Why did we lock down?



The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed titled “The Data are In: It’s Time for Major Reopening”. Beside my approval of the fact that the authors knew that “data” is plural not singular, I found this article made a major error.

The authors make the argument that the major lockdowns imposed by many states in March and April were a mistake because they were based on an early economic analysis by economists at the University of Chicago, which argued that “the likely benefits of moderate social distancing would greatly exceed the resultant costs.”

The authors say this is because the economists based their analysis on a study from the Imperial College of London that has since “been shown to be full of analytical and even coding errors..” These led the study to vastly overforecast total deaths through October. According to them, if a correct forecast had been used, the study would have concluded that total costs of the lockdowns would greatly exceed the benefits.  

What would have been a good alternative strategy, given that deaths from Covid-19 were growing at a clearly unsustainable rate of 6-800% per week in late March and April (vs. 5% currently)? They don’t give an answer to that, except to say that it would have been good to focus resources on the most vulnerable people.

But it’s safe to say that any alternative strategy would have had to depend on extensive testing, contact tracing, isolation of cases (away from home, of course), and enforced mask wearing. Unfortunately, we were very far from having any of these in place in March. In fact, we still have a long way to go in all four areas, especially if we face a resurgence of the virus in the fall.

Had we had those four things in place in March, we might well have been able to control the virus without lockdowns, as happened in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. As it was, lockdowns were the only choice at the time.

I hope we’ll have in place what we need to keep the virus under control when it resurges in the later fall. But given that the White House seems to have moved on to focusing on the November elections – the coronavirus task force hasn’t even met for a couple of weeks, and we all know what’s happening (or not) with masks – this is questionable. Given that the fall wave could potentially be worse than the current one (as happened in the 1918 pandemic), we may be forced to have lockdowns again.


The numbers
These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 5%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending
Deaths reported during week/month
Avg. deaths per day during week/month
Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7
18
3

March 14
38
5

March 21
244
35

March 28
1,928
275

Month of March
4,058
131

April 4
6,225
889

April 11
12,126
1,732

April 18
18,434
2,633

April 25
15,251
2,179

Month of April
59,812
1,994
1,474%
May 2
13,183
1,883

May 9
12,592
1,799

May 16
10,073
1,439

May 23
8,570
1,224

May 30
6,874
982

Month of May
42,327
1,365
71%
June 6
6,544
935

June 13
5,427
775

June 20
5,383
769

June 27
5,629
804

Month of June
24,375
812
58%
July 4
 5,887
 841

July 11
 6,156
879

July 18
 6,438
920

July 25
 6,733
962

Month of July
 29,291
 945
120%
Total March – July
159,863


Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 118,286
Increase in deaths since previous day: 427 (vs. 331 yesterday)
Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 5% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in deaths, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases
Total US reported cases: 2,183,040
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 20,634
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 1%
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 8%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 890,015
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 118,286
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 12% (vs. 12% yesterday)
For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post.


I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

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