bobongo
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The problem is that the article you referenced isn’t a Study. It’s a statement saying there haven’t been studies. Since that statement was made there have been a bunch of them conducted of all types.
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The CDC and a few other sites will provide cases, hospitalizations, and deaths per 100k as well as totals. California and Florida look better when adjusted for population. Louisiana and Michigan look worse that way. I didn’t see a good way to filter for the last month, though.
https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/
As far as lockdowns are concerned, China locked down regions until they could get a plan in place, but it seems like we just learned to lock down. I’m not sure who has a good strategy, but it seems like the southeast asian countries are doing better.
Regarding masks, most studies I’ve seen lately are that they’re effective. I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re harmful other than raising your heart rate a bit when you’re exercising. It seems like they have a preponderance of the evidence for an upside, little to no evidence for a downside, and they’re cheap and have individual control.
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https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/
As far as lockdowns are concerned, China locked down regions until they could get a plan in place, but it seems like we just learned to lock down. I’m not sure who has a good strategy, but it seems like the southeast asian countries are doing better.
Regarding masks, most studies I’ve seen lately are that they’re effective. I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re harmful other than raising your heart rate a bit when you’re exercising. It seems like they have a preponderance of the evidence for an upside, little to no evidence for a downside, and they’re cheap and have individual control.
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NBC News had a whole Chinese propaganda piece last night. They use military force to lock people down (both shutting off roads and closing down neighborhoods, buildings, etc. and all kinds of things we would never do. They glamorized the whole thing as if it was written by the Chinese government...it was surreal.
On masks, as long as you exercise outdoors somewhere and not on top of people, you wouldn't need to wear masks then. You're right - there really is no downside and many studies have proven it helps. If someone insists on medical grade equipment or nothing, they can always choose to wear one of those N95 masks. Hell, they can wear a full PPE gown if they wish.
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Bump.
LibertyTurns
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The only negative I’m aware of it reduces the amount of O2 being breathed in. I’d post the study but it’s from THAT institution we dislike, but reduction in O2 is 5-20% causing lightheadedness and dizziness if work too long. It can also cause lung damage. If you have respiratory issues, ie asthma it’s obviously a bit of an issue. Ambient air is 21% or so, therefore a mask reduces your O2 intake down to 17-20%. OSHA requires 19.5%. We’ve told our employees masks are required anywhere they’re near others but they should be wary of their personal situation and if they have any signs of being lightheaded, dizzy they are to go to a break area and take 5-10 mins. Repeated instances they need to go see the nurse and be evaluated if they need to be moved to an area requiring less mask use.
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Looking through the Johns Hopkins data, I see three main categories of countries:
1) They absolutely got run over by a truck, with hospitals overrun, so many people dying they couldn't even count them all, and so on. They look like they probably reached herd immunity because of it, and their numbers have come back down now - Spain, France, Italy, UK...think New York City.
2) Countries who avoided getting run over by a truck. They successfully kept hospitals from being overrun. But cases continue to spread around the country.
3) Countries who avoided getting run over by a truck. They have also kept continued spread down.
#2 looks to be by far the largest population of countries. If you scroll through countries' data, there are dozens and dozens of countries seeing cases continue to grow right now.
#3 looks to be the smallest, and is also interesting. You've got liars in here like China, you've got police states like South Korea. But you've also got countries like Germany.
Looking through demographics - the United states has 35% more elderly people per capita than Germany does. And the United States has 70% more obese people per capita than Germany does. I wonder if the combination of those things (since they are by far the lions share of deaths) accounts for the mortality differences between Germany and many other countries (they are significantly less obese than the rest of Europe).
1) They absolutely got run over by a truck, with hospitals overrun, so many people dying they couldn't even count them all, and so on. They look like they probably reached herd immunity because of it, and their numbers have come back down now - Spain, France, Italy, UK...think New York City.
2) Countries who avoided getting run over by a truck. They successfully kept hospitals from being overrun. But cases continue to spread around the country.
3) Countries who avoided getting run over by a truck. They have also kept continued spread down.
#2 looks to be by far the largest population of countries. If you scroll through countries' data, there are dozens and dozens of countries seeing cases continue to grow right now.
#3 looks to be the smallest, and is also interesting. You've got liars in here like China, you've got police states like South Korea. But you've also got countries like Germany.
Looking through demographics - the United states has 35% more elderly people per capita than Germany does. And the United States has 70% more obese people per capita than Germany does. I wonder if the combination of those things (since they are by far the lions share of deaths) accounts for the mortality differences between Germany and many other countries (they are significantly less obese than the rest of Europe).
WreckinGT
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There are a few things that went in China's favor:
1. They can obviously implement any kind of lockdown they want with incredible speed. They had government arranged food delivery services shortly after shutting down. How long would it take us to do something like that?
2. Things shutdown during Chinese new year when most people weren't working anyways making the transition smoother.
3. Mask culture is already established in China. Even before the virus it is pretty common see plenty of people wearing masks and its never shunned in any way. Most wear them because of pollution.
4. Chinese people are generally on board with the governments efforts. When the vast majority of the nation is working together towards a common goal it obviously helps things.
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Or said another way - its an oppressive communist regime. Take the most recent lockdown. 18 people tested positive in one area. China blockaded the neighborhoods. Nobody was allowed to come or go. Only 1 person was allowed outside in each household per day, and only once per day, and only for emergency supplies. People were given required time schedules to show up to be tested. No vehicles are allowed to be used. So when people are 'generally onboard', that's by force of gun by the military.
WreckinGT
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No, I meant that the people I have spoken to are generally on board with the way the government has handled this situation. For full disclosure, I have family and friends in China and I work with teams in China on a daily basis. They don't feel oppressed from my experience. They feel it is necessary. There is plenty of criticism for how they handled the start of the pandemic, especially with regards to Li Wenliang, but for the most part everyone has been pretty much on board with the response to the virus itself.
Techster
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"Lockdowns" is a nice way to put it. They literally shutdown the city, locked up buildings, and didn't allow anyone out on the streets unless it was to go get food. If you were on the street and they took a temperature check...if you were over the limit, they put you in a car took to a quarantine hospital. No ifs ands or buts...you were getting in the car. If a neighbor was suspicious about you being sick, a government employee would come by take your temperature...and drag your a$$ out of the building if you were above the limit.
China is being absolutely ruthless about it. What the United States did is a vacation in Bahamas compared to what China is doing. That's why people should be glad all we need to do is wear mask and social distance. Beats getting dragged out of a building.
takethepoints
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Almost all of these measures (the business about only one person leaving a house would, I think, be out) would be constitutional in the U.S. under a national emergency declaration. We don't do this kind of thing because we have a political culture that doesn't like the government to try it. There's nothing necessarily oppressive about measures to control an infectious disease that can spread through asymptomatic individuals. The problem with SARS-Cov-2 is that it isn't deadly enough to lead to a demand here to take such measures to suppress it. The barriers are lower in China, probably as much due to past experience (SARS) as an expectation that the government's commands would be wise to obey.
This doesn't mean the place isn't a dictatorship, of course.
takethepoints
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On the shutdown and its effects, see:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27432.pdf
Yet another study that uses cell phone records to track movement and a "quasi-experimental" research design. The abstract tells the story. Short paper: people quit going to "leisure and entertainment" businesses because they were scared, that started well before any mandated shutdowns, and the rebound in activity from "reopening" has been modest for the same reason.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27432.pdf
Yet another study that uses cell phone records to track movement and a "quasi-experimental" research design. The abstract tells the story. Short paper: people quit going to "leisure and entertainment" businesses because they were scared, that started well before any mandated shutdowns, and the rebound in activity from "reopening" has been modest for the same reason.
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How closely did you study their charts? Most states instituted stay-at-home orders, limited restaurants to take-out only, and so on the second week in March. So look at the data in their charts immediately preceding those orders - traffic was down a small fraction.
Also, traffic had rebounded 50% by the end of the chart, which was before any reopening.
Once again a group of people who publish something they want to believe instead of what the data shows them.
RonJohn
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It has been 15 days since we left Universal Studios. No one has had COVID-19 symptoms. Or at least no one has had COVID-19 symptoms that don't match pollen allergy symptoms. The day after I cut the grass last week, I had a bad sore throat. It was itchy and it got better when swallowing instead of worse when swallowing. I took Claritin and it is better now. Temperature hasn't been above 98. It is normally around 97.4.
So, I took the family on a road trip and spent two days at an amusement park. After the reported incubation period, no one has symptomatic COVID-19. Like a mutual fund report, I will say that I can't guarantee future success for others doing the same thing.
bobongo
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Sun Belt States Backtrack After Flouting Pandemic Guidelines:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/s...guidelines/ar-BB1674n9?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds
From the article:
The daily surge in confirmed cases and hospitalizations has been most pronounced in Sun Belt states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona that disregarded benchmark health guidelines to wait for a steady, two-week decline in infections before reopening their economies.
"That's a recipe for disaster," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN in an interview broadcast on Monday.
"Now we're seeing the consequences of community spread, which is even more difficult to contain than spread in a well-known physical location like a prison or nursing home or meatpacking place," Fauci said in the interview, which was recorded on Friday.
Now, those mostly southern and western states are backtracking, closing bars and beaches and delaying the reopening of other businesses and activities. AMC, the largest U.S. movie theater chain, on Monday said it was pushing back the opening of its theaters to July 30 from July 15.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/s...guidelines/ar-BB1674n9?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds
From the article:
The daily surge in confirmed cases and hospitalizations has been most pronounced in Sun Belt states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona that disregarded benchmark health guidelines to wait for a steady, two-week decline in infections before reopening their economies.
"That's a recipe for disaster," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN in an interview broadcast on Monday.
"Now we're seeing the consequences of community spread, which is even more difficult to contain than spread in a well-known physical location like a prison or nursing home or meatpacking place," Fauci said in the interview, which was recorded on Friday.
Now, those mostly southern and western states are backtracking, closing bars and beaches and delaying the reopening of other businesses and activities. AMC, the largest U.S. movie theater chain, on Monday said it was pushing back the opening of its theaters to July 30 from July 15.
takethepoints
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Read pages 5 - 7 again. Goolsby and Syverson's explanation of the effects they estimated in Table 1 shows why they said what they did and why they did more then look at the graphs of logged visits. The Appendix Table they provide is also informative.
This has absolutely nothing to do with ignoring the data; indeed, it is their careful parsing of effects that reveals what the data are actually telling us; i.e. that the bottom fell out of consumer demand in leisure and entertainment before any re-opening and continued falling until states began to take their foot off the pedal. Even then demand (as measured by visits) only partially recovered.
LibertyTurns
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I’m always amazed how different the circles we run in are. My company has a reasonably large footprint in China. They’d never text, email or post anything on social media derogatory to the Chinese government, but man when they get back stateside Katie bar the door. They couldn’t hate the response & treatment any more than they do. Got three out of Chinese “jail” a little over a month ago & they’re resigning because we’ve got no place to put them other than China and the job nature makes it impossible to telecommute from here to there. Let’s see- massive cover ups, blatant lying, abusive controls, incompetent leadership, slow & incoherent responses, etc are the themes on the ground among the few willing to talk. Most people over there are reluctant to talk to the expats right now for fear of becoming enemies of the state.
takethepoints
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The actual sentence should read: "… i.e. that the bottom fell out of consumer demand in leisure and entertainment before any shutdown and continued falling until states began to take their foot off the pedal." My bad.
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FWIW, this is a great article on the research being done right now on the dominant variant of the virus in the US. it is known as the G (glycine) variant and it differs from the original D (aspartic acid) variant. Over 95% of positive tests in the US by May were of the G variety. It is believed to have started in Europe and then migrated to the US through NY.
They are still studying this variant so no definitive conclusions have been reached but scientists are coming to believe this newer variant is more contagious than the original D variant, though fortunately so far doesn't appear to be any more deadly.
The article likens the virus to a destructive burglar. The G variant is a much more efficient lock picker at getting into our cells.
It's a good read into how much scientists are learning and how much more we have to go.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science/?arc404=true
“G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means.
At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others.
The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.
They are still studying this variant so no definitive conclusions have been reached but scientists are coming to believe this newer variant is more contagious than the original D variant, though fortunately so far doesn't appear to be any more deadly.
The article likens the virus to a destructive burglar. The G variant is a much more efficient lock picker at getting into our cells.
It's a good read into how much scientists are learning and how much more we have to go.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science/?arc404=true
“G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means.
At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others.
The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.
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