The Failed Experiment of Social Distancing

American Greatness ^ | May 4,2020 | By Julie Kelly

[Hojczyk]

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration and a lead booster of social distancing, admitted Sunday that the draconian measures aren’t working as the experts promised.

The concerning thing here is that we’re looking at the prospect that this may be a persistent spread,” Gottlieb said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” further noting 20,000 to 30,000 new reported cases per day despite intense lockdown orders in most states.

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” he said. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that.”

That’s hardly the sort of settled science that justifies the abrupt and costly disruption to the American way of life wrought by social distancing.

The alarming reality is that social distancing never has been tested on a massive scale in the modern age; its current formula was conceived during George W. Bush’s administration and met with much-deserved skepticism.

“People could not believe that the strategy would be effective or even feasible,” one scientist told the New York Times last month. A high school science project—no, I am not joking—added more weight to the concept.

[Da Coyote]

How to determine whether an idea will not work:

Q: Does the enemedia support it?
A: If yes, it’s a failure.

Such is the legacy of those who really shouldn’t be allowed outside without a leash.

[glennaro]

[Anti]-social distancing is the Democrat/Left’s only weapon to stop those giant Trump rallies. It will fail as people learn — some very much slower than others — that they’ve been duped by “The Experts” ... with masks, twice duped.

[ExSES]

In my County we have gone from only testing emergency room arrivals and medical staff/first responders only to drive through testing of anyone in the span of 3 weeks. More testing reveals a greater universe of those infected...

Even a Caveman could understand this (ala the old Geico Ads). But, but, but... the sky is falling doncha know???

[chief lee runamok]

New directive: six feet spacing rule extended to thirty feet spacing.

[cuban leaf]

From mid March I just assumed that we would all get this and the draconian measures were just to ensure we all don’t “get serious symptoms” at once and overwhelm the health care system.

There seem to be a lot of asymptomatic people that test positive. It may spread like crazy, but it doesn’t seem to be all that deadly except for the old and sick.

[BobL]

Taiwan didn’t bother ‘learning’ that social distancing doesn’t work. They went straight to masks, and that does work - as shown by their numbers.

[ConservativeInPA]

Guess what fascist pigs, people are not social distancing. It’s not in the true American make up to blindly follow orders and disassociate from people. This whole thing will be over when there is herd immunity. Be glad people are not social distancing because herd immunity will come faster that way.

[cyclotic]

Between the six feet spacing and the muffled sounds of people trying to talk through a mask, when this is over, we’re all going to be yelling at each other.

[slorunner]

You said “when this is over, we’re all going to be yelling at each other.” We were all yelling at each other BEFORE this started!!

[MAGAthon]

3 Apr: Nature: Special report: The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19
How epidemiologists rushed to model the coronavirus pandemic.
by David Adam
An earlier version of the Imperial (College London/Neil Ferguson) model, for instance, estimated that SARS-CoV-2 would be about as severe as influenza in necessitating the hospitalization of those infected. That turned out to be incorrect...

The true performance of simulations in this pandemic might become clear only months or years from now...
“Forecasts made during an outbreak are rarely investigated during or after the event for their accuracy, and only recently have forecasters begun to make results, code, models and data available for retrospective analysis,” (John Edmunds, who is a modeller at the LSHTM) and his team noted last year in a paper6 that assessed the performance of forecasts made in a 2014–15 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone...

Media reports have suggested that an update to the Imperial team’s model in early March was a critical factor in jolting the UK government into changing its policy on the pandemic. The researchers initially estimated that 15% of hospital cases would need to be treated in an intensive-care unit (ICU), but then updated that to 30%, a figure used in the first public release of their work on 16 March...

Ferguson says the significance of the model update might have been exaggerated...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6

25 Apr: Business Insider: How ‘Professor Lockdown’ helped save tens of thousands of lives worldwide — and carried COVID-19 into Downing Street
by Bill Bostock
Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, authored a paper that prompted the UK to scrap its coronavirus strategy.
Ferguson’s team warned Boris Johnson that the quest for “herd immunity” could cost 510,000 lives, prompting an abrupt U-turn.
His simulations have been influential in other countries as well, cited by authorities in the US, Germany, and France...

On March 23, the UK scrapped “herd immunity” in favor of a suppression strategy, and the country made preparations for weeks of lockdown. Ferguson’s study was responsible...
The White House received the paper two days before it was made public...

Scientists have piled in to criticize Ferguson’s paper in less uncertain terms.
“Some of the major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations seem to be substantially inflated,” John Ioannidis, a professor of disease prevention from Stanford University, told The Telegraph...
https://www.businessinsider.com/neil-ferguson-transformed-uk-covid-response-oxford-challenge-imperial-model-2020-4?r=AU&IR=T

[dgbrown]

It never made sense. How is telling half the people to not work prevent the spread. Is the other half (essential) not able to spread this? + telling 330 million people to do something doesn’t work. It worked somewhat the first week then people started doing there own method of distancing.

[1Old Pro]

Bottom line, don’t sneeze or cough on people, don’t be a close talker. Wash your hands, be wary of surfaces, stay home when sick - and LET’S FRIGGIN GET BACK TO WORK!!

[nathanbedford]

Let me see if I understand this:

We have abandoned the Constitution, bankrupted the country all in a pursuit of a remedy that this expert says does not work and, even if it does work, it was never intended to save anyone from getting the virus, it was only intended to postpone that inevitability for each one of us and, incidentally, lower the rate of infection sufficiently so the hospitals can cope with sick people.

Meanwhile we emptied the hospitals of all other patients, killing some no doubt, and bankrupting the hospitals.

So we did all this social distancing which does not work and, even if it does work and did work, was evidently unnecessary because the data upon which the social distancing was implemented was clearly wildly pessimistic and therefore the distancing was unnecessary to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed.

No Constitution, a bankrupted country, dubious, conflicted and inconsistent science, uncertain results, no meaningful contribution to saving lives overall.

Is that a proper understanding?

[cyclotic]

Not in anger, we’re getting conditioned to talk louder.

[CodeToad]

It was a joke in the first place. Every bit of this does NOTHING to prevent viral infections. This is about soliciting the obedience of the people to hurt Trump and it’s working. I am stunned by how gullible and willing the people are to destroy their country.

[FirstFlaBn]

Tomorrow’s headlines today:

“New Study Shows Fear and Panic 37x More Transmissible Than COVID-19.”

“CDC Spokesperson Announces New Slogan to Replace ‘Science Based, Data Driven’: Trust Us or You’re an Anarchist”

[be-baw]

“people are not social distancing.”

They are here in Michigan for the most part. All the stores have marks 6 ft behind the mark in front, and 6 ft in front of the mark behind. That’s not to say people don’t get closer- they do at the meat coolers-but there’s no question most people are adhering to it.

I find it hard to believe that social distancing doesn’t work. It’s just common sense to me.

Herd immunity is a long way off, maybe not even attainable at all. I’ve heard estimates that range from 60-90% of the population who have to have the antibodies before herd immunity works. I don’t think we’re anywhere near that.

[John W]

Well we’ve been told all along to follow the science. How are the numbers doing? How are Michigan’s numbers doing?

[Spok]

It’s like what the TSA does; just a show to make people feel like something is being done, whether it actually accomplishes anything or not.