COVID-19

[Pappy13]

If Hoodie is objecting to the mild, mostly voluntary steps being taken in the US, I don't imagine he would be at all supportive of the steps China has been taking lately to stop the spread of the virus.

Agreed, but hopefully by being more proactive rather than reactive we won't have to.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Which explains a lot about your position in this thread. If you don't feel that way, that completely changes the discussion.

Absolutely. But the models are based on that. Unless we are going to shut down schools, business etc until we have a vaccine.  We need about ~75% of the population to be immune in order to carry on normal life at have a non exponential growth. If we end social distancing before we get to 75% we will have exponential growth.  Two ways to get to 75% immunity— vaccine or people get sick and recover.  Flattening the curve and social distancing is only about extending the time it takes to reach 75% so hospitals don’t get overwhelmed.  It makes no claim of lowering the overall number of cases.

Flu requires about ~50% for linear growth.  As about 47% of the population gets a vaccine we only see very rare exponential growth as recently recovered get us above the threshold pretty quickly.  

All numbers are very fluid.  Might not be 75% real number could be as low as 50 or as high as 90.  

[Pappy13]

Unless we are going to shut down schools, business etc until we have a vaccine.  We need about ~75% of the population to be immune in order to carry on normal life at have a non exponential growth.

Unless the virus is seasonal like the Flu virus. If that is the case then all we have to do is make it to the end of the virus season then we have some time to develop a vaccine.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

If Hoodie is objecting to the mild, mostly voluntary steps being taken in the US, I don't imagine he would be at all supportive of the steps China has been taking lately to stop the spread of the virus.

I think the mild ones are foolish. I would fully support sealing off a city with a high incident rate and not letting anyone leave until the disease ran its course.  

Not allowing a sick person to travel to a healthy city will stop the spread.  Having children interact with 5 kids per day rather than 20 won’t.  I would have shut down the airlines before the schools.  

I have very rarely supported Trump on anything.  I did support him banning flight from China.  The only problem I had with his Europe ban was it didn’t include his golf estates.

[Spider-Dan]

We need about ~75% of the population to be immune in order to carry on normal life at have a non exponential growth. If we end social distancing before we get to 75% we will have exponential growth.  Two ways to get to 75% immunity— vaccine or people get sick and recover.

You keep casually mentioning the let everyone just catch it so we can move on approach without adding that if 75% of the US were to catch C-19, we would expect over six million people to die (and that's before we get to the vastly increased numbers of people who would die from diabetes, asthma, cancer etc. because the hospitals are far beyond capacity).

This continued focus of yours is bizarre and inexplicable.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

You keep casually mentioning the let everyone just catch it so we can move on approach without adding that if 75% of the US were to catch C-19, we would expect over six million people to die (and that's before we get to the vastly increased numbers of people who would die from diabetes, asthma, cancer etc. because the hospitals are far beyond capacity).

This continued focus of yours is bizarre and inexplicable.

Here is my thinking.....less people will die of diabetes, asthma, cancer etc.  If we have 3 weeks in which the hospitals are at 200 time capacity and then return to normal than if we have 60 weeks of hospitals being at 10 times capacity.  Flattening the curve gets us the latter.  I think it is a myth we can flatten it to the point hospitals can actually manage the load.

[Spider-Dan]

So six million deaths is fine as long as they do it fast.
This is a garbage take, man.  I don't know what stake you have in this, but you should really re-evaluate your priorities.

Do you seriously think the difference in outcomes between South Korea and Italy is insignificant and not worth attempting?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

So six million deaths is fine as long as they do it fast.
This is a garbage take, man.  I don't know what stake you have in this, but you should really re-evaluate your priorities.

Do you seriously think the difference in outcomes between South Korea and Italy is insignificant and not worth attempting?

Except we aren’t following S korea’s model.  We

South Korea’s model s a great one.  But it s not what we are doing.  They didn’t shut down schools because someone 50 miles away had an infection.  They tested everybody who might have possible contacted someone who was infected. 

We are doing what Italy did only worse.  Shutting down areas but insufficient testing to figure out who is actually sick. 

Following S. Korea’s model isn’t randomly shutting down an entire states school system.  It is testing anyone who is showing even minor symptoms plus everyone everyone who might have come in contact with someone who is infected.

Want S Korea’s results. Have free testing.  Test everyone who has been overseas, test everyone who has a single cold or flu like symptom, then test everyone who might have been in contact with those who tested positive. 

However, given the spread we already have at this point that would require testing millions of people.

South Korea did far less mass shut downs than italy and far more testing than italy.  We are doing more shutting downs and less testing than italy. 

What if instead of sending Pappy home, they tested every single one of their employees and sent the sick ones home?

What if instead of shutting down entire schools we tested every student?

What if we required everyone who flies to get tested 24-48 hours before their flight in order to board the plane.

Absolutely we should be isolating sick people.  But to do that we need to know who is sick.  And that requires testing.

What the USA is doing with social distancing is the same security theater that Italy did, except we are doing more theater and even less testing than them.

And are results are almost identical, we are about 9 days behind Italy.  (If you look at day by day number of cases)

So yes, let’s follow South Korea’s model. 

[Spider-Dan]

South Korea’s model s a great one.  But it s not what we are doing.  They didn’t shut down schools because someone 50 miles away had an infection.  They tested everybody who might have possible contacted someone who was infected.  

We are doing what Italy did only worse.  Shutting down areas but insufficient testing to figure out who is actually sick.  

Following S. Korea’s model isn’t randomly shutting down an entire states school system.  It is testing anyone who is showing even minor symptoms plus everyone everyone who might have come in contact with someone who is infected.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/no-panic-here-i-am-south-korea-watching-coronavirus-spread-128697

"The heaviest emphasis now is on what epidemiologists refer to as ‘social distancing.’ This means simply that people should keep their distance from each other. This makes any sort of gathering automatically suspect. And as the virus spreads, the cessation of meetings, events, and congregations has become more and more thorough.

Here are just a few examples, almost all of which have been voluntary. Religious services have effectively ceased. Catholic churches have taken to saying mass over the internet. Schools are universally closed. My children’s kindergarten closed completely last week and will close again this week. My wife and I are now planning on this lasting through the whole month of March.

Grade school and college students have so far had it lucky. The Korean spring semester does not normally begin until March. But now that March is here, these schools are planning on opening in the middle of the month instead. And in fact, this week school administrators across the country will meet to decide if school should start in April. Given that the number of corona cases is jumping few hundred every day now, I have little doubt school will be postponed till April. Indeed, if they started it on March 16 as originally planned, I wonder how many people – including instructors – would even come.

Just about any outdoor congregation is now ended. Concerts have canceled. Political protests, which are very common in South Korea, have all but stopped. Movie theaters are empty, and some are simply closing until further notice. A friend and I were going to run a few 10K races this spring. This has been delayed, even though transmission seems to occur mostly in closed spaces. Even the jungle gym for children and health club facilities in my apartment complex have closed. In the eleven years, I have lived in Busan, that has never happened. It is rather startling. There is not much left to do. My family and I are spending most of our time at home. We are ordering food via the internet and spending too much time watching TV. As an academic, I have the flexibility to work at home, but there has been a lot of contention about families that cannot keep their kids at home when the parents must still go to work.

If you do go outside, it is remarkably quiet. I live near a major university. There are all sorts of shops and vendors near our apartment and usually an active street life. About half the shops near our place seem closed now, and there is very little foot traffic. Employees in those shops which are still open are universally masked. I increasingly wonder if the store shutdowns are simply because employees will not come to work. At my own university, almost no one comes to work now except required support staff, and naturally, they are masked too. Public transportation – buses and the subway - is still running, but they too are sparsely used, and again everyone is masked. Even taxis seem fewer on the streets."
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This is exactly the kind of action that you have repeatedly decried as not only useless, but actually counterproductive (as it delays people from catching the virus).

Do we need more testing in the US?  Absolutely; testing is a critical, necessary component to keep this virus at a manageable level.  But your obsession with keeping schools and libraries open is absurd.  There exists a level of response between "aggressive testing with comprehensive tracking of known victims" and "infect everyone as fast as possible to get this over with quickly."

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Our response so far has been security theater.  I oppose theater. 

Testing will have real results.  Ending travel will have real results. 

What we are doing will do almost nothing to fight covid, but will be very effective at causing massive unemployment and bankruptcies. 

If we aren’t going to do testing, we might as well do nothing.  And we aren’t testing.

Step 1: Test everyone that is suspected of infection.  Isolate those people.

Step 2 Eliminate long distance travel. E.g shut down the airlines.

If that doesn’t work maybe we can consider completely cratering our economy.  But we choose the nuclear option first.  I oppose that.   

Allowing the airlines to fly beach goers to Florida while telling people they shouldn’t go to the beach makes no sense.

I am not opposed to taking common sense steps to slow the disease.  But I am opposed to the government picking the least effective and most burdensome one as the first option. I would rather we did nothing. 

[Fau Teixeira]

i got news for you .. the economy is cratered .. almost 3 million unemployment claims this month .. there's no putting the genie in the bottle anymore ..

you want us to keep the economy running? .. provide UBI for at least the next 6 months, defer student loan payments, mortgage payments and rent payments, close the stock market, make all coronavirus medical care cost 0 to the patient and direct industry to produce needed consumables. Then once this is all past, ease off all of those things. Then you keep the economy running.. and the last point that i can't stress enough.. Fuck the national debt. Now is the time to spend 10 trillion dollars on our "afghanistan war".

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

i got news for you .. the economy is cratered .. almost 3 million unemployment claims this month .. there's no putting the genie in the bottle anymore ..

you want us to keep the economy running? .. provide UBI for at least the next 6 months, defer student loan payments, mortgage payments and rent payments, close the stock market, make all coronavirus medical care cost 0 to the patient and direct industry to produce needed consumables. Then once this is all past, ease off all of those things. Then you keep the economy running.. and the last point that i can't stress enough.. Fuck the national debt. Now is the time to spend 10 trillion dollars on our "afghanistan war".

Won’t disagree with you on any of that.  But the gene is also way too far out of the bottle to alter our path from Italy to S. Korea.

[dolphins4life]

I've been a nervous wreck at work this week.

I had to draw somebody in the isolation room.  I put on the right gear, but I couldn't tell if my mask was sealed.

Second, the patient ripped off his own mask.

They told me not to worry, because it's not airborne

[Pappy13]

Southwest just started another program. You can take a minimum of 1 month off from work and still get 25% pay. Time must be taken off in increments of a month at a time.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Southwest just started another program. You can take a minimum of 1 month off from work and still get 25% pay. Time must be taken off in increments of a month at a time.

Interesting approach.  Reduces payroll costs during a slow time without layoffs or early retirement packages.  And easy to ramp back the workforce back up after the crisis, compared to rehiring laid off employees or finding new ones.