COVID-19

[Bankai]

China quarantines a city of 10M near Russian border:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-5 ... type=share

[George the original one]

When asked, they said that we could be a long way off from herd immunity -- even if case numbers are much higher than previously thought -- because we don't know yet whether exposure provides lasting immunity.

Anybody who thinks we're near herd immunity is not really looking at the numbers. You don't get 24,000 new cases per week for the past 3 weeks in NJ if you're near herd immunity. NY state has 50,000+ new cases per week for the past 3 weeks; yes, it's peaked, but NY new cases will take at least another 3 weeks before they drop to 25,000 per week.

Yes, I really need to dig up the weekly rates for NYC to see where they are in the cycle...
[see LA County rates I posted a day or two ago]

[SustainableHappiness]

@bigato

Social distancing fucking sucks. I'm an anti-hermit, I think I got pegged at >90% extroversion on one of the personality pigeon-holers that has gone on this forum. Our family has decided our limit is seeing our parents (our young kids g-parents) on the weekends, we typically go and stay for a couple days or vice versa. No interaction if anyone has any glimmer of sickness (so far, no glimmers).

Virtual calls fucking suck with a toddler because they just yell, or want to play with the phone and no conversation happens. Babies are fine in this new virtual environment...oh wait, they quickly become toddlers too.

Death and sickness also fucking suck, so does killing people accidentally (or maybe the word is indirectly? or maybe its just straight up directly?), therefore we only see ourselves for the weekdays and a social circle of 4 people total on the weekends.

Am I a narcissist? Maybe? My greatest fear is surviving without living...In this new environment I see people slumping into internet and fear-based vegetable lives...barf. My hope is we all get past and through it back to health (mentally, emotionally, socially and physically).

Edited: I am loving spending time at home with my family... Just noting that social interactions solely with a 2.5 y/o, a baby and my wife is a massive change and sucks in some ways.

[George the original one]

NYC's peak of weekly rate new cases happened on Apr 8, while NY state peaked on Apr 9. NYC's weekly rate of new cases was 35,563 and it is 15,779 as of Apr 19.

That rapid drop is most likely indicative of how successful the state-wide lockdown begun on Mar 23 (ordered Mar 20) has been because it matches other successful lockdowns in timing (peak rate is 2.5 weeks after lockdown and now the Apr 19 rate, 44% of peak rate, is 1.5 weeks after the peak).

[George the original one]

Latest IHME forecast is out

The other discouraging word is that the projected U.S. death toll through Aug. 4 has been raised, from 60,308 to 65,976. There’s a wide interval of uncertainty to that figure: The institute says it could end up as low as 45,375 or as high as 124,120.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus- ... 24815.html

I don't know what IHME is smoking when it comes to their forecast for USA deaths. Only 65,000 deaths by Aug 4 when the weekly rate has increased to 20,000/week and we're already at 45,000 deaths as of last night?

[HalfCent]

It still frightens me that it does not concern anyone that BAU means sacrificing health care workers.

Everyone debating the economic cost of lockdowns seems to want the economy to open up and OTHER people to go to work.

I say put up or shut up. If you want the lockdown to end, YOU get out there and start meeting face to face with people. Good luck.

[ZAFCorrection]

@halfcent

That is what the protesters are doing.

The people with no real skin in this game are the upper classes who suffer no hardship from the continued lockdown and are coincidentally also the ones are turning adherence to the lockdown into a moral issue.

[JL13]

And that is considering that nyc have had 100% of its population exposed by now, which is not likely (because they are in lockdown for a while).

It's possible that NYC is closer to being 100% exposed by now, because the metro was still running during lockdown, and they REDUCED the train frequency, keeping people packed in. 0.2% of NYC population dead at 60% herd immunity = 0.33% mortality rate.

I wonder what the demographics are of NYC versus Italy. Much younger?

[7Wannabe5]

Yeah, the protesters are the downtrodden. That’s why there were so many African American faces in the crowd that came out in Michigan I saw one obviously affluent woman in her 40s carrying a sign being interviewed. She told the reporter that she had to shut down her small business because of the lockdown. When the reporter asked what sort of business she ran, she hesitated for a moment and then replied “We service student loans.” Poor, poor, baby loan collector shark.

Another individual known to have attended the rally is a city commissioner in one of the hardest hit counties. When questioned about the safety of her behavior, she claimed that she maintained social distancing with everybody except the guy with whom she shared a ride “ because I know that he doesn’t have it and he knows that I don’t have it.” Hey, I guess if you never got herpes, why not stick with your usual heuristic!?

[theanimal]

There is a new working paper that claims that subways seeded the outbreak in NYC

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27021#fromrss

New York City’s multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator – if not the principal transmission vehicle – of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic that became evident throughout the city during March 2020. The near shutoff of subway ridership in Manhattan – down by over 90 percent at the end of March – correlates strongly with the substantial increase in the doubling time of new cases in this borough. Maps of subway station turnstile entries, superimposed upon zip code-level maps of reported coronavirus incidence, are strongly consistent with subway-facilitated disease propagation. Local train lines appear to have a higher propensity to transmit infection than express lines. Reciprocal seeding of infection appears to be the best explanation for the emergence of a single hotspot in Midtown West in Manhattan. Bus hubs may have served as secondary transmission routes out to the periphery of the city.

[ZAFCorrection]

@7w5

I wouldn't say protesters are necessarily downtrodden, just that they have skin in the game given their behavior. If they are wrong, then they will be the first to suffer from their stupidity.

Incidentally, I'm noting some interesting parallels between the idea of supporting healthcare workers and "support our troops" from the 2000s. I think we got a new rhetorical thought stopper brewing.

[Jason]

I draw a comparison to the appreciation shown to the health care workers to the appreciation shown police and firemen that suffered/perished during 9/11. Especially in the NYC area which is/was a main target during each event. I'm sure there will be similar PTSD, survivor guilt etc. that they will suffer from in the future.

[Hristo Botev]

The people with no real skin in this game are the upper classes who suffer no hardship from the continued lockdown and are coincidentally also the ones are turning adherence to the lockdown into a moral issue.

This is certainly what I'm seeing in my own little bubble. Relatively well off white-collar neighbors/friends (only one of whom has had his paycheck affected so far), with all the necessary resources to work from home and for their kids to do the distance learning thing with little involvement needed from the parents. And they simply DON'T STOP with the moral admonishments and redneck name-calling against the protesters and our governor (I'm in Georgia). I've had to silence several text chains (I gave up on social media awhile ago) because it just doesn't stop.

DW works in a hospital, and the reality is that at least her hospital has had sustained record-low census numbers over the past few weeks--because they're not doing "elective" surgeries, people are avoiding hospitals in ways they never did before, and because there just hasn't been a massive influx of COVID-19 patients. The hospitals are bleeding money and people (hospital workers) are starting to lose jobs. Our governor said we locked everything down only to flatten the curve to get our hospitals geared up and to avoid them getting overrun. That's been accomplished, at a HUGE toll to business and peoples' livelihoods. So what am I missing as to why it's such a moral travesty that we are going to try and ease into reopening certain aspects of society? There's more than just one narrative here.

[HalfCent]

I'm out.

Thanks to this forum I did get a lot ahead of this but am disgusted now.

[Jason]

Rich man's war, poor man's battle. Although this one has some strange bedfellows as it has divided church leaders, especially in the Roman Catholic community where physical presence in the church has a particularly strong significance. That being said, seems to be on-going anecdotal accounts of the "bathed in Jesus's blood" protestors meeting Him sooner than they thought.

I'm out.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

[ZAFCorrection]

@Jason

Ya, there is the response to the good work done by healthcare workers which is comparable to that given to first responders after 9/11. That is, sincere admiration and support divorced from any other point being made. But there is also a comparison to the post-9/11 soldiers when they are only used as props to win an argument. "If you don't do/believe x, you must hate [insert revered institution]."

I think the initial story was "you must hate seniors," but it's kinda an awkward case to make when the protestors are mostly MAGA boomers.

[RealPerson]

Both the economic consequences of the lock down and the morbidity and mortality of the virus are disproportionally affecting poor people. The same story repeating itself over and over. If only we could get the masses to read the ERE forums instead of watching TV all day.

[thrifty++]

We are currently at about 180k deaths world wide and 45k deaths in the USA. How does everyone think we are tracking and how poorly or well have we handled this so far ? How much further does this have to go ?

My opinion is that this is turning out far better than what I expected and we've handled this well post some countries reacting too slowly (probably the UK and the USA). I reckon China should cop it big time but I don't think that excuses the fact we've all been caught with our pants down in this situation.

I have no idea if this is going to progress to wave after wave of infections that are progressively worse or we are going to get one spike and then it's going to be basically over.

I feel so sorry for anyone who has lost a loved one in this event. At the same time it's hard not to look at this virus from a total deaths perspective and believe it isn't relatively that bad but like I said who knows how this progresses.

I am taking the published figures as just a fraction of the reality. Pandemics tend to be significantly under reported at the time they are occurring. Look at the patterns for previous pandemics. That is what happened. For so many reasons there is under reporting at the time the pandemic is occuring. Its probably more than a million already but could even by two million by now. Just UK as an example here. But there will be many places which are underreported to a far greater level. https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/uk ... spartanntp

[Jason]

I think the difference between now and 9/11 is that we do not possess the same social fabric in 2020 that we did in 2001. The debate we are having in how to respond to the "foreign invasion" - economic vs. health - reflects deep social divisions that were not so pronounced in 2001 when there was no debate on how to respond, it was merely against whom we should respond - Iraq vs. Afghanistan. The big fight now is amongst ourselves. And you have to think the vaccination race between the US and China is similar to the landing on the moon race in the 1960's between the US and the USSR. The advancement of humankind is great except when its your enemy/frenemy leading the way. It makes you wonder how it will play out if China crosses the finish line first in this instance. Cooperation would be best but I don't see a chance of that happening so our hope of chanting "USA USA" is riding on the people wearing lab coats not military fatigues. I think it will be huge blow, real and symbolic, if China develops it first.

[thrifty++]

I think anything developed by China at this point might be treated with such global scepticism that it might get next to nothing in leeway. The anti vax minority might quickly turn to the majority. I am doubtful of China developing anything though. Really despite having become wealthy and having a huge population, China has developed next to nothing in the last 20 years. Its basically been a global production house for large western companies mass producing the cheapest version of things designed in the west and applying systems and technology already designed by the rest of the world. I do suspect there is now going to be a large shift away from production in China and away from buying anything Chinese made