My husband’s lab in Texas was opening up but now shut down for the time being. Everyone will work from home until further notice. I don’t think any company wants to be responsible for its employees being sick/dead if they can help it, even if 1 or 100 or 1000…
His Bay Area lab, ototh, stays open for now.
@“Cardinal Fang” Look at Germany. Model approach and execution according to most. Couple outbreaks and cases increasing in general. Lockdowns re-instated. Uncertainty will lead to older people with disposable income (and younger people with it as well) not spending. Doesn’t need to be countrywide to have that effect.
I think the US is poorly equipped to handle this virus on a number of levels. Politics are a mess (no matter which team you prefer). We have strong state governments (and some strong city governments with economies the size of countries) in addition to a federal government. Mistrust of government (again no matter which your preferred team) and science. Per capital high numbers of people who who are high risk. Limited public health system. Patchwork of private and semi public entities throughout the country focused on addressing/treating problems rather than preventing them. Individualistic culture (Vulcans would not feel welcome here).
Countries that have done better tend to have many fewer of each of those. Being burned by another outbreak (such as SARS or MERS) in the past or being an island nation also appears to help.
Someone I know on FB had been posting how Covid is not a hoax, but the hysteria around it is, he posted all kinds of stats to prove how it’s not that dangerous as people made it out to be. He was so quiet for a month, only to re-emerged this week with the opposite view. Why the shift? His bff died from Covid. Why does it have to be this way? Why does it take someone you loved to die in order for you to see the other POV? And this was his bff, imagine if it was your own flesh and blood.
The latest Twim and twivo re covid also.
Sometimes politicians and others involved actually are racist, though. Historical examples from the 1918 flu pandemic: https://theundefeated.com/features/in-1918-and-2020-race-colors-americas-response-to-epidemics/
@youdontsay, that will always be true for any death, regardless of how rare or unpreventable it is, the family will always suffer. As a young adult I had a good friend die of an extraordinarily rare disease, of which far fewer than 1 in a million will die. As she pointed out, somebody has to be that one. For that person and their family, there are no comforts. Of course 47 deaths are sad. So is 1, if you know the person.
If you actually think race is determining Houston’s reaction to the pandemic, say so, @Ucbalumnus. I am sure our city leaders have heard worse crazy tales, and they have far thicker skins.
@emilybee, I truly thought you could never shock me more, but you have done so. Remarkable.
What worries me is not the 47 deaths today in Texas. Casualty events happen; if I heard of a bus crash in Texas that killed 47 people, I would think that was a terrible thing, and then forget all about it.
But 47 today is going to be more tomorrow, and the next day, and then there will be 60, and 100, and on and on. If I heard of a bus crash today in Houston, and then another tomorrow, and then another, and another, and then two busses crashing into each other, every day more and more busses crashing and more deaths, and state officials kept telling me there was no problem, I should ignore it, no need to fix the roads or tell drivers to slow down, I would think they were insane.
And if they said, oh, but those were busses carrying people from the senior center who were medically frail, plus the drivers and the aides and so forth, and they all died but I shouldn’t worry because the seniors were near the end of their lives, the bus drivers were fat and the aides had diabetes, I would think those state officials were monsters.
My county just announce a full reopening of the beaches at 12:01 a.m. tonight.
The ‘closure’ was from 11-5 daily. No access unless you participated in a water sport. No hangin gout in the sand. During open hours one could walk on the sand but not sit, meditate, lie in the sun etc.
There Eason for the last minute decision - it was no longer possible to enforce the closures. The beaches were already becoming crowded and no way could the meager law enforcement resource control the masses.
Northern California beaches are probably pretty safe. Sun, wind… it doesn’t seem like a place the virus would spread easily.
Nah, I’ll do what I figure is prudent, responsible, and affords the best quality of life.
(Holing up for months at home, completely dependent on others to put themselves in harms way so I could do so, and speaking of it as virtuous doesn’t hit any of those metrics, btw.)
Shaking my head at this piece published by our paper:
“The state has confirmed 9,573 diagnoses and 606 deaths in King County, the state’s most populous, accounting for a little less than half of the state’s death toll. At 6.3%, King County’s positive test rate is higher than the statewide average.”
Really? Nicole, have you checked the handy graphs that our DOH updates daily?! The average says zip, but the reader will infer that the sky is falling. The latest numbers are meaningful and so are the trends. The last readings from this very densely populated county come at 2-3% tops, the hospitalizations are down, and we have had a stretch of days with zero people dying. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in some other places in the state where the number of cases is going up, and the beds are filling up. Sad.
The poster thinks it’s selfish of old people to not be willing to go out and perhaps die to keep the economy going for future generations, so. Hopefully, poster is practicing what he/she is preaching.
Some good news from NYS, at least or now:
© 2020 POLITICO LLC
Yep, I go out and spend as needed to maintain myself and my family and not impose on others unecessarily. And I think I still qualify as middle aged, technically. ? And I bet others do the same.
Amen
Prudent and responsible? That doesn’t sound like you are practicing what you are preaching. Perhaps you aren’t really willing to sacrifice yourself either for the future economy.
Do you write to the reporter, or in the comment section. If not, you should.
I think what we are talking about is prudent tradeoffs and sacrifice. So having wild sex with many partners in a drunken orgy at a bar may increase your risk of COVID but doesn’t do much for the overall welfare of children or society. On the other hand, Keeping schools open so children get educated ( as UNICEF suggests) may also increase your risk of COVID but has substantial societal benefits. Pretty basic concept to understand. Pretty widely recognized and used in decisionmaking.
I saw on the news that even with cases being 10 times the number reported, as the CDC just said, that still leaves 90% of the population not infected yet. So a long way to herd immunity.
Flu illness and deaths happen among folks who were vaccinated, because often the flu vaccine doesn’t match well with the actual virus that year. The question remains whether there will be a similar problem with the COVID vaccine, since it is mutating into various versions, apparently.
Just for perspective, Maryland a state of 6 million had 68 deaths on April 29th. Today we added 23 more deaths (of course these were spread over who knows how many weeks as they just add the number once they confirm them).
Our numbers have been great, falling steady for quite a while. Our hospitalizations is the lowest it’s been in 84 days.
I believe every state will go through a peak and a rolloff. Maybe multiple peaks. How steep the peak and how fast the rolloff will depend on many factors. In the end we locked down to flatten the curve and many places did that. We didn’t do it to eliminate all cases, of course that would be ideal but we are not locking down to that extent.
There are many here that in the camp of we have to stop all cases. I just don’t see that as possible with this virus at this time in the majority of the world. Are there a few areas it could happen? Yes.
There are others here of the camp that as long as the hospitals aren’t overwhelmed let’s just open some things up. Obviously this is contrary and insane to the no cases crowd. Obviously locking down for a month completely to stop all cases is insane to the other crowd. Yes, there are other camps here too. In the end we’re just sitting here going in circles because we have different views and different thoughts. We’d all love to have things exactly our way but in the end we are not all going to get what we want.