As has often been discussed in the last few years, the wealth distribution in the United States is heavily skewed toward older Americans. The young can’t support the economy by their spending, because they haven’t got enough money.
Ive never understood why people don’t seem to take flu more seriously.
It’s an ill wind and all that, if covid targets the old. Me being old.
With COVID killing off the grandparents (and perhaps mom & dad) finally, a shot for millennials at homeownership…
LOL. Early on in this thing, a friend said “I keep hearing all these warnings for old people. And then I realized, they mean ME”
I wish CC would add a DISAGREE or DISLIKE icon
[quote=“katliamom, post:3302, topic:2093584”]
I agree with you. Just trying to understand @emilybee ‘s point of view that we should all stay at home, except essential workers, until there’s a vaccine or a “ proven therapeutic remedy”. I honestly don’t understand where the money comes from for the government to provide long-term support to a huge chunk of the population.
I went to a local hardware store today and it was pretty good. They had signs everywhere about mask requirements and they were cleverly worded to imply that masks were now required by governmental decree. They are required here for “public facing workers”, but only “strongly encouraged” for the shoppers but I completely agree with the mild trickery on these signs.
Everyone was wearing a mask. The employees had surgical masks under face shields. They had the usual plexiglass barriers and spacing reminders on the floor. On the aisle endcaps were posters telling you how to make a bleach cleaning solution and there was the bleach and gloves on the shelf below. The cashier had masks and hand sanitizer behind her for sale.
It gave me hope that we can act smart and get through this.
OTOH there has been a small outbreak on a few crawfish farms. The people there are seasonal and work outside, not too close together. Needless to say, it’s pretty hot and humid and there’s plenty of sunlight (the crawfish are raised in large open ponds). The virus is spreading in the workers’ dormitories. Viruses love dormitories, barracks, tenements, etc.
ETA- the crawfish farm outbreak may have been in processing facilities, not where people work outdoors. Figures. I wish they were more specific because the workers at either place could have been housed together anyway.
I want despise, but that’s just me.
From a link posted up-thread:
For a while I thought that ‘excess mortality’ statistics would end up settling exactly how many people died from something that there’s a financial incentive for hospitals to claim. (That last is true, so unless you’re going to claim that someone going broke won’t stop to pick a 5-spot off the street, don’t bother.)
Realized I was naive, because there are additional deaths resultant from the response to this. Immediate would be from those afraid to go to the hospitals when they were suffering a heart attack, stroke, etc. Long term would include the ones cancer ends up taking because they couldn’t or wouldn’t go in for a screening, biopsy, or bloodwork.
Excess mortality isn’t going to tell us much other than how many died from both the disease and the panic.
You can get a good estimate if you look at two areas that had roughly the same amount of lockdown, but different levels of known covid deaths and covid infections. If, after we subtract out known covid deaths, my area has N excess deaths per 100,000, and New York City has 20N excess deaths per 100,000, then we can be pretty sure most of those 20N excess deaths in New York City were covid deaths. People were just as afraid to go to the hospital for a seeming heart attack here as they were in New York, and were having just as miserable a time staying at home, so that part of life wouldn’t be 20 times as deadly in NYC as here.
However, in Wuhan, the busyness of funeral homes doing cremations got people suspicious that the official count of 2,500 COVID-19 deaths was seriously undercounted (the funeral homes there did about 20,000 more cremations in a month than the normal rate).
And the response to this has been tailored to protect the old… absent those in nursing homes and LTC, they’re the ones that tend to hold not only the money but the power to influence policy.
(Sucks to realize I’m one of those fat-cats and might be mistaken for one of the group that single-handedly trashed our country’s economy. Continued wearing a mask, after the young figure out exactly how badly we’ve hosed them, might be a really good idea. May never take mine off and dye my hair to boot.)
Apologies if this was already posted on this thread.
I think I grabbed it from another thread? Hat tip to the OP.
I had looked at the NYS table that listed C19 deaths by age and morbidity. But this CDC graph made an impression on me in a way other charts have not.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
Am I the only person who knows “old” people who aren’t rolling in dough? One of my best friends is a divorced woman age 61 who is barely scraping by. Although I realize that speaking generally, older Americans are better off financially than younger Americans, there are a lot of poor people age 65 or older.
I am amazed at just how fast things are changing down here in Palm Beach County. It is as if someone threw a switch. Today, traffic was heavy all over, from surface streets, to the six lane highways that pretend to be surface streets, to the actual highways. Cars in all the strip mall parking lots. Fewer people wearing masks, although most still are. It seemed like every store was open, but my wife who went to a large local mall to search out bargains told me a few retailers are still closed.
I think this reopening is going to happen fast. People in the end are herd animals. It will not be difficult to change the narrative. Just my opinion of course, but I feel like I had a pretty good handle on how this would all unfold two months ago, at least in Florida. I did think the hospital system would be overwhelmed for a time and clearly that did not happen (not even in the NYC area in the sense that there were always beds and ventilators - no one was triaged away to die in a hallway). I will be a little more cautious in the future about believing the self-interested prognostications of experts. I assume that many will similarly be cautious.
I would be more supportive of shutting down to all but essential workers if we’d really done That.
The US was never shut down. Starbucks, carry out food service, ACE hardware were all open. Target and Walmart were open for a lot more than groceries. The entire world is walking by my front door every day with baby strollers and dogs. People here on CC were going to work, stopping into 3-4 grocery stores on their way home looking for certain things, ordering off Amazon and ‘forcing’ the poorer people to deliver groceries, games, puzzles, books that allowed them to boast that they’ve been totally quarantined for 37 1/2 days. Anything to do with agriculture could stay open, so farms but also landscape services, nurseries stayed open, farmer’s markets, flower shops. You could buy guns and liquor and pot. You could buy a computer at Costco but not Best Buy (mail order or curbside, which caused people to work).
It wouldn’t change anything to keep semi-closed for another 14 days or 21 days or all summer. As soon as we open, there WILL BE another surge. We are 2 months past most states shutting down and there are still more cases happening now, more outbreaks in nursing homes and after small family parties.
Even if the non-essential services have to shut down again, we’ll have had 3-4 months of haircuts, mammograms, eye doctor appts., new cars purchased. People can have gone to the bank to straighten things out. Restaurants may have figures out what they need to do to survive or if they want to survive. Churches can hold funerals for those who have died during March and April (and people can attend with new clothes and haircuts). Children can get well child check ups and vaccines.
We’ve learned a lot. We all wash our hands more and wear masks and don’t go to the movies or concerts or football games. I think it is time to open whatever we can.
Anyone know of an online calculator that would provide information on one’s own risk? That is plug in your state or area. Then put in your age and your underlying conditions. Find out the chance of being infected, the chance of death based on specific information.
FWIW, I’m not predicting doomsday. I think a bit of commerce will limp along with those who adapt and come up with new ideas doing better than those who shout or whimper about how bad things are because they aren’t the same.
Most people will also survive the disease (stats show us that).
But things will get worse for a time IF too many folks don’t follow the recommendations and/or summer doesn’t give us a helping hand. How long the “time” is has yet to be determined.
This has already happened (at least in areas) and goes back to Feb when med school lad told me about it. Doctors there proposed then that what was good for preventing Covid also helped prevent the flu.
Since then some places have gone back and determined at least a couple of deaths previously blamed on the flu were Covid. Who knows just how many of those there were?
What would be the point of polarizing people more?