So it doesn’t strike elderly people at a disproportional rate.
People who are vulnerable know who they are. They should do whatever they can to protect themselves. Each individual should be able to choose for him/herself.
If you don’t want to get your haircut or travel anywhere, then don’t.
It’s not just businesses going bankrupt. States and cities are running out of money. California ran out of unemployment payment money and had to borrow from the federal government.
Science and data say we should protect the vulnerable and direct our resources there. No one wants anyone to die or get sick. But an overbroad approach makes little sense and is doing a lot of damage.
You haven’t listed any measures that you support to protect the vulnerable. Instead, you say that people who believe they are not vulnerable should do nothing to stop spreading contagious diseases, and people who are vulnerable should “do whatever they can to protect themselves.”
Had several errands to run this morning, including my weekly grocery trip.
Meat and toilet paper shelves were fully stocked (literally full with every brand). No limit on meat (which I didn’t buy and didn’t need), but still a one-pp limit on TP. Bleach and cleaners were there. The only item still not available was hand sanitizer, but I was able to pick up a bottle at Walgreens, along with my prescription.
Our store now has one-way aisles. This is new. I was nearly half way done with my shopping before I noticed. Pretty much everyone else was oblivious too. No harm, no foul, as most of the time I had the aisle to myself anyway, and absolutely no one was being snippy over signage. Even the store employees were forgetting the signs, very likely all honest mistakes with old habits dying hard and all that. Everyone had masks on and was social distancing as much as possible.
IMO the one way aisles are probably useful when the store is crowded, but at the time I shop, that isn’t the case. Actually following the signs kept me in the store notably longer than I needed to be there, and I actually passed more people in going up the aisle I didn’t need to be in (so I could be going in the correct direction of the aisle I DID need to be in) than I would have had I been able to go directly over to the aisle I wanted in the first place. Not sure that is a desirable outcome, especially when multiplied for every customer. I’m usually pretty organized too. In better times I was able to make one sweep through the store. It quite as easy when only shopping once a week, buying for the food pantry as well, and backtracking for forgotten items or last minute text requests from the family.
Vulnerable people will have to continue to shelter in place until there’s a vaccine. I’m not sure why that CDC recommendation would change.
There should be daily COVID tests for those working at nursing homes, for example. Some nursing homes are even setting up trailers on site for their workers.
So the plan is to “protect” them by making it more likely that they’d catch the virus than it is now, because any chance contact, any household contact, or any caregiver would be much more likely to be infected? That doesn’t sound like protection to me.
Given how large a percentage of American adults the higher risk population is, it is unlikely that if everything opened up completely that economic activity would return to anything close to normal. Then you also have to add lower risk people who live with vulnerable people or who are otherwise afraid of getting the virus who will also limit their economic activity even if everything opened up completely.
See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22778224/#Comment_22778224 for survey results showing a very high level of concern about the virus. The unconcerned, and especially those unconcerned enough not to bother with the additional antiviral habits, make up only a small percentage of those surveyed. If you want the economy to come back, you need to convince everyone that they should not be concerned about getting the virus.
Realistically, the choices are likely to be:
- Lots of people die or suffer long term injury, very deep economic downturn.
- Even more people die or suffer long term injury, deep but not very deep economic downturn.
But then, knowledge is incomplete enough that there is still a lot of guessing as to how much of an effect any particular action makes on the number of people who will die or suffer long term injury, so it is not like a decision can easily be made based on cost relative to the US government agencies’ value of a generic human life ($7.9 million to $9.6 million).
I am vulnerable but my late 20 kid is squeezed in with me because of job loss due to the virus. One bathroom. What happens when she goes back to work? Another one of my kids, also late 20’s had health conditions. That kid has work and a grad program, not sure how protection will work for her.
As for the truly elderly, aides and other staff are in and out, work more than one job, and many have family in small homes or apartments.
Basically the idea, I think, is to sacrifice the vulnerable or at last put them at risk, so that the economy can come back. I am staying away from politics here. I am not even disagreeing.
I think it is a matter of timing and I think we need more time. Hospitals and supplies need to recover, and it may be that some treatment options will prove helpful. Most of all testing and contact tracing need to be in place, and a way for those positive or exposed to avoid exposing others in the household.
How? Is US prepared to deliver food and other necessities to their homes? UK contemplated it before she gave up.
Gloves would protect him, but not you. Even with gloves, I would have disinfected the door handles and stair railing. Who knows where those gloves have been?!
I’d be much more concerned if he weren’t wearing a mask.
The whole discussion may soon be moot; the NY Times says by this weekend, 43 states will have at least partially relaxed restrictions and opened up.
Up to 80% of all people who have been infected and are contagious are either asymptomatic, or have symptoms which are not recognizable to the patient as COVID 19. If we take a random sample of people who have the virus and are contagious, 90% or higher are either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic.
So exactly how can we protect the vulnerable population, unless we put them all in full quarantine, and only have them visited by people wearing full protective “clean room” gear?
Even people in the age range of 40-60 have a 1%-3% death rate. Considering that about 70% will be infected if this group isn’t protected, that is 500,000-1,500,000 deaths. Add to that the fact that, unless this group is also protected, emergency rooms will be swamped again, and you will have many more deaths that could have been avoided if ERs and ICUs were available. There are also all the hospitalized severe cases who do not die, but who are severely sick and suffer from long-term health issues, which would be another 500,000-1,500,000 people, and another 3,000,000-4,000,000 people who will be sick for a month.
Considering the limitations of the USA healthcare system, and the inadequacies of the health insurance coverage, and the lack of adequate sick leave, many of these people will lose their savings and possibly their homes. Since people of this age group generally have a number of dependents, the economic impact of this would be far greater than another month or two of closure.
HOWEVER, in that case, the cost of the pandemic will be put almost entirely on the shoulders of the poor and lower-middle class, whereas maintaining the stay-at-home policies spreads the cost to the upper-middle and upper classes who are more easily able to bear the costs.
The poor and middle class are already bearing most of the economic costs of the pandemic. They have jobs they can’t work from home. They have little savings to fall back on. Many can’t get through to unemployment offices due to the antiquated computer systems. I don’t see how two more months of shutdown helps them at all. They won’t have jobs to go back to
The poor and the lower middle class will bear most of the burden of both the disease effects and the economic effects, regardless of what policies are chosen.
I found these articles interesting. They compare the reported number of Covid deaths with the death rate over and above historical norms. It in effect shows the impact of the virus irrespective of cause of death. Some of it is under-reporting of Covid deaths but also other deaths that are a result of the Covid measures (e.g. deaths related to not seeking treatment for other conditions).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html#commentsContainer
The number of unreported Covid deaths is probably even higher because the total deaths being reported over and above historical norms is partially offset by decreased deaths due to other causes (like car accidents and violence) which under normal circumstances would still be occurring driving those numbers even higher.
Also with regards to states reporting falling number of cases, this article points out the problem with some of those numbers:
Just went to a local town hall and they said that unlike the national news where most who have it are male and over 60, most here are under 60 and female and most recent patient is 17. Other good info in that. Our peak hasn’t crested yet here. They were big into stay the course and the opening is happening before our peak will end!!
Ummm… this sounds high to me, if we’re looking at the percentage of people in that age group who are infected (possibly without knowing it) and then die. Probably more like 0.5 percent, much lower for 40-year-olds and much higher for 60-year-olds… We don’t have the complete data yet. We know that covid-19 is much more deadly for 60-year-olds than 40-year-olds; that much we can easily learn by eyeballing the list of victims.
NJ restrictions are continuing for another 30 days, according to the governor’s press conference today. I’m not enthusiastic about opening up - and I understand his decision - but I think it’s going to be a very difficult month. We’re fortunate that staying at home isn’t a hardship for us, but I think compliance is going to swiftly decline. Governor says the curve is flattening, but I read and pay attention I am frustrated and unsure of the end goal. Also, living at the beach in NJ it is hard to escape “Jaws” mentality that everything needs to be open for Memorial Day or there will be a total meltdown. That’s just an emotional feeling from me-that I think come Memorial Day if we are not making strides towards reopening, things will really devolve here.
One thing that doesn’t get remarked on much is the interaction between age and gender of victims. The median age of a person who dies of covid is somewhere around 80.
Something like 60% of the victims are men. But it must be way worse for men than that statistic implies. Look at the demographics of the over-80s. This is a demographic that skews female by a considerable amount. And yet, even though most over-80s are women, and half of victims are over 80, nevertheless men outnumber women in deaths by something like 3 to 2. So being male must be even more of a risk factor than it initially appears.