Coronavirus Thread

[Deleted member 2897]

4. Can you name any governors besides the ones I did that have addressed the need for contact tracing and started to put the necessary infrastructure in place during the last two months? This doesn't have anything to do with politics. The governors I named listened to their public health officers; most didn't. It's that simple. And we are going to pay for it.

Its really exhausting trying to keep counteracting misinformation. I mean, you didn't specifically say only a couple governors were putting in place a high-volume testing and contact tracing plan, but you said "prove me wrong". Okay, South Carolina:
https://www.postandcourier.com/heal...cle_1fec00fe-8f1a-11ea-96f0-8be4198900e2.html
As a part of that, they're also putting in exactly the science-based strategy we should - obsessively protect nursing homes and the vulnerable, while enabling everyone else safely possible to keep the state economy. Someone has to pay for all this you know.

We could go on all day.

You continue to state that people cannot safely participate in the economy while at the same time protecting the vulnerable. That's a false choice. People having been doing it the entire time. But here's again (for like the eleventeenth time) the good news for you - if you don't trust us and other people, you can continue to stay isolated for as long as you see fit. My in-laws are doing exactly that. They are extremely vulnerable. It doesn't matter if everybody in the grocery store (one of the very few places they visit) is naked sneezing on each other and licking the floor, they're not going to get the virus. They go rarely and stock up. They go at off hours. They wear gloves and masks. They disinfect everything once they get home and let it sit long enough for any virus still escaping their precautions to die on the surface. And on and on. You can live and act in a way that ensures you don't get the virus. Its not magic.

A little bit of a thank you from some of you guys would be better here - many of us are trying to keep the economy going to pay people's bills and pay the taxes that will fund your ability to stay home.

 

[684Bee]

Dude, let it go. Not everything everyone post is anti your agenda. Sometimes people can share information and that's it.

Thanks, ref. I’ll take that under advisement.

 

[Milwaukee]

 

[GoldZ]

Yup...we agree (sorta). It's that word "gradually" that gets us all in trouble. That could mean 6 months to you and 6 days to me.

Yeah, the devil in the details. I can assure you that I wasn't talking about April style shutdowns for 6 months and I'm gonna go out a limb to guess you aren't talking about 6 days.

 

[dtm1997]

 

[GoldZ]

You can live and act in a way that ensures you don't get the virus. Its not magic.

The question is...for how long. The mantra of the let er rip crowd is....Oh my gawd at the suicides and depression with this stay at home crap. Well, see a bit of hypocrisy here!?

Considering the number of vulnerable involved, it's gonna take even more people to make it possible to have them shelter. Plus you just linked us that the vulnerable list just grew by millions more, in addition to the millions to begin with. Hell, I'm headed to GNC now to get a big bottle of testosterone pills! :>/

What exactly is wrong about opening up gradually (increasing steadily as long as stats give a green light) with testing/tracing in place? Wouldn't this reduce the chances of both having to shutdown again and save lives (yes, geezers count, even in-laws). Iow, both let er rippers AND shut er downers until a vaccine, are both short sighted in a tragic manner.

Congrats, seriously, on how South Carolina has done so far. Makes ya think that backwoods places like NY and California could do it too!

 

[Deleted member 2897]

The question is...for how long. The mantra of the let er rip crowd is....Oh my gawd at the suicides and depression with this stay at home crap. Well, see a bit of hypocrisy here!?

Considering the number of vulnerable involved, it's gonna take even more people to make it possible to have them shelter. Plus you just linked us that the vulnerable list just grew by millions more, in addition to the millions to begin with. Hell, I'm headed to GNC now to get a big bottle of testosterone pills! :>/

What exactly is wrong about opening up gradually (increasing steadily as long as stats give a green light) with testing/tracing in place? Wouldn't this reduce the chances of both having to shutdown again and save lives (yes, geezers count, even in-laws). Iow, both let er rippers AND shut er downers until a vaccine, are both short sighted in a tragic manner.

Congrats, seriously, on how South Carolina has done so far. Makes ya think that backwoods places like NY and California could do it too!

Part of the problem in this is how we all talk past each other as you rightly point out. You said 'let er rip crowd'. I don't know anybody that has advocated for such a free for all. I would be against 'letting er rip' too. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing. I think that's what each side uses to incriminate the other side (the corollary would be 'we can't stay at home isolated forever!' like anybody has ever suggested that). You have well stated this that both sides aren't helping the discussions in this way.

 

[takethepoints]

Wow, talk about making up numbers to support your point of view....whew! A million deaths...When we have had 80,000 deaths so far. (maybe)
Let’s see, I believe 2 million will die if we follow your advice.
See, I can make up numbers too!

I posted about the earlier. See:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-immunity-wont-save-us/

Do the math. If we don't have a vaccine and we need ~ 70% infection to reach herd immunity and the IFR is .5 (it was .878 in NYC, btw), the equation tells us:

(330M * .7) * .005 = 1,155,000 deaths

I might also point out that we are at the very start of this and the 85,408 deaths we have so far took place over the last 11 weeks. Got anything similar to support your numbers?

I thought not.

 

[LibertyTurns]

We haven’t even gotten to the funniest part of the story. Do you know where he thinks he got it? He flew on a packed flight from NYC to New Orleans. 1 hot spot to another. Why on earth would someone who is a virologist put himself in that position?

Let’s see: beer, nekkid women, great food. Hmm, my odds of catching C19 are the same so donI stay in NYC locked up in a small apartment where the mayor arrests you if you go outside, eat some ravioli out of a can and zoom all day with a bunch of bastards I hate or fly to The Big Easy, party on Bourbon St and find a hot nekkid woman to keep me company? Hard choice

 

[GoldZ]

There are a some Sweden fans here, but although Sweden is as close to a let er rip strategy as a Nation could be, even they aren't truly open for biz as usual.

 

[Techster]

The question is...for how long. The mantra of the let er rip crowd is....Oh my gawd at the suicides and depression with this stay at home crap. Well, see a bit of hypocrisy here!?

Considering the number of vulnerable involved, it's gonna take even more people to make it possible to have them shelter. Plus you just linked us that the vulnerable list just grew by millions more, in addition to the millions to begin with. Hell, I'm headed to GNC now to get a big bottle of testosterone pills! :>/

What exactly is wrong about opening up gradually (increasing steadily as long as stats give a green light) with testing/tracing in place? Wouldn't this reduce the chances of both having to shutdown again and save lives (yes, geezers count, even in-laws). Iow, both let er rippers AND shut er downers until a vaccine, are both short sighted in a tragic manner.

Congrats, seriously, on how South Carolina has done so far. Makes ya think that backwoods places like NY and California could do it too!

The road map for easing up and letting people return to normalcy (as much as is possible) is there. The problem is that too many people want to obfuscate direction or flat our refuse to do it.

Everything starts with testing. We are WAY behind in testing. There are political agendas when it comes to testing, so unfortunately all that's going to happen is we will fall further behind.

Contact Tracing. See above. At this point, contact tracing would require a sizeable army (and maybe that's the answer, use our personnel in the army/navy/marines to conduct it). We may be too far down the road for this.

Safer at home restrictions for those that are medically at risk or fragile. This should be happening anyhow.

Require people to wear face masks in public. An inconvenience, but the small price you pay to have life go back to some sense of normalcy.

Heavy restrictions on activities that increases risk of human to human infection (gyms, exercise groups, group activities that makes wearing a mask untenable, etc.)

Social distancing at the office, and allowing work at home where possible.

There's probably more things, but IMO, those are the obvious things we can do if we want to start easing into some sense of normalcy. The virus isn't going away any time soon, but people can't just stay in their homes forever. You have to let people work, get out for activities like buying food and exercise, and some socializing. There is a way to balance it, but it requires some rather minor adjustments.

If we can't make small adjustments like the items I outlined above, I don't think we should be complaining about having to stay home. Personally, I'm more than willing to take 10-30 minute of my time to test, wear a mask in public, stay away from the gym (and find other means of exercise), and work from home if all that means my friends and neighbors can resume their livelihoods, and we can possibly have sports again. Unfortunately, we can't even agree on a baseline of things that need to be accomplished before letting everyone safely resume some sense of normalcy.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

There are a some Sweden fans here, but although Sweden is as close to a let er rip strategy as a Nation could be, even they aren't truly open for biz as usual.

I've been paying attention to Sweden for awhile. The news is rarely accurate about what they've done. For example, South Carolina's governor issued a stay-at-home recommendation in mid-March. The news didn't report that we were under a stay-at-home order until like a month later. Sweden also recommended similar orders - they just refused to put regulations and fines and criminality behind it. So they've had some people still milling around, but so have we here in the US. We all still go get take out food, go to the grocery store, Lowes and Home Depot, and Walmart. The news has also reported that Sweden kept all gyms, schools, and restaurants open, but that is false. Many schools have been closed. The best way I can describe Sweden's approach is that they have been stubborn. But day by day, week by week, they have gradually done what most everyone else has done. They didn't actually take a stay open approach. Step by step they've gradually locked down piece by piece of their society. As we've shown in charts and graphs, their new case rate has been much more longer extended than say New York. When chasing herd immunity, you're shooting for a sharp peak that is faster and drops back down to normal quicker, as opposed to a shut down approach which flattens the curve. A shutdown approach keeps hospitals below capacity, but extends the timeframe of the virus. Sweden's curve is showing to be actually about twice as big and broad as New York. Their death rate is one of the worst in the world, which is shocking considering their population density is so sparce. I don't wish bad things on people, but I was really hoping they'd stick to their guns and not shut down so we could all see the real data of what happens. But alas, all they've really shown is what happens if you do what everyone else does, just are much much slower to react.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

The road map for easing up and letting people return to normalcy (as much as is possible is there). The problem is that too many people want to obfuscate direction or flat our refuse to do it.

Everything starts with testing. We are WAY behind in testing. There are political agendas when it comes to testing, so unfortunately all that's going to happen is we will fall further behind.

Contact Tracing. See above. At this point, contact tracing would require a sizeable army (and maybe that's the answer, use our personnel in the army/navy/marines to conduct it). We may be too far down the road for this.

Safer at home restrictions for those that are medically at risk or fragile. This should be happening anyhow.

Require people to wear face masks in public. An inconvenience, but the small price you pay to have life go back to some sense of normalcy.

Heavy restrictions on activities that increases risk of human to human infection (gyms, exercise groups, group activities that makes wearing a mask untenable, etc.)

Social distancing at the office, and allowing work at home where possible.

There's probably more things, but IMO, those are the obvious things we can do if we want to start easing into some sense of normalcy. The virus isn't going away any time soon, but people can't just stay in their homes forever. You have to let people work, get out for activities like buying food and exercise, and some socializing. There is a way to balance it, but it requires some rather minor adjustments.

If we can't make small adjustments like the items I outlined above, I don't think we should be complaining about having to stay home. Personally, I'm more than willing to take 10-30 minute of my time to test, wear a mask in public, stay away from the gym (and find other means of exercise), and work from home if all that means my friends and neighbors can resume their livelihoods, and we can possibly have sports again. Unfortunately, we can't even agree on a baseline of things that need to be accomplished before letting everyone safely resume some sense of normalcy.

I agree with everything you're saying, except for the testing part. I continue to think that's an overblown concern. There's no way we're going to be testing our entire population once a week. Or even half of it. Or even a tenth of it. What is important is that as soon as you feel any symptoms or as soon as you have reason to believe you've been exposed that you're able to get a test (contract tracing helps there, and most states already have those processes in action). And contrary to what you might read, a great many states actually already have that capacity in place today. You won't read about it, but I live in SC so I hear about it all the time, but many states have had these pre-screening and widely available drive through testing centers available for months. We've not been at testing capacity for months. Sure, if you're testing a large part of society, you'll catch asymptomatic people that wouldn't have otherwise known they had the virus, but we need to all give up on the idea that we're ever going to be able to test that number of people. We need to stop thinking we can eradicate the virus, because we can't. We can't eradicate the flu, even with vaccines. We haven't eradicated AIDS. We haven't eradicated many things at all. We need to learn how to live and operate as safely as we can at the same time.

 

[bobongo]

We haven’t even gotten to the funniest part of the story. Do you know where he thinks he got it? He flew on a packed flight from NYC to New Orleans. 1 hot spot to another. Why on earth would someone who is a virologist put himself in that position?

Maybe he was doing his job. Good grief.

 

[FredJacket]

Maybe he was doing his job. Good grief.

I agree with you there. He chose to go to NO... and I believe him when he claims he took measures to protect himself from the virus.

But the part that confounds me the most... he is a doctor. Let's say you went to him with COVID symptoms. He tested you for the virus. The test came back negative. He recommends taking the test a 2nd time.... negative. then a 3rd and 4th time... 4 negative tests in a row. Then... he tells you that you have C19. Would that make any sense to you? It is really a rhetorical question. I do not think this story sheds any light to educate us on the virus. I'm more blown away it was aired the way it was aired and it simply makes me really wonder what NBC was doing. More of funny/interesting side show than anything significant.

 

[bobongo]

I agree with you there. He chose to go to NO... and I believe him when he claims he took measures to protect himself from the virus.

But the part that confounds me the most... he is a doctor. Let's say you went to him with COVID symptoms. He tested you for the virus. The test came back negative. He recommends taking the test a 2nd time.... negative. then a 3rd and 4th time... 4 negative tests in a row. Then... he tells you that you have C19. Would that make any sense to you? It is really a rhetorical question. I do not think this story sheds any light to educate us on the virus. I'm more blown away it was aired the way it was aired and it simply makes me really wonder what NBC was doing. More of funny/interesting side show than anything significant.

The tests are only so accurate. If all the symptoms were present, it would be prudent to assume it was COVID, if for no other reason to err on the side of caution even if the tests came back negative.

 

[684Bee]

I agree with you there. He chose to go to NO... and I believe him when he claims he took measures to protect himself from the virus.

But the part that confounds me the most... he is a doctor. Let's say you went to him with COVID symptoms. He tested you for the virus. The test came back negative. He recommends taking the test a 2nd time.... negative. then a 3rd and 4th time... 4 negative tests in a row. Then... he tells you that you have C19. Would that make any sense to you? It is really a rhetorical question. I do not think this story sheds any light to educate us on the virus. I'm more blown away it was aired the way it was aired and it simply makes me really wonder what NBC was doing. More of funny/interesting side show than anything significant.

I actually think it is significant. It demonstrates blatant skewing of what actually happened. It’s not a one-off example either. Add it up and it causes unnecessary fear and anxiety.

 

[armeck]

I've been paying attention to Sweden for awhile. The news is rarely accurate about what they've done. For example, South Carolina's governor issued a stay-at-home recommendation in mid-March. The news didn't report that we were under a stay-at-home order until like a month later. Sweden also recommended similar orders - they just refused to put regulations and fines and criminality behind it. So they've had some people still milling around, but so have we here in the US. We all still go get take out food, go to the grocery store, Lowes and Home Depot, and Walmart. The news has also reported that Sweden kept all gyms, schools, and restaurants open, but that is false. Many schools have been closed. The best way I can describe Sweden's approach is that they have been stubborn. But day by day, week by week, they have gradually done what most everyone else has done. They didn't actually take a stay open approach. Step by step they've gradually locked down piece by piece of their society. As we've shown in charts and graphs, their new case rate has been much more longer extended than say New York. When chasing herd immunity, you're shooting for a sharp peak that is faster and drops back down to normal quicker, as opposed to a shut down approach which flattens the curve. A shutdown approach keeps hospitals below capacity, but extends the timeframe of the virus. Sweden's curve is showing to be actually about twice as big and broad as New York. Their death rate is one of the worst in the world, which is shocking considering their population density is so sparce. I don't wish bad things on people, but I was really hoping they'd stick to their guns and not shut down so we could all see the real data of what happens. But alas, all they've really shown is what happens if you do what everyone else does, just are much much slower to react.

So this isn't accurate? April 6th?
https://www.wistv.com/2020/04/07/go...-at-home-order-fight-coronavirus-outbreak-sc/

I can't find any mention of a voluntary order except for a bunch or editorials disagreeing with the Gov. for not issuing an order.

 

[FredJacket]

The tests are only so accurate. If all the symptoms were present, it would be prudent to assume it was COVID, if for no other reason to err on the side of caution even if the tests came back negative.

I would tend to agree with that too. But how do you reconcile that with demands we MUST get more testing. If testing is that unreliable... then just take precautions, respond to symptoms, and be safe.

 

[MWBATL]

I agree with everything you're saying, except for the testing part. I continue to think that's an overblown concern. There's no way we're going to be testing our entire population once a week. Or even half of it. Or even a tenth of it. What is important is that as soon as you feel any symptoms or as soon as you have reason to believe you've been exposed that you're able to get a test (contract tracing helps there, and most states already have those processes in action). And contrary to what you might read, a great many states actually already have that capacity in place today. You won't read about it, but I live in SC so I hear about it all the time, but many states have had these pre-screening and widely available drive through testing centers available for months. We've not been at testing capacity for months. Sure, if you're testing a large part of society, you'll catch asymptomatic people that wouldn't have otherwise known they had the virus, but we need to all give up on the idea that we're ever going to be able to test that number of people. We need to stop thinking we can eradicate the virus, because we can't. We can't eradicate the flu, even with vaccines. We haven't eradicated AIDS. We haven't eradicated many things at all. We need to learn how to live and operate as safely as we can at the same time.

This makes sense....