America is giving up on the pandemic? • Hacker News Board

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#711

Post by anewdirection » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:23 AM UTC

MickerNews wrote: post #599

scythe wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Systemic racism is way bigger than just police killings. A single protest movement isn't going to end systemic racism, no matter how large it becomes. Even revolutions don't end conservatism -- just ask Leon Trotsky. However, the coronavirus epidemic is here today and it may well be gone in a year. This may be the worst possible time for a protest movement since the Spanish Flu.

Yes but you can't plan these things. So here we are...

Except you absolutely can. The black civil rights protests were planned months in advance, and almost always when schools where out.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#712

Post by chipotle_coyote » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:23 AM UTC

gentryb wrote: post #608

rayiner wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget public health officials outright lied and said masks don’t help reduce the spread of the disease, putatively to help conserve masks for medical personnel: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... > When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks.…

When I first started doing volunteer health assessments and triage at our local homeless shelter, I inquired if facial hair was an issue with PPE. The organization's initial response was no. I sent them a link to the CDC guidance[1] that includes this picture regarding facial hair styles that are ok[2]. I don't think the notice at the top of said article is helpful whatsoever saying that this isn't advice for covid-1…

It’s my understanding — which seems to be congruent with the pages you linked? — that facial hair is an impediment to medical-grade respirators that require a tight seal to be effective. With cloth/paper masks that aren’t intended to be PPE for medical workers, though, that’s not actually what we’re going for, though, right? What we’re trying to do is curtail the spread of droplets. Beards and mustaches really won’t materially affect the effectiveness in that case.

In your specific example of volunteer health assessments and triage at a homeless shelter, you probably need real honest-to-goodness PPE, and the organization’s advice was wrong. When I’m going down to the grocery store, though, a cloth mask should be sufficient — and my (admittedly short) beard is not going to keep my mask from blocking droplets from my mouth and nose, assuming it completely covers both of them.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#713

Post by JamesBarney » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

in_cahoots wrote: post #666

JamesBarney wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those CDC numbers are really weird btw. 0.4% of symptomatic cases is like a 0.2-0.3% IFR. 0.3% of the New York City population has already died of corona-virus. So assuming everyone in New York was infected that gives us an IFR of .3%. But if a more realistic 20% of the population was infected then the IFR could be as high as 1.5%. I tried going through all the most recent research and almost all of it came up with a…

Maybe the 20% of the population was more susceptible? It seems that the outbreak was concentrated in long-term care facilities, healthcare workers (who received a larger viral load than average), and the poor (who tend to have more pre-existing conditions). If the 20% is not randomly distributed the math can still work out.

The math could work out, but if that was true then that means if NYC got 5 times as many infections the number of fatalities would barely change.

I would find that hard to believe and I also doubt they would have enough data to validate that type of hypothesis. We're still guessing at the number of people infected, not to mention how old are they, what pre-existing conditions did they have, how do those pre-existing condition affect Covid-19 mortality in different age groups, what viral load did they receive, etc..

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#714

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

in_cahoots wrote: post #676

rayiner wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxford Textbook of Public Health: https://m.oxfordmedicine.com/mobile/view/10.1093/med/9780199... . Do you see any sections on police brutality? Not to mention, I have family in the field, I grew up with probably a dozen public health experts attending Thanksgiving dinner, and did my first internship at a public health company. At no point in hearing decades of shop talk did I ever hear police brutality being mention…

Out of curiosity, were guns or poor maternal outcomes for black women discussed as public health issues? The former has long been thought of as a public health problem but it is rarely discussed due to politics. The latter has been a problem for decades but only acknowledged recently. I recognize you have some expertise here, but I don’t think there is a finite set of issues that can fall under ‘public health’.

Yes. But the Feds won’t allow government funded research into gun violence. For black moms the issue is wrapped up in obstetrics in the US which basically has refused to use checklists, crash carts etc... I am not sure if this has changed but there was no national standard protocol in the US. It varied by state! This has been widely reported on if you do a few google searches. Lastly there’s also a lack of access to prenatal care.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#715

Post by chasd00 » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

Fellshard wrote: post #572

metrokoi wrote: post #90

Quoted from a letter from 1,000 health professionals on the virus and protests [0] >However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from…

The analysis is quite simple: basic cynicism. Experts are incentivized to maximize results corresponding to their field /in isolation/ - with little or no trade-offs considered. This preserves their reputation, and allows them to recommend within the bounds of their knowledge. If an expert recommends religious institutions continue to hold only remote meetings, they are not going to suffer any consequences, both dire…

but reality doesn't care. when people start falling sick, and the curve steepens while the cries of "why weren't we warned!" become loud and clear what's going to be these "experts" answer then? Surely they've thought that far ahead. right?

Or maybe the lockdowns were a massive over reaction and this is a subtle acknowledgment.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#716

Post by schoen » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

yters wrote: post #709

schoen wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some indications that many people in the public health field feel that everything that affects morbidity and mortality is potentially within scope for them, including, for example, intentional actions like assault or murder. A difficulty with this view, at least potentially, is that it seems to allow everything in the world (certainly almost every area of public policy) to be in scope for public health, bec…

Yeah, that is a really broad definition. That results in everything becoming everything. For example, everything has some kind of economic impact, so everything becomes economics. Or, everything can have some affect on the arts, so everything becomes arts. This kind of failure to make distinctions makes the scope of every field to encompass everything, which eliminates the very notion of separate fields of study. Pro…

Good points!

However, public health continues to actively distinguish itself from medicine (they're different degrees and different departments in universities, for example, and you can get both an MD and a DPH), so I don't think your proposed definition for medicine will satisfy public health experts as a definition of their field. Although county health departments are often led by someone who has both a medical and public health degree, many of the people working in them will have public health training but not medical training.

Even looking at classic public health activities like sanitation/environmental health and epidemiology, sanitation and epidemiology aren't really about the functioning of the human body! They're more about conditions under which the human body is more likely to experience some particular kinds of morbidity...

Even your definition of medicine might be unsatisfactory to some people in the medical field, for example because they think mental health is medicine, or because (to pick an amusing example from my health insurer's claim form) pregnancy is not a disorder or malfunction of the body, but it requires a lot of medical expertise to manage its outcomes well. Other examples could be pain management and anaesthesia (pain, for example during surgery, is not necessarily a malfunction of the body—typically you would like the body to make you aware when it's being cut!) and elective surgeries.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#717

Post by NateEag » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

shwoopdiwoop wrote: post #564

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it's intellectually honest to compare countries with very, very low rates of firearms access to a country where firearms are available to anyone who wants one? You're comparing the USA, which has about 100k shootings per year, 36k deaths involving guns of which 33% (~12k) are homicides, to the UK which has 50-60 cases of homicide involving a gun per year. The fact is that the US police are far, far, far…

Sounds like severely limiting access to guns in the US would be great place to start then.

Regardless of whether it's a good idea, it cannot be done.

I believe the last number I saw said there were about 300 million guns in the US - one for each person.

There's no way to just make those disappear into government hands.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#718

Post by noelherrick » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #680

rayiner wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxford Textbook of Public Health: https://m.oxfordmedicine.com/mobile/view/10.1093/med/9780199... . Do you see any sections on police brutality? Not to mention, I have family in the field, I grew up with probably a dozen public health experts attending Thanksgiving dinner, and did my first internship at a public health company. At no point in hearing decades of shop talk did I ever hear police brutality being mention…

I've seen some indications that many people in the public health field feel that everything that affects morbidity and mortality is potentially within scope for them, including, for example, intentional actions like assault or murder. A difficulty with this view, at least potentially, is that it seems to allow everything in the world (certainly almost every area of public policy) to be in scope for public health, bec…

Should public health officials weigh in on all issues? Yes. In my home state, every bill before the legislature has a financial assessment tied t it, because most laws cost money. The same should be true for health: we should figure out if an issue is positive, negative, mixed or neutral on public health. It should be part of the deliberation process.

Take your gun example: people should know that if they support the status quo gun laws how many people will die, or what the impact of a new lw is. That doesn’t mean the CDC regulates guns, but it does mean they should have a voice in the conversation.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#719

Post by sjg007 » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #699

alkibiades wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i’m 25 and this whole covid debacle and seeing how public health officials handle it has soured me on all “experts” for the rest of my life. no wonder people don’t believe in global warming, these “experts” prioritize politics over everything

I got very skeptical reading the reaction to the antibody studies here. Also, the total hate for Sweden really depressed me. I've always held this place in high regard but I suppose it's still just more of the same.

The prevalence is too low for the antibody tests to be reliable. Every public health expert has reported that but people refuse to listen. Sweden has admitted their strategy is not working.

Re: America is giving up on the pandemic?

#720

Post by hindsightbias » Mon, Jun 08, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #688

rayiner wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget public health officials outright lied and said masks don’t help reduce the spread of the disease, putatively to help conserve masks for medical personnel: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-... > When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks.…

[flagged]

We indeed live in an era where all things are binary.

But what is a thinking person supposed to think when the Surgeon General is saying don’t wear masks in a pandemic caused by airborne viri?

In urban (educated) zones likely to be hotbeds for outbreaks, could the state not do a little nuance and say “hospitals need the N95s and you need a bandana”

Everybody has got a bandana, but if I were to start walking into stores with one before sanctioned, someone would be calling 911. In the meantime, how many weeks go by at R 3...