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California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

nytimes.com

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

#21

Post by TomVDB »

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

> ... 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-19, it is currently estimated to be around 60+%. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151357/)

We are nowhere near these kind of immunity levels right now, and it's impossible to get to that level without vaccine unless you're willing to accept that a huge amount of people will die or get seriously ill.

Any suggestion that herd immunity is relevant in today's environment is plain wrong.

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

#22

Post by AlexandrB »

nickff wrote: post #19
AlexandrB wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effectiveness of a middle ground strategy is pure conjecture. Canada shut down fast and hard - like California - and is not seeing cases spike. Perhaps because we re-opened slowly and people are still generally cautious - wearing masks in public and maintaining social distance. Or perhaps because we have not been getting wildly mixed messages from local/provincial/national leaders about the severity of the situat…

Canada did not act in unison, it was very province-by-province. Ontario locked down quite hard, whereas British Columbia only required shutdowns of service businesses, and suggested everyone stay in.

My mistake. I guess I'm specifically speaking of Ontario.

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

#23

Post by mjmahone17 »

standardUser wrote: post #10
pettazz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for case counts staying relatively low in those places has a lot less to do with "herd immunity" and a lot more to do with still being careful. Even though a huge number of people were infected, it was still a very small amount of the population overall, not anywhere near enough to affect the transmission rate with no restrictions. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/herd-immunity-questioned-aft... In MA we're…

If you look at the numbers throughout the Northeast, you see a remarkable consistency. New cases are at a trickle, despite lots of reopening (more in some places than others) and weeks of mass protests throughout the larger cities. I am in NYC and mask compliance here is... OK. But people are generally going out a lot, eating out a lot, shopping, etc, with very little concern. Weeks keep passing without even a tiny u…

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 under “total lockdown”: in NYC, we still don’t have indoor dining, for example, whereas Arizona still allows 50% capacity indoor dining despite nearly running out of ICU beds in most hospitals.

When you’re in the center of the epidemic, merely getting to an infection rate of 1 is not good enough. NYC got well below that. I don’t think everywhere else did, and even the places “shutting down again” may not be doing enough.

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

#24

Post by nostromo »

woeirua wrote: post #9

The only question now is, which state will win the race to be the first to reinstitute stay-at-home orders?

My guess is that no states will do that.

Even as the number of cases goes up, deaths (the more important number) keeps coming down.

https://i.imgur.com/LMVNbBD.png

We keep hearing about how this trend will reverse soon, ("two weeks from now"), but that hasn't happened yet.

It seems pretty clear now that even our low estimates of fatality were too high and that many people had Covid-19 in March/April/May and were never tested/counted.

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

#25

Post by dominotw »

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

This is the same thing that happened in India. Precious lockdown token was used up too early, now they can't go back to lockdown again even thought its speading like wildfire.

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

#26

Post by AlexandrB »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #18
AlexandrB wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effectiveness of a middle ground strategy is pure conjecture. Canada shut down fast and hard - like California - and is not seeing cases spike. Perhaps because we re-opened slowly and people are still generally cautious - wearing masks in public and maintaining social distance. Or perhaps because we have not been getting wildly mixed messages from local/provincial/national leaders about the severity of the situat…

My understanding is that Canada is currently at the stage of reopening that California is rolling back to, where gyms, indoor restaurants, and movie theaters are closed.

Yup, that's the case in Ontario. Mask wearing is also now mandatory indoors. I guess the question is why did California rush to re-open fully?

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

#27

Post by jhowell »

standardUser wrote: post #8
pmoriarty wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Perhaps California could have attempted a middle ground strategy. Let the virus spread just a slight amount more than occurred during the initial lockdown in order to gradually spread immunity." It's not even clear yet whether exposure to this virus confers immunity, nor how long such immunity would last if it does exist. From the newest episode of This Week in Virology [1]: Daniel Griffin: The tough thing, right, i…

Though it has not been conclusively proven, literally all signs point to meanginful immunity and virtually no signs point to the opposite. Dozens of vaccines are being developed on this assumption, and there have been zero confirmed instances of reinfection of a fully recovered individual.

> 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 lingering, she still has a cough, and she continues to take breathing treatments to relieve tightness in her chest. She recently tested negative and retested.

> Skillings says she thought she was getting better, but recently her cough returned full force. She tested a week ago and it came back positive again.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/12/three-arizona-teacher...

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

#30

Post by Xavdidtheshadow »

nostromo wrote: post #24
woeirua wrote: post #9

The only question now is, which state will win the race to be the first to reinstitute stay-at-home orders?

My guess is that no states will do that. Even as the number of cases goes up, deaths (the more important number) keeps coming down. https://i.imgur.com/LMVNbBD.png We keep hearing about how this trend will reverse soon, ("two weeks from now"), but that hasn't happened yet. It seems pretty clear now that even our low estimates of fatality were too high and that many people had Covid-19 in March/April/May and were neve…

> deaths (the more important number)

One of the more interesting things I've been reading is that we shouldn't think about this as a total binary. There are reports that survivors exhibit have long-term effects, such as neurological issues [1] and lung damage.

So yes, it's good that fewer people are dying! But that doesn't mean everything is simply great now.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...

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