. One can absolutely argue over where the 'sweet spot' is, especially when you add in other measures like masks, ventilation and vaccines.

 

[Jaskalas]

This is insane... Not a single one of these studies support the conclusion. I mean it's just made up bullshit. Just completely made UP.

It does not matter what you believe. It matters what he believes, and that is based on feels good ideas. Not logic, reason, or science. Such notions are SO 20th century. Welcome to the madhouse of the 21st where facts are fiction!

 

[SMOGZINN]

As I recall they would report statistics like the "average number of daily contacts" of people, and you could see those decline in line with restrictions. Of course you can't ever get it down to zero, and there's a price to pay in terms of other health problems and economic damage, but it's a trade-off. One can absolutely argue over where the 'sweet spot' is, especially when you add in other measures like masks, ventilation and vaccines.

Oh, absolutely! In fact I think it is quite possible that some places locked down too hard and actually encouraged people to break it. It is tempting to just yell 'If everyone just closed their doors and not go outside for 2 years this would all be over!' but that is just not realistic. Public health guidelines needs to take the people it is designed to protect into account. We need real proper science to tackle that question, what is the right amount of lockdown? What businesses should we close for maximum effectiveness? For how long?
This paper does none of that.

 

[manly]

To be fair, as far as I've seen, the Economist's published excess deaths stuff doens't really cover China. I'm not sure what they did to estimate those, and it's a fair point that the article doesn't seem to give a complete source. (The link you give requires an account to read, so I haven't seen that webpage.)

In general though, the official Chinese death figures just seem implausibly low, and it's not at all hard to imagine, given the nature of the Chinese system - with the constraints on information and the incentives at every level to put a posiitve spin on your performance, that there are incentives for not fully reporting the numbers, from the bottom (local party bosses) up to the national level, and little incentive for the CCP to push to strongly to get the true picture.

India is known to be under reporting deaths massively, and I don't see why China would be any different. In both cases it will be a mix of inability to fully count the numbers and a reluctance to look too closely, just probably those two factors in different proportions for each country.

Here’s a good article on how data scientists are grappling with estimating COVID mortality worldwide:

The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts

Countries have reported some five million COVID-19 deaths in two years, but global excess deaths are estimated at double or even quadruple that figure.

www.nature.com

I don’t agree with your general assessment that China must be lying by multiple orders of magnitude. We don’t know, but we also can’t assume. There are a few states that adhered to zero COVID strategies, so they appear to work if you can actually do it: New Zealand, Taiwan and even AU before they gave up a few months ago. What these nations and China did is very different from what India did.

We’re all convinced that China obfuscated and concealed the original Wuhan outbreak, but there’s not much evidence they’ve hidden a million COVID deaths since. That doesn’t preclude it either, but that Forbes piece is going far out on a limb.

 

[PowerEngineer]

This so-called John Hopkins study demonstrates the fallacy of citing the conclusions drawn from a single (supposedly) scientific study as if they are undeniable truths. IMHO the scientific process for discovering truths involves the testing of many ideas that leads towards a consensus about which idea seems most likely to be true. The consensus view is the one that we should rely on to inform public policies.

On the other hand, if your goal is to bolster a belief you have already decided must be true then you will have no problem finding outliers promoting ideas (as "science") that meet your needs.

Here's another review of that "John Hopkins study:

Claims that a “Johns Hopkins study” showed lockdowns are ineffective at reducing COVID-19 mortality are based on a working paper with questionable methods

 

[shortylickens]

You need to remember something important:
The people who believe this study are the exact same people who said the virus is fake, the virus wont make it to America, the virus wont kill anyone in America, and the virus is all Democrats fault.

These people are NOT scientists. These people are angry morons.