California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges • Hacker News Board

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#71

Post by fzeroracer » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #41

jhowell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all signs point to meanginful immunity and virtually no signs point to the opposite. Here is a story from CNN via the Mercury News about 3 teachers sharing a classroom. Anecdotal, but makes me think these are signs of a lack of immunity. A positive, negative, positive test. > A month after they caught the virus that killed their colleague, Martinez and Skillings are still struggling. > Martinez says fatigue is ling…

Right, when millions and millions of people become infected with an illness there will be a wide range of edge cases. But if reinfection within 6 months was anything other than exceptionally rare it would be obvious by now. Now if you had a peer reviewed study to link instead of media reports, I would be very interested.

It seems you're moving the goalposts though. Your initial statement was that there were zero confirmed cases of reinfected individuals. The commentator gave you an example of such a case (and I can give you an another with the thoughts of a doctor [1]), then you moved back and said 'if it was anything more than exceptionally rare'.

At the very least can you maintain your argument? More dangerously could be the situation in which those that are asymptomatic initially end up with shorter duration immunity than those that have symptoms. Which would toss out a lot of our understanding of how severe the virus could end up being out the door.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21321653/getting-covid-19-twic...

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#72

Post by banads » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

CerealFounder wrote: post #28

I dont understand for the life of me why the state cant get tough on masks and distancing with the rule of law. All they do is put out suggestions and guildelines. Until they flex the guidlines with some muscle it's just theatre

Why doesn't the state also mandate exercise, diet, and sleep?

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#73

Post by perl4ever » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #46

mjmahone17 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven’t left NYC, it may also be true that our perception of “going out a lot” is about equivalent to much of the nation’s “lockdown” perception. In other parts of the country, like Florida and Arizona, it doesn’t seem like the transmission rate ever really went below 1: it just hovered around 1. So now NY, Boston, etc are “opening up” to a roughly equivalent position that those states were in when they were u…

The rest of New York has been in phase three with indoor dining for a few weeks now.

That doesn't tell you whether people actually are, the way they may be in some other places. Is actual behavior at all the same in, say, NY vs FL?

I'm fatalistic about avoiding the virus in the long run, and I go out whenever I have something to do, but my food has all come from the grocery store or mail order since March. I'm still asking myself "do I need to do this" every time I consider going somewhere.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#74

Post by jhowell » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

CerealFounder wrote: post #28

I dont understand for the life of me why the state cant get tough on masks and distancing with the rule of law. All they do is put out suggestions and guildelines. Until they flex the guidlines with some muscle it's just theatre

Can you really imagine the police confronting and/or arresting someone for not wearing a mask only to take them to jail to contract the virus?

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#75

Post by blisseyGo » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

Agustus wrote: post #42

CerealFounder wrote: post #28

I dont understand for the life of me why the state cant get tough on masks and distancing with the rule of law. All they do is put out suggestions and guildelines. Until they flex the guidlines with some muscle it's just theatre

Enforcement is the state forcing its will on you eliminating the individual’s ability to evaluate risk. Eric Garner is dead because of government rule flexing you suggest. The government should buy ads showing the efficacy of face masks and use the ad council to pretty it up. If you have politically connected individuals flouting the rules, people will salami tactics their way to not wearing the masks. *edit: thanks…

It's amazing how HN is downvoting your comment for a pretty thoughtful point. I posted a comment with studies and got downvoted too. Seems like HN is turning into Reddit.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#76

Post by TomVDB » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #45

TomVDB wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but any amount of immunity in a population makes transmission of the virus more difficult. That may be true from a pure logical/mathematical point of view, but that doesn't mean it makes a practical difference. Herd immunity is something that happens when a very large percentage of the population is immune. For mumps (which has a very high R0), you need about 92% immunity level for it to be effective. For COVID…

I did not suggest herd immunity has occurred. You seem to be confusing the idea of herd immunity with the similar idea that any immunity in a population will reduce the transmission rate by some amount.

You’re saying that maybe CA should have done some middle ground closure since that might have help a little more with increasing immunity.

My point is that the goal of increasing immunity is pointless unless it can be raised to a very high percentage and without taking massive casualties.

Without a vaccine, that’s simply not possible for COVID-19.

And thus that suggestion doesn’t make a lot of I sense.

The benefit of a slight higher but still very low level of immunity is so small that there’s no point.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#77

Post by anarazel » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #51

morsch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We keep hearing about how this trend will reverse soon, ("two weeks from now"), but that hasn't happened yet. It happened a week ago. It's easier to see when you look at a moving average. https://imgur.com/a/xGLRjGa https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...

Yes, there's a blip at the end of the chart. But the headline is clearly that deaths have fallen ~70% even as total (reported) cases has continued to grow exponentially.

The US wide totals are muddling the picture substantially. Deaths have continued to shrink substantially in previously severely affected states like NY or NJ.

The other big issue of course is lag. If you look at daily positive tests, current hospitalizations and newly reported deaths in one graph the lag becomes more visible.

Here I e.g. just used a log y axis to show all three in one plot: https://anarazel.de/t/2020-07-13/all_in_one.png

which imo makes that more visible.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#78

Post by makomk » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #71

standardUser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, when millions and millions of people become infected with an illness there will be a wide range of edge cases. But if reinfection within 6 months was anything other than exceptionally rare it would be obvious by now. Now if you had a peer reviewed study to link instead of media reports, I would be very interested.

It seems you're moving the goalposts though. Your initial statement was that there were zero confirmed cases of reinfected individuals. The commentator gave you an example of such a case (and I can give you an another with the thoughts of a doctor [1]), then you moved back and said 'if it was anything more than exceptionally rare'. At the very least can you maintain your argument? More dangerously could be the situat…

The positive, negative, positive cases are almost certainly testing artifacts rather than reinfections though - they all seem to involve someone who was infected testing positive after a relatively short time period, and researchers in countries like South Korea have found that the patients don't seem to have any viable virus or be able to infect others when they test positive for the second time: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southko...

As far as I know, their original claim is still true: there are zero confirmed reinfections with Covid-19.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#79

Post by anarazel » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

Agustus wrote: post #42

CerealFounder wrote: post #28

I dont understand for the life of me why the state cant get tough on masks and distancing with the rule of law. All they do is put out suggestions and guildelines. Until they flex the guidlines with some muscle it's just theatre

Enforcement is the state forcing its will on you eliminating the individual’s ability to evaluate risk. Eric Garner is dead because of government rule flexing you suggest. The government should buy ads showing the efficacy of face masks and use the ad council to pretty it up. If you have politically connected individuals flouting the rules, people will salami tactics their way to not wearing the masks. *edit: thanks…

> Enforcement is the state forcing its will on you eliminating the individual’s ability to evaluate risk.

Except that the primary benefit of masks wrt covid is to significantly reduce the likelihood of the wearer to spread covid (by reducing how much spit escapes ones mouth). So the decision to wear/not wear is not directly about the decider's risk, it's about societal risk.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#80

Post by perl4ever » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #51

morsch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We keep hearing about how this trend will reverse soon, ("two weeks from now"), but that hasn't happened yet. It happened a week ago. It's easier to see when you look at a moving average. https://imgur.com/a/xGLRjGa https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...

Yes, there's a blip at the end of the chart. But the headline is clearly that deaths have fallen ~70% even as total (reported) cases has continued to grow exponentially.

That seems to me to be obfuscating the factors that everyone knows. Cases are growing exponentially in some states, while deaths fell tremendously in the states that previously had the most cases. California and Florida didn't have deaths fall 70%; they had deaths more or less plateau, while the age of the infected shifted younger, and now the increase in cases is getting to the point where it more than compensates for the lower death rate.