shoshin

Actually, if you look upthread, I noted that we needed to be creative in how to reopen for everyone. The idea is this: If we make reopening the priority, we will reopen. If we make fear the priority, we never move forward. At one point, we had a goal of flattening the curve to give healthcare time to get ready so our hospitals wouldn't bottom out (like they did in NYC). We are WAY past that and have moved our goal to be something like total safety, which is not how we live in society, even during a pandemic.

NYT article on same. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-schools-reopening-outdoors.html

I'm sorry for your losses. n of 1 always hurts but that's not how we live. My friend died from a reaction to a common antibiotic. My neighbor died in a car accident. My grandfather died young from heart disease, likely due to eating poorly. My daughter is 18 and I let her drive, knowing that she's at the pinnacle of high risk groups for driving deaths. There is risk in life that we all choose to live with each day. The risk from Covid for those without risk factors is very very small.

Kids die of lots of things and it's tragic. Every number is a person and a heartbreak. But we accept some risk in life. 82 kids under 18 have died from Covid to date according to the CDC (March-Aug 12). The number of those kids with comorbidities is likely in line with other demographics, that is, high. For reference, 166 kids died of flu in 2019-20. So we are probably accepting something like the same risk we accept for kids and the flu--something we do without discussing it every year.

Patrick: Sympathies to you and yours, truly. This is one of those moments where people need to get creative. At risk teachers and students need to be taken care of too, and so must we take care of those not at particular risk. Right now we have a response built around the average at-risk person: 79 and 2 comorbidities. That's no way to continue. We lack leadership coming up with solutions but I'd suggest we need plans for at-risk people and also those not at Covid risk--because those not at risk from Covid are suffering in all the additional ways that they don't have to. Bill: We have not shown a backbone as a people and are not united in any way to contront this. I lay that blame neither with the Ds nor Rs, but us. We need to build America up block by block, not in online forums like Twitter/PPP that tear it down. Ironically posted on a message board.

I'm not mad about it, I'm concerned and worried about it. NY is allowing schools to open. Many will but probably most will let fear guide them. Here in PA, a lot of private schools are opening, public ones not. GA, TX, and FL are opening schools.

Online truancy is as high is over 50% in low income areas. Even if a kid has a computer (something not available to everyone), it's only one small part of the problem. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/coronavirus-schools-attendance-absent.html My kid is brilliant and self-motivated. She could be like Newton, who invented The Calculus during the Bubonic Plague. Very few kids are like that. And there are the many, many, other important aspects that school brings that are completely absent online. No, I get it. The more we are open, the more people die, though as Florid, Texas, Georgia are showing, even remaining open we see cases go down. Whether it's schools or bars. The flip side of those deaths from being open is an entire society under higher rates of suicide, violent crime, depression, joblessness, child abuse, and the list goes on. That list isn't getting shorter with 8 more months of lockdown and the people most likely to suffer: Kids.

I recognize this is not PPP and am trying for a civil discourse on an important subject (reopening) and in particular in the last few posts, reopening schools. It's really hard but it points to a bigger problem of people not being able to engage in civil discourse. I know PPP has given up the art of rhetorical engagement and the powers that be allow it, but here I thought we could do better. Maybe we can. At some point, we need to open. At the extremes are folks who would pack concert stadiums tomorrow and those who won't go outside until we have a month of zero cases. In the middle is everyone else, which is most people. There will be a tension between those who want to stay closed and those who want to open--and that debate needs to be had in the open, civilly.

Is there some reason you can't keep conversation civil? There's a place for this: https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/forum/14-politics-polls-and-pundits/ Some historical perspective: How much do you think this increases for 2020 in NYC, even including the April bomb? When you have that answer, you may have perspective about how life has always gone on, except now for some reason.

All of those masks but one are made to protect incoming particles and would work great for Covid and all of them minimize the outgoing ones. But don’t let facts get in the way of a PPP meme.

Who do you think reports the most cases of child abuse? Neglect? Schools. What do you think the long term consequences are to mental health? We already see the short term consequences in society at large in violence, suicides, depression. At risk teachers like everyone can make their own decisions. You know how many deaths there are in PA of kids under 18 from Covid? Zero. Kids need to be in school.

Already playing out in colleges. My daughter is online. A college that literally shares blocks of buildings with my daughter’s and same size is set to return in a few weeks. I want all the colleges to succeed so my daughter can have something like a good freshman year this spring.

FYI the PPP crowd says I’m a mainstream media Kool Aid drinker. That article is about unmasked zero distancing college partying outbreaks. If those students want to ruin their college experience, it’s in their hands. My guess is they will start to see the consequences and change course. If not they will go home. But that’s not a school setting. And regardless, schools need to be open. The risk to kids for not being in schools is far worse than any Covid risk by far. Online school for anything but rich/very dedicated high school kids is not school. It’s reading rainbow with less production value.

A lowish number for a Tuesday. Still brutal totals but at least trending down perhaps.

MA, PA, CN, MI, LA...and all the European countries. There has not been a place that got hit hard that has had a second wave. FL and TX are going down with limited to no shutdowns. There's no herd "immunity," but there's something like a herd "slowdown" and that gives enough room for our hospitals to deal with what's happening and life to begin resuming, most especially schools.

Months of this is in rapid decline. I deleted your political stuff but consider CA that is in lockdown and had good mask compliance: Covid-19 isn't all about politics.

Economist video interview with Bill Gates. Highlights: - Change of US admin won't affect Covid outcome. - Says the next admin (Trump or Biden) will face the challenge of getting Americans to take the vaccine quickly and get rid of the virus. I see this too. Lots of people just won’t take it, and this thing will be prolonged. - He is not worried that the vaccines will fail in Phase 3 tests. Says of the 6 candidates, several will work. Fully optimistic about it. There are the left and right anti-vaxxers, but also a new group of people who are afraid of “new vaccines,” that is, most of the people here who responded about vaccines a few months ago. [Gates said you shouldn't be afraid...the software that runs the nanomachines in the new vaccines runs on Windows 3.1 and cannot go more than a few hours without locking up.] - 4 candidates are very cheap ($2-3/dose) and should make it to developing world, but may not get there quickly because the US isn't leading to help those countries like it has in the past. - Phase 3 testing should be done by Q4. - timeframe to herd immunity (30% in his view) counting people who have had it + cross-immunity to other coronaviruses + vaccines: In the US, he says sometime 2021 we will be largely over it. 2022 rest of the world. - key thing is that this has to work well with elderly. Phase I candidates seem to be doing well with older folks (notes that flu vaccines sometimes work poorly for elderly) - is amazed about the conspiracy stuff...could not have predicted so many people could adopt this conspiracy mindset Chum for the conspiracy nuts.

Economist video interview with Bill Gates. Highlights: - Change of US admin won't affect Covid outcome. - Says the next admin (Trump or Biden) will face the challenge of getting Americans to take the vaccine quickly and get rid of the virus. I see this too. Lots of people just won’t take it, and this thing will be prolonged. - He is not worried that the vaccines will fail in Phase 3 tests. Says of the 6 candidates, several will work. Fully optimistic about it. There are the left and right anti-vaxxers, but also a new group of people who are afraid of “new vaccines.” - 4 candidates are very cheap ($2-3/dose) and should make it to developing world, but may not get there quickly because the US isn't leading to help those countries like it has in the past. - Phase 3 testing should be done by Q4. - timeframe to herd immunity (30% in his view) counting people who have had it + cross-immunity to other coronaviruses + vaccines: In the US, he says sometime 2021 we will be largely over it. 2022 rest of the world. - key thing is that this has to work well with elderly. Phase I candidates seem to be doing well with older folks (notes that flu vaccines sometimes work poorly for elderly) - is amazed about the conspiracy stuff...could not have predicted so many people could adopt this conspiracy mindset

A 6-8 week unified lockdown in addition to all the lockdowns so far? You think businesses can afford that? That's fair to schoolkids? A lockdown that may not improve much? Yes, that ship sailed.

We blew our window to “handle this” months ago. Our leaders failed us, both federally and at the state levels. But that ship has sailed. We can take it up with them in future elections. As a country, we cannot stay closed forever and we have a good understanding of what being open means: no spikes, hospitals can handle it, and we see a predictable fatality rate. We have other predictable diseases that we manage. We need to manage this now and urgently band together to move forward rebuilding what we’ve lost. So you test and contact trace and clean and enact distancing and ventilate and pod and etc to keep the most vulnerable as safe as possible. By the way, my nursing home relatives would rather see us than be in lock down. By like 1000000000%.

I said the US regionally has not seen two spikes. Once an area has a big spike up in cases/hospitalizations, it doesn't have a second one. By current testing measures, I doubt you see two separate 3-4 week periods with 15-25% positive test results. I have been watching lots of data and I see no single place where it happened. I can tell you that in my state of PA, it looks like we had two rises (more like a spike and a rise), but if you look at what happened, SEPA (Philly area) had its spike in April and SWPA (Pittsburgh) had their outbreak in June. Just regional pops. Philly has been slowly declining since June and on a sharp decline from May to June before then. Philly looks like most places after the big wave hits, flat: Someone above said Florida spiked in April. It definitely did not. Nor did TX or CA or AZ. (Wish I could paste Florida data but I'm at the data paste limit.) I'm not saying don't wear a mask. I'm not saying don't take reasonable distancing measures. But I am saying, we need to be open. We've proven we can handle this and that's something to take pride in and get back to taking care of ourselves and our country in ways other than "shutdown." The at risk population is the average person who's dying: 79 with comorbidities in a nursing home. Let's take great care of them. Focus energy on them. But my friend's restaurant needs customers. My kid needs to be in school. My friend's kid needs to be in school so she can work. And we need to get back our mental health. A late add as I just saw this graph (the second chart, though the first is solid too). The regions are sliced too large to tell this whole story but the data is very clear in the Northeast and South:

What we proved is that we can beat the hospital curve long ago. As to the current data: Georgia Florida From Covid Tracking Project but the state data tells the same story. Once the big spike happens, and it happens everywhere, it only happens once. So far, every state and area except NYC Metro, which got mashed by more cases and at a time when we had bad treatment protocols, has been able to handle the hospitalization spike. And no place has had two big spikes. Not here or anywhere. We had two big spikes in the US but the second was an area where one never had the big spike. Florida (never closed), Texas (never closed), and Cali (still large parts closed) are giant population centers that are exiting their peaks and will drop (NOCal may still get hit--it has not had a big spike but a consistent wash of cases) just like the Northeast has. And that's the point: We need to get back to being open because the toll now being taken is going to be much longer lasting than what happens in the next 6-9 months. The idea that we've latched on to fear and refuse to reopen is not what anyone signed up for in April. We have beaten the curve. St. Louis in April doesn't look like there was a big outbreak at all. It appears to have spiked in July/August. I admittedly have dedicated very little energy to following St. Louis, but here's the case graph.

Those states never had a spike, which they have now and are coming down from them. In at least tow cases, TX and FL (as well as AZ), they have almost no restrictions in place. That article predicted China, SK, and JP would see a "resurgence." That hasn't happened in the first two, and the last, see below. So that was a bad prediction. This claimed to show resurgence in Germany, Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong. Germany: a very small rise in cases, no particular "wave." I bet that's happening in geographies that didn't get hit in the spring. Australia: They barely got hit in the spring, were vulnerable (like NZ), and now are dealing with what will likely be their only big spike. Japan: Never got hit the first time, they have had one day over 10 deaths in the last two months. Hong Kong: Same as AU and seem to be on the decline. This article is mostly about predictions, not showing second waves. I don't think we "know" that. I'll stop keeping going in this thread since it's being driven by me today but I hope some of this is something people found interesting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/unc-chapel-hill-coronavirus-cluster/2020/08/17/8ebce060-e0ab-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html