The modelers have been all over the map with their guesses. In March, when California shut down its economy, our governor predicted 25.5 million cases of COVID in 8 weeks here without the shutdown. That’s over half of the state. We currently have 90,000 some cases with 3600 some deaths. I really don’t think people did such a good job at social distancing that it prevented millions and millions of positive cases.
Really? I guess you can choose to believe what you want to believe, but I doubt the economy would be in its current state without pretty remarkable levels of social distancing.
Why should I have any sympathy for people who not only deliberately put themselves in harms way and/ or deliberately put their loved ones in harms way because of their actions.?
We know exactly what measures are needed to reduce the spread of the virus and save lives. Those who disregard these measure will get no sympathy from me.
What method did he use to make that prediction? R0?
But more than 50 vaccinated children still died of flu. Rare enough that we don’t upend lives. That’s my point
Yep. H got infected at work by coworkers who were sick. Eventually they fessed up they had been taking Advil to make their headache & fever go away (!!!)
And, believe it or not, it did not click for them that it must be C19 — figured they would be much more sick???
Despite a sick pay policy, the coworkers felt pressure to show up for work. Undocumented & ineligible for UI, hanging on to that job is very important.
[quote=“amsunshine, post:3859, topic:2093584”]
Right but the risk to children from COVID of dying is about the same as from the flu EVEN WHEN Vaccinated. Many of those 50 could likely have been prevented with the measures in place now…but we don’t do that.
The point is that we accept very very uncommon risks of dying from communicable diseases without taking drastic steps to prevent those deaths like lockdown. A focus on the rare rare event as opposed to the real differences between the flu and COVID is a dishonest approach.
Some people may move around as they did before, but many (most?) will not. As things begin to open up, I plan to stay mostly in my cocoon, wait and see what happens. If/when I do go out, I plan to wear a mask and social distance whenever possible.
[/quote]
Google mobility data confirms that people are not moving around as they did pre-covid.
https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/
Those R0 numbers are inconsistent with the ones on rt.live, which shows only 4 states >1.
That’s odd, because this AL.com piece - bylined this morning - appears to contradict your AP quote:
If you figure out who’s wrong, let me know. I’ve seen a slew of biased reporting (leaving things out, headlines that don’t reflect the body, etc.) but not that many erroneous ones.
There seem to be several posters on this thread expecting or hoping for more deaths in states other than their own, and these posters clearly (because they say so) represent both the “stay at home longer” and the “open up quickly” camps.
I know few victims personally, but I mourn all of the nearly 100,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19.
Would it make more sense to have different social distancing (or other protective-against-virus-exposure) recommendations for different risk levels like the following?
- Outdoors, transient exposure. E.g. walking in a park or at a beach.
- Outdoors, longer exposure. E.g. eating at an outdoor restaurant, sitting in a park or at a beach where others are also sitting, waiting in line to get into a grocery store, participating in an outdoor group fitness class.
- Indoors, transient exposure. E.g. shopping at a grocery store or other indoor retail, circuit training in a large gym.
- Indoors, longer exposure. E.g. eating or working in an indoor restaurant, waiting in line to check out in a grocery store or other indoor retail, working as a grocery store checker, in a gym using the same station for a while near someone else using the same nearby station for a while (including group fitness classes), getting or giving a haircut, getting or doing dental work.
Or do different recommendations not exist because those who may make such recommendations do not think that the general public will be able to understand or implement anything more complex than a one-size-fits-all recommendation?
I responded to this point in another post (sorry for that – I haven’t had enough caffeine this morning, lol).
I understand what your point was. The comparison to the flu is not apt because we have no similar vaccination for c19. The very article you cited pointed to the necessity of regular flu vaccinations and showed pediatric deaths were, in fact, reduced significantly by the vaccine. It is remarkably effective. That is why we don’t upend our lives for the flu. Even though we have a vaccine, however, the public still requires encouragement to get vaccinated and get their kids vaccinated every year, which seems pretty amazing. There are still people who refuse, just don’t have the time for, or are ignorant of the importance of, the flu vaccine.
But anyway, my original post didn’t address pediatric deaths. I was simply commenting about long term damage, and pointed to the case of Nick Cordero, who is not a child, but did not have the benefit of getting a vaccine to prevent his condition. I don’t believe it was “less than honest” to point out that his case is very real to him and his family, and very sad. This virus has claimed and will claim the lives or long term quality of lives for many, many people. That’s not “less than honest.” It’s also sad that we don’t have a vaccine yet, or a course of treatment that would enable the world to get back to more of a semblance of normalcy and start to heal, both healthwise and economically. Both things are true and “honest”.
I asked med school lad if the patient with Covid and sepsis who wanted to check themselves out of the hospital against medical advice was able to do so (the drug addict). He said the person is still a patient. He’s unsure if it’s due to legal enforcement of some sort (due to Covid because they can’t keep them otherwise if they want to go) or if the person was just using “leaving” as a way to get more meds.
Personally, if the latter, I hope they are helping the person with their addiction too as best they can.
And I hope states can legally mandate people stay “somewhere” (NOT inhabited with healthy folks nursing homes) until they are over the virus if it’s suspected they’ll go out infecting others.
If someone is in a hospital for COVID-19, could s/he be discharged before completely clearing the virus if they are “well” enough? If so, then what if his/her normal residence is a nursing home that does not have space for an isolation area?
Your last point. They won’t understand. They don’t even understand the simplest of rules.
It’s by no means inevitable that a region that opens up will see exponential growth in cases. If they start with a very small number of cases, they might not.
In the beginning, one thing we didn’t understand about this disease (one of the many things) was the large variability in the number of other people an infected person infects.
I imagined that if R0 was 3, then people would tend to infect 3 other people, or 2, or 4. It would be a bell curve with an average of 3. But that was completely wrong.
We now know an infected person usually infects nobody else. Or they might infect one other person, or possibly two. But a few people, the superspreaders, infect more: 6 other people, or 20, or 50 (if they are allowed to be exposed to that many). The average will still be 3, but the variance is big.
For this reason, if a region has an introduction of one case, or two or three, the outbreak can quickly die out, or go along at an almost undetectable level, as happened in my area of Northern California in January and February. Or there can be an outbreak, as happened in our friend to the north, Washington. With a small number of initial infections, probably a region will be lucky, like we were, but they might be unlucky, like Washington.
The Law of Large Numbers is still true, though. If a region gets to a high enough number of cases and does nothing to slow the spread, the high variance is no longer protective. The growth will be exponential and it will be awful.
I have no idea, but infecting others should not be an option, esp if they are in high risk groups.
I recall some time ago somewhere someone proposed using closed wings or closed facilities (reopening them for this purpose). I don’t know if that actually happened, could happen, or was just a suggestion.
I highly suspect this drug addict who wanted a fix wasn’t exactly planning to go home and stay isolated. I could easily see them spreading it to quite a few others.
If it’s reasonable to trust an individual, I can see sending them home (like my lad). If not, I think it’s reasonable for authorities to enforce isolation.
I’d also like to add that we don’t know the circumstances or the people who have contracted the virus. Alabama, in particular, has a lot if people living in poverty. And there have been numerous articles pointing out that the coronavirus is hitting poor and minority communities harder.
I don’t doubt there are people ignoring social distancing guidelines and not wearing masks, but there is at least some reason to believe that SES may have something to do with what’s happening in Alabama.
[quote=“maya54, post:3867, topic:2093584”]
We don’t accept the risks of dying from communicable diseases. We, as a society, work toward finding ways to prevent deaths. No death is “acceptable”.
The reason we don’t generally “lockdown” for the flu, again, is because we have a very effective vaccine. If people die of the flu after having been vaccinated – those deaths are tragic. They aren’t just statistics – those people are very real. It is not dishonest to put faces and names on what some would rather view as merely statistics because it is more convenient to do so.
Also, without vaccination for the flu, we would very likely see the same types of “lockdowns” because the dangers would be significantly higher.
There are some fascinating issues out there now from a purely legal standpoint. The government can absolutely ban in person religious services to protect the public health if it has stats to back up the ban ( it clearly does to back up at least restrictions…but does it to back up outright bans? That’s not clear. To support an outright ban it has to show that no less restrictive method ( such as masks plus social distancing ) would have the same degree of safety. And then if it eases bans to avoid legal fights as Cuomo did it faces other fights over favoring religion over political protests. Which is again why Cuomo amended his orders. I personally think the bans are a great idea on gatherings but the issues are thorny and as people lose patience and more willing to fight the issue grows more difficult for governors to deal with.
If it allows the gatherings and then there’s spread it could use this as the basis to just the restrictions. Maybe that’s what a Cuomo is doing.