LogFAQs > #940401976

Bullet_Wing posted...

That's why we had lockdowns and social distancing, to curb the increase of rates. The fact that they shot right back up in a lot of places after reopening is a sign places might have been premature in lifting restrictions.

Also again, simply changing the variable of number of tests should have no effect on the positive rate.

Think with numbers. Say you had 1000 tests, 10 positive. If you upped the testing to 10000 you should have around 100 positive. Having more is a bad sign and nothing to do with the availability of tests themselves.

I know there's a difference between rate and scale. Yes, if you have a complete lockdown with everybody staying home and never leaving their houses, of course that is going to have a lower rate than people going outside. But that scenario is not realistic or sustainable, because people have to get food, get medicine, get laundry, make money, etc.. The question we should be asking is if an economy plus precautions (masks, social distancing, sanitizing, the whole shebang) has a lower rate than the pre-lockdown economy. This has already been shown to be yes, because many of the states that reopened were still seeing a decline in deaths and had an R-naught of less than 1 until a couple of weeks ago.