RonJohn
Helluva Engineer
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CLEARLY, they should be listed as a COVID-19 death.
Clearly no deaths should be listed as COVID-19 deaths because they are actually caused by cytokines.
CLEARLY, they should be listed as a COVID-19 death.
However, the modeling is now being shown to have badly overestimated the size and nature of the pandemic.
Do you really want the government to track your every move, regardless of how significant those statistics might be? That is way too Orwellian for me.A very large problem with the models is that wide scaled mitigation has never been used before. Until a couple of months ago, it was a theoretical response to a very contagious pandemic. Scientists could arrive at theoretical estimates of how large scale mitigation would affect infection rates of a pathogen. People who build models could put those estimates into the models. The reality of mitigation appears to be better than what was arrived at in models of the theoretical impacts. It is still far too early to arrive at any concrete conclusions about how dangerous or not this virus actually is. If the Ro actually is as high as the recent study says, and the mortality rate actually is a little over 1%, this could have been a very devastating event. If antibody testing shows that 80% of the American population has the virus, then it is more akin to the flu. To actually answer any of this, will take final data and time for epidemiologists and statisticians to work on the data.
Something that probably would help modelling mitigation's effects would be years worth of cell phone data from the entire public. If the models based infection rates on cell phones being close to each other instead of statistics, then they might have a better chance at predicting effects of different scales of mitigation efforts. However that could raise some privacy concerns.
Do you really want the government to track your every move, regardless of how significant those statistics might be? That is way too Orwellian for me.
See:It won’t last that long. We can’t put the country into abject despair for that long to protect such a small minority of people. The general population will demand strong quarantine protection for those people and to let everyone else live their lives.
My gut tells me some parts of the country will open up with social distancing, wearing masks, and what-not...and by the time any resurgence comes we’ll have a better read on vaccines and medicines.
Everyone should remember that we now have the best testing in the world. So if our testing isn’t enough, nobody else’s is either. This isn’t an American problem. The rest of the world won’t put up with this either. The health issues and despair from just 30 days will lead to uprisings and revolt if they try to hold this for longer than say another month.
That is true about the Millennials and Gen X's (not sure what a Gen Z'er is), but they are naive if they don't think the government, or anybody for that matter, can and probably does use those cameras and maps for potentially nefarious reasons. Like I said, I realize the potential good of having such information, at least in this case, but overall, I just don't like it.Using anonymous cell phone location data would probably be a lot better at forecasting than just statistics. Using non-anonymous cell phone data would be a great tool for containment. Contact tracing and identification could be almost complete and would catch people that current methods do not.
I did state that there would be be privacy concerns. I think that it will happen at some point. There is already some tracking by different companies and apps, although I don't think it is complete tracking. If someone had asked 30 years ago about having cameras everywhere on the street that could be used to track where you go, many people would have objected. Today that is common. If someone had asked 10 years ago about all neighbors putting up doorbell cameras that record everything that happens in the neighborhood, many people would have objected. Today that is common. Millennials and Gen Z'ers don't appear to be concerned about being on cameras or on maps most of the time.
See:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
And look at your favorite metric, in this case tests per million population. There you will see at once that the US, while giving a large number of tests, is not - repeat not - among the world leaders in the kind of surveillance that will be necessary to accommodate even a rolling withdrawal of restrictions without running the risk of making the infection rate explode. And that, of course, will make the death rate explode too.
Also, where do you get all this "abject despair" stuff? People seem to be coping fairly well and are expecting considerable aid in getting past this from the government. I've seen no opinion data showing anything resembling despair; if you have, let's see it. Now, if the checks get held up too long, that'll get people upset alright. But I suspect the administration knows that and will deliver as soon as the actual civil servants at Treasury begin to make the wheels work.
I'm pretty sure that most of us would rather not get sick then get back to work.
Give it another month or two and you will almost definitely see a helluva lot of despair in this country. And what happens when those government checks are spent? What are the people counting on them going to do then? We have GOT to re-open the country and get things going and people working again, or a crisis will result from not doing those things that may end up being worse than the health crisis itself.See:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
And look at your favorite metric, in this case tests per million population. There you will see at once that the US, while giving a large number of tests, is not - repeat not - among the world leaders in the kind of surveillance that will be necessary to accommodate even a rolling withdrawal of restrictions without running the risk of making the infection rate explode. And that, of course, will make the death rate explode too.
Also, where do you get all this "abject despair" stuff? People seem to be coping fairly well and are expecting considerable aid in getting past this from the government. I've seen no opinion data showing anything resembling despair; if you have, let's see it. Now, if the checks get held up too long, that'll get people upset alright. But I suspect the administration knows that and will deliver as soon as the actual civil servants at Treasury begin to make the wheels work.
I'm pretty sure that most of us would rather not get sick then get back to work.
Hope you're right. But … this is a brand new virus and extremely contagious. Remember that the initial estimates of total deaths were based on not doing what we are doing now. Personally, I think that, even with the present measures and better treatments, we will still top better then 100K deaths from this before we have a vaccine. Relaxing at this point without proper surveillance mechanisms in place will make that absolutely certain, imho.Problem here is that no one has much credibility in this whole matter. The scientists and the science are what I respect deeply. However, the modeling is now being shown to have badly overestimated the size and nature of the pandemic. The field hospital in Seattle that was erected, saw no patients at all, and is now being dismantled is one aspect of that. The estimates that scared everyone about the need for beds and ventilators in NYC are another (it has turned out that Trump was factually correct that Cuomo did NOT need 30,000 ventilators.)
I want more data and more clinical trials. My understanding in listening to Fauci is that numerous such trials are underway. By the time this re-surfaces next Fall, we should know MUCH more about how to treat it (since a vaccine will still not be available yet) and we should be able to hold down mortality rates significantly based on that.
I think we have now seen the worst of this virus and will see steady improvement, with a few blips, from here on.
Uh, they can already do that, you know. The only restriction is that you can't do it as part of a criminal investigation.Do you really want the government to track your every move, regardless of how significant those statistics might be? That is way too Orwellian for me.
You and bwelbo seem to have convinced yourselves that people are going to behave irrationally in this. As the crisis continues, the federal government will provide more money. It really is that simple. The Fed just pumped another $2.3 trillion into economy yesterday. Congress will follow suit; at a lag, of course.Give it another month or two and you will almost definitely see a helluva lot of despair in this country. And what happens when those government checks are spent? What are the people counting on them going to do then? We have GOT to re-open the country and get things going and people working again, or a crisis will result from not doing those things that may end up being worse than the health crisis itself.
You and bwelbo seem to have convinced yourselves that people are going to behave irrationally in this. As the crisis continues, the federal government will provide more money. It really is that simple. The Fed just pumped another $2.3 trillion into economy yesterday. Congress will follow suit; at a lag, of course.
There will be potentially dire economic consequences from this, but this downturn won't take place because of a failure on institutions, like 2007-8. This is a natural disaster. People respond differently to those, even if the effects are long lasting. I wouldn't worry so much, if I were you. Especially if that worrying leads to precipitate actions that increase our problems with the disease. We can handle the economy; we can't handle the virus yet.
Clearly no deaths should be listed as COVID-19 deaths because they are actually caused by cytokines.
Some people are already behaving irrationally, some in the private sector and quite a few in government. The entire country has never shut down like this before. People who previously held at least decent-paying jobs, as well as some with relatively high-paying jobs are now not getting paid at all. Do you really think that those people won't get increasingly desperate if this lasts much longer? I am fortunate to have a fixed retirement income, so life pretty much goes on for me as before, and I am sure other retirees like me feel the same. But when conditions somewhat comparable to those during the Great Depression exist, things can potentially get way out of hand. And sadly people today are nowhere near as stalwart as most people during the depression were.You and bwelbo seem to have convinced yourselves that people are going to behave irrationally in this. As the crisis continues, the federal government will provide more money. It really is that simple. The Fed just pumped another $2.3 trillion into economy yesterday. Congress will follow suit; at a lag, of course.
There will be potentially dire economic consequences from this, but this downturn won't take place because of a failure on institutions, like 2007-8. This is a natural disaster. People respond differently to those, even if the effects are long lasting. I wouldn't worry so much, if I were you. Especially if that worrying leads to precipitate actions that increase our problems with the disease. We can handle the economy; we can't handle the virus yet.
I am fortunate to have a fixed retirement income, so life pretty much goes on for me as before, and I am sure other retirees like me feel the same. But when conditions somewhat comparable to those during the Great Depression exist, things can potentially get way out of hand. And sadly people today are nowhere near as stalwart as most people during the depression were.
Yep !Isn't that the great irony? The people most susceptible to the virus are also largely not inconvenienced by shutting down the economy. The people least susceptible to it are the ones getting driven over the top of.