shoshin

Not much to support this one way or another on Covid-19. The virus has only been around for ~7 months. Almost every flu season, a certain herd immunity exists going into the season based on what happened the year before. So we do have certain herd immunity each year to the flu, whether it's through having contracted it before, or contracted a similar strain that gave us effective immune response to the current strain, or from a vaccine. There's no reason to think that won't be true for Covid-19, but there's not really any data to know how long immunity for Covid-19 will last.

Deaths are up above normal, as are PCI hospitalizations, so your “point” isn’t much of one. It’s real. It may not be as bad now as it was but it ain’t nothing.

My guess on CA is that we've yet to see the northern CA population get hit so it's not going away there yet. In April, NYC was accounting for 60% of the deaths some days and if you added NJ (which was all northern NJ), it was 80%.

You think CA is done?

Most people here are in this club.

longish thread here

The bots are out tonight. Nice!

Florida data through today. Fatalities on the sharp rise. Hospitalizations can't tell for sure if there's any break coming. The Florida hospital capacity seems bad but there does not yet seem to be a good one-stop source. I'm not sure why.

Asked and answered, and who would care about what I recommend anyways?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/sunday-review/coronavirus-history-pandemics.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage This past March, before coronavirus cases began to mount, the annual death rate in New York City was about six per 1,000 New Yorkers. The virus’s first wave added about 2.5 more deaths per 1,000 to that baseline. By contrast, from 1800 into the 1850s, deaths in the city rose in a relentless series of epidemic spikes, year after year, with only brief respites in between.

FWIW, Worldometer had yesterday at 1001 deaths. Deaths are up 50% in the last 8 days. Bounced off the artificial 4th-of-July-assisted low of 515 that no one predicted (!) quickly.

The morgues and mass bodies in NYC Metro disagree with this. It was really really bad. I'm shocked people are already forgetting what our country was going through back then.

The bar, though, is a bunch of people outside your circle all gathered around in each other's space. At a table, you're in your own circle of people who are already likely in some way part of your quaran-team. Add in more liquor at the bar and I can see why it is thought to be a more effective transmission vector. I only brought it up to counter the point others have made that there's no difference between a bar and a table. There is.

What numbers do you think we're about to see daily?

To expand on Hokie's thought, I get the difference. Go sit at a table with your family or a group you're already associated with and finish in a finite amount of time (usually without getting smashed) vs Go sit at a bar drinking and lower inhibitions (who said that's all bad?!?!) with strangers for an extended period of time.

Sounds like the FL department of health is not aligned with the posts here that say FL hospitals are in great shape. Not sure which take to believe but I've never been able to source Berenson's numbers on this so I tend to discount his read.

FL Today: 14,000 new cases 156 deaths Watching to see signs of it slowing at all compared to AZ. Magox had some county data that looked like some places had slowing. Overall, the state is not.

The below piece is about an attempt by the cancel culture to go after Steven Pinker. It reminds me of all the energy people here dedicate to "linking" folks in guilt-by-association conspiracies. I know this won't move most of you but consider this: Cancel culture is bad on both sides. On the left, it's more mainstream. On the right, it's still a bit fringey but mainstream here at PPP. https://www.city-journal.org/steven-pinker-letter?fbclid=IwAR2k0ZJzHCoyhBs6wXhI3pPnxlNjuvLx6aZe_fUYZNzpgsKy4SEL3-7v7Cs Guilt by association is a key tactic of this kind of attack, not because it is particularly convincing but because it makes an implicit threat that anyone who disagrees with the letter can be caught up in the smear campaign. Pinker is accused of public support for New York Times columnist David Brooks, of calling Bernard Goetz “mild-mannered,” and of providing expert linguistic support used in Jeffrey Epstein’s trial. The David Brooks reference is baffling; Brooks is no fringe figure. One imagines that Pinker’s reference to Goetz was to his demeanor, not a defense of his actions. However terrible Epstein’s crimes were, he deserved a fair trial, including the right to argue over the meaning of the statute under which he was being prosecuted. The letter presents no evidence that Pinker’s linguistic advice was incorrect. (The authors confuse “testimony” with “testimonial”—either a smear or a lamentable lapse of linguistic competence.) There’s also an incomprehensible reverse guilt-by-association charge: Pinker quoted Harvard professor Lawrence Bobo on racism. But the authors of the letter like Bobo, so they accuse Pinker of “co-opting his academic work.” The first substantive charge, as opposed to smear, is that Pinker has not acknowledged or addressed the role of linguistics in the “reproduction” of racism. Regardless of what “reproducing” racism means, as opposed to “promoting” or “defending” it, the authors don’t accuse Pinker of believing the field of linguistics is on balance on the right side in the fight against racism—only of not saying loudly and clearly enough that it’s on the wrong side. This is another McCarthyite tactic. It’s not enough to be innocent; you must broadcast your support and denounce others. The next charge is that Pinker “has a tendency to move in the proximity” of “scientific racism.” Indirect charges were another feature of Red Scare smears. The letter provides no specific quotes, no definition of what separates legitimate scientific inquiry into the effect of genetics on human behavior from racism. If you’re going to throw someone out of your linguistics society, tell him what he said that offended you, and ask him what he meant first. Don’t claim “tendencies” to “move in in the proximity” of ill-defined concepts without specific evidence.

Wow that's pretty cool. What was your job?

More complete shutdowns could be coming to Florida, Broward County, maybe Dade as well. https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/07/15/broward-vice-mayor-steven-geller-fears-county-closure-coming/ “I expect in the next week or two we’ll have to order another complete shutdown in Broward. Dade will be there a week or so before us,” said Vice Mayor Steven Geller." Thoughts, Magox? Not sure if you're in those counties but you've said you're in FL.

What. A. Dick.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/sunday-review/coronavirus-history-pandemics.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage This past March, before coronavirus cases began to mount, the annual death rate in New York City was about six per 1,000 New Yorkers. The virus’s first wave added about 2.5 more deaths per 1,000 to that baseline. By contrast, from 1800 into the 1850s, deaths in the city rose in a relentless series of epidemic spikes, year after year, with only brief respites in between.

And Sweden has the highest % of people living alone of anyplace on earth. And they are more insular on top of that. Even with that, their fatality rate is much higher than ours. Stockholm is a nice city and definitely the most American-feeling place in Europe (to me) in a lot of ways. I had a stretch where I went there on business a lot.

File this in the “not within my circle of influence” category. I suspect society will navigate it just fine if it happens.

PA is now limiting all indoor dining to 25% capacity, and the 25% includes staff. The “we won’t go backwards” predictions are proving naive. CA and PA, parts of FL, TX. I’m sure others too.