Coronavirus

[SageBrush]

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.

'every single possible Covid-19 death' is a straw man.

My main problem with the political divide is that the 'open for business' vote and the 'no mask, for freedom' vote intersects. When the people like you stop acting like the trumper moron I'll listen. Musk is actually a good example: his take on Covid-19 is moronic in my opinion but his factories are run with best practices to prevent Covid-19 infection and spread. That is good enough for me.

My grandmother used to say that it is not what you say, it is what you do that matters. In the instance of Covid-19 the important argument is not over whether businesses and industry should open now, it is whether people will act in a manner to avoid epidemic, uncontrolled spread.

 

[Sanny]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

It is a straw man argument that it is about the money. It is clearly not. It is about being human and not plants. Humankind was always about making sacrifies for our ambitions, plants could never do that. It is about not choosing shame between shame and war every hour of every day.
It is about looking forward for the future for our children (those who are thrown under the bus currently with zoom schoolling) instead of clinging on the past.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Sorry for your losses. You make some very good points.

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.
A very simple (and incomplete) example is that the lock downs have caused traffic deaths to drop about in half. That is half of ~40K deaths per year but we spend very little to stop this, relatively. And there are about a million non-fatal injuries per year in addition.
Why not just have a permanent shut down to stop all these deaths and injuries?
Please discuss in a calm manner.

If you were to assume that no vaccine ever arrives, what is the end game for all the closures and what mitigation efforts should be done going forward? We all know how the death rates are skewed to older and other factors.

We spend about $500 billion a year in this country on new vehicles. I'm willing to bet a significant fraction of that goes to safety features. Add to that the amount of money spent on making the roads themselves safer and it's not chump change.
I don't think anyone is advocating that we should shut down the economy. After all, people need to eat and get medical care. I think when we get the GDP numbers (and not misinterpret the annualized numbers!) you will see that only a fraction of the economy is shut down. It should be possible to restart the vast majority of missing economic activity with proper safeguards in place. People falling ill and being unable to work is also not great for the economy. I doubt that mass gatherings right now would have a net positive economic impact.
I predict that countries that suppress the virus will do better economically than us. We'll see.

 

[shinytop]

It is a straw man argument that it is about the money. It is clearly not. It is about being human and not plants. Humankind was always about making sacrifies for our ambitions, plants could never do that. It is about not choosing shame between shame and war every hour of every day.
It is about looking forward for the future for our children (those who are thrown under the bus currently with zoom schoolling) instead of clinging on the past.

It sounds like you want schools to open. Under the bus? Seriously? What is your magic solution to reducing numbers of students in classrooms? What is your solution so that one asymptomatic child does not spread the virus to other children who carry it home where it can infect their family, their grandparents? What is your solution for the kids getting to school in socially distanced school buses.

I am not against schools reopening but we must have well thought out plans.

Choosing between shame and war? Cool that you can reduce complicated problems to such simple choices.

 

[dfwatt]

I missed the ammonia. Ammonia and chlorine is a well tested combination. Do people need to be ventilated first or are you expecting this combo to take care of any lung issues, like breathing?

This combination is a miracle cure. Cures cancer, heart disease, covid 19, type 2 diabetes. You name it, ammonia plus bleach fixes it. Unfortunately, death is a 100% side effect. I can just hear all the snowflake namby-pambies complaining about this. What a bunch of wimps!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Social distancing is literally the only weapon we have.

Don't forget test & trace! It is a very effective weapon (if we'd actually do it)! China is doing it.

Paul Romer on Twitter

Should be interesting to see whether this website ends up being accurate. Not sure where their sources are for numbers of contact tracers, etc., but it's one of the only places where I've seen it tabulated per state. (Oregon and Washington just recently went green - they previously had problems with contact tracing coverage.)

America’s COVID warning system.

 

[Sanny]

It sounds like you want schools to open. Under the bus? Seriously? What is your magic solution to reducing numbers of students in classrooms? What is your solution so that one asymptomatic child does not spread the virus to other children who carry it home where it can infect their family, their grandparents? What is your solution for the kids getting to school in socially distanced school buses.

I am not against schools reopening but we must have well thought out plans.

Choosing between shame and war? Cool that you can reduce complicated problems to such simple choices.

First, do you have kids of school age? Are you ok with them loosing a year of life? Just basically imitating the year of life, but in reality just skipping it.
Your questions are not relevant, I assume you do not have kids of school age. They do bring everything home - all kinds of flu, pink eye, everything. However, it was never a reason to cut out years of their life. Isolate grandparents for God sake, they will be happy to stay low knowing kids are going on with their life. If not, they are not good people, that happens sometime too.

 

[Daniel in SD]

First, do you have kids of school age? Are you ok with them loosing a year of life? Just basically imitating the year of life, but in reality just skipping it.
Your questions are not relevant, I assume you do not have kids of school age. They do bring everything home - all kinds of flu, pink eye, everything. However, it was never a reason to cut out years of their life. Isolate grandparents for God sake, they will be happy to stay low knowing kids are going on with their life. If not, they are not good people, that happens sometime too.

A large number of children live with their grandparents.
Seems like we should just suppress the virus enough over the summer that we can safely open schools in the fall. Other countries are doing it. People may have to sacrifice high risk activities and wear masks but I think they'll survive.

 

[Norbert]

Horowitz: The CDC confirms remarkably low coronavirus death rate. Where is the media?

Elon was right all along. IMO.

I am responding to you in the coronavirus thread. That article is wrong. Valid sources of news can sometimes be wrong, but they are never as disingenuous as this article. They are conflating the WHO CASE fatality rate with the CDC INFECTION fatality rate, plus they are using the asymptomatic percentage from another study, rather than from the CDC study, from which they are quoting, in order to further exaggerate their case.

I stopped reading after that. Doubtlessly they made many other mistakes.

So it is highly recommended, you drop this as a source of news. Articles displaying this kind of disingenuousness, will always be a source of disinformation purposely.

They have lost sense of context. The CDC doc speaks of multiple "planning scenarios", one of which the authors in their humbleness called "most likely". Not a proper study where you can look at the numbers (AFAIK). The CDC produces stuff of varying quality, it also counted about 60,000 deaths when everyone else was counting about 90,000.

If the IFR were 0.26%, as interpreted in the article, given about 100,000 deaths now, there would have to be more than 38 million infected, which is about 11.6% of the US population. No way. This is almost the infection level of New York State, which probably everyone considers exceptionally high, and which has 5 times the deaths per capita as the US average.

Personally, I consider this debunked.

 

[Sanny]

A large number of children live with their grandparents.
Seems like we should just suppress the virus enough over the summer that we can safely open schools in the fall. Other countries are doing it. People may have to sacrifice high risk activities and wear masks but I think they'll survive.

Again, are you talking about kids in theory or in real life? Do you have kids? It is not over the summer thing, it is almost a school year (and some 'advanced' places are already thinking about the next year). How many kids live with grandparents? Is the % enough for all the rest to waste a year or we could have another solutions possibly? For other countries I would pick Sweden, thank you.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Again, are you talking about kids in theory or in real life? Do you have kids? It is not over the summer thing, it is almost a school year (and some 'advanced' places are already thinking about the next year). How many kids live with grandparents? Is the % enough for all the rest to waste a year or we could have another solutions possibly? For other countries I would pick Sweden, thank you.

Sweden closed schools for over 16 year olds and universities. Why not pick a country where schools are open and there is almost no COVID?
Research Shows 3 Million Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Record 64 million Americans live in multigenerational households

I do not have kids but I think I am willing to sacrifice a lot to make sure that schools can open again in fall. I don't want to sacrifice their grandparents.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Had to remove some posts again for containing personal attacks. I know the subject has a large impact on many people’s lives, but try to keep the emotions at bay.

 

[JRP3]

First, do you have kids of school age? Are you ok with them loosing a year of life? Just basically imitating the year of life, but in reality just skipping it.

Hyperbolic nonsense. You do realize that for the vast majority of human existence there was no such thing as school, right? Somehow children were still able to progress to adulthood. One partial semester of virtual schooling will not be the end of us.

 

[P3dStealth]

Sorry for your losses. You make some very good points.

However, what is missing and seems to be taboo is any kind of adult conversation about what the limits are that society could/should take to eliminate every single possible COVID-19 death compared to the efforts/dollars/GDP spent to stop other deaths.
A very simple (and incomplete) example is that the lock downs have caused traffic deaths to drop about in half. That is half of ~40K deaths per year but we spend very little to stop this, relatively. And there are about a million non-fatal injuries per year in addition.
Why not just have a permanent shut down to stop all these deaths and injuries?
Please discuss in a calm manner.

If you were to assume that no vaccine ever arrives, what is the end game for all the closures and what mitigation efforts should be done going forward? We all know how the death rates are skewed to older and other factors.

I don't have a solution or take a side. I'm just saying how it is in NY and what it's been like for me. Most people in the forum are from California and it hasn't been that bad for California. I just think that yea we need to be careful with this. I don't think everything should be closed. I do think people need to be aware and more responsible though.

In the beginning I didn't think much of it either. Now I am afraid of getting it but I am still going to work tomorrow. Im not sideline quarterbacking.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

This is why we were emotionally incapable of formulating an even remotely rational response in the first place. Everything is two absolute extremes, those are the two realities we acknowledge in every scenario. Nevermind that real life is rarely one of the two extremes.

Kids under 17 have a very very difficult time contracting this coronavirus. When they do it's generally quite mild, chance of death approaches zero, and they don't seem to transmit it very easily either.

Healthy women under 55, the majority of teachers, almost never die from this coronavirus.

Statistically it's far far far more dangerous to cohabitating grandparents for kids to be exposed to flu than this coronavirus. That's been illustrated pretty clearly so far and could certainly be proven to a high degree be July.

There's a reason we're the only idiots talking about cancelling school in the fall. We're acting like irrational children.

Test, track, trace, isolate. Same story since February.

 

[dhanson865]

And we did it...
View attachment 544984

That was the partial days total, here is the end of day update.

USA above 100,000 deaths

Brazil still behind the Euro pack for at least a few more days.

 

[P3dStealth]

For the guys talking about schools...

My girlfriend's school had two kids both under 17 and one teacher die (he was old). They likely didn't get it at school though since it was closed a while. What was strange is at the time the news was saying only 1 kid died of covid in NY. Makes you wonder how valid these numbers really are.

Do I think schools everywhere should be closed... Prob not if there is low infections in the area it should be up to the districts. In NYC I don't see how they can open them but I am sure other areas can figure something out. Maybe education for students and parents as to what to look for. Tell them if they think they have a symptom stay home for a day or two. At least try to stop spreading it.

I really have no idea what to do. I'm not an expert in this stuff.

This is my last post here good luck everyone. Try to stay healthy. You all sound like very smart people on both sides. Stop getting mad at eachother lol.

 

[eevee-fan]

View attachment 544951
COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020

point is, because Covid19 is overwhelming an indoor (including vehicular) transmission disease, indoor ventilation is critical. The above was an actual restaurant in China, A1 (yellow) infected 9 others (red circles) during a meal. Yet none of the other tables were infected.
View attachment 544958(same place, but in a model, 1 table different)

This is a pretty basic room, yet even so, how to optimise its operation to minimise risk of covid19 transmission.

View attachment 544954


View attachment 544956

View attachment 544957

So similar to any safeguard. Here is HIPAA Security Safeguard: Technical, Administrative, Physical.

Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule

 

[eevee-fan]

That was the partial days total, here is the end of day update.

USA above 100,000 deaths

Brazil still behind the Euro pack for at least a few more days.

View attachment 545134

Wow, what a difference novel ways of counting is affecting the death numbers, we've been below 1k for a few days now! So effective, should have thought of that earlier.

 

[eevee-fan]

So we are launching a national experiment to see if May/June temperatures will prevent an outbreak, without any evidence?

Do we have a control and test group? Would hate to have an invalid study.