Dr Fauci has been quoted

[johnson86-1]

You might want to read it before YOU post. I specifically said that was in reference to wearing masks in the post.

I'm still not seeing that in the post I responded to, but I was unreasonably snarky regardless. mea culpa

 

[OneParticularHarbor]

High quality one-liner. I’ve got it saved in my signature & it might even replace Donna Ladd’s remarks about the Clarion-Ledger and Ole Miss.

I'm honored. You could knock me over with one of Seymore's feathers.

 

[johnson86-1]

Agreed that local conditions has not been paid enough attention. Look at GA. Almost all the cases are in Atlanta. Yet we all have been looking at state data and statewide orders.

Spread WILL lead to hospitals being overwhelmed. It's just math.

Will it? As bad as New Orleans and NYC were, do we have an idea of how many excess deaths there were? They didn't run out of ventilators or ICU beds I don't think? I know they had excess deaths from people dying at home; I'm just not clear if that is b/c the health care system was overrun or because people ignored serious issues because of fear of contracting COVID if they went to the hospital.

And NYC is basically the worst possible conditions for containing a respiratory virus in the US. For much of the US, we can carry on a lot of activities while still limiting close contact with others. I'm not betting against it happening anywhere. I think there will be some places that get overwhelmed. I just think the vast majority of places will be able to manage because their lack of density and some relatively easy to implement precautions will limit the spread from being that fast. Plus there is the fact that we now know that ventilators should not be used as quickly, and they are of limited effectiveness, so you're really talking about ICU beds and the ability to staff them as the limiting factor.

But regardless, even if roughly have the places are overwhelmed at one point or another and we are constantly ramping up and ramping down measures to halt the spread, I think that's a better option than having places shut down while their hospitals are empty.

I'm not following the rest. Nothing will happen that will justify having locked down, or that will justify locking down again?

I worded it poorly. Hopefully more clearly: The potential/hope that we will have a major breakthrough in the next few weeks or months is not worth inflicting certain, and enormous financial and other harms that would come along with continuing our lockdowns.

The thing that gets me is when numbers start going back up, how do we know when to call it and reimpose SIP? Goes to your #7. I don't think you are giving proper weight to the lag times involved and the lack of quality data. I predict the guvs will all stare at each other until one goes first. And by then it will be too late, hospitals will be overwhelmed, and we will be far worse off than if we waited. Businesses need customers too, and no one is going to want to go anywhere throughout the nation if there's a NYC-level crisis in the news somewhere. We get one shot to credibly tell consumers it's safe. We're blowing it.

I think you reimpose a SIP if your hospital is projected to be overwhelmed. Look at active cases + the average hospitalization rates for confirmed cases + the best guess at the current rate of spread, and use all of those to project how many beds you will need in a week. It's not going to be perfect, and maybe I'm being naive, but I also don't think the politics will be too big of an impediment. I think what will help with the politics is that the places that do get overwhelmed are going to provide a good incentive to politicians to not just focus on political harms from being too restrictive. I also think you'll see people will comply more readily with this approach. Right now, a lot of people pushing back are doing so because much of the country has relatively little direct experience with the virus. You tell people that they are going to lose their business when nobody they know has the virus and nobody they know knows anybody with the virus and the hospitals are shutting down floors and even furloughing ER personnel, that's a pretty abstract risk to them and the response seems completely out of whack. When they see it as an actual threat to their community and friends, and not just as a potential future threat, I think you'll see people doing much more voluntarily regardless of whether orders are in place.

ETA: I guess I'm saying We have the wiggle room to open up some, and we should, but the idiots out there are blowing us past our wiggle room, and officials should respond to that. Send a strong signal that selfish, uneconomic social behavior will be followed by tougher rules. Open the beaches and idiots pack them? Close them. Idiot refused to wear a mask somewhere that required one? Close the business for a day for cleaning. Send that message, and we have the wiggle room to open up.

I'm not sure people are going to be as haphazard as you think, but I also disagree that people at the beach pose a big threat. If being in the open air and sunlight at the beach allows for efficient transmission of the virus, then we are just 17ed. If you believe that being exposed to smaller viral loads results in a more manageable infection for healthy people, the beach seems like possibly the best possilbe place to be exposed, as I can't imagine the scenario where you would get a lot of exposure from somebody outside your group.

 

[VegasDawg13]

View attachment 16160

I'd love for that chart to be true, so I hope you can point me to a source, but the NYT story listed at the bottom of the image doesn't contain that graph or that information in a non-graph form. I'm afraid it's fake.

 

[BoomBoom.sixpack]

Will it? As bad as New Orleans and NYC were, do we have an idea of how many excess deaths there were? They didn't run out of ventilators or ICU beds I don't think? I know they had excess deaths from people dying at home; I'm just not clear if that is b/c the health care system was overrun or because people ignored serious issues because of fear of contracting COVID if they went to the hospital.

And NYC is basically the worst possible conditions for containing a respiratory virus in the US. For much of the US, we can carry on a lot of activities while still limiting close contact with others. I'm not betting against it happening anywhere. I think there will be some places that get overwhelmed. I just think the vast majority of places will be able to manage because their lack of density and some relatively easy to implement precautions will limit the spread from being that fast. Plus there is the fact that we now know that ventilators should not be used as quickly, and they are of limited effectiveness, so you're really talking about ICU beds and the ability to staff them as the limiting factor.

But regardless, even if roughly have the places are overwhelmed at one point or another and we are constantly ramping up and ramping down measures to halt the spread, I think that's a better option than having places shut down while their hospitals are empty.

I worded it poorly. Hopefully more clearly: The potential/hope that we will have a major breakthrough in the next few weeks or months is not worth inflicting certain, and enormous financial and other harms that would come along with continuing our lockdowns.

I think you reimpose a SIP if your hospital is projected to be overwhelmed. Look at active cases + the average hospitalization rates for confirmed cases + the best guess at the current rate of spread, and use all of those to project how many beds you will need in a week. It's not going to be perfect, and maybe I'm being naive, but I also don't think the politics will be too big of an impediment. I think what will help with the politics is that the places that do get overwhelmed are going to provide a good incentive to politicians to not just focus on political harms from being too restrictive. I also think you'll see people will comply more readily with this approach. Right now, a lot of people pushing back are doing so because much of the country has relatively little direct experience with the virus. You tell people that they are going to lose their business when nobody they know has the virus and nobody they know knows anybody with the virus and the hospitals are shutting down floors and even furloughing ER personnel, that's a pretty abstract risk to them and the response seems completely out of whack. When they see it as an actual threat to their community and friends, and not just as a potential future threat, I think you'll see people doing much more voluntarily regardless of whether orders are in place.

I'm not sure people are going to be as haphazard as you think, but I also disagree that people at the beach pose a big threat. If being in the open air and sunlight at the beach allows for efficient transmission of the virus, then we are just 17ed. If you believe that being exposed to smaller viral loads results in a more manageable infection for healthy people, the beach seems like possibly the best possilbe place to be exposed, as I can't imagine the scenario where you would get a lot of exposure from somebody outside your group.

NYC and NO imposed SIP. I had business to do in NO, it went from normal to feeling like an apocalyptic ghost town in a week. They also didn't start from a high baseline, they started from zero. They imposed SIP at a level of infection below where many places are at now when they are removing them.

I agree, I do not see a breakthrough as imminent that would by itself justify SIP while waiting on it.

Here's the rub. You can't predict out 1 week due to the lags involved. You have to project out THREE. Reimpose SIP now, and cases will rise for 3 weeks before falling. GA imposed SIP on 4/2. They didn't start seeing an impact until 4/23. 3 weeks prior to imposing SIP they had about 20 cases a day. They relaxed it when seeing 900. The 3week prior data for today hasn't gone down. They could reimpose when seeing 1000 new cases a day, and have to sit and watch where it ends up. The data just won't be there for decision makers to know when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. 50/50 results is to be expected. Which means many places will wait too long and will be overwhelmed.

I've run the math. To be able to hit the brakes soon enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals in MS, R0 has to stay under 1.5. I don't see that happening. Of course local areas that have a baseline near zero should be ok, like NYC and NO ended up. But areas that already have a high baseline....

It's not as much that people at the beach are the biggest threat, as it has no economic value while being somewhat of a threat. Our society is sending entirely the wrong signals right now. Dumb.

 

[WilCoDawg]

Go back to that post. It’s unedited and states the following:
”Taxes? Also, it’s supposedly for ingredients that only China has access to from having a monopoly on resources.”

Clearly, I didn’t tell you anything except offer up reasonS why businesses would go out-of-country. Reading comprehension isn’t everyone’s strong suit though so I’ll try not to judge you.