[UPDATE: The Ginn article was taken down by Medium, and it was “taken down” by someone on twitter, using lots of snark and 4-letter words, as Twitter users are wont to do. I am not going to change any of the post below, in which I warned that Ginn’s views go against my own. The way I see it, Ginn threw a lot of different stuff against the lockdown policy, and certainly some of what he threw at it didn’t stick. But if he made 9 criticisms that are invalid, if there is a 10th one that might be valid, it is worth exploring that 10th one, rather than go beserk. Hence, my charitable approach, which you can judge for yourself.]
I am going to provide a link to a contrarian article on the virus, by one Aaron Ginn, who is roughly on my level–not an officially certified expert, but somebody who thinks about data and what they mean. If you go to the page and click on the comments, you will find some that are extremely hostile. You can also see that the author’s point of view differs from mine. But he at least gives us a lot to think about, and I believe I can give a succinct, charitable interpretation of his analysis. My conclusion, below the fold, is that we need to scientifically evaluate the key question that I take away from his analysis.
To stimulate your interest, an excerpt from his conclusion:
Does stopping air travel have a greater impact than closing all restaurants? Does closing schools reduce the infection rate by 10%? Not one policymaker has offered evidence of any of these approaches. Typically, the argument given is “out of an abundance of caution”. I didn’t know there was such a law. Let’s be frank, these acts are emotionally driven by fear, not evidence-based thinking in the process of destroying people’s lives overnight. While all of these decisions are made by elites isolated in their castles of power and ego, the shock is utterly devastating Main Street.
He throws a blizzard of charts and quotes at the issue. But my interpretation is that his views align with what commenter RAD wrote here and here. The argument goes like this
(1) Suppose that spreading the virus almost always requires close contact in a confined space with a symptomatic, infected person for more than a minute.
2. In that case, you would expect social distancing to have almost no effect at the margin, compared with isolating symptomatic infected individuals. Social distancing includes closing restaurants and bars, limiting air travel, and so on.
Obviously, the marginal cost of social distancing vs. isolating symptomatic infected individuals is high. So if the marginal benefit is low, both the government-mandated social distancing and many of the private actions to avoid large gatherings are misguided.
So we need to take a position on whether or not (1) is true, or whether there are other ways of getting the disease that are important. These could be
(a1) from symptomatic individuals by casual contact
(a2) from symptomatic individuals by touching surfaces previously touched by those individuals
(b0) from asymptomatic infected individuals by close contact
(b1) from asymptomatic infected individuals by casual contact
(b2) from asymptomatic infected individuals by touching surfaces previously touched by those individuals
Many people are talking as if all of these alternative methods of spread are important. But Ginn argues that only (a2) is supported by data. He writes,
The World Health Organization (“WHO”) released a study on how China responded to COVID-19. Currently, this study is one of the most exhaustive pieces published on how the virus spreads.
. . . According to their report if you come in contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19 you have a 1–5% chance of catching it as well. The variability is large because the infection is based on the type of contact and how long.
The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with other infected individuals. Person-to-person and surface contact is by far the most common cause.
Ginn points us to this from the CDC.
Some spread might be possible before people show symptoms; there have been reports of this occurring with this new coronavirus, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
…It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.
[UPDATE: a reader notes that the date on this document is March 4. I will search for something more recent.]
“not thought to be the main way”? Is that the most definitive statement you can make? Come on. Given the stakes involved, I want to see our best scientific evaluation of the strength of these alternative mechanisms of spreading the disease. If none of the alternative vectors of spreading is important, we need to know that! To me, it would mean we should open the schools and the businesses and the flights and instead use commenter RAD’s approach.
Suppose that we can rule out (b0) -(b2) and (a1) as significant vectors, but (a2) is important. Then we can put a huge emphasis on disinfectant procedures in public areas and wearing masks to prevent touching one’s own face, but allow restaurants and bars to open. Only if one of the other vectors is likely to be important can we justify the closures.
Thank you for doing this. I used to follow that site, but gave up because of the typical insane Liberal articles of Liberal media and comments just like the ones to his article. When I started reading the comments I wondered why there was so much hysterical reaction and then I saw that someone pointed out the guy had some association with a conservative blog which explained everything. I wonder how many of these folks ever went back and reevaluated their certainty about Trump being a Russian agent. I would guess the answer is near zero. They just venomously spout their hatred toward anything that does not follow the party line. Regardless of how correct this guy’s analysis is (and I think it is decent) I think his errors pale in comparison to the damage done by the Washington establishment’s last seven years of trillion dollar annual deficits and now proposing to quadruple down on that in just a few months. I thought Obama’s spending was society destroying. Trump is trying to make that into small change with his encouragement of Mitch and Nancy who are so eager to follow his lead by not letting another crisis go to waste, as Rahm once said.
I’ve be thinking about the benefit of Social Distancing since I refined my Cough Isolation strategy last Tuesday. There are two indirect benefits:
1. Scaring people into paying attention.
2. Making Contact Tracing easier for public health officials using established tools/techniques that must back-trace for 14 days.
The Canadian epidemiologists that are the top public health officials, federally, and for each province (health care is a provincial level responsibility) have been indirectly making the “Cough Isolation” arguments consistently since the beginning. I don’t understand why the simple heuristic I’ve proposed isn’t promoted or discussed; I assumed it was a messaging issue which is supported by the silence I’ve received here and on Marginal Revolution when I’ve posted it.
The scientific evidence is sound. Go through the history of the Provincial COVID-19 Updates by the epidemiologist doctors and every one of them answers clearly. Don’t worry about Amazon packages, wipe them down and practice safe hand hygiene. Groceries, ditto. Money? Coins are worse but so are the card machines so practice hand hygiene. “It’s not miasma, it’s not airborne”, they say (paraphrasing). How can you know your strategy is working when you have a 4 day testing backlog? A: we will see evidence of community spread in our other metrics.
The Cough Isolation and Circle of Trust makes some of the confusing logistics of Social Distancing clearer. If you arrive back in Canada and must self-isolate for 14-days how do you get back home? A: have someone drop off your car or get picked up by someone in your Circle of Trust that will Self-Isolate with you. How do you maintain Social Distancing in the car with your family? A: the family is part of your Circle of Trust that will Self-Isolate with you.
Cough Isolation and Circle of Trust is not incompatible with Social Distancing. Who do you let within your Social Distance (6ft or 2m)? A: anyone in your Circle of Trust.
WARNING: don’t fight the last war. The science question doesn’t matter anymore. New York city is lost. The question should have been asked and answered 5-10 days ago. I don’t think Seattle/Washington is lost yet. I kept saying that Canada’s increase was due to the echo of international travellers returning and the U.S. should have been almost identical in scale. The question was always whether there was uncontrolled Community transmission in America and that question is now answered. America has multiple Korean Case 31 scenarios. That is the focus of the next 30 day sliding window.
WARNING #2: health care workers must pay attention to the low numbers of people that exhibit gastro intestinal (GI) symptoms. This was the scenario Handle and I discussed recently (sorry, not looking up the comment link now). This is not the main vector, cough droplets are, but in a hospital setting it can get out of hand.
I think we have a pre-panic phase and a post-panic phase and the problem is the same in both cases: adherence to the plan. Korean Case 31 is the case you have to solve for.
It doesn’t just have to be crazy religious people. I keep reading about Canadian cases of health workers and other people you’d assume to be smart that return to work with symptoms after they were supposed to be in Self-Isolation for 14-days after travelling. We are creatures of habit. We are social. We fall back into familiar habits when we are stressed.
Today’s B.C. Update on COVID-19 by Dr. Bonnie Henry showed what she called an “epi curve” with a clear Bell Curve of the “first symptom” dark blue bars followed by a light blue Logistics Curve that I think is the delayed Test Confirmations. Not one journalist asked about it.
What I dislike about Aaron’s post, and have seen elsewhere, is that he shows China case data rise and fall and act like this was a natural occurrence; as if unprecedented actions to lock down over 100M people didn’t occur. It’s not as if all of China just kept going about their daily lives and that was the natural progression.
The other thing I think is a bit misleading is the country per capita metrics. This thing explodes quickly in cities, and it’s not like we can easily transport patients from New York to an empty hospital bed in Nebraska. The data is probably best understood at a city level, and if you want to normalize it and understand the risk, do severe cases per hospital bed in the metro area (just brainstorming here).
He did bring up one thing I’m interested in, which is the affect of warm weather. I’m currently of the belief that summer will significantly slow, but not stop, the spread in the northern hemisphere, although it could easily speed up again in the fall. As testing ramps up, it’ll be interesting to see the difference between southern and northern cities in the US.
The weather thing caught my attention, too. It anecdotally kind of matched up with what is actually going on. NYC but not NY State. Same for Washington vs. Oregon; the California coast vs the Inland Empire, etc. Author’s analysis or hypothesis also fits with my own 65 year life experience with with winter flu.
I certainly don’t know who is right but I really look forward to seeing who is closer to being right and whether the temperature geography holds. I also respect most who might post on this blog, but the people in the comments to the original article were driven to make argument by presumed authority and/or political party or both, so I could not resist supporting the authors possibly flawed statistical approach which seemed much more valid via common sense and basic knowledge of math and statistics.
Most readers comments these days, including those at the site of the original article I am sad to say, are more influenced by math like this: https://youtu.be/9_i0QrK2814
I also like to be optimistic. I live in Missouri which is ground central weather wise today. Knowing our death counts are likely to be more like Hong Kong than around the Wuhan weapons lab gives me some anxiety relief. It seems more likely than not that the thing is not a super easy spreader, since there really is no evidence that it is. Most things end up in the middle statistically per all bell curves which means this is likely easily manageable, too.
Great blogging.
But what has happened now to debate is what happens in the early to mid stages of any war.
The huge costs incurred must be defended. Who wants to admit they have collapsed the economy and wrecked financial systems on the basis of death rates among elderly smokers?
Or that the economically destructive measures we have taken might only retard but not defeat progress of the coronavirus?
We have manned the Heroic Anti-Pandemic Battle Stations. The media is on board. Public health officials have assumed the role usually played by those in the National Security State —-that of highlighting risks, and the release of white-paper worst-case scenarios.
Prominent American “libertarians” have doffed the costumes of statist martinets.
9/11 deja vu
Bravo!
Thanks.
Please see and subscribe (forever free):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G97UMCEfBBc&list=PLnVr2t8lPw8_xUBxu8caiJ3qKZ4MvA9DA&index=12
Good analogy.
We are in the early stages of creating a biblical economic disaster. It won’t be too much longer before production of vital goods slows enough that the actual distribution of goods still available gets hijacked by all the people in the chain of that distribution- the rolls of toilet paper suddenly don’t even reach the Walmart shelves, nor does the insulin, the gas, or the food.
Anyone who thinks these lockdowns can go longer than 2-3 weeks is a fool, and a dangerous one at that. It will be interesting to see which governor throws in the towel first- they have committed themselves to a path that isn’t isn’t easy to argue your way off. If around the first week of April, there is no abatement in “new cases”, the elderly and unwell will just have to be isolated with our best effort. Expend your testing resources on rigorously testing the people who work in hospitals, clinics, and nursing and rehab facilities. Everyone else will have to get on with the normal course of life keeping productive society working.
Sleep much at night? I didn’t much either once. I thought doom would come just a few years after annual trillion dollar deficits began. Remember Bush II’s stimulus and Obama continuing it for 8 years. Remember when the major issues in politics was budget fights. Now they are done in secret, always increase by a trillion dollars and are never covered by the media. To keep my sanity I had to quite thinking or worrying about it. What, me worry? …about Trump spending 4 trillion on a virus? I guess the answer is that America is still the world’s safe haven for financial assets because all other countries are in worse financial shape. And most importantly I think Adam Smith was right when he said “there is a lot of ruin in a nation”. In other words the collapse often takes much longer than one thinks it will. I agree there is no Volker type fix because it is too late and too large, so the collapse is certainly in the cards. We just don’t know when. I say buy bargain stocks today and hope for one more go around. Then head to New Zeland in your private jet. Oh, you don’t have one. Neither do I. But I laugh rather than cry. It makes life easier.
Did I mention this is a country where half the young adults support a Marxist for president? Oh never mind. It is too late. I think calling it Biblical is accurate. That also means it is unavoidable. Keep your family safe, love your wife and kids and make the best of the unavoidable.
I think Hanson makes the important point which is that if you are deciding on policy by optimizing subject to constraints, one of the key constraints is whether your political system can be relied upon to make hard decisions well and then stick to painful strategies for the long run and follow through without cracking or yielding to tremendous pressure, until the very end, and with big elections in the middle. There are going to be a lot of politically influential wheels squeaking to be granted an exception to operate, and are the powers that be made of strong enough stuff to say no, everywhere, all the time?
Oh, and unlike FDR, they face a totally hostile media climate, to include “revolt of the public” social media. Oh, and if you didn’t achieve herd immunity, or get everyone vaccinated or discover a wonder drug, then if any other place in the world also didn’t stick with the program, as soon as you try and relax, you risk relapse and another outbreak.
It’s like the highest stakes version of the marshmallow test of all time, and honestly, how well do you think members of our ruling class or electorate do on those tests?
Now, this consideration doesn’t necessarily tip the balance against trying extreme lockdown for a long time. The same problem pops up with trying a “get through it quick, expose the exposable” strategies as soon as the hospitals are overwhelmed. But it should put a giant asterisk at the end of any analysis relying strictly on sophisticated numerical simulation.
I wanted to read the Aaron Ginn article myself and see what I thought of it, but it’s gone. In its place is a message from Medium saying, “This post is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules.”
This is infuriating. We’re on a path to destroy wealth and capital on a colossal scale, and some people are more interested in policing the “wrong” opinions than in thinking through what we’re doing or considering alternatives. This is not how good choices get made.
Infuriating indeed. My guess is that it is just another example of the new expanding “cancel culture” where individuals get dismissed, destroyed and disappeared if they have good ideas which become visible and don’t conform to standard politically correct wisdom. There are also a lot of powerful people who stand to lose a lot or not receive a lot if Trump’s, Pelosi’s and McConnel’s big giveaway is stopped.
We can’t read the article at _Medium_? Consider that sudden development to be example N+1 of the “Distributed Idea Suppression Complex.”
” The media is on board. ”
Please. The media created the fricking boat.
If the governments forbids you to run your business, then what happens when you refuse to pay your debts? If you were fired because your employer was no longer allowed to offer services, how can you possibly be expected to pay your debts?
Start a “Stop Paying Your Bills” movement; see how quickly the shutdown ends.
I am, as I said, appalled at how many normally sane people are on board with this (like Arnold, Clair Lehmann, JayMan). At least Arnold is considering the possibility. But he shouldn’t have to. This is blindingly obvious.
I too noticed the takedown. The fact that you are not even allowed to notice that millions of people are being negatively impacted by this lockdown (something that is clearly true no matter whether or not you believe the trade off is worth it) shows that the fix is in.
This is exploitation of a crisis for political purposes plain and simple.
Here is a link to a thread on Twitter by an epidemiologist – Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington – that disassembles Ginn’s article: https://bit.ly/2U85Vqa
Thanks.
You’re welcome. By the way, Ginn’s article that was taken down on Medium can now be reviewed on the Zero Hedge website. That location alone is sufficient to raise substantial questions regarding Ginn’s reasoning.
Yeah, this is a good take down. Of course, experts can be wrong, but it points out some basic flaws in the argument. His #14 was along the lines of what I mentioned above. I had also noticed something strange along the lines of #6 and 7 when reading it, but the piece was so long I forgot all of my critiques by the time I posted them…
Couldn’t we really be running experiments right now on transmission? Wouldn’t one or two thousand people be willing to be exposed in controlled ways in exchange for guaranteed care?