The real cost of lockdowns….

Big_Jim59 said:

Any student of history will tell you that pandemics rock the world from time to time. As pandemics go The COVID one was mild by comparison. During the Bubonic Plague one third of Europe died as it reoccurred regularly over a number of years. The efforts to combat that disease are a mixed bag and rather inconclusive to this day. They too had lock downs with mixed results. We have the benefit of modern medical knowledge and hindsight and we are still arguing about cause and effect.

In 1918 there was an outbreak of something called the Spanish Flu. My grandfather lost his half brother and half sister. He said "some communities were spared while other had multiple advanced cases. The hallmark of that infection was a pneumonia that seems to effect the most healthy subjects. Fully half of the US solders that died during WWI died of influenza. Many measures were tried, once again with mixed results. There is a brick paved sidewalk in the little town where I lived for over 20 years. Several of the bricks have the words "no spitting" cast into them. This is a result of just one of the regulations implemented during the flu epidemic. They tried various measures and still people died.

I have spent a lot of time in skilled nursing facilities both from my time in medical marketing and from time with my parents and great aunts and uncles. Even a mild infection is a huge risk in a SNF. It's made worse by the very nature of the clientele who are vulnerable to infection but who love to receive visitors and family. Death is a constant visitor even in the best of times.

It's very difficult to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures in a scientific fashion because there are too many variables. We live in a time when the population is aging and we have developed strategies to manage people's specific health needs. It also makes these people vulnerable. There are no easy answers. My biggest concern came from groups that were so sure of their convictions that they were willing to cost people their jobs, their businesses and implement other punitive measures for noncompliance. We had people turning on each other often times based on political affiliation. I think it boils down to a dispute between those that say "we have to do something" and those that say "nothing we do will make much difference."

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Big_Jim59 said:

Any student of history will tell you that pandemics rock the world from time to time. As pandemics go The COVID one was mild by comparison. During the Bubonic Plague one third of Europe died as it reoccurred regularly over a number of years. The efforts to combat that disease are a mixed bag and rather inconclusive to this day. They too had lock downs with mixed results. We have the benefit of modern medical knowledge and hindsight and we are still arguing about cause and effect.

In 1918 there was an outbreak of something called the Spanish Flu. My grandfather lost his half brother and half sister. He said "some communities were spared while other had multiple advanced cases. The hallmark of that infection was a pneumonia that seems to effect the most healthy subjects. Fully half of the US solders that died during WWI died of influenza. Many measures were tried, once again with mixed results. There is a brick paved sidewalk in the little town where I lived for over 20 years. Several of the bricks have the words "no spitting" cast into them. This is a result of just one of the regulations implemented during the flu epidemic. They tried various measures and still people died.

I have spent a lot of time in skilled nursing facilities both from my time in medical marketing and from time with my parents and great aunts and uncles. Even a mild infection is a huge risk in a SNF. It's made worse by the very nature of the clientele who are vulnerable to infection but who love to receive visitors and family. Death is a constant visitor even in the best of times.

It's very difficult to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures in a scientific fashion because there are too many variables. We live in a time when the population is aging and we have developed strategies to manage people's specific health needs. It also makes these people vulnerable. There are no easy answers. My biggest concern came from groups that were so sure of their convictions that they were willing to cost people their jobs, their businesses and implement other punitive measures for noncompliance. We had people turning on each other often times based on political affiliation. I think it boils down to a dispute between those that say "we have to do something" and those that say "nothing we do will make much difference."

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Fast Eddie said:

True, hindsight is a wonderful thing and should be used to learn, not blame.

But there is a big difference between hindsight, and opposing points of view that were ignored, shut down, etc at the time that now seem more true, more believable.

A big lesson we MUST take from this is to not fall back into medival superstition whenever we are faced with something we can’t control or understand fully, which I believe is close to what happened. We must never be bowled over by claims of ‘THE science’ ie the claim that there is only ONE correct science. Thats simply not how science works. Thats how authoritarian regimes work.

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Fast Eddie said:

Your dentist story is a great example, partly for the reason you raise it, which I agree with strongly, but also because it’s an example of a ridiculous over reaction.

Even if all of those dentists got covid, the infection duration is very predictable and is measured in days, not months. Locking them down for two weeks would have been a very practical measure ‘on the safe side’, locking them down for several months has no basis in the prevention of anything !

Whatever her motive, and whatever pain it caused the dentists, what about all the poor sods who needed dental treatment !?!

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The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test (Published 2020)

Dr. Bonnie Henry kept the disease in check in British Columbia without harsh enforcement methods. Now, she is leading the way out of lockdown.

www.nytimes.com

worntorn said:

That is true , some people had sore teeth over it, but I think our Health Officer was teaching this group and the general public a very necessary lesson.
It was felt that the organizers for that Convention, all Dentists and all men, ignored our health officer, Bonnie Henry, because she is a woman. She is also an epidemiologist so had the best possible education and experience for the situation we were in. They ignored that and felt that as Dentists they somehow knew better than her.
After a reasonable period for incubation she allowed emergency dental work to proceed, then slowly phased the Dentists back to work.
I think she had to make it clear that her rules were to be followed and that is going to be it, suffer the consequences otherwise.


She also shut down strip clubs and many other venues that were not operating in compliance with new rules on capacity etc. She had lots of death threats made against her, but that didn't seem to faze her.
I believe her actions saved a lot of lives. Looking at the outcomes in our neighboring Province and State to the South, it would seem most of her decisions were correct.
Because she had experience working in Africa with the Ebola outbreak and dealt with other epidemics as well, she had already witnessed the outcomes of inaction or taking the wrong action. She freely admits to having made some of those mistakes in her early work as an Epidemiologist.
We were very lucky to have her running things.
It was interesting that the Pandemic was not Politicized here like it was in some places. For the most part, the politicians on the Right and Left got out of the way and deferred to those who truly understood the Science.

Glen

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worntorn said:

As mentioned, she allowed emergency dental work to proceed once there were uninfected Dentists available to do that.

Glen

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worntorn said:

She definitely did have good reason to shut them down. They were a highly infected group and they had done it to themselves. After that Superspreader Convention they weren't fit to treat people. The disease was new and we did not yet know how it was transmitted, or even how long infected people were dangerous to be around.
We knew that it was infectious and deadly.
The irony of a large group of Health Professionals ignoring the existence of the virus so they could enjoy a weekend of play was not lost on most folks.
I think a lot of us looked at a visit to the Dentist's office differently after that.
Have those tools and fingers that are being placed in my mouth been properly sterilized?
As my OR Nurse wife has said of certain Doctors " He needs to go back to school and relearn Germ Theory"
In this case basic Virus Theory that we were all learning from Bonnie Henry.

Glen

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Fast Eddie said:

But the restriction was not a scientific one. Corona viruses aren’t new Glen. So we knew the basics of it beforehand and it was known very early on how this variant passed through the body. There were lots and lots unkowns about how it made people so ill, quite how it transmitted so well, how to treat, etc, etc. But the basic modality of it, ie the time taken to infect, incubate, become symptomatic and leave was known very early on.

There is no way anyone could seriously be saying that those dentists could be infected for months !

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marshg246 said:

Exactly. The common cold is a selection corona viruses. People have been getting them for thousands of years. They still bother us and some still die from the other things that can come from being weaken by them. But, in general, our bodies know how to kill the cells they take over and so it lasts 1-4 weeks.

Same thing with COVID, one of three things happened:

1) It was over in 1-4 weeks naturally and your symptoms were between no big deal and terrible requiring a ventilator.
2) You died
3) You developed "Long COVID" probably wish that you died.

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worntorn said:

No that wasn't her point in the way she handled it. If you read the New Yorker article you will get an idea of how she operates.
She treated dental offices the same as hair salons.
I suspect that after the Convention Super Spreader event she realized that, as a group, Dentists were no more trustworthy than hair stylists.

Hair styling was put on hold as it required a person to somehow come into contact with a large number of people without spreading the disease.
It is possible to do this with perfect technique, but reality was showing that wasn't happening.

Same with the Dentists, although we had all hoped for better.

The Dentists and the hair salons went back to normal at about the same time, if memory serves.

Glen

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Fast Eddie said:

I agree with everything except your last point. IMO the two groups are those who say:

“we have to do everything, in full, despite the consequences or believed effectiveness or even evidence to the contrary ‘just in case’”

And those who say:

“we need to do the sensible things, that we believe will have results, and do so in balance with other societal needs”.

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