Coronavirus

[DadEBoy]

I am very reluctant to buy from any organization with leadership that expresses such drivel. That means you, Tesla.

 

[TyPope]

You don't know that. You are just making this up the same as the "open everything" crowd is making up what they say.

It is perfectly reasonable to "open" up low risk high reward activities today. Low risk would be things where people can easily maintain 6 or more feet distance and are outdoors. The science tells us that most transmissions take place indoors and from family members. This means that people should be going outdoors and not sitting next to each other just watching TV.

Allowing, even encouraging this with the proper precautions will go a long way towards keeping people on board with the other restrictions.

No one is saying we should pack into bars and restaurants, going to densely packed sporting events, conventions, etc.
It is nonsensical to disallow tennis, golf, hiking, surfing and similar activities as long as proper social distancing is maintained.
The same goes for jobs such as gardeners who don't get close to anyone.

I completely agree that if we continue to be cautious, we can avoid a huge spike. In 1918, they thought it was over, basically, and went on to business as usual which caused the spike. It seemed like TalkingMule was advocating for basically no precautions. Georgia was the first state to really open up. In about 2 weeks, we'll see how it went for them. I suspect that for the next week to week and a half, there won't be much movement in Georgia's numbers. They went up only about 10% in the last 5 days. On May 10th, we'll see the start of a spike. It'll be uncertain how drastic the spike will be at first though. But, we can all watch that case and see how it goes. I'm not against easing back into normalcy at all but carefully.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I’m not sure what you are saying? You want to be more like Seoul or NYC? All I’m saying is all the hospitals in my area are half empty and laying off a lot of people because cuomo won’t allow elective surgeries.

I'd like us to be more like Seoul where their hospitals aren't full of COVID-19 patients.
Elective surgeries will soon be allowed in some parts of New York:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...e-surgeries-heres-how-theyll-resume-new-york/

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

California Gov. closing all beaches and state parks beginning Friday,

Pretty sure that's only state beaches.

Only Orange County beaches, and I believe it is all beaches (though that is harder to figure out, that's how I read it).

 

[SDRick]

Pretty sure that's only state beaches.

NBC was reporting this is for all beaches. If it was just the state beaches County supervisors and everyone else would not be so upset. Newport Beach last Saturday was the catalyst (and I do not think that was a state beach).

.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It seemed like TalkingMule was advocating for basically no precautions

It's always hard to tell what that guy is talking about, BTW. He can sometimes talk about issues from both sides. Super hard to keep track. And he rarely, if ever, provides data. He still thinks SARS had an IFR of 2% or something. Never has provided any evidence.

I don't put him on ignore because I find his pronouncements to have high comedic value. Sometimes good to have a good laugh.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

NBC was reporting this is for all beaches. If it was just the state beaches County supervisors and everyone else would not be so upset. Newport Beach last Saturday was the catalyst (and I do not think that was a state beach).

.

Just go to around 25-26 minutes, he says it at around 26:40:

Gavin Newsom on Twitter

Orange County, State & local beaches. (Around 28 minutes.)

It seems that he got appropriate pushback from local authorities who had successfully got people to not rush the beaches (and had other rules in place - like no sitting!). And so it ended up being OC only.

Sounds like he's happy to release the order ASAP as soon as they can ensure that there won't be a repeat of the prior weekend. Makes sense. The local authorities should just put some proper rules in place and enforce them!

 

[SDRick]

Hey Alan,

I was just mentioning what NBC was reporting. Why are you giving me a disagree.

Newsom expected to close all California beaches

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Hey Alan,

I was just mentioning what NBC was reporting. Why are you giving me a disagree.

Newsom expected to close all California beaches

Because the information has changed (and I had posted as such). I'll remove them.

You could update both those posts with the correct information, if you have a chance...you have about 17 minutes. Then I'll consider whether to add "funny" or "disagree" back on if they don't get updated...

 

[Singer3000]

Part of the reason our crisis is lasting longer than China's is our lockdown is relatively lax compared to China's because we are trying not to be fascist. If the Govt in mid March sent the National Guard to enforce a hard 2 week quarantine where no one leaves their house even for supplies, rather the army does drop offs, this whole thing would've been over but we didn't do that because personal rights and we aren't fascist.

And it was politically tough to make the lockdowns harder and earlier, in large part because thought leaders in the media and politics but also including figures such as Musk, were telling people the whole thing was no big deal.

Still, most mornings I see my 3-year old’s eyes filled with wonder at watching the SpaceX channel for the umpteenth time, which reminds me what Musk is capable of. A complex character he is for sure.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If the Govt in mid March sent the National Guard to enforce a hard 2 week quarantine where no one leaves their house even for supplies, rather the army does drop offs, this whole thing would've been over but we didn't do that because personal rights and we aren't fascist.

Yeah, in retrospect probably would have been good to be stricter. However, a big part of the issue is that people who get diagnosed as ill should be strongly encouraged to shelter at hotels set aside for that purpose. That would probably have cut down transmission within families a bit and accelerated the drop off. Nursing home rip-through, jail populations, and medical personnel would still have a long tail though.

Not sure when things are really going to start dropping. Guess it depends on the reasons for ongoing transmission. A little discouraging, but hopefully things will improve shortly. It appears to be super contagious!

 

[azaz]

musk who rails on journalists all the time is now promoting James o Keefe lmfaooo

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Someone show me a scenario where millions of Americans are killed by this virus. Again....I post a simple observation or a statistic and you guys lose your minds. This guy posts something PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE and it's fine. Because it fits a narrative you're comfortable with.

We're doing a horrendous job of mitigation and y'all are acting like people want to stop taking a know antidote.

Take a look at Nembro in Italy. Last year, on average, 10 people/month died.

COVID-Related Deaths Are Much Higher Than Reported — And Soon We’ll Know How Much

Covid-19’s death toll appears higher than official figures suggest

There were 142 deaths there in March, in a town of 11,500 people, which is a 1.15% fatality rate. Replicate that across the whole US and you'll see millions of Americans dead. And sure, many of them may not be classified as Coronavirus fatalities, but if it swings through an area, and the death rate increases by an order of magnitude, what else would be causing those deaths?

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

I am very reluctant to buy from any organization with leadership that expresses such drivel. That means you, Tesla.

I feel like he's been stuck inside for too long and has gone full Mr Burns on us.

 

[Cherry Wine]

The bit that sticks in my throat the most is while he castigates Western democracies for their mostly quite moderate and temporary steps to protect the most vulnerable, he continues with the hero worship of the Chinese Communist Party. Who locked down the better part of a billion people at the barrel of a gun. Welded Wuhan residents into their apartment blocks. Sent armed police to head-bag and bundle elderly people into armoured vehicles because digital tracing showed they may have been exposed to the virus. Withholding key information from the world at a crucial time (e.g. that human-human transmission was occurring). Disappearing scientists (and perhaps worse) that tried to raise the early alarm that may have prevented the crisis entirely. Deleting all criticism of the government from the media. And by the way, detaining perhaps a million residents of Xinjiang in “re-education camps”, or to call them what they are, concentration camps, because of their political and religious views.

That’s without getting to unsubstantiated (but plausible) conspiracy theories that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab, or that the CPC deliberately sat on what they knew to ensure the rest of the world caught the same economic flu that was at that point already inevitable in China.

It’s really hard to reconcile just how anti-science Musk has been through all this with his carefully curated public persona of being “Mr First Principles”, smartest guy in the room. His apparent naïveté in trusting the CPC because they threw him some cheap liquidity and drew a line through city red tape for him.

Which does rather cast doubt on the justification for that image in the first place. What else is he too pig headed to listen to advice over? Where else is he misplacing his trust?

As someone else said, TSLA suddenly looks a very brave place to park very big proportions of your wealth, even if it’s still worth having a nice chunk of it in case the company hits the jackpot in its various ventures.

I agree that Musk appears out of touch on the issue of public health measures related to COVID-19. With respect to TSLA, I don't make the mistake of conflating Musk's (lack of) epidemiological prowess with his engineering brilliance and outstanding business acumen. Oversimplifying in that regard would, ironically, be making the same mistake as Elon -- just in a different way.

I have lost zero sleep with respect to my TSLA investment since his outburst, wrong as I think he is.

 

[Doggydogworld]

I did a quick check of the JHU county data for MA and it's worse than covidtracking.com. JHU had several days of zero deaths for the whole state scattered throughout the file.

MA updates in the late afternoon, except there were a few (weekend) days they didn't for unknown reasons.

If the Govt in mid March sent the National Guard to enforce a hard 2 week quarantine where no one leaves their house even for supplies, rather the army does drop offs, this whole thing would've been over...

Two weeks isn't long enough. Three weeks might be long enough if you could force family members to isolate from each other. But how would the Nat Guard do that?

 

[renim]

I've put up with your nonsense patiently for quite a while but you are simply clueless. You have no idea what Frontline medical staff are experiencing and how close they are to burn out. There was a recent suicide of an ER doctor, the head of the ER at an elite New York City teaching hospital, obviously a bright and talented woman, who got covid-19 tried to come back to work, failed for uncertain reasons possibly because she was still inflamed and perhaps somewhat depressed also, and then went home and killed herself.

While you can't conclude anything from a single tragic case the point is that frontline staff and the hospital systems in many areas have been running at or close to red line for a very long time. They are dangerously close to burning out en mass. So stop dispensing crap. It's not just grotesquely counterfactual it's offensive. Cut it out.

Covid19 like HKsars indeed loves health institutions, but nonetheless as a precaution, people stopped seeing doctors, reduced having traffic accidents, avoided sport injuries, reduced getting the flu. The list goes on and on.

The policy of cancelling/postponing elective surgery was important for maintaining capacity in covid19 hit places like nyc, but for much of the world, including parts of america, emergency department has never been so calm and quiet.

It was unexpected, and we should be grateful.

 

[jhm]

Deaths were up 2469 to 59,266 total yesterday. This pushes the ultimates of both dumb-ass and 14-day models a bit to 78,832 and 88,473 respectively.

View attachment 537046

View attachment 537047

View attachment 537057

Again, deaths up 2,389 on 4/29 to a total of 61,655. This continues to push ultimates projected by my dumb-ass model and the 14-day model to 82,018 and 106,406, respectively.

All of you who were complaining that my model was underestimated future death rates seem to be correct. Since 4/21 when the history was properly backfilled for non-hospital deaths, this is the highest ultimate projection from dumb-ass. While there has been some weekly variability in this, the trend does seem to be upward. Perhaps the 14-day model can give us a sense of what is possible. 120k seems to be the high water mark for the last few weeks.

One important implication of these two models is that dumb-ass is projecting the daily death rate will fall below 200 by May 27, while the 14-day model is projecting this to happen by June 19. I don't know that 200 deaths per day is the best threashold to focus on, but below some threshold most of us may be able to agree that lockdown measures are no longer necessary. That threshold is largely a political decision, but it seems to me the lower the death rate goes the easier it is for the politics to shift to more openness.

 

[azaz]

so uhm, the rate of new cases, positives and deaths in the country has been flattening instead of declining again the last two days. deeply worrying.

Trevor Bedford on Twitter

"Emboldened by billionaire Elon Musk, a cadre of wealthy tech investors and venture capitalists is pushing for an end to shelter-in-place orders, arguing the harm of the quarantines outweighs the benefits and even equating the measures to forced detention. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/musk-coronavirus-quarantines/"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/musk-coronavirus-quarantines/

 

[dfwatt]

I agree that Musk appears out of touch on the issue of public health measures related to COVID-19. With respect to TSLA, I don't make the mistake of conflating Musk's (lack of) epidemiological prowess with his engineering brilliance and outstanding business acumen. Oversimplifying in that regard would, ironically, be making the same mistake as Elon -- just in a different way.

I have lost zero sleep with respect to my TSLA investment since his outburst, wrong as I think he is.

Yeah I kind of have a similar overall take. What's puzzling is that in one person you see a basically unparalleled ability to develop and implement a brilliant set of engineering and technological solutions to the problem of sustainable energy and infrastructure. In that endeavor, he has to deal with climate deniers who manifest many of the same scotoma and a grotesque inability to see the big picture as he demonstrates around covid-19. People sure are complex and self-contradictory even!