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Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

latimes.com

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Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#101

Post by corobo »

atty wrote: post #20

What are HNers planning to do for the holidays? We’re seriously considering not seeing anyone, not even parents, even though my SO has had COVID already (she works at a hospital and contracted it from COVID patients). Stories like this are the main reason. Even if no one at the party gets very ill, the chance of further spreading it to others seriously scares me.

Same thing I'm doing right now, bugger all. We've already written off a large part of 2020, seems silly to throw all this isolation away for some paper party hats and a christmas tree.

I'll wait for the vaccine before I pretend everything's normal again

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#102

Post by drcross »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5

It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.

Removing personal choice should sound alarm bells for anyone who has read Brave New World, 1984 or the Gulag Archipelago.

If you permit me to stereotype the HN demographic here- you are probably reading this comment from the comfort of a warm apartment with running water and you're probably not hungry. Removing personal choice is an extremely dangerous idea where those reliable things that you take for granted start to disappear. All you have to do is look to N. Korean, Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela right now, this day to see how disastrous it is. You may call me hyperbolic but this is exactly how it starts. If we have to lose some elderly people to a virus (with an IFR of .1%, median age of death of 84 and 92% with comorbidity), i'm sorry to say that we have to lose them. The alternative is authoritative oppression, starvation and misery for hundreds of millions of others. Make no mistake, this is exactly what is at risk when you talk about removing personal freedoms.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#103

Post by aroch »

flavor8 wrote: post #17

It's a little hugged to death at the moment, but https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/ is a useful tool to show relatives who are thinking about social gatherings for the holidays.

Lead dev here... Huh, didn't think I'd ever see my work show up on HN. Sadly getting an .edu institution to fork over the money for better scaling is hard... Even when it gets them unlimited free press.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#105

Post by technofiend »

atty wrote: post #20

What are HNers planning to do for the holidays? We’re seriously considering not seeing anyone, not even parents, even though my SO has had COVID already (she works at a hospital and contracted it from COVID patients). Stories like this are the main reason. Even if no one at the party gets very ill, the chance of further spreading it to others seriously scares me.

I lost a family member this week. I did not attend the graveside service even though it was outside, which is anecdotally supposed to be lower risk than something indoors. The issue for me is I'm high risk combined with the fact it's possible someone could show and refuse to wear a mask. Even if everyone socially distanced and wore masks, I believe there's still a non-zero chance of transmission. Couldn't take the risk for myself, much less anyone else I might expose if I were to get infected.

To answer the original question I don't plan to do anything for the holidays either. Our activities will be in-home with my wife and myself only. I don't really see that changing until vaccines are ubiquitous and the local R factor is well below 1. Unless the disease is eradicated which in the face of antivaxxers seems unlikely, I don't thinks things will ever entirely return to normal.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#106

Post by arkitaip »

jayspell wrote: post #95
ceejayoz wrote: post #5

It also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.

We are going on a year with COVID and the death rate is not what was advertised at the beginning. Everyone has to live their life, part of life is risk. Personal choice is BS? What in the literal hell!!! You want to take freedom away? You want to remain under house arrest fine, stay in your bubble, the nut house is a warm safe environment.

Not when your recklessness threatens my life and the lives of my elderly parents.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#107

Post by joshgel »

exabrial wrote: post #35

Case count != actual risk of death or permanent injury. You have to be in a high risk group. I wish we'd evaluate actual risk rather than perceived.

You do not have to be in a high risk group. I've seen people not in high risk groups die. Your odds may be lower, but no one is immune. (I guess except those who survived it or got the vaccine)

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#109

Post by war1025 »

sequoia wrote: post #96
war1025 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People die. I'm becoming more and more callus about the whole thing and beginning to think we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that people die . I was told recently that my town is in terrible shape and the hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. Listening further, I learned that "nearly overwhelmed" meant we had capacity for two or three people to be really sick with Coronavirus. If we need to decimate our…

'fighting the virus harms the economy' Would you believe it if I told you that not fighting the virus has an even bigger toll on the economy? Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, how much less economic impact would have resulted. But then, as now, we wanted to "protect the economy" and avoid restrictions as long as possible. But this time the strategy will work? I have trouble believing…

> Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March,

Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine and their economy isn't exactly peaches and cream right now.

And they have spiking case counts just like the US right now.

Re: Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings

#110

Post by jcims »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #67
newfeatureok wrote: post #11

By sheer coincidence I’ve been reading World War Z and it’s amazing how in the real world we’re making the same mistakes that countries in the book made against the zombies. Of course the situation is entirely different, but it’s interesting. Why doesn’t the government actually just enforce rules? So many lockdowns, mandates and laws but so little enforcement, or the penalty is not commensurate with the risk. What’s…

Everyone talks about all the bad things police do. Not enough people talk about the good things the police don't do because they are too busy doing the the bad things.

Eh, there's approximately one police officer per 400 people in the US. Seems unlikely they are going to be able to enforce much of anything here.
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