Agree. Lack of PPE and testing and information on spread decimated our nursing homes.
Again, a false narrative. “Yes, some of the deaths may have been due to workers being positive”. Not some. Even if its 5000 (we don’t know this -opinion) that’s 5000 out of 35,500 in NY. AP story clearly states what happened in Louisiana
“Some states went in the opposite direction. Louisiana barred hospitals for 30 days from sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes with some exceptions. And while Louisiana reported about 1,000 coronavirus-related nursing home deaths, far fewer than New York, that was 40% of Louisiana’s statewide death toll, a higher proportion than in New York.”
The opinion piece you reference pushes the false narrative that most nursing home deaths were because of the bad NY policy.
Re: school staffing, there’s a good chance a bunch of smaller private schools will either fail or cut staff, as fewer people will be willing or able to pay tuition for whatever-school-looks-like in the fall. So, some areas of the country will have some excess school staff looking for jobs.
OTOH, I honestly think COVID-19 will create a learning gap/bubble that follows this cohort through school. There are no “good” solutions for fall. If it’s all online, there’ll be a big chunk of kids who fall behind, despite a teacher’s best efforts. If in person, there will inevitably be setbacks and interruptions. Many more students will be behind where they should be going forward, with schools constantly trying to bring them up to grade level. The kids who will not get behind are those who are good at online and self study, and those who are homeschooled.
I feel for the people having to make decisions for schools. As I’ve mentioned before, I once served on the board of a small private school. At one point, we faced a crisis, nowhere near the scale of this. I lost sleep, I cried. It was very, very stressful.
Why would a state open up with no guidelines for localities on what to do if cases spike?
Leaving it to localities seems like a recipe for disaster.
“Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said she’s surprised those metrics haven’t already been created by the state Department of Health. Palm Beach County is the state’s third most-populated county, yet commissioners haven’t received firm guidelines from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration on when another lockdown should be considered, she said.
“It was frightening to learn that something similar does not exist — at least to the knowledge of our public health director — of any such document at the state or federal level,” she said.”
IMO the media pushed stories of young people getting sick in order to encourage buy-in for the SAH orders. i.e. on the theory that younger people may be more likely to stay home for their own self interest, if not for the “greater good”.
On my dog walk this morning I re-listened to a Sam Harris podcast.
It dropped on March 11 to put that in the timeline and context.
It’s an interview with Amesh Adalja an infectious disease specialist at JHU Center for Health Security whose work focuses on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/
I really enjoyed listening to it again, 2 months in.
At that time, and in that interview with Harris, Adalja emphasized transmission by breathing in someone else’s cough and/or sneeze. I kept wanting to say “Add don’t share someone else’s breath!!!”
I’ve guessed the stories were pushed due to the current business model.
So much pressure to stir up a high level of interest and online engagement. What’s better than a lot of shares and likes and getting other media outlets to report or discuss your story? How about some controversy? That will drive traffic!
My emotions have been all over the place since this thing started and I’ll confess I’ve been sucked into clicking on many of the terrifying stories like a moth to a flame.
I find I do much better (emotionally) if I stick to carefully selected podcasts!
I am sure that media has highlighted the deaths of younger people. The whole “man bites dog” being more interesting than the reverse. I would just like to note that the younger people they have highlighted are, in fact, dead.
Would you want this app on your phone?
I would have no problem with the app. They have a problem in that even if people accept and download it, it won’t work if Bluetooth is turned off. That’s quite a simple light switch if someone wants to appear compliant but wants to hide some activity.
That is why it is so important to emphasize that the extremely low death rates are already estimated across a population which has a high percentage of co-morbidities.
Yep.
Raising my hand, yes, I would want the app!
Seems like the privacy protections are not convincing enough for potential users, but seen as too limiting for public health purposes.
However, mobile phones themselves can be privacy issues.
Absolutely I want it. Anyone with a smartphone that uses social media apps has their data sold and tracked all over the place. FB, etc. But people don’t mind that. I’ll uninstall the app when this is over.
I’m happy for the student-athletes (SEC) who will be permitted to resume on-campus workouts and team activities starting June 8! Really encouraging sign.
Employers (including mine) are looking at all the contact apps- both the phone ones and wearables (including on your badge)- for return to work. These would be used, at least in our case, only while in the workplace. It could either be a true contact tracer or be an alert when you are too close to someone. The privacy issues abound…
Hospital seeing a year’s worth of suicide attempts in 4 weeks. John Muir Hospital in the East Bay.
Death is not the only bad result that can happen. No one seems to be interested in finding any useful data about the rate of longer term injury after recovery, even though it seems to occur often enough that it is something people should want to know in assessing risk levels.
If risk of any bad result is low, would you recommend that not-so-high-risk people variolate themselves in order to get to herd immunity faster to better protect the high risk people?
I am sure some people would do that, some football coaches have even suggested that, and I don’t think they were kidding.
But again we don’t know much about immunity yet, or even if herd immunity is a reasonable goal. Even if people are protected at some level once they have the disease, we don’t know for how long. It could be months, or a year, or several years, or forever.