shoshin

Not in Sweden. UK is not compliant with masks. No return of cases. Going on with life is the priority. Prove it can happen and yes. But we don't even have that 99% statistic with Covid.

Do you think it's appropriate to legislate based on no evidence? IT, ES, SE, US (regionally), UK have had no second death/hospital spike after an initial. Nowhere will be at 0, even after the vaccines come because many won't take them.

Saying , "Who knows" is not a reason to levy life-altering restrictions. There is not yet any evidence that this is coming back. All evidence shows exactly the opposite. The school thing makes no sense. Kids need to be in school.

That's what you can do when you have no cases.

The Vietnam conflict didn't have kids out of school and cause 10% unemployment and countless shuttering of small businesses and keep people from going to the hospital and all the crushing health issues happening now. A bubble of friends doesn't keep open the corner store. And it really doesn't send kinds back to school and a system that is vital to a lot of Americans. You can think of the guys having the beer at the bar as selfish. I just think of them as "not me," as I'll choose to not do that. But based on numbers, we are long past a time where the government should be mandating what the guys at the bar are allowed to do. If we see a rise like happened in NYC at the beginning that region can maybe justify more but so far, EVERY place in the world that got hit hard once has seen no serious rise since. Not one, no matter how strict or lenient they are. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

New Zealand is absurd. The hospitalizations are falling rapidly in all the hardest hit states, 3 of which barely have any distancing. That's kind of my point. Why would we give up our livelihoods when the system can handle the pandemic. That's the idea of behind having a great medical system. The idea is not to shut down life. Look at the pestilence graph above. Europe is better not because they did something extreme on distancing and the like--Europe burned through the disease to achieve some kind of herd slowdown to their new level. We are doing that too but it just takes longer because we're a big country. Of course, we may in the end finish at higher per capita death rates than the top EU countries but we still have a ways to go. I am not a fan of how this was handled at all from a prevention/leadership perspective but nor do I think we can justify living in this new fear mindset. If anything, a cautious/community mindset would be much better and help with a lot of other issues related to mental health, physical health, and long term consequences of this. I don't know anyone who is doing this and it's this kind of black/white thinking that stops dialog. I'm not saying you said this of me but just noting it.

But here's the thing: You are statistically safe from Covid and that's the point. The average age of death is 80 with 2 comorbidities. In my state (PA), 70% of the deaths are in nursing homes. THOSE are the people we need to keep safe. And you can keep them safe without giving up on all rest of the heirarchy. Not true. We were putting people on ventilators and having them rest on their backs in April. We have learned a lot since then. I know of no one who is out partying except the very young, who are almost no risk at all. Back to PA, 11 people have died who are under 30, (0 under 20)--tragic every one but I feel confident that if those people are like most of the other stats, many were likely suffering from something else. I know there's concern about spread, there will be healthy people who get sick, and that's real but then let's keep the messaging going to be safe/mask/ distance with some judgment--but there's no reason for people not to be gathering when the consequences of staying apart is so dire.

The virus frenzy has blown the priority of "protecting loved ones" out of all proportion. Looking at the below historical graph, Covid will raise this graph by ~2/1000...and that's in NYC, which got hit out of proportion to America... and most of the deaths contributing to the rise happened long before we had better treatments. Our primal needs were never under threat in America. The physiological foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy has never been at risk except maybe sleep from the crumbling of all the other layers. We need a lot more than gathering in "small family groups," though that is perhaps most people's priority.

Out there in conspiracy land. Nowhere actually credible.

Being skeptical of that is the right way to go. But the science committee will be here shortly to disabuse you of the notion of the effectiveness of vaccines.

Mindset question. We beat the curve for hospitalizations a long time ago. Even in states that were relatively open, they made it through the resource crunch. Knowing that we’ve had much worse, endured much worse, and are seeing such awful consequences of shutdowns, why have we not bonded together in a positive way and gotten back to living? (See India) Why are we as a nation so latched on to the fear? When did flatten the curve/prepare for the wave become never reopen? My downtown commercial area is still a ghost town. Restaurants not allowed to reopen for indoor dining. Voting being discussed as an isssue. Schools closed. People may see this as a cavalier call to toss all masks and go to 5 rock concerts. It’s not. But where’s the urgency to preserve our way of living and mental well being?

Schools and winter are potential inflection points on data. But we still need to be open.

Apologies. Combining 2-3, not skipping. And? There will likely be a few pretty soon.

Most of the vaccines here are going from 1 to 3--no phase 2.

A guy in that thread posted Chicago data. Philly and NY similarly low. People are locked in fear mode.

Could be. 100%.

Like I said, most people recover. Of course, that's not the headline they framed and that was shared here.

That he recovered? No, I don't believe he's lying about that. Who knows why he got better? Most people get better with aspirin, rest, and fluids. Maybe he prayed and god made him better. Maybe hydrochloroquine helped him. He has no idea but he was eager to make it political and say HCQ made him better.

He recovered. Most people do. He can credit anything he wants for it I guess.

Didn't check the numbers but 100% we have lost our minds on this widespread lockdown.

Trump must have said to mask up 5 times in his press conference yesterday and even said it was patriotic. What a shocking change. Anyone have eyes on Buffalo_Gal? I want to make sure she hasn't taken a header off the Rainbow Bridge!

Also may be an interesting listen. I work a lot in India. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/shruti-rajagopalan-covid19-and-india/ When COVID-19 hit the US, everyone was told that hand sanitizer needed to be saved for healthcare professionals and to just wash their hands instead. But in India, many homes lack reliable piped water, so they had to do the opposite: distribute hand sanitizer as widely as possible. American advocates for banning single-use plastic straws might be outraged at the widespread adoption of single-use hand sanitizer sachets in India. But the US and India are very different places, and it might be the only way out when you’re facing a pandemic without running water. According to today’s guest, Shruti Rajagopalan, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, context is key to policy. Back in April this prompted Shruti to propose a suite of policy responses designed for India specifically. Unfortunately she also thinks it’s surprisingly hard to know what one should and shouldn’t imitate from overseas. For instance, some places in India installed shared handwashing stations in bus stops and train stations, which is something no developed country would recommend. But in India, you can’t necessarily wash your hands at home — so shared faucets might be the lesser of two evils. (Though note scientists now regard hand hygiene as less central to controlling COVID-19.) Stay-at-home orders present a more serious example.

Why factors do think contributed to the fatality spikes in IT, ES, NYC Metro, NOLA that were not repeated in FL, TX, JP, CA? The two factors I proposed were #1: Treatment protocols. #2: Distancing measures particularly protecting the most vulnerable. Since you say that #1 and #2 are not supported by the data, let me know what you'd put ahead of those 2.

You seem triggered by the source, which just shows data. Almost no opinions there. "Attempt to portray Texas" WTF? All that chart shows is what months excess deaths occurred. That's just data. It's not anything to fear. Just shows when things happened. You make it sound like a sinister plot when all it does is show movement of the disease by state and region. Lowest per capita is a good stat but it's a different one. I would guess all the later-hit states look good on that stat. (I haven't looked but I bet FL looks solid in this stat too.) As I noted, and as the article notes, the CDC provisional death counts are slow to identify COVID deaths, which is why the CV-only deaths in earlier months are above the norm at the CDC and not as much in later--the CDC has not yet classified all the later deaths in the same way that the states have. Their process is slower. You can see that in the charts I linked upthread where I dealt with this. All of that is relevant to other conversations and has been covered in many places. Adding another one, there's a good map that shows how many deaths have occurred in nursing homes by state. It's high. And? The point is that the LA chart looks like the NE because NOLA got hit hard. Just like the NYS and NJ state data is all NYC-metro driven. That all supports my point that those places had bad treatments, behavior adaptations slow to take hold, etc. California probably has the best flattened curve in the US, especially given how many huge pop centers there are.