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The plans to reopen the economy are scary

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31–40 of 214 posts

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#31

I started studying the US news reports of Covid-19 related to ventilators weeks ago when I realized there were no interviews with survivors, and ignored the speculation around partial testing results and R0 calculations because of the lack of hard data, and exponential rate of infection making analysis moot. Essentially, ICU admission for ventilators, and subsequent deaths, are the most complete and factual data we h…

This plan is stupid. In U.S. under lockdowns, already 18k people died in just a few weeks, and every day 1k more die, and that number is still growing. The worst estimate for 2018 flu was 56k (e.g. less than a month left under current lockdown regime to surpass it), best is 12k which is long surpassed.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#32

The author considers letting the epidemic run its course on the demographics most at risk, to be the most unrealistic outcome. He writes: > I care about my privacy, but not nearly so much as I care about my mother. Most people care about their own mother. But if lockdowns, unemployment and poverty continue, I can definitely imagine people saying, "I don’t care about your mother, so why should I stay unemployed and co…

A simple alternative would have be to quarantine the at risk people (60+ and pre-existing conditions) and let the rest of the world create the wealth necessary to help keep the at risk groups alive, focusing our healthcare attention on the at risk groups.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine this is really code for "if we infect all these low-risk people first, we get a large proportion of our workforce immunised". I think it’s really code for “let’s repeat the mistakes we made early on when we adopted ‘herd immunity’ rather than isolation as an I itial strategy and spread this as rapidly as we can and create another critical peak”, because those people aren't completely isolated from the res…

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but the herd immunity thing was a throw-away statement tacked on to the end of an initial briefing, it was never the plan. Also, we shut-down pretty quick when it became clear how much worse Italy was faring than the stats China had claimed. There seems to be some pretty ridiculous things being said in foreign papers at the moment about Britain's response as it's an easy way to…

> The British is on a similar trajectory (if not lower) then America/Italy/Spain/etc.,

Yes, it's among the worst hit as all those you name are, and like the US that's mostly a result of national government incompetence and not other circumstances that put it in that group (Italy seems from what I understand to be other circumstances, Spain I'm less clear on.)

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#34

I started studying the US news reports of Covid-19 related to ventilators weeks ago when I realized there were no interviews with survivors, and ignored the speculation around partial testing results and R0 calculations because of the lack of hard data, and exponential rate of infection making analysis moot. Essentially, ICU admission for ventilators, and subsequent deaths, are the most complete and factual data we h…

Who are you?

Q: "What's the most important part of a message?"

A: "The name of the messenger."

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK they're now making noises about letting the 20-30 year olds who live alone go back to work first. I imagine this is really code for "if we infect all these low-risk people first, we get a large proportion of our workforce immunised, for a fairly low hospitalisation proportion". I don't know enough about the models, but I also guess having a large chunk of your low-risk population already immune reduces R0 f…

Current plan for Norway is to start gradually opening up after Easter: * Opening up kindergartens, physiotherapy, hair salons and allowing cottage holidays from 20th April * Opening schools for 4 youngest classes, After School and some higher education in final years from 27th April So you go after lowest-hanging fruits gradually, but it's a learning phase and could need rollback if people don't follow restrictions e…

Does anyone know why I've seen various reports that they think opening schools will have a low impact on the virus spread? Kids still get infected, so will spread the disease (and I would assume more than most people being careful) as well as then spread it to their households.

Is it because children rarely commute outside a community, so it wouldn't spread between communities, just within communities already infected?

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#36
> Any feasible plan starts with massive testing, completely subsidized by the government. And yet just yesterday the president claimed we don’t need mass testing.

This is something I've been saying from day 1: short of universal vaccination, the only way to get back to some form of normalcy is widespread testing of the population. Any government with some sense of reality would spend billions in testing, to avoid losing trillions in the economy. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that the US government has any notion of how (or desire) to do this.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#38
This will be a good chance for state governments to show how well they function and coordinate absent federal guidance.

Maybe they will form their own federation to circumvent the current federations ineffectiveness. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/governors...

That's at least one emergent non-California nation state coming to be. Maybe we could call it the Great States. Toronto can come too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis

Culturally; North Central, The North, Midland, St Louis Cooridor, Inland North, W. Pa.; make a nice package. https://www.wbez.org/stories/_/9054d7a4-f876-4c53-8ce1-08ada...

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#40
For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument.

We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders.

Again, since the quarantine started in my area I exist twice to buy groceries and that's all. So I understand the need and the importance of it.

But should I really throw away on year of my life? Shouldn't we quarantine only the elders? Would your opinion change if you were living by yourself with your significant other locked up somewhere too far away to meet in two months?

And yes I am aware that also younger people died from the virus but the chance are so much smaller that I don't believe is fair to compare it.

The opportunity cost is so much different and nobody is addressing the issue.

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