Coronavirus!

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[AHF]

18 hours ago, thecampster said:

One thing I annoyingly repeat to anyone who will listen is there is no such thing right now as a Covid-19 expert. I think the best position to be in right now is humility and remembering there is still more we don't know than we do know.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/got-coronavirus-while-pregnant-months-181557384.html

There are infectious disease experts.  Granting that they are working off limited information (although experts know much more now than they did early this year), comparing them to lay people is a false equivalency.    And generally those experts acknowledge the limitations of their knowledge in a way that the lay people who claim to know what is best don't.

[thecampster]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

There are infectious disease experts.  Granting that they are working off limited information (although experts know much more now than they did early this year), comparing them to lay people is a false equivalency.    And generally those experts acknowledge the limitations of their knowledge in a way that the lay people who claim to know what is best don't.

Just be careful tossing around the term expert. There are thousands of people working in the field right now with hundreds of opinions on this. There are idiots in the doctors for Trump group who are infectious disease experts. Lets not be giving "anyone" that title on this until they have a handle on it.

My comment wasn't comparing them to lay people, my comment was in regards to the term 'expert'. I'm listening to the people I'm supposed to but I'm also questioning what I hear with healthy doses of inquisition. You and I have been in 90% agreement on this thing other than my choosing risk avoidance techniques over blindly slapping cotton on my face and running into traffic. No reason to pick conflict where none exists. Everything posted doesn't need to be argued.

Edited August 6, 2020 by thecampster

[Peoriabird]

2 minutes ago, thecampster said:

Everything posted doesn't need to be argued.

Cut AHF some slack...He's a Lawyer!

[AHF]

33 minutes ago, thecampster said:

Everything posted doesn't need to be argued.

Peo and I have been arguing on the superstar item.  This last series of posts around experts I don't see as arguing.  Certainly doesn't feel that way from my end.  I do think we've done ourselves a disservice by not putting together a coordinated plan under the best available scientific guidance from infectious disease experts.  And seeing people deliberately working to undermine and delegitimize disciplined expert analysis is very hard.  This applies to the covid context but goes much broader.

On the Covid front, it is hard not to contrast what has happened in our country and how poorly we have fared on infections as a % of the population (although I put much less emphasis on this number since we do more testing than many countries) and deaths as a % of population (which is largely unconnected to testing).  We have big advantages over a lot of other countries that are much more densely populated.  We should be doing much better than this.

[thecampster]

31 minutes ago, AHF said:

Peo and I have been arguing on the superstar item.  This last series of posts around experts I don't see as arguing.  Certainly doesn't feel that way from my end.  I do think we've done ourselves a disservice by not putting together a coordinated plan under the best available scientific guidance from infectious disease experts.  And seeing people deliberately working to undermine and delegitimize disciplined expert analysis is very hard.  This applies to the covid context but goes much broader.

On the Covid front, it is hard not to contrast what has happened in our country and how poorly we have fared on infections as a % of the population (although I put much less emphasis on this number since we do more testing than many countries) and deaths as a % of population (which is largely unconnected to testing).  We have big advantages over a lot of other countries that are much more densely populated.  We should be doing much better than this.

IMHO, the first shutdown held too many jobs as "essential". What we need to do to get a handle on this is shut the country down for 6 weeks. Tell everyone its coming to give people time to stock up on 6 weeks worth of good and then shut everything down except for fire, ambulance, police and hospital services. Freeze mortgages and rents for 2 months. My fear here is from a civil liberties point of view people will balk. From an economic point of view it will be devastating (short term), but this death by a thousand paper cuts approach is more damaging in my opinion. Don't reopen for 6 weeks. Cut off everything. I want an all or nothing approach. Little changes aren't stopping this and it was evident from the start.

I posted 2 maps on a Facebook forum today and I'll share them here. The first link is where the protests happened. The second link is Covid cases in the US.

I saw early reports that the protests didn't lead to this surge, but the numbers and maps suggest they went hand in hand (along with Memorial day barbecues and beaches reopening). Basically, exposure leads to exposure. The maps are near identical.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q10a56wo15zr3vz/protests.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwbogsl2ng4cgmo/covid cases.jpg?dl=0

Edited August 6, 2020 by thecampster

[AHF]

No argument there.  Exposure is exposure.  Virus doesn't care if it is a protest, church, school, rally, sporting event or whatever.  Anytime you have people gathering, you are going to get transmission.  Transmission rate will definitely be affected by various factors (like inside/outside, degree of social distancing, masks, activity of people, etc.) but that only affects degree of transmission not the fact that it will inevitably happen in this environment when people get together in significant numbers.

[thecampster]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

No argument there.  Exposure is exposure.  Virus doesn't care if it is a protest, church, school, rally, sporting event or whatever.  Anytime you have people gathering, you are going to get transmission.  Transmission rate will definitely be affected by various factors (like inside/outside, degree of social distancing, masks, activity of people, etc.) but that only affects degree of transmission not the fact that it will inevitably happen in this environment when people get together in significant numbers.

At some point the whoopin stick has to come out and they're going to have to shut it down completely or go back to normal and suck it up. This mixed messaging is doing more harm than good.

 

[AHF]

1 hour ago, thecampster said:

At some point the whoopin stick has to come out and they're going to have to shut it down completely or go back to normal and suck it up. This mixed messaging is doing more harm than good.

 

Amen on the mixed messaging.  I don't think shutting everything down is necessary in the abstract but a more much consistent and disciplined approach when we were on the decline was needed to keep things under control.  Other countries did this and got it under control.  Maybe given our stubbornness the whoopin stick is the only answer. 

It is just hard for me to see what form that whoopin stick could take.  Shutting everything down is much, much more extreme than mandating the use of masks in public buildings and we saw several governors issue orders to that effect and then a stream of outrage that even included law enforcement openly declaring to the public that they wouldn't enforce those modesty requirements.  It is so strange to me on this what people are willing to accept and not.  Like the school in Georgia that said it couldn't enforce social distancing and mask wearing in the school but was going to monitor kids' social media and suspend people who posted things critical of the school.  Seems to me that if you've got the energy to enforce bans on social media that you can enforce mandates on social distancing and mask wearing at least as easily and only one of those subjects is important to public health.

[thecampster]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

Amen on the mixed messaging.  I don't think shutting everything down is necessary in the abstract but a more much consistent and disciplined approach when we were on the decline was needed to keep things under control.  Other countries did this and got it under control.  Maybe given our stubbornness the whoopin stick is the only answer. 

It is just hard for me to see what form that whoopin stick could take.  Shutting everything down is much, much more extreme than mandating the use of masks in public buildings and we saw several governors issue orders to that effect and then a stream of outrage that even included law enforcement openly declaring to the public that they wouldn't enforce those modesty requirements.  It is so strange to me on this what people are willing to accept and not.  Like the school in Georgia that said it couldn't enforce social distancing and mask wearing in the school but was going to monitor kids' social media and suspend people who posted things critical of the school.  Seems to me that if you've got the energy to enforce bans on social media that you can enforce mandates on social distancing and mask wearing at least as easily and only one of those subjects is important to public health.

So I can't imagine a world where the kid who posted the picture and criticized the school doesn't win in court for a government entity restricting his freedom of speech. That was a really really bad choice by the school.

[bleachkit]

One thing that is very unusual is how Covid-19 has not impacted the third world in the same way as wealthier nations. How could nations with far less health care infrastructure, and far less health care capacity, not be impacted? It really defies any explanation.

[AHF]

39 minutes ago, thecampster said:

So I can't imagine a world where the kid who posted the picture and criticized the school doesn't win in court for a government entity restricting his freedom of speech. That was a really really bad choice by the school.

Agreed.  Not a great call.

If they had a policy prohibiting kids from taking photos on school grounds and gave every kid who ever posted a picture from the school a 5 day suspension, I'd say the school would have a pretty good case that they have a right to discipline students for violating policies that impact privacy rights of other students like posting pictures of their peers without their consent.  That all falls apart, however, when you see that they don't do that for anyone else and they are just singling out the people who are doing it to criticize the school for failing to provide a safe environment.   I bet there are easily 1000 pictures posted by kids currently enrolled at the school of their peers at lunch, school functions, etc., though, and probably plenty of pictures posted by teachers and staff as well from events like graduation, homecoming, etc.  It is obvious viewpoint discrimination which is a problem for government bodies taking action based on speech.  

[AHF]

2 minutes ago, bleachkit said:

One thing that is very unusual is how Covid-19 has not impacted the third world in the same way as wealthier nations. How could nations with far less health care infrastructure, and far less health care capacity, not be impacted? It really defies any explanation.

It is going to be an interesting question.   Me talking out my rear, I'd guess you have a benefit to the fatality numbers from the younger populations in developing countries and that you have a lack of testing and reporting that might mean the numbers are misleading (i.e., under-reported) in some of these areas as well.  

I would also guess that for some areas it has to do with the reduced interaction.  Less travel across boarders and more regional isolation than you would see in more mobile first world countries.  Even if an area is densely populated, if there isn't much interaction with populations outside your immediate community then it makes sense that the community can limit transmission simply by not getting exposed. 

When we closed our boarders to travelers from China and Europe, we first returned all Americans traveling abroad in those regions without making even the slightest real effort to quarantine.  With some limited exceptions, people still can and do travel pretty freely.  Think about how many people you know who have vacationed in Florida after March.  If you are like me, you don't have to think hard to come up with someone who traveled there during the pandemic.  My guess is that you have many fewer people in third world countries who can afford to travel hundreds of miles as a matter of course.  

But again, that is me just spit-balling.  Pretty sure we'll see papers written about this topic at some point.  

[JayBirdHawk]

19 minutes ago, bleachkit said:

One thing that is very unusual is how Covid-19 has not impacted the third world in the same way as wealthier nations. How could nations with far less health care infrastructure, and far less health care capacity, not be impacted? It really defies any explanation.

I can only speak from my neck of the woods:

Closed their borders, instituted 24 hour lockdown island wide when the first case was announced (which were 2 people who traveled from the US), then switched to 24 hour lock down Thursday night  thru Monday morning (which limited weekend partying etc), curfews other days, initially only essential workers allowed out, (if you had to be about you needed police permission),  limited work hours for other businesses, grocery shopping and essential business operated by zones, mandated masks, 8 Doctors from Cuba arrived to assist (yes Cuba has a thriving medical field where lots of the Caribbean go to study). Took advise of the medical experts from PAHO-WHO and received testing supplies through them. The medical community gave the daily briefings, not politicians.They were able to test, trace and isolate effectively to avoid community spread. They even held elections that went off without a hitch. What we had most of all was a buy in by the general populus. We had 2 incidents of persons who didn't want to isolate, police was stationed outside the home to enforce it.

They have now reopened businesses, churches with social distance guidelines, masks are required, anyone visiting the island or traveling back home has to quarantine at a designated hotel for 2 weeks (at your own expense, special rate) no ifs ands or buts.  So if you are planning a getaway plan for an extra 2 weeks for your quarantine time.

[JayBirdHawk]

32 minutes ago, AHF said:

My guess is that you have many fewer people in third world countries who can afford to travel hundreds of miles as a matter of course.  

It might surprise you to know that the Summer months are when lots of Caribbean Islanders travel for vacation, mostly to the USA, Canada and England. More often than not they are staying with relatives or friends that have migrated to these countries so there is no hotel cost. Just your plane ticket and spending money. Tickets are pricey but we plan accordingly.

[thecampster]

18 hours ago, AHF said:

Agreed.  Not a great call.

If they had a policy prohibiting kids from taking photos on school grounds and gave every kid who ever posted a picture from the school a 5 day suspension, I'd say the school would have a pretty good case that they have a right to discipline students for violating policies that impact privacy rights of other students like posting pictures of their peers without their consent.  That all falls apart, however, when you see that they don't do that for anyone else and they are just singling out the people who are doing it to criticize the school for failing to provide a safe environment.   I bet there are easily 1000 pictures posted by kids currently enrolled at the school of their peers at lunch, school functions, etc., though, and probably plenty of pictures posted by teachers and staff as well from events like graduation, homecoming, etc.  It is obvious viewpoint discrimination which is a problem for government bodies taking action based on speech.  

They lifted her suspension today. I'm thinking legal got to the principal and said, "make it so".

 

[AHF]

43 minutes ago, thecampster said:

They lifted her suspension today. I'm thinking legal got to the principal and said, "make it so".

 

Nods.

I think it shows how insecure the school is about their plan.  If someone had criticized their lunch food options, I doubt they would have jumped straight to suspensions.

[JayBirdHawk]

22 hours ago, AHF said:

Amen on the mixed messaging.  I don't think shutting everything down is necessary in the abstract but a more much consistent and disciplined approach when we were on the decline was needed to keep things under control.  Other countries did this and got it under control.  Maybe given our stubbornness the whoopin stick is the only answer. 

It is just hard for me to see what form that whoopin stick could take.  Shutting everything down is much, much more extreme than mandating the use of masks in public buildings and we saw several governors issue orders to that effect and then a stream of outrage that even included law enforcement openly declaring to the public that they wouldn't enforce those modesty requirements.  It is so strange to me on this what people are willing to accept and not.  Like the school in Georgia that said it couldn't enforce social distancing and mask wearing in the school but was going to monitor kids' social media and suspend people who posted things critical of the school.  Seems to me that if you've got the energy to enforce bans on social media that you can enforce mandates on social distancing and mask wearing at least as easily and only one of those subjects is important to public health.

The school enforces dress codes, particularly with females regarding length of skirts, thickness of straps on blouses, length of blouse if wearing leggings, etc. but they can't enforce masks.....Riiiiiiight! 

[AHF]

59 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

The school enforces dress codes, particularly with females regarding length of skirts, thickness of straps on blouses, length of blouse if wearing leggings, etc. but they can't enforce masks.....Riiiiiiight! 

My son's school (now former school) argued that they wouldn't make it mandatory for two reasons.  

First, the kids are responsible and can be counted on to wear masks.  It isn't necessary to make it mandatory because you'll get uniform use just through voluntary behavior.

Second, it would be too difficult to enforce when kids don't wear them.  What happens if a kid isn't wearing one and a teacher doesn't tell them to put it on.  You have to be consistent and that is just too difficult.

Ummmm....what?

[JayBirdHawk]