We’ve placed some online orders. Shipping has been really unpredictable, I ordered three items from a clothing retailer that also has stores. Order came in three separate shipments on three different days. Took 10 days or so from order to arrival. The next order of three items came in about a week, all in one box. Ordered something 10 days ahead of D’s birthday. It said it would arrive in 5-8 days. It arrived a week after her birthday. At least it arrived. We aren’t counting on delivery dates at this point.
No. But a week ago or more, there was a rumor going around the LA County jails that prisoners who contracted COVID would be released. The sheriff released a video showing prisoners clustered around each other, drinking each other’s water, trying to get sick. The rumor was false. They weren’t going to be released.
We can’t know the counterfactual, “how many people would have died in 2020 in the rest of the world if Coronavirus had never left Wuhan?” Ever.
By the end of the year we can get better insight on how it is affecting the US. We can see the total number of deaths and compare it to the total number of expected deaths. But there is a range of total expected deaths, so we won’t know precisely how many extra deaths there have been.
Would the 92 year old that died of Covid-19 in a nursing home have died the next month of pneumonia, or lived to be 100?
Would the 22 year old that died in a 127 MPH crash on an empty highway have died later that month in a gun battle?
Would the 45 year old whose cancer was discovered when she went for successful treatment from coronavirus have died of the cancer if hadn’t been caught early?
For the people we know well we can make good guesses, but from a public health viewpoint we’ll mainly just go by demographics and a little Kentucky windage.
The blood bank in our area is now doing free antibody testing for all blood donors. The test they are using is supposed to have 100% specificity. D and I signed up for appointments next week.
DH and I weren’t able to get to sleep until midnight last night due to a raucous pool party at the house kitty-corner behind us. Music pounding and more shouting and loud chatter than we’ve heard since NYE. Had to have been more than 30 people there. Our community is now completely open and back to business as usual. I have been keeping track of case counts in the three zip codes surrounding us and only an increase of 2 or 3 in each the past week. County deaths have not increased in the past week. This is good news. I hope it holds.
My MIL wasn’t looking to get it to die sooner. She was more anxious about being socially cut off from her friends at her independent living home. She told all of us that she didn’t really care if she got it knowing that she would likely be very very sick, but she cared much more about enjoying her f
People have mentioned higher risk for those over 65+. I am over 65 and still have kids in their 20’s. I do sword Tai Chi. I think the image people have of us over 65 folks is a little off 
I hope I am not expendable for another 40 years.
Math-challenged? OK, let’s talk about math. I love math…
When the death toll (which, I remind you, continues to grow) was at 50,000, minimizers would say piously, well, half of those people were over 80 and would have died anyway within the year. This is not true.
But even if it were true, that’s how you told me that if it were 50,000 deaths that would be serious, but oh, it’s actually not 50,000 deaths that we should care about because people over 80 aren’t worth our concern.
Now 50,000 under 80 have died. Is it serious yet? Will it be serious at the end of the year, when 200,000 have died, so that we’ll have 100,000 under 80 dead?
How many dead people do we need before we should care? How many empty chairs at Thanksgiving? How many fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers? How many auditors, tailors, grandmoothers? How many people who liked their bacon and hash browns crispy? How many stamp collectors and fashionistas? How many meat-packing plant workers and prison guards will it take, before I am supposed to care?
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The people I know that are staying SIP are not the ones over 65, but rather ones under 65 that have autoimmune and other issues. The question of the deaths under 65 is other pre existing conditions, but would those conditions have killed them anyway.
I do know of 2 deaths of people in their 80’s in the last few months. Neither died of Covid or ever tested positive. So deaths are still happening.
You mistakenly believe we do not care about deaths. Of course we do; you have no exclusive corner on the caring market. Sone of us happen to believe that at this point in time, the lockdown cure is now more costly than the virus in terms of health. Or should I accuse you of not caring about the kids who will die from polio and measles because they were not vaccinated, or their parents who put off colon scopes due to their fears and thus died of cancer?
Enough with the moral superiority claims on either side.
I don’t think you’re expendable at all but statistically you are apparently at a higher risk of dying. Maybe you should take more precautions? Maybe you should just live life. Personal choice is not a bad thing.
It is possible for a situation to be terrible and sad, and also for much of the reporting on it to be superficial and incompetent.
The New York Times has done extensive analysis of excess deaths. For example, from a week ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
“These numbers undermine the notion that many people who have died from the virus may soon have died anyway. In Britain, which has recorded more Covid-19 deaths than any country except the United States, more than 130,000 people have died since mid-March — 57,000 more people than usual, and about 16,000 more than have been captured by official death statistics.”
Exactly. The CDC has now announced their estimate of a death rate (IFR) of 0.26% across all age and risk cohorts. This is exactly the same IFR estimated in the comprehensive Gangelt study in Germany. See 3:55 of this interview with the virologist who conducted the study - “true” IFR of 0.24-0.26% - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrL9QKGQrWk. The entire interview is WELL worth watching.
Two things to observe about such a low IFR as regards individual risk. First, these are the chances of death if you are infected and even in an uncontrolled virus sweep, no more than 50% would be infected before saturation is reached (it looks like NYC reached saturation at approximately 25% penetration). Thus, the overall IFR must be discounted by at least a factor of two for any individual contemplating the risks, leaving a risk of fatal outcome for an individual estimated across all age and risk cohorts under 0.15%, perhaps well under if saturation is achieved at lower penetration.
Second, the distribution of fatal outcomes is skewed towards the very elderly, with median age of COVID deaths reported as anywhere from the high 70s to the early 80s. Thus, for workers under age 70 or so, the true risks are much less than 0.15%, likely well under 0.05%, 1 out of 2000.
These are not the sort of risks for which I would change my behavior very much. This very low risk was apparent to me at least two months ago (here is my post on risks from 10 weeks ago http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22663387/#Comment_22663387). Judging from how many people seem to be easing up here in Palm Beach County on their protective measures (and I have been out and about every single day since the earliest stages of the crisis, so I have seen the trends in both directions), I believe it is becoming more apparent to many others.
The ones in competition for Champion of Self Isolation see no problem with making others expose themselves over and over again to shop for them.
This discussion often gets polarized. People who advocate a more cautious approach are misrepresented as wanting everyone to stay inside until there’s a vaccine, when that is not true. People who advocate more opening are misrepresented as wanting no restrictions at all, when that’s not true. Let’s instead avoid strawmen and examine exactly what people want.
You say that the current state of lockdown is more costly than the virus. I’d like to see rough numbers here, in your calculation. We are certainly avoiding some deaths from the current state of lockdown, and also causing some deaths and other ill health effects. How many deaths do you think we’re avoiding, that would have happened in your preferred approach?
What do you advocate in terms of closing right now? If your preferred policy were adopted nationwide, what do you think would be the daily death rate eight weeks from now? How many new cases a day would we see, eight weeks from now?
Is there a number of deaths from covid that you would think of as too many, that your policies would seek to avoid?
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@TatinG & @CTTC I am the one who posted the question about shipping/deliveries. I have never held myself out to be a Champion of Self Isolation. I have been in support of states reopening as they see fit. You must be confusing me with someone else. Please don’t be so quick to attack.
I wasn’t referring to you.