Coronavirus in DFW - News & Discussion (Dallas, Arlington: post office, dinners)

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by BuyBuyBuy?

The COVID death number is clearly inflated, but it's impossible to know by how much. The vast majority of people aren't questioning whether COVID is real (it clearly is), but whether the unprecedented restrictions on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are (1) effective and (2) justified. At this point, it certainly looks like the virus is going to run its course, and lockdowns, masks, etc. are shockingly not very effective. And it isn't because people aren't complying with restrictions like mask mandates, 90%+ appear to be doing so. If masks were effective, we wouldn't be having this "Second Wave", or whatever it is you want to call it.

Take California for example, a State with 40 million people living in it. There are currently around 5,000 people in the hospital due to COVID in the entire state and they are headed back into lockdown, which didn't really work the first time.

The math is actually pretty simple on what the right solution is, but it's not necessarily intuitive to a population that doesn't understand basic statistics. From the beginning we should have just isolated the vulnerable (for example, well over 50% of COVID deaths are from people that were living in nursing homes) and let the generally healthy go about their lives. This would have actually saved more lives than general lockdowns etc. but politics and virtue signaling by power-hungry politicians got in the way.

Agree to disagree.

1. The number of COVID deaths is understated, not inflated. Through October, there have been an 300,000 “excess” deaths vs a typical year in the US. The largest population with excess deaths are younger (under 45) Hispanic people which makes sense because large family gatherings are where the virus is spreading rapidly.

2. Isolating all high risk individuals would have left very few people out of isolation. And I doubt many folks would have enjoyed hearing, “you’re obese which is the #1 comorbidity with Covid so stay home or lose 100 pounds and your skinny coworkers will cover for you this year.” 70 MILLION American adults are obese. 34 MILLION are diabetic. 1 IN 2 ADULTS has hypertension. Many of those population counts overlap but it’s safe to say that over half the country is high risk for Covid complications & death due to their poor health.

3. Nowhere near 90% of Americans wear masks & social distance on a regular basis - or properly. The Dallas County number is somewhere around 55%. If we can get back to 65% compliance (which is where we were after the July mask mandate), this wave will recede. No one was ever counting on 100% compliance because, duh, Americans.

[NTXPerson]

I have to disagree. Epidemiologists are actually saying there are likely more deaths from COVID-19 than recorded. Also, when you look at the data of these spikes, they correlate with holidays and events where people are not wearing masks and social distancing. We are seeing a spike right now because people have grown fatigued by all of this so they are not following CDC guidelines and recommendations. Lastly, most states determine whether to lockdown based on the bed capacity of hospitals. For example, Texas will start increasing restrictions if more than 15% of hospital beds are filled with COVID patients in a triage area. I believe DFW has been hanging out around 12%. Yet, nurses and doctors will tell you that they are already becoming overwhelmed in the area.

We can't shut down nursing homes and let everyone else go about their business. Not all vulnerable people live in nursing homes. My father lives with us and he is considered high risk. While I am not considered high risk, I cannot risk getting ill and passing it onto my father. Many other people are in the same predicament.

[BuyBuyBuy?]

No one said all vulnerable people live in nursing homes, that is just an obvious example and is an extremely low-hanging fruit. Also, just being overweight does not put you in a meaningful high risk category. Are you higher risk than someone that is not overweight, sure, just like any other sickness, but the risk is still very tiny. It's people with multiple co-morbidities that are doing most of the dying.

Again, it would be great if lockdowns and masks worked, but the data just isn't showing that. Compare any similarly situated states/countries and it doesn't seem to matter how draconian the lockdown was, or when and how stringently enforced mask mandates were implemented. The virus generally has the same effect.

One big problem with how this developed is how strong a position many public figures took when we only had extremely terrifying (and it turns out completely incorrect) information from China. As time has gone on and the facts have come out, they can't walk their position back without losing face, so instead they are doubling down on ineffective policies.

Not sure where you got 55% compliance from, but I'm out every day and it's almost 100% compliance in every inside space I go to. Outside is a bit less but the odds of catching COVID by walking past someone outside is almost zero.

Someone pointed out that over 500,000 Americans die every year due to heart disease and another 500,000 due to cancer. Sadly COVID is not our most pressing health issue, but we've gone blind to considering any other risks in our zealous focus on COVID.

[serger]

Originally Posted by BuyBuyBuy?

No one said all vulnerable people live in nursing homes, that is just an obvious example and is an extremely low-hanging fruit. Also, just being overweight does not put you in a meaningful high risk category. Are you higher risk than someone that is not overweight, sure, just like any other sickness, but the risk is still very tiny. It's people with multiple co-morbidities that are doing most of the dying.

Again, it would be great if lockdowns and masks worked, but the data just isn't showing that. Compare any similarly situated states/countries and it doesn't seem to matter how draconian the lockdown was, or when and how stringently enforced mask mandates were implemented. The virus generally has the same effect.

One big problem with how this developed is how strong a position many public figures took when we only had extremely terrifying (and it turns out completely incorrect) information from China. As time has gone on and the facts have come out, they can't walk their position back without losing face, so instead they are doubling down on ineffective policies.

Not sure where you got 55% compliance from, but I'm out every day and it's almost 100% compliance in every inside space I go to. Outside is a bit less but the odds of catching COVID by walking past someone outside is almost zero.

Someone pointed out that over 500,000 Americans die every year due to heart disease and another 500,000 due to cancer. Sadly COVID is not our most pressing health issue, but we've gone blind to considering any other risks in our zealous focus on COVID.

Cancer and heart disease are not contagious.

[BuyBuyBuy?]

Originally Posted by serger

Cancer and heart disease are not contagious.

True!

[BuyBuyBuy?]

Okay. I realize that at this point, almost no one is going to change their mind about lockdowns, mask mandates, etc. due to how invested everyone is in their current opinion. I'll leave you with this:

Kansas is an interesting case study as counties could opt in or out of the mask mandate. The CDC announced two days ago that the mask mandate in Kansas helped slow the spread of COVID, based on a "study" that "ended" on August 23:


https://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...9-cdc-research

August 23rd seems like a weird date to end this kind of "study", given that we are at the end of November, what's happened since then?

https://twitter.com/boriquagato/stat...750657/photo/1

Interesting, masks now appear to have had no effect whatsoever. The information is out there if you know where to look.

[DPatel304]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

Sure....CDC estimates annual flu deaths for the past decade averaged 36,000 per year (range 12k-63k). So COVID has in 10 months (excluding peak flu season months of December & January which haven’t registered covid deaths yet obviously) killed between 7X the amount of people who die from the seasonal flu each year.

9/11 was such a significant event that the US government was reorganized with DHS’s creation and a total overhaul of safety and security measures in airports and other public/federal facilities. That was a national security event and this is a national health event so yes, they’re obviously different.

I'm aware of how many people die from the flu, it's just odd when people start making comparisons about the number of COVID deaths, the flu is generally not a part of the conversation.

The flu kills more than 10x the number of people who died in 9/11 per year and nobody really bats an eye.

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

But it shouldn’t be a surprise that the response would be this strong to control COVID. The countries with the strongest responses have done much better at having normal economic and social activity between waves and have had much less death per capita than the US.

Debatable. The UK, Italy, and Spain had harder lockdowns, but saw just as many deaths and I believe France is up there as well.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by BuyBuyBuy?

Not sure where you got 55% compliance from, but I'm out every day and it's almost 100% compliance in every inside space I go to. Outside is a bit less but the odds of catching COVID by walking past someone outside is almost zero.

55% is the Dallas County health number based on GPS and other data.

Do see huge groups of twenty-somethings who don’t live together out for brunch, laughing and talking loudly and maybe even sharing appetizers or taking a sip of someone else’s cocktail?
Do you see big groups of middle schoolers at sleepovers? Or at overnight lacrosse tournaments?
Do you see birthday parties still happening at places like Play Street Museum where almost no parents or kids are wearing masks?
Do you see inside your neighbors’ homes when their 20+ family members come over for birthday parties or Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday?
Do you see families insisting that their kids have their own homecoming parties or other events even if the school has cancelled the official one?

My Facebook feed is full of people doing these things every damn week. And not just in Dallas.

These are places where no one is wearing a mask and Covid is spreading like wildfire. No one is getting random Covid at the grocery store and according to our pediatrician, no one is getting it at school either. It’s all of the other stuff that no one will stop doing that is the problem. WFAA has featured one Arlington (I think?) family that gathered for a birthday party last month and 15 family members got Covid. Only 13 were actually at the party. We have extended family who all just got Covid at a child’s birthday party that we declined to attend.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by DPatel304

Debatable. The UK, Italy, and Spain had harder lockdowns, but saw just as many deaths and I believe France is up there as well.

I was more thinking about Asian & Pacific countries that not only did lockdowns to begin with but put in place world class “test and trace” initiatives. South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore.

[DPatel304]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

I was more thinking about Asian & Pacific countries that not only did lockdowns to begin with but put in place world class “test and trace” initiatives. South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore.

I'm not sure you can compare the US to smaller island nations like New Zealand and Australia. A number of Asian countries have handled this extremely well, I'm just not sure it was reasonable to expect people in the US or Europe to be as compliant as they are in Asia.