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The plans to reopen the economy are scary

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Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#151

Post by Simulacra »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #60

As somebody who has been tracking and interested in this story since late January, the one thing I can without qualifications is that whatever seems true now will change in a few weeks' time. In general the outlook has gotten better as the data got better and we were able to compare notes, although there have been some setbacks, too. I don't think we'll ever, ever get back to "normal" as this is the pandemic we've be…

This article seems like a lot of fear mongering, almost doomsaying. I think we will get back to normal, and we will basically return to what we were doing before with little change.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#152

Post by LyndsySimon »

ztjio wrote: post #96
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #43

I'm extremely skeptical of any analysis that discusses political non-viability at this point. If you asked any commentator 2 months ago whether it was politically viable to issue general stay at home orders, or to give every American a bunch of free money, or to pass a multi-trillion dollar stimulus bill, they would have told you no.

Giving every American a token cash handout is something Republicans have done before, it's hardly unbelievable if you actually have historical context. And by far most of that bill is corporate handouts. And the oversight has been fired. Everything about this aligns exactly with what you'd expect politically. It's a debacle. Furthermore, while there has been a lot of shutdown, it's not equal across the board. Tons of…

> It's clearly a case of more right leaning areas taking less cautious measures in favor of money.

While I see where you’re coming from with this statement, I’m not sure I agree. From where I stand - a town of 13k people surrounded by a large rural area - it makes sense that we’re taking less aggressive action because the virus is not yet endemic here. Given the growth of confirmed cases in my area (northern Arkansas), it seems those steps are working adequately to keep it from becoming endemic as well.

I propose that areas with lower population density are taking less aggressive action, and those areas are also predominately right-leaning.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#153

Post by alkonaut »

elephantscan wrote: post #135

When are we just going to admit that our choices are: 1) indefinite lockdown 2) everyone gets the virus Between a 0.5% chance of dying, and life imprisonment, I'd take my chances.

Your chance of getting a severe case of you are infected is 5-10% or something similar. That’s a case that you want to have a hospital bed for, maybe an ICU bed.

If all beds are taken then many of those severe cases will kill people. Say mortality is 3% instead of 0.5% once hospital capacity runs out. Assume 60% need to get it before we have herd immunity. I don’t think 3% mortality without healthcare is pessimistic. Unfortunately we’ll soon find out if the disease hits Syria and similar places.

Not only that, thousands would also die from strokes and heart attacks and other things that they wouldn’t die from if hospitals weren’t full.

Hospital staff will simply quit when their job becomes a constant struggle to keep the hallways clear of corpses instead of saving people.

It’s not “0.5% dies why are we doing this?”, it’s “we do this so only 0.5% die”.

Between a 0.5% chance of dying and a 3% chance of dying I’d happily observe some measure of distancing for 12 months to get 0.5%.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#154

Post by Barrin92 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #84
Barrin92 wrote: post #72

> "The CAP and Harvard plans both foresee a digital pandemic surveillance state in which virtually every American downloads an app to their phone that geotracks their movements, so if they come into contact with anyone who later is found to have Covid-19, they can be alerted and a period of social quarantine can begin." If this refers to the bluetooth supported apps I've seen developed by several institutions, does t…

I don't mean to rip on you, it's important to notice problems, but that seems very solvable. Just require some minimum duration of proximity before you alert.

It's not that easy. Social networks, particular urban dense ones have the characteristics of small world networks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network). The distance between every person in a city is maybe 5-6 individuals. You can imagine how many hundred people you stand next to, how many people they stand next to, and so on.

So if say, the chance of being infected in an interaction is say 5%, then the chance at a distance of two is 0.25%, the chance for someone at a distance of 3 is merely 0.01%, etc..

Do you really think it's a rational use of resources or your attention that if you're one of the countless 'distance 3' people to alert you? Unless you had some mysterious ability to determine with extremely high fidelity that infection has occured from metadata alone, which doesn't exist, it's a tool for mass panic.

Bluetooth will give you a match for up to 10 meters. The official safe distance is 6 feet. You can't even tell from a bluetooth match if people were close enough at all.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#155

Post by threatofrain »

altoidaltoid wrote: post #10

Cynically, since the morbidity is mostly in the elderly parts of the population vs. the younger ( a la 1918 ), I can see the Lt. Gov of Texas's attitude of " let the olds make their sacrifice" be the driving principle...

Not simply just old people [1]. Texas has also categorized religious gatherings of 50 as an essential service, whereas abortion clinics have been closed.

Texas is taking a very different approach from California.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#157

Post by naveen99 »

siscia wrote: post #70
superkuh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders. No, we're pausing the life of everyone to protect everyone. If you overload the hospital systems then everyone dies. If you pause and keep things barely managable then mostly only old people die.

I believe we both agree that locking down 20/30 years old people who still have to study, to meet people, to make experience, to find lovers and to find themselves is very different that lock down 70/80 years old people right? Then there is no doubts that the virus hit hardest the elders. Again, what I am saying is that younger people are hit by the lockdown much more than the elders while being the less concerned ab…

80 year olds not ready to die will quarantine themselves, no lockdown needed for them.

Some young people are benefiting with fewer car accidents. Some old people are having to wait longer for transplants as there are fewer organ donors dying of accidents.

Also fewer middle aged people are having myocardial infarcts.

My children are not so upset that they don’t have to go to school.

I wonder if countries benefitting from tourism will finally get rid of visas and passports to encourage international travel again. Probably not, but one can dream.

Maybe if the us ends up bailing out the entire world, there won’t be a reason to protect the borders with passports as we will have a United States of earth. Fed swap lines are already available to around a dozen countries.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#158

Post by threatofrain »

frockington1 wrote: post #44
whatshisface wrote: post #37

He's saying that such-and-such is politically unviable, but that's what we were all saying about business shutdowns, too.

In my state (Ohio) at least, protest are starting to form on the legality and length of shutting down businesses. It's still only a handful of people but seems to be growing every day. There is a very slim chance the government can enact shut downs for long and still maintain authority

If the government loses authority, what entity would fill the power vacuum?

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#159

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

lisper wrote: post #149
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't agree with the analysis. If I had a choice between a 2% chance of dying and isolation for the rest of my life, I'd roll the dice.

But it's not the rest of your life. It's just until we come up with a treatment or a vaccine, most likely a year or two. Yes, that's an annoyingly long time, but still better than being dead.

There's no way we should trust a dystopian regime to just quietly abolish itself once its rationale for existence disappears.

Re: The plans to reopen the economy are scary

#160

Post by LyndsySimon »

IanDrake wrote: post #59

As we enter summer, the question no one is asking is: Can mosquitoes transmit this virus like they do malaria?

My understanding is that no, they can’t, because the virus does not reproduce in mosquitos.

Similarly to HIV, it is theoretically possible for a mosquito to feed off someone with the virus then within minutes feed off someone else, be killed, and the infected blood contain enough remaining particles to cause an infection... but to my knowledge this has never been shown to happen in practice.

I’m more concerned about stray cats. It has been shown that felines can both host 2019-nCoV and get COVID-19.

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