Yes, the rush to get the cash out to many millions of people inevitably there will be mistakes like sending checks to dead people.
@mommdc, would you mind sharing what amounts you take of D3 and K2? I take 5,000 IU of D3 daily and was thinking of balancing that supplementation with K2.
A law requiring people to always wear masks outside is just foolish. This is the kind of pointless law that gets people fired up.
@suzyQ7, that seems so long ago. I don’t remember where I got those numbers. Sorry. It might have been a WaPo article.
My daughter hates going into the office because there are so many new rules. Only three members of her team are there this week. Others will take their turn next week. The company provides breakfast and lunch, but they must now eat in 20 minutes shifts, allowing for 15 minutes between shifts to sanitize everything. And of course there is social distancing in the cafeteria.
When I discussed the R numbers with her, she wasn’t concerned. This from the daughter who texted me multiple times a day about safety measures because my husband, her father, is very high risk. So I found it interesting that she was so lackadaisical. If I recall correctly, she said restaurants will begin to open soon.
They don’t wear masks.
She’d prefer to continue to work at home.
Contact Tracer in Training here…You would probably only have to list contacts for the two days prior to the onset of symptoms, and any contacts while you had symptoms.
Regarding rewards for vaccines, I don’t know about the financial side. But if the new mRNA vaccine works, I could see it leading to a Nobel Prize.
Im not sure I understand your math. Are you assuming 100% of the population is infected, in the bolded part, for best and worst cases scenarios?
This may have already been covered, but I have a question about the contact tracing. I could easily name the people I have had contact with over the last two days (that would be dh), but how do trips to the grocery store work with that? I mean, I could say I was at my Neighborhood Market on such and such day (I’m personally going only once every 7-10 days) during a certain window of time, but that would be it. The people that I come into contact with that I know are FEW and far between - except for the grocery store trips. Though, I can tell you that Slow Alice is always my checker.
@suzyQ7 and others, I will also add some other observations my Copenhagen daughter has made. I sharing this only for those who are interested. It is not intended to begin conflict, so please do not start one. As my mother would say, take what you need, and let the rest roll off your back. ?
Regarding Sweden, she says that 50% of the people live alone. I’ve seen posters in this thread mention 40%, so I won’t quibble. But what she points out is that the Swedes trust their government. So when the government suggests they work from home, they do. When the government suggests they don’t congregate, they don’t. Etc., etc. etc. That first hand knowledge (she can see Sweden from her house ?) was intriguing.
The Danes and Swedes have always had a rivalry, so the Danish media would gleefully report Sweden’s higher case numbers and deaths. This was quite entertaining to my daughter. Denmark sheltered in place before they had any deaths.
Also, her “inside scoop” on the mess in Spain is that the Spanish culture involves kissing and hugging everyone you meet, so it spread quickly. Presumably it originated from the Spanish/Italian soccer game. And of course Italy had already had it, presumably from the textile factories in Northern Italy, which are owned by the Chinese. She says, (no documentation) that there are direct flights from Northern Italy to Wuhan. ?♀️ But it all makes sense. Her fiancé is from Spain, still has family there, and this is hearsay from family members.
You’d tell the contact tracer what you remembered. The contact tracer would go through your movements carefully, to prompt you to recall more. Unless you spent twenty minutes watching Slow Alice check your groceries, she probably would not be of interest to your contact tracer. Two minutes with Alice would probably not be enough to put her at sufficient risk that she would need to be quarantined; it would have to be 15 or 20 minutes.
When the contact tracer calls you, the person who has just tested positive, she has two jobs. First, she is going to help you out, making sure you understand how to isolate, making sure you have what you need to isolate, explaining to you when you should seek more medical help and how to do it so that the medical staff you end up seeing know to take precautions. She’ll keep checking in with you periodically.
Second, she needs to find out your contacts. She’ll go through your movements, starting from two days before you showed symptoms, prompting you to tell her who you’ve been in contact with. Then she’ll call up the people who were at significant risk for being infected by you. Probably Slow Alice won’t get a call. Your friend that came to your house will be called, the appliance repairman that fixed your fridge will be called, but not the person you passed on the meat aisle.
I’m not an expert but I have spent a couple of months in Spain. I didn’t notice that they were more kissy/huggy than Italians. But they live in such small apartments that they do their socializing communally. They watch soccer in crowded bars rather than at home. They all take the evening paseo. City pedestrian streets become very close and crowded during the paseo. All the cities have squares where the whole town gathers. It’s recipe for spread.
Not only that, people don’t wash their hands!!! My daughter was appalled when she studied in southern Spain. Kids would use the bathroom, not wash their hands, and then start eating lunch. She asked a friend who’s there now if things had changed recently, and they said, no, you don’t even see soap out very often.
Spain and Italy both had harsh results. Their gov’ts had to really crack down to try to stop all the socializing even after “lock downs.” I’m not sure the gov’t had success as much as seeing all of the folks dying.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/14/wisconsin-bars-reopen-evers/
Ugh. “We’re the Wild West.”
I forgot about that little tidbit! Daughter mentioned that also. I must have repressed that I formation. ?
Isn’t it already, in many areas?
It’s messy.
But (!!!) according to the WaPo article, three WI counties with major cities (Milwaukee, Madison & Greenbay) are continuing SIP orders that include restaurants & bars not being open for dine-in.
Illinois is getting pushback about the new Regions. Some counties are loudly objecting to being counted in the same region as Chicago proper, saying it’s apples & oranges.
Virginia has separated out northern Virginia (the counties around DC) from the rest of the state for re-opening plans. Some very rural counties still have no cases.
Have we discussed what’s known about those with immunity still being able to transmit the disease? Friends of ours who came home very sick after traveling mid-March both had positive antibody tests (hopefully not one of the inaccurate tests) recently and want to have dinner at our club on Friday. We declined because we’re not ready to eat in any public place yet, but my friend insisted that, going forward, it is safe to be with them and in their home and for them to be in ours because they’ve already had the virus. I believe this to be a one-way street, great for them, but not for us or anyone else they gather with, especially as they are now taking no precautions and are freely out and about. I believe they are immune but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to bring the virus with them on their persons/shoes/things just like anyone else, so they are not coming in to our home and vice versa.
This is what I have read:
What say all of you?
@momzilla2D , I hope I got my own math right, please correct me if I didn’t!
My assumption for the first bit you bolded is that people who test positive are a poor indicator for how many people have actually been infected, due to a number of reasons (testing criteria, asymptomatic cases and so on). Some people throw out estimates of numbers to make the case for herd immunity, but I suggest multiplying the known deaths for a best and worst case. You can use excess mortality even, which is an even higher number than known Covid deaths, probably by a factor of 20 or 25 percent, multiply times 270. That’s the highest number of people who can reasonably be assumed to have antibodies, and only in places with little or no disruption in health care.
The assumption for the second bit you bolded, which I think I didn’t make quite clear, is how many deaths to expect if 100 percent of the population were to be infected. Best and worst case. Which is probably unreasonable, but 80 percent isn’t. The problem is, the higher the rate of infection in a short time, the higher the fatality rate, because of the disruption. If you really want to go for herd immunity, you have to accept a massive number of deaths.
I’d think the disruption to the economy would be far worse in that case.
I love that New Yorker article, particularly the bit about culture being the hardest to change. Wearing the mask not to protect yourself, but to protect everyone else. Forgoing some fun stuff that involves lots of people in order to make it safe for everyone to be with close friends and family. Forgo some measure of privacy to enable contact tracing. Change the way we teach, learn, worship, exercise, have fun, earn a living, to make sure none of these activities have to be stopped for good. Which societies will rise to the occasion? We have found Asian societies appear to do better. Can the West change?