Coronavirus

[S4WRXTTCS]

Huh? greater LA 13.3 M, greater Chicago 9.5 M, DFW, 7.2

That includes urban sprawl.

I was referring to just the city.

Just looking at city makes Seattle the 18th largest city in the nation.

I think this is an important distinction when talking about Covid because it's really about people per square mile, and maybe more importantly the connectivity within the city, and to the greater area.

The greater Seattle region isn't very conducive to the spread of Covid because of poor connectivity. I'm hardly ever in Seattle due to this.

A city like Tokyo is a completely different reality from anything we have in the US with exception to NYC.​

 

[TespaceX]

Yeahh...
I haven't looked at the photos of demonstrators demanding that SAH end. What fraction are wearing masks ?

Maybe not representative of the whole. But, here’s one protester picture I smh at.

 

[Daniel in SD]

This is not a bar that can be met till end of 2021. BTW, its not like all these 10k people are absolutely isolating themselves at home.

<rant>There is no reason to say minimum wage workers should work in Amazon warehouse or grocery stores or Home Depot - but low risk Fremont factory should stay closed. We have now created a "stay at home" class and the servant class who bring all the needed / un-needed stuff for this SAH class to their doors. This is how things worked in medieval times (I guess still works for the rich).</rant>

We haven't shut down farms either! Obviously you need to prioritize. The claim is that the Fremont factory is NOT low risk. Obviously it's not as bad as a meat processing plant or a call center but I think it's pretty bad. Maybe Musk should volunteer the plant to be a case study.
Government orders certainly didn't create a stay at home class. People with the means would be avoiding infection in any plausible scenario.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Has anyone started having Covid related nightmares?

My nightmare last night was I was enjoying some peaceful time alone next to some body of water, and this horde of non-mask wearing people starting coming my way and I had to find an exit.

I find myself going through a phase of getting irked about the lockdown, and feeling its excessive. Then I come to this thread and after a few pages that feeling goes away. Then I go do something to take my mind off it before repeating the same cycle.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Maybe not representative of the whole. But, here’s one protester picture I smh at.
View attachment 538156

Such a bizarre time we live in.

You'd expect a central figure like the president to have a widely understood position, and game plan in place. Where every state was acting in cohesion with each other on a federally directed mandate. That's the only way to beat this virus.

Where if someone didn't like it then they'd attack the leader for having plan that didn't fit their wants.

Instead we have a president trying to play two sides. To my knowledge he hasn't given the states a game plan for opening up. He says one thing one day, and then tweets something that completely contradicts what he just said. Any reasonable opening up plan requires some mask wearing when around vulnerable people. Yet, the VP makes a choice not to wear a mask in the very place where masks are mandatory.

How can a strong libertarian view the president as supporting their position when he has really done any actionable items to help them? A few tweets about liberty can't possibly count when he's the PRESIDENT.

I'm concerned that more, and more Americans will grow impatient of the lockdown. Where they are getting frustrated with the lack of solid information on what metrics are being used to decide to open things up. So that will push them to support the protestors, but the protestors don't seem to be putting any blame on the president for our situation.

The president is not the "your body, your choice" person.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

See, that only works out to 13 Tesla factory workers. What are we waiting for? FREE AMERICA NOW.

It is well worth it, because people need the Model Y

Loving the disagree on this.

This is not a bar that can be met till end of 2021.

Sure it can. Test everyone whenever they enter the factory campus. Dramatically reduces the probability, assuming minimal false negatives.

This will cost some money, but it should not be prohibitive. (Obviously, logistically, there are some difficulties, but they can be worked through with pre-screening and strict mandatory isolation in advance of factory opening - this should start now!)

There is no reason to say minimum wage workers should work in Amazon warehouse or grocery stores or Home Depot - but low risk Fremont factory should stay closed.

I have relied a lot more on Amazon over the last 7 weeks than on my Tesla. I could have got away without using a car. I would say Amazon has been critical.


Amazon is spending 4 billion in Q2 protecting their employees (hundreds of millions on tests). The question is whether Tesla will do the same.

To be clear:

1) I think the factory can open soon.
2) I think it can be done safely
3) It requires control measures that may seem excessive and expensive, but are not.
4) It will require a strong intelligent leader to make it happen properly and protect the workers.

The question is: will we be referencing these posts in 4-6weeks when there is a factory outbreak (followed, of course, by immediate plant shutdown, with a negative impact on the stock price, the company reputation, and the ability of Tesla to attract and retain the best workers)?

Or, will we be comfortable and confident that the rigorous procedures in place are protecting all the workers, and our investment? And protecting the long term mission of Tesla...

We live in a country where the federal government is running lean and low cost, with a low budget. Solidly conservative values. They keep taxes low, so that means that companies have a lot of money to use their natural efficiency (due to capitalism) to implement their own controls at much lower cost and higher efficiency than the gov’t could, if they simply were taking care of it for everyone. Or something. Unfortunately.

So this means Tesla needs to use some of their tax savings to protect their workers and the community. They are riding high, and will need to make some substantial short term investments in safety to ensure long term success.

It’s only going to be a couple hundred million per quarter, I would guess. Small cost for a short time, with large ROI.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

There's a free testing site opened up in North Philly to help address this dramatically underserved community. I'm gonna head over on Tuesday and get tested if it's for antibodies. Willing to bet I've already had it. We shall see!

 

[Sean Wagner]

If people keep their distance - frankly beach is probably a low risk place. Winds, humidity should work to reduce risk.

I think outdoors in general are less risky than indoors. Gyms, bars, restaurants and offices are probably the worst.

Here we are, May 1, 2020.

19,509,000 people have died so far this year.
234,000 from Covid-19.
19,275,000 from other causes.

These numbers fail the plausibility check. Look again and think.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The situation in Belgium is improving fast now. The number of patients in the hospitals and ICU is half of what it was at the peak now. New daily cases is down to about 500, a fifth of what it was at the peak, and that despite doing 4 times more tests than at the peak daily case situation. Closing in on 25K tests/day, with less than 500 positives.

Since you've probably got 8-10% of the population infected, it's possible you're seeing some effects of herd immunity in this decay. You're also about two weeks ahead of the US, perhaps. And your testing is relatively good. In any case we definitely can't expect as rapid a decay in the US, in most locations.

You're doing 227 tests/100k daily. With about 100k active cases (1 million infected so far).

COVID-19 Projections | Belgium

In other words, doing about 1 test for about every 4 active infections.

So scaling to the US, which has about 2 million active cases (9.5 million infected so far):

COVID-19 Projections | United States

(Makes me sad that the lower bound of their active infections estimate in August for the US is 30k people....)

Scaling to population, we'd need to do 750k tests per day.

Scaling to infection density, we'd need to do 500k tests per day.

I don't know what the best metric is. I guess for an R just less than 1 you'd need to catch 1.5 million new infections over the infectious period (say 5-15 days of very infectious pre-symptomatic), so that sort of test rate would just about cover it assuming 10-20% positivity. If positivity were lower I guess you'd need more tests to make sure you get good capture.

I'm a bit surprised how low your number of positives is at this point, though you are on the rapid decay portion of the curve.

I guess it seems possible that in a couple weeks we might only be seeing 10-15k infections per day in the US (measured). At 500k-750k tests per day that would be just 2% positive which seems like it could provide some hope. I hope there are plans to go nuts on testing (and processing capacity) though, and far exceed these numbers, two weeks from now. It would almost certainly help with the decay rate and a more rapid return to normalcy (and also would help with opening the factory if massive testing capacity were available - but a "one and done" test strategy won't work...!).

 

[MXLRplus]

Has anyone started having Covid related nightmares?
...

My dream starts as a nightmare, but then the Covid victims turn to zombies, so I bust out "The Pig":

 

[dhanson865]

Green method could enable hospitals to produce hydrogen peroxide in house

 

[ZachF]

Sweden's 7-day rolling average of deaths has dropped for around 10 days now, and is ~30% below that peak:

(Source: Worldometers)

 

[ZachF]

What?

You're correct about the WA and TX population comparison, but totally incorrect about the pop of a modern city. If you're talking American city.

WA has a population of over 7 million which puts it well above the population of every city in the US except NYC.

Anyways I do agree that deaths have to be compared by using per million people.

Honestly, Metro area populations are a better guage for the size of a city than arbitrary town lines. Both Houston and DFW metro areas have similar population sizes as Washington state.

 

[Norbert]

This is exactly the fallacy that I'm trying to point out! The _assumption_ is that changing the existing SAH scope _automatically_ means an increase in infections. My point is that this assumption is wrong, since it's predicated on the flawed assumption that all businesses present the same levels of risk factors. See my original post in this thought chain. Allowing businesses that are suited to applying mitigation measures should NOT appreciably increase infections. The mitigation measures should be more effective in the low-interaction businesses, because they worked in the riskier high-interaction businesses.

You are not responding to what I actually said, there is no point in discussing with you.

 

[ZachF]

Here's a great example why people are fighting the government mandates. The governor of California ruled that beaches must be closed. Reasonable? On the surface perhaps. The nuts and bolts are that his ruling only applies to Orange County. It has a very low infection rate. So why just Orange County? To punish them for defying him. It's backfiring big time. He is a child who was forced into politics by Getty Oil Money and his cronies. He's related to Nancy Pelosi. So pettiness is in his genes. He can't act like a rational human because he's never actually met one.

Make then wear masks... Then the LA fashion industry can market masks that match the bikinis girls wear and generate some economic activity... everybody wins!

 

[Norbert]

To be clear, most of this is wife regimented. I would be satisfied with mask use and hand washing.

What does that have to do with anything?

 

[dhanson865]

We used our own bags until the stores stopped allowing them. Really the only risk from a new paper bag is where the cashier or bagger touched it. If you sanitize your hands after carrying them, leave them in the car as long as possible, and unload the produce in the garage, the risk becomes pretty low. (It's now not possible to bag your own groceries because of the plastic walls between you and the bagger.) My hope is that even after a vaccine is developed, this kind of procedure will continue. It might even stop the annual flu.

What ever happened to self checkout? It's all I ever use in a grocery store. I'd have to sanitize or wash my hands after dealing with the touch screen but I don't have to worry about a cashier coughing or sneezing near me.

 

[ZachF]

What ever happened to self checkout? It's all I ever use in a grocery store. I'd have to sanitize or wash my hands after dealing with the touch screen but I don't have to worry about a cashier coughing or sneezing near me.

You can buy a stylus to carry with you for use on touch screens

 

[Norbert]

Here's a great example why people are fighting the government mandates. The governor of California ruled that beaches must be closed. Reasonable? On the surface perhaps. The nuts and bolts are that his ruling only applies to Orange County. It has a very low infection rate. So why just Orange County? To punish them for defying him. It's backfiring big time. He is a child who was forced into politics by Getty Oil Money and his cronies. He's related to Nancy Pelosi. So pettiness is in his genes. He can't act like a rational human because he's never actually met one.

In an interview (lost track of where that was), the "governor of California" said that Orange County beaches was where they saw people acting in a way that was contagious. So he felt obliged to close them, even though he didn't want to.

 

[NikolaACDC]

Maybe not representative of the whole. But, here’s one protester picture I smh at.
View attachment 538156

Why is she displaying a banana wrapped in a diaper?