re: Does social distancing even do anything?

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You don't know that either.

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If it did, we would’ve seen massive drops in infections in places more aggressively social distancing than in places not as aggressively social distancing.

I was being overly conclusive, sure. But we don’t have really any data to say that it’s a viable solution. It’s certainly not a solution worth $6T or more.

Every decade has fashion trends, some stupider than others.

70s clothes and 80s hair are particularly notorious.

The 90s, especially the late 90s, had some truly godawful clothes as well. The goth pants that my friends called “90,000 gallon fashion pants” come to mind.

No, that's not right.

There are too many variables going on, and again, because of asymptomatic carriers and not EVEN KNOWING when the spread actually started, looking at a graph that measures incomplete data and saying 'well you can't visually see the effect' is the same pseudo science as the proponents of social distancing.

My whole point here is there is NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE as to the effects of social distancing. You don't know if it does anything or nothing at all.

I would say I don't think we should be doing government enforced social distancing at all. I'm just arguing that the reason should be that we don't have any evidence it does anything, not that it conclusively does nothing.

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We’re going to look back in a year or so and realize how insane this all was

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I thought 9/11 would have woken people up to the erosion of our civil liberties. I was wrong. While I'd love to think that this bullshite would wake some people up regarding the role of gov't, I'm not hopeful.

My gym has been open for 2 days now with mask and distancing requirements. The rules are already being ignored. Everyone wears the mask to get in. I pull mine down to free my nose when doing heavy lifting so I can breathe. Two guys today just took their masks off. They're young doctors. Nobody from the staff has told us anything.
The one thing we can't circumvent is no showers, no towels and no water fountain.

I’m convinced social distancing nor masks work simply because people can strictly adhere to either.

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If it did, we would’ve seen massive drops in infections in places more aggressively social distancing than in places not as aggressively social distancing.

I was being overly conclusive, sure. But we don’t have really any data to say that it’s a viable solution. It’s certainly not a solution worth $6T or more.

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A huge factor that almost no one is discussing in this whole debacle is the cost in lives and economics for the tens of millions who have lost jobs, had their income reduced due to layoffs/furloughs/hours worked cut back.
What will be the long term cost in lives and destruction of families from these "unintended consequences"?

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The one thing we can't circumvent is no showers, no towels and no water fountain.

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Another example of this double-edged sword. take your stank arse straight home and shower, don't touch anything along the way

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So comparing Sweden's numbers to ours at face value, 1 to 1, is still extremely flawed. Certainly not close enough an equivalence to say with confidence what caused the difference of 0.172%. Especially since we have such a WIDE range of estimations for number of 'secret' infected.


You are correct however Sweden's numbers are still better than ours and their measures were not as extreme as others. It probably has more to do with the health of each countries' general population to explain the difference.

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I'd add that it's going to be very, very difficult bordering on impossible to tease out how much of any effect was from stringently-enforced state lockdowns vs. voluntary change in behavior of the population. I think the Swedish example will probably show that to a degree, as are some of the states that opened relatively early (after locking down relatively late, at that) like Georgia, Florida, et al.

If someone the time, resources, and so forth, it'd be worth digging into Kentucky vs. Tennessee. Similar climates, similar demographics, similar culture, so on and so on. Tennessee is bigger, denser, and has more population flow into and out of the state for business and tourist reasons (mostly because of the Nashville area). Tennessee shut down later and to a less stringent degree than did Kentucky (the Governor's offices even had some spats about it). Yet Tennessee has out-performed Kentucky in this any way you want to look at it.