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I agree with Witt. You definitely appear to be shifting the goal posts on this argument. We have all been talking about the impact of the disease HERE in the US. Not the world. You would have been better off sticking to the US only. Using the entire world as your argument makes you look silly. So are you seriously suggesting that Italy and Spain would have been better off keeping their economies open??? Do you even read what's going on in other countries??? You do know that it almost took out the British Prime Minister, who like you, also thought the economy should have been kept open? You need to start educating yourself on how bad this disease has been outside the US. It doesnt bolster your argument at all.
Yes I am well aware of all those things. Do you realize how condescending you sound by asking me basic questions like that?
I have been "educating myself" about how Covid is affecting communities outside the US, which is why I posted the article about the World Food Programme warning about worldwide starvation. I posted about a girl in the U.K. who killed herself. But somehow I'm moving goalposts and not reading about how this impacts people around the world? That doesn't even make sense.
ETA: my argument has never been that Italy and Spain or anywhere else shouldn't have shut down. My argument is that the impact of the shutdown will also take lives. It's possible that the number of lives saved by shutting down will be exceeded by the number who die from something such as starvation. If somehow you can prove that isn't true, by all means go ahead.
Last edited by calgirlinnc; 04-26-2020 at 05:20 PM..
I just came back from Target at 121 and Josey Lane in Lewisville. All the employees wore masks. There were 2-3 employees that exposed their noses.
There was a light crowd. Half had their masks on. Everybody kept their personal space. There were only a handful of kids around. The kids wore masks and were well-behaved.
There is no hand sanitizer or alcohol wipes. There was toilet paper and paper towels, but the selection is not back to normal.
If they had used 2 trillion bucks to prepare for the virus (get supply chains and testing and science and resources ramped up and in place), maybe they wouldn't have had to trash the economy.
Guffawing and calling it a hoax and wasting time screwed all of us $$-wise and likely killed a lot of folks that did not have to die.
If your ire is not directed at the folks "in charge" - ALL OF THEM - and instead you are whiny-babying at the actual medical experts who are saying we need to be careful now that we have painted ourselves into a crappy corner, you need to grow up.
It did not have to be like this, and now we have the worst of both worlds. We all lose money and people needlessly die.
If they had used 2 trillion bucks to prepare for the virus (get supply chains and testing and science and resources ramped up and in place), maybe they wouldn't have had to trash the economy.
Guffawing and calling it a hoax and wasting time screwed all of us $$-wise and likely killed a lot of folks that did not have to die.
If your ire is not directed at the folks "in charge" - ALL OF THEM - and instead you are whiny-babying at the actual medical experts who are saying we need to be careful now that we have painted ourselves into a crappy corner, you need to grow up.
It did not have to be like this, and now we have the worst of both worlds. We all lose money and people needlessly die.
Awesome job, government.
I said pretty much the same thing word for word on FB recently.
There's been so many news stories about this, from all angles, but one that has really struck a chord with me was discussing how this virus has exposed how ill prepared we are as a country for any sort of pandemic, war, etc... that requires nationwide mobilization. Perhaps a wiser President would have heeded expert advice sooner, but I don't think that would have been enough. I think we'd still have been short on masks, testing, etc, even though we had a good 3 months to really ramp up production of these things. Our political fracturing is to blame, as well as the lack of a cohesive strategy from the federal government. Something that has the ability to affect the entire US shouldn't be left in the hands of individual governors, who all see things differently.
At this point, I'm all for opening things back up. Not because I think it's a good idea, but because when it fails in horrific fashion, I want everyone who supported such actions to be run out of office on the idiot train they rode in on.
Is it possible that you are not clear on your "critical distinctions"? You may be re-reading your posts from your own perspective, and will never see the other person's perspective. I personally see your posts as pessimistic. It does not mean I am right. I am just stating how I read your posts. At the same time, you may interpret my posts to be optimistic.
Honestly, I would like to know a clear plan or solution from you. You seem to be focused on the number of infections numbers, which we already know that it is not accurate and is under-reported and under-diagnosed. You highlighted the word "normal" in bold from your post. Nobody on this forum has suggested that we go back to "normal" life without social distancing measures, masks, etc.
So, can you please clearly state what measures of re-opening do you agree with - geographical, phased, timeline? Also, what is your opinion on the re-opening of Texas - timeline, measures to be taken? If you do not agree with May 1, what is the date for re-opening? I think, we agree that we are past the peak at Texas.
Hope you are not suggesting that we keep the economy closed until we have a vaccine.
EDIT: I think, we do not agree that are past the peak at Texas.
I am pessimistic about this. I think we have good reason to be. Look at our chart versus that of Italy. Look at the actual numbers we have. Look at what the various epidemiologists think. For starters, our last two days nationally have been our two worst days in terms of new cases. We are seeing as many deaths as we ever have. How is this the time to open up? In the last week, we have set two new records for worst new daily case days, had 2000+ daily deaths (pretty close to our worst day) pretty much every day and realized that our 60,000 death revised target is going to be demolished before we even hit peak active cases. That is all terrible news. How is there anything promising in that?
My plan: We probably can't open much until the end of May. There's a reason even the optimistic IMHE modelers took that as an assumption. We also can't open until every person has a mask to wear. If you want to be out of the house and in a space where you could be within six feet of people, you must have a mask on -- no exceptions. We need significantly greater testing capacity. Ralph Kirk mentioned earlier that we should have been ramping up testing capacity over the last few months at a greater rate, and I agree. Finally, we can't open up until we have done more serology testing. You said that actual cases are higher than the case counts show, and I agree. I think they're probably 5-10x greater, but we don't know that because we haven't done enough serology testing. The White House's guidelines for reopening include the stipulation that a state see 14 days of declining new cases. Texas doesn't even have two days of declining cases.
We can do the open based on geography, but micro-geography like Austin-but-not-Dallas won't work. It can be state-by-state for larger states, and large swaths of rural areas can open sooner.....but I think most people are severely underestimating the potential for us to have a second wave that will be even worse than this first one has been. Remember, all of this started with a handful of "seed" cases. We now have almost a million (likely 5-10 million actual cases).
I simply don't see how the peak for new daily cases is a good time to open. Active case peak is probably a month away. Italy had their active case peak about a week ago, and they're opening up now. To me, it makes sense to target that as a prospective time, not when you're still a month away from the peak number of active cases. Btw, our downward curve isn't even close to as good as Italy's was, and theirs was worse than expected.
You asked about Texas' peak....what do you mean by "peak"? "Peak virus" means peak active cases, not peak new daily cases. Texas is nowhere close to peak virus yet. Texas may or may not have passed peak new daily cases -- I'm really not sure. My hunch is that it has, but it still had one of the worst days yet for new cases yesterday (along with the second-worst death day). I also thought the US had passed peak new daily cases back on April 4, but that was eclipsed twice in the last two days. Peak active cases is a much better target for opening, not peak new daily cases.
If you're in the school of "I don't care what the numbers look like, we just need to open," fine. I guess. I don't agree, but the numbers wouldn't matter to you. But I take your posts to mean that you are someone who thinks our opening schedule should depend on the progression of the virus. I don't know how you could possibly be looking at the actual trajectory and numbers and conclude that we are ready to open.
Seriously, I would like for someone to tell me what they are seeing in the numbers that makes them think most states are near a good time to open.
Slowing it is the goal. Slowing it is great. No one claimed we could stop it.
The slower the hit, the better our healthcare system can respond.
We can start to open things up at some point, provided people are willing to do things like wear masks. Unfortunately, it seems there are a lot of people like yourself who don't value other humans enough to be inconvenienced by masks.
The two million projection was without shut downs, and it was in the US.
If we open things up without restriction, we are likely looking at that kind of number. We are almost certainly going to be over 100k even with the restrictions.
Your language here is too imprecise. Yes, the "majority" will survive this. No one has ever suggested otherwise. Yes, "many" have had this....but we are still nowhere near herd immunity, and that's unlikely before a vaccine.
The thing that should make people scared is the numbers. Just look at them. Our two worst days yet in terms of new cases were yesterday and the day before. We are seeing 30-40,000 new cases and over 2,000 deaths daily. Covid is very close to becoming the leading killer of all causes in the United States. What about those numbers is reassuring to you?
Yet you don't even care about the next guy enough to wear a mask while grocery shopping....
So lets ruin our economy because of this. People are already avoiding the hospitals and dying from other issues cause they are scared. The fact is if your having cardiac problems you are more likely to die from that, but we have scared them from the hospital. You will die from cardiac issues but they won't take their chance with this virus. The scare tactics are worse than the virus right now.
None of those numbers are reassuring to me. They also are basically including anyone who dies from flu or pneumonia with those numbers, so they aren't true. Did we broadcast the 2017 to 2018 flu deaths on a regular basis, nope.
They have normal healthy people running around scared, when we should be focused on the elderly and those with weaker immune systems.
1) I do not know how you are ariving at 'peak active cases' unless you are tracking recovered cases. Dallas numbers being sent by the Mayor clearly mentions that they are not tracking recoveries currently. So, in Dallas' "Active Cases" numbers, anybody who has been tested positive including home-quarantined cases and hospitalized cases, since the first tested case was reported, is being counted. The Dallas officials, possibly short-staffed, decided not to track recoveries. They might very well go back to each and every active case and update the 'active cases' based on recoveries. I am sure majority of the cities/counties in the US are not tracking recoveries. If italy showed 'peak active virus' number almost a month after their 'peak daily new infections', I will bet that it was just a matter of delayed update of their numbers, after the health officials got some relief dealing with the surge of daily new hospitalizations and ensuring that they have taken care of the hospitalizations. With Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, they never got to a state that their health system was overwhelmed with hospitalizations, so they could track their recoveries and update their 'active cases' on a real-time basis. China numbers cannot be trusted. Also, their numbers started getting reported quite late and were false anyways. Unless you are looking at something different than what I interpret as 'active cases', i can confidently say that the 'active cases' and the corresponding numbers in Italy, Spain, NY cannot be trusted as the recoveries are not updated real-time and there are considerable delays. So, in effect, when NY governor says in the news conference yesterday, that the hospitalizations currently are back to what it was 21 days ago, we could be pretty confident that the curve has been flattenned enough to ensure our health care system is not overwhelmed. Remember that the very objective of the shutdown was to ensure our healthcare system is not overwhelmed. Somebody mentioned earlier it was a time-out. Now, with extra measures (not a perfect world of 100% testing), we should be able to effectively manage the surge. From my perspective, the biggest advantage that we have is that we are not centralized in our governance. Even a county judge or mayor can take decisions on how to effectively combat the virus at the local level.
2) Austin-but-not-Dallas argument is touched upon in my earlier point. In my opinion, DFW can be looked upon as a unit since there is economic activity and flow of people across counties. Similarly Austin and its suburbs, Houston and its suburbs have to be looked upon as individual units. So each of these economic units have to make a decision on its start date. Rural parts of the state can be opened, owing to its low numbers.
I am continuing to advocate for social distancing measures, targeted contact tracing (especially for passengers coming in at airports like DFW). Private businesses have an obligation to help contain the spread by enforcing social distancing, masks (cloth masks at least) wearing at all times, cleanliness guidelines for their facilities, temperature monitoring, etc.
One last point - I have always believed that we were not behind on getting infections, we were behind on testing and reporting active cases. So, the fact that we are in control of our hospitalization numbers and capacity percentage for beds and ICU beds and are at par with Spain or Italy or even better than them at this point, is a good sign. It is an indication that we have flattenned the curve enough to ensure our hospital system will not be overwhelmed for the current wave of the pandemic.
EDIT: Lastly, warmer temperatures are a factor in slowing the spread of the virus. There was a post previously that mentioned poorer countries that have warm temperatures, are not reporting their cases. I understand his point completely. There may be almost 0 testing at such places but there is free press in many of those countries. So I cannot imagine thousands of deaths can go unnoticed by their media, even if the governments may not report such deaths. For eg: India's official death numbers is around 1000. And they are a billion plus in population.
And on that point, I very much agree with a high possibility of a second wave of this virus in the upcoming winter, in the US. I am sure, we will be much better prepared to handle it.
I commend our Texas state govt and local governments like Dallas county for doing a great job overall in handling the containing of the virus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost
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I am pessimistic about this. I think we have good reason to be. Look at our chart versus that of Italy. Look at the actual numbers we have. Look at what the various epidemiologists think. For starters, our last two days nationally have been our two worst days in terms of new cases. We are seeing as many deaths as we ever have. How is this the time to open up? In the last week, we have set two new records for worst new daily case days, had 2000+ daily deaths (pretty close to our worst day) pretty much every day and realized that our 60,000 death revised target is going to be demolished before we even hit peak active cases. That is all terrible news. How is there anything promising in that?
My plan: We probably can't open much until the end of May. There's a reason even the optimistic IMHE modelers took that as an assumption. We also can't open until every person has a mask to wear. If you want to be out of the house and in a space where you could be within six feet of people, you must have a mask on -- no exceptions. We need significantly greater testing capacity. Ralph Kirk mentioned earlier that we should have been ramping up testing capacity over the last few months at a greater rate, and I agree. Finally, we can't open up until we have done more serology testing. You said that actual cases are higher than the case counts show, and I agree. I think they're probably 5-10x greater, but we don't know that because we haven't done enough serology testing. The White House's guidelines for reopening include the stipulation that a state see 14 days of declining new cases. Texas doesn't even have two days of declining cases.
We can do the open based on geography, but micro-geography like Austin-but-not-Dallas won't work. It can be state-by-state for larger states, and large swaths of rural areas can open sooner.....but I think most people are severely underestimating the potential for us to have a second wave that will be even worse than this first one has been. Remember, all of this started with a handful of "seed" cases. We now have almost a million (likely 5-10 million actual cases).
I simply don't see how the peak for new daily cases is a good time to open. Active case peak is probably a month away. Italy had their active case peak about a week ago, and they're opening up now. To me, it makes sense to target that as a prospective time, not when you're still a month away from the peak number of active cases. Btw, our downward curve isn't even close to as good as Italy's was, and theirs was worse than expected.
You asked about Texas' peak....what do you mean by "peak"? "Peak virus" means peak active cases, not peak new daily cases. Texas is nowhere close to peak virus yet. Texas may or may not have passed peak new daily cases -- I'm really not sure. My hunch is that it has, but it still had one of the worst days yet for new cases yesterday (along with the second-worst death day). I also thought the US had passed peak new daily cases back on April 4, but that was eclipsed twice in the last two days. Peak active cases is a much better target for opening, not peak new daily cases.
If you're in the school of "I don't care what the numbers look like, we just need to open," fine. I guess. I don't agree, but the numbers wouldn't matter to you. But I take your posts to mean that you are someone who thinks our opening schedule should depend on the progression of the virus. I don't know how you could possibly be looking at the actual trajectory and numbers and conclude that we are ready to open.
Seriously, I would like for someone to tell me what they are seeing in the numbers that makes them think most states are near a good time to open.
Last edited by CDContribuitor; 04-26-2020 at 10:44 PM..
I am pessimistic about this. I think we have good reason to be. Look at our chart versus that of Italy. Look at the actual numbers we have. Look at what the various epidemiologists think. For starters, our last two days nationally have been our two worst days in terms of new cases.
What is a "case"? Is it an infection, or something else? We currently have no idea how many new infections we are getting each day, and anything else you want to count is arbitrary in a way that will overstate new "cases" compared to past "cases".
Last time we went, we saw a family of 5 (with a 3 year old touching everything) at the grocery store lol
My wife and I are empty nesters. We have been having to shop more frequently due to shortages in items, either brought about by supply chain disruption or by shoppers buying a month's worth of groceries. It is starting to stablize now and it looks like we can go back to once a week again.
Also we had been using Kroger's pick up service for over a year but that fell apart early in the crisis and we had to go into the store instead.
Fortunately we already had a good supply of paper products because Target ran a promo in January if you spent $50 on their brands, and most of what we buy in their brand are TP, paper towels, and paper plates.
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