Fauci Warns 'Little Spikes' of Coronavirus Might Turn Into Outbreaks if States Reopen Too Soon (nbcnews.com) 401
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday warned of serious consequences if governors reopen state economies prematurely, saying he fears spikes in coronavirus infections could morph into further outbreaks of the disease. From a report: Testifying by videoconference before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, ticked through the criteria that the White House said states should meet before reopening. "My concern [is] that if some areas, city, states, or what have you, jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks," Fauci said in response to a question from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Fauci and two of the other witnesses -- Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Stephen Hahn, the head of the Food and Drug Administration -- are testifying by videoconference Tuesday because they self-quarantining after possible exposure to COVID-19. The fourth witness, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health and the administration's coronavirus testing coordinator, also testified remotely but is not in self-quarantine. Murray, the top Democrat on the committee, said in her opening statement that the U.S. needs "dramatically more testing," but added that testing "alone won't be enough to reopen our country."
Fauci and two of the other witnesses -- Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Stephen Hahn, the head of the Food and Drug Administration -- are testifying by videoconference Tuesday because they self-quarantining after possible exposure to COVID-19. The fourth witness, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health and the administration's coronavirus testing coordinator, also testified remotely but is not in self-quarantine. Murray, the top Democrat on the committee, said in her opening statement that the U.S. needs "dramatically more testing," but added that testing "alone won't be enough to reopen our country."
What else do I know? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not Happening (Score:5, Insightful)
My concern [is] that if some areas, city, states, or what have you, jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently,
If after all these weeks the government doesn't have the capability, they will never have the capability.
Who needs expert opinion? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who needs expert opinion? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you could experimentally inject some disinfectant. That should give you a reliable data-point!
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A single data point. Please trust me, I'm a statistician and to be sure we'd have to increase the sample size.
I'm fairly sure it should be possible to find volunteers. Let's just say whoever does it may go out and play again, that should get us a relevant sample.
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I don't. I may not know what "experts" know, but I do know what the people I know know...
Covid-19 for everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Quarantine is just a delaying tactic.
With no vaccine, insufficient testing, (no good tracking either) and over 50% asymptomatic carriers, we're all going to be infected eventually.
Getting the disease is bad, but the alternative seems to be "get locked up for months and then get the disease anyway".
I'm all for ramping up production of needed medical supplies and spreading out the impact on hospitals, but there comes a point where reduced economic activity is deadlier than the disease. Even if we knew for a fact that an effective treatment or vaccine was going to be available in September, we might be better off lifting the quarantine anyway.
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This.
Note that we really can't keep the economy shutdown till September. People have to eat, and there won't be so much of that as one might expect if people can't grow food, package it, ship it, sell it, plus the same for all the spare parts for everything used to grow it, package it, ship it, sell it, plus the spare parts needed to keep the factories that make the spare parts for everything...etc, etc, ad infinitum....
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The current trend is to say, "China lied about the severity of the virus." and I am inclined to believe that, but why did President Trump and his administration believe their bullshit? He and his people have spent the last couple of years demonizing China for unfair trade and other issues, so why did they all think China was on the level about the outbreak?
Easy. It's the same reason that President Trump believes everything that comes out of President Putin's mouth. Our president loves totalitarian autocrats, and wishes he could be one. He frequently says that he wishes he had the sort of power that they do, and continually lavishes praise upon them, seemingly at every turn.
In his business world, having a single leader whose word is obeyed unquestioningly is the only style of leadership President Trump has ever known, demonstrated, or respected. Unfortunat
Re:Covid-19 for everybody (Score:4, Informative)
The fact of the matter is that there are only three routes:
No, you forgot the route actually recommend by epidemiologists and public health officials:
Lockdown, and use the time during the lockdown to expand testing capacity, PPE production, and staff up for contact tracing. Then ease the lockdown and use your expanded testing and contact tracing to quarantine those who are sick or a risk, and do that until you get herd immunity via natural spread or a vaccine.
Any of these can be combined with increased testing, which every country (including the US) is now doing.
We are doing "increased testing" only in the sense that the number is higher than before. We needed to spend the last three months increasing it by two orders of magnitude, and we didn't.
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The world is a dangerous and uncertain place, and as terrible as it sounds we have to be adults about it, Keep Calm and Carry On.
Re: Covid-19 for everybody (Score:2)
The argument of should we or shouldn't we is over. They have already started opening up and it will be a disaster. But they won't stop opening up either. LA county announced that over the weekend 40% of the newly reopened businesses didn't follow the recommended guidelines and yet they said overall it was a success. Facts don't matter anymore, it's all politics and we're opening, no matter what.
But the real disaster isn't going to be the virus. The eviction moratorium ends may 31 and they aren't even talkin
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It's already warm in L.A. and it's going to get warmer. The virus spread is not likely to be severe.
It takes time for an eviction to be processed. You can't throw someone on the street the same day you file papers. Furthermore, most landlords will realize that they have nothing to gain by evicting their renters because there will be nobody to replace the evicted. Wise landlords will accept late payments for a month or two.
Mass evictions would be likely to encourage class lawsuits and the quick issuance of t
That is insane (Score:2)
Absent other interventions, a key metric for the success of social distancing is whether critical care capacities are exceeded. To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022. " [sciencemag.org]
I'm not too worried (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point countries won't be able to depend on quarantine measures to help them because unless they're willing to remain closed and under quarantine until a vaccine is developed anyone who doesn't get infected and develop some kind of immunity is only likely to get infected later. In an ideal world we'd be able to do things in a controlled manner to make sure we're getting enough of the people who probably won't get seriously ill infected while isolating those who are so that a herd immunity can be built up, but we can't even handle basic shit.
While it's probably easy for most of the people who post on
Re:I'm not too worried (Score:5, Informative)
There's 4 things you might want to consider concerning Sweden.
One, their infection rates are still rising heavily and there's no sign that they're going to "flatten" any time soon.
Two, ignoring tiny countries where every single death turns into a couple hundred-per-million due to having way fewer citizens than a million, Sweden is currently number 6 in the per-capita death toll list. Tendency upwards, too.
Three, unlike the US, Sweden has quite extraordinary surplus capacities in its ICUs. Something you can't really do if you run your healthcare system for-profit.
Four, Swedes tend to be quite "nice". In other words, if you ask them nicely to please do what their governments kindly suggests, they usually tend to do it and not do the exact opposite just to show that you can't boss them around.
Can you imagine what this would look like in the US?
Re:I'm not too worried (Score:4, Informative)
One, their infection rates are still rising heavily and there's no sign that they're going to "flatten" any time soon.
I'm not sure if you're just basing this on data from a few weeks ago or if you're just misinformed. If you look at the most recent data [worldometers.info] and had to draw a trend line you might say that it appears as though the number of new cases is going down and that they're over the hump. Even if that's being optimistic, it doesn't appear as though the infection rate is increasing. It looks like the number of deaths is also falling as well.
Two, ignoring tiny countries where every single death turns into a couple hundred-per-million due to having way fewer citizens than a million, Sweden is currently number 6 in the per-capita death toll list.
What do the countries that stay shutdown look like if they try to reopen and all of the people who previously didn't get infected end up getting it? Maybe they could have better screening in place to prevent future cases from spreading as widely as they previously would have, but until there's either a vaccine in place, sufficient heard immunity, or the virus mysteriously fades away, it's only delaying the inevitable.
Three, unlike the US, Sweden has quite extraordinary surplus capacities in its ICUs. Something you can't really do if you run your healthcare system for-profit.
Even in the U.S. the problems of an overrun healthcare system never really materialized. New York was hit worse than just about everywhere else and managed to weather the storm. There was even a recent article [forbes.com] that showed for whatever reason, a lot of the newest cases that were winding up in hospitals were from people staying at home. Even in New York the extra field hospitals that we constructed were largely unnecessary [apnews.com] so it's unlikely that we'll see a massive outbreak that overwhelms the U.S. system.
I'm not sure if the statement about Sweden having some extraordinary surplus capacity in ICU is true either, but I can't find good data. The wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] (for just hospital beds in general, not ICU beds) has the U.S. ahead of Sweden (2.77 vs. 2.34) based on the 2016 figures. A Forbes article [forbes.com] citing a few different studies shows the U.S. as having more ICU beds than many European countries, but Sweden isn't included in the numbers. There's a list that compares European countries [tradingeconomics.com], but no indication of where the numbers come from. Relatively speaking, Sweden doesn't have more than other European countries and is actually on the lower end. There's a peer reviewed study [nih.gov] (though it's from 2013) that shows the U.S. having more than Sweden, though the authors point out that differences in definitions between countries can make direct comparisons difficult.
Four, Swedes tend to be quite "nice". In other words, if you ask them nicely to please do what their governments kindly suggests, they usually tend to do it and not do the exact opposite just to show that you can't boss them around.
Most Americans would probably do the same if asked nicely. The problem is that America still has that same rebellious streak we've always had. We just don't like being "told" what to do. Trying to do it is going to have the opposite effect as desired. I think the other problem is that the governm
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Their number of new cases is steady. You can hope that it will decline soon and extrapolating from other countries you can assume that they are past the peak, but they're nowhere near the end.
Before you were claiming it was increasing, "rising heavily" in fact. It's steady now? Maybe it will go up again long term, I honestly don't know, but I don't think you do either.
The point I've been making is that unless you have some plan in place to slowly infect part of the population, delaying doesn't help you unless you can hold out until there's a vaccine/cure in place or there rest of the world has built up enough of a heard immunity that you don't need to worry about international travel infectin
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Look at the data more closely. Sweden barely tests anyone. Of course that makes the numbers look as if they decline.
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You might want to look at the data for the countries around Sweden, too. Unlike Sweden, the Netherlands are actually showing a slow decline in cases and so do Spain and Italy, the latter mostly because they have been in the game longer than most others. Sweden, unlike them, still has an upwards trend in the Active Cases charts, in the very statistics you have been linking there.
I dunno... taking biased news as a source is one thing, but willfully misreading information is a completely different beast, ya kn
Little Spikes? (Score:2)
Mushroom-shaped?
Time to face the music... (Score:2)
May as well resign ourselves to the reality that we have to learn to live with this.
Give up on the futile "Lockdown"; the genie is out of the bottle.
* Bolster healthcare.
* Improve aged care homes.
* Hygiene education.
* Increase interpersonal distance spacing for pubic transport and spaces.
* Masks mandatory in public until healthcare can handle the load.
The rest of the world can just "Move along... nothing to see here..."
The old and unwell had very little milage on the clock; yes there are outliers but gener
Fauci has tunnel vision (Score:5, Interesting)
He is focused on the here and now of Covid-19 and how to prevent deaths in the short-term. He is not looking at the economic devastation and collective depression and anger of the population from an extended lockdown. At some point the lockdown will have to be lifted. The question is if you do it in time to avoid a global depression otherwise you'll have 10's or 100's of millions of unemployed people that will actually be physically weaker an unable to fight this and other diseases. I think the big tell here that it has gone on too long with no comprehensive plan to recover is that medical personnel are now being laid off in various sectors. The lockdown was to prevent them (healthcare workers) from being overwhelmed, not to put them out of work!
Re:Fauci has tunnel vision (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the big tell here that it has gone on too long with no comprehensive plan to recover
There is a comprehensive plan to recover.
The plan is you lock down for a few months, and use the time to build up your testing and contact tracing capability so that you can quarantine only the people who must be quarantined. Which is what every other first-world nation is doing, and why they're leaking their lockdowns.
The federal government is explicitly ignoring the plan, in favor a strategy of denial.
The question is if you do it in time to avoid a global depression otherwise you'll have 10's or 100's of millions of unemployed people
Too late. We already have 10's of millions of unemployed people.
Which is why opening back up isn't goin
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Yeah, it might.
Not "it might."
It's already happening.
Unreleased White House report shows coronavirus rates spiking in heartland communities [nbcnews.com]
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:2)
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The "it's coming to rural areas too" narrative doesn't fly; the numbers just aren't there. Multiple narrative pushers have been trying to fly this and it just fails because we can see the numbers.
At worse it gets into some semi-rural retirement community and wipes out some residents and they MSNBC jumps up and down "see! see! it's coming for you too." The surrounding population is just going about it's business and nothing happens. If you're cowering in your house thinking that everyone in the hinterla
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:2, Troll)
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You think they will be more than what we had back when the economy hit us?
Just drop a huge bailout for corporations, it worked great back then, too. We'll be fine.
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:2)
You think they will be more than what we had back when the economy hit us?
No question, but I must admit suicides are a strawman, as one can refrain from ending their life, and still be miserable as fuck without taking your life (i.e. focusing on preventing suicides - while doing zilch' to address the reasons people take their own lives give up - is fucking idiotic).
However, there's no question as to whether the virus or the shutdown will tear apart more families apart.
Once again, fear itself proves to be the greatest threat.
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:2)
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:2)
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Fear is less of a threat right now than FUD and corporate interest pretending to be citizens wanting desperately to go back to work, risk to their life be damned.
I can of course not spead for people from the US, but I highly doubt that even they can be so hardcore capitalist that they'd rather die than depriving their corporate masters of profit.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
-- George Orwell
Actually, it's not scientists pandering to emotion here. Science has learned a lot about infectious disease in the last 150 years, and none of that points to a good outcome when you expose more people to a disease when community transmission is already taking place.
Whether that makes you afraid is your choice, but that doesn't make the belief irrational.
However when belief arises from a feeling, or disbelief from the desire to avoid a feeling, that is irrational.
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:3)
The depressing thing is, after 100 years, all that modern science is offering is essentially the same response as science offered in 1918.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:4, Informative)
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We now have at least half a year of data on it. What we do know at this point is that it isn't going to just taper off.
It literally will taper off. Look at Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Czechia also has gotten R0 below 1 now, too, despite easing off on the lockdown.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Informative)
You realize that
a) they had an outbreak from *one* bar hopper.
b) they tested much more much earlier so it isn't as widespread in their societies.
c) they *all* wear masks when in public.
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Probably the Czech Republic. They have reacted very quickly with a travel ban and using face masks when going outside.
Germany has been more lax and less compliant hence we had the R0 going from 0.7 to 1.1 after easing off on the lockdown.
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Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fauci is implying that the world must remain shut down until there is an inoculation. We have lost a whole third of a year to quarantine, and all that we can get out of the man is a bunch of "what ifs" and no plan for action. We now have at least half a year of data on it. What we do know at this point is that it isn't going to just taper off. It is like an underground coal seam fire. You can't put the thing out, and it is going to slowly burn through all the fuel. We also know that the mortality rate is fairly low and that this is like a flu on steroids that does some very strange things to a tiny subset of the population. What are Fauci's hidden interests here? He's holding back on us.
A doctor is responsible for keeping your ass alive when you enter a hospital with a life-threatening ailment. They don't give a shit about your "interests" otherwise, so enough with the mentality that there MUST be a hidden agenda here. Fauci is a doctor first and foremost. Don't disrespect the man by assuming he's now a fucking politician simply because he's on temporary assignment. He's doing his damn job, which is to advise in the face of a pandemic within the US medical system that still isn't prepared for any level of massive outbreak. He cares about saving lives, not economies.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fauci is implying that the world must remain shut down until there is an inoculation.
Nonsense. He's implying that we must remain shut down until we have ramped up testing and tracing capacity to enable us to shift from general quarantine (everyone stay home) to targeted quarantine (everyone who tests positive stay home).
I don't understand why the "lives vs economy" crowd consistently ignores the fact that there is another path.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
January was wasted because of the sham impeachment circus, severely hampering any action Trump did/could take. TDS caused a lot more deaths than Trump.
If President Trump really was so distracted by a bunch of people saying mean things about him in Congress that he couldn't do his job, well then doesn't that just prove that the Democrats are correct in their belief that he isn't psychologically fit to lead the country? Just saying.
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Because, unlike the virus, it was racist. A total travel ban was necessary, with all repatriated citizens going into a compulsory quarantine after arriving. That would have been doing his job, instead of saying that the virus would just disappear on its own.
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Is this the best argument you can muster?
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't actually ban travel. He just banned tourism from China. If he had actually banned travel, including for U.S. citizens, that would have been doing his job. Telling people from China that they can't return to the U.S., but allowing U.S. citizens to return, and then allowing government officials to recommend that quarantined people NOT be tested because doing so would risk delaying their release further, is very much NOT doing his job.
No, he really didn't do his job. He didn't do any of the things that experts recommended, and immediately jumped to a travel ban that nearly all of the experts said would be largely ineffectual. And it was. Big surprise. Where was the restocking of PPE? Where was the mass import of testing kits so we could get a head start on testing? Where was the mandatory testing for people returning from overseas?
The Trump administration's response to this crisis was the most dismal failure that I've seen in my lifetime.
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:4, Informative)
Where was his crystal ball you mean? Apparently everyone else lacked one also since everyone was downplaying this on media. It's been like 60 days since we thought this was actually serious. What we were told until Feb was it was barely contagious. Death rates were unknown. China still says less than 4k deaths. Wtf. There is still a tiny fatality count % considering how fast it spreads. Yes the lockdown helped but flu kills quite a bit every single damn year (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm) and we're still not prepared for it anywhere either. None of us do our part in wearing masks which btw the government stated at first should not be done. It is the state's responsibility to protect their own and almost no state has money reserved to handle this. They are all bankrupt. This failure is everyones' responsibility. Not just federal. Not just Orange Man Bad. Some of these government workers have been in office 30-40+ years and we're still not prepared? And you think this guy we hired to clean out government that has been dealing with 3 years of constant investigations and has had no history of political office is responsible for all of this? Yeah the government as a whole should take blame but this has been decades in the making. Our own government helped send money, with Fauci in charge of sending the cash, to the place this probably originated in while that same lab had many warnings for its crappy procedures. But damn you if you think nobody else should not share that blame in government. Governors, mayors, everyone needed a plan well before this past 60 days to deal with this situation. They even run yearly simulations on this crap.
Dude, stop. Our own intelligent services told Trump about the potential pandemic on November, then on December. Then on January.
His own economic advisor Peter Navarro penned two urgent memos to him in January asking him to take action ASAP.
Mnuchin and Azar (another pair of Trump right hands) also went after him for weeks asking to take this shit seriously. They literally had to hold an intervention in March 4th to get him to address the nation.
All the while he went to golf God-fucking knows how many times and held I forgot how many rallies.
Just. Stop.
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You know Trumps impeachment had nothing to do with the administrations inaction. Trump listened to the the folks I call the Ignorant or Arrogant. These are the only two options I see in these people. Either too ignorant to think for themselves or so arrogant they believe they are right in the blinding truth of the situation.
These are the same denier-types that will not trust science if it causes them any stress. They are too afraid to face the reality that the status-quo can't, and won't continue, and will
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:3)
Huh? What power? They only had any during Obama's first two years. That was 10 years ago! Only two years ago did they win back the House. Whose only _real_ power is to a NO vote. But the Republicans would rather blame everything on Dems than admin they have no negotiating skills.
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Because his actions was indeed racist.
He was letting American Nationals (who had already caught the virus) to fly back to America. He was letting Europe (for a while, who also had cases) fly back for a while, and UK (who also had cases) fly back.
It is a case of Too Little too late, and the Too Little was because Chinese are the "Other" that he has been ranting on about.
During Ebola when people came back, they were personally quarantined at their home. (And that was politically bad too) However what that d
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Maybe I'm older than you. I remember the Cuyahoga River burning, the copper slag piles turning rivers weird colors, the Love Canal housing development, the near-extinction of raptors, daily venting of waste gasses from the Midland Dow plant my cousins lived near, a quarter of my grade school class getting sick from salmonella from a shipment of bad meat from the Chicago stockyards, guys my dad worked with losing eyes and hands in the plant because the company didn't have to cough up money for safety equipm
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Die for the God of Capitalism!
Hermes was a god of commerce, so that's pretty close.
Well, Saint Corona is the patron saint of money [catholic.org], so I'd say in the Catholic mythos, she's as close as we get to the God of Capitalism.
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That's basically the demand, yes. Ok, it's kill the poor, not the heretics, but then, let's not pinch pennies.
Or wait, that's what it's about!
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No, there will be more people dying without the God of Capitalism, the collateral damage of shutdown will surpass virus body count from what UN says. Certainly value in keeping the hospitals from clogging up as that too would cause collateral death, but we didn't need to shut down to extent we did, plenty of "non-essential" businesses could have operated in a safe enough manner with distance, PPE, curb drop off or pickup, etc.
Never in over half a century of trying has any coronavirus had an approved vaccin
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the collateral damage of shutdown will surpass virus body count from what UN says
Citation?
Re:Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Insightful)
Die for the God of Capitalism!
Besides the obvious moral problem with that view, I think people who argue for "acceptable losses" to re-open the economy are missing the very crucial fact that lots of people dying will also trash the economy, and probably worse. I don't think there will be enough deaths (and disabilities -- remember that COVID-19 often damages those who survive it) to directly tank the economy, though that's not outside of the realm of possibility. The problem is that although you can rescind all of the shelter-in-place orders, etc., you can't actually make people leave their houses, and this creates a risk of an essentially "uncontrolled" shutdown.
See, the current shutdowns are somewhat planned, in the sense that someone has taken a hard look at what businesses are essential and allowed them to keep operating, and the case rates and death rates are low enough in most of the country that those businesses' employees are still willing to go to work. But we're already seeing that the "reopening" that many states are attempting to do isn't actually happening. Businesses are reopening but finding they have so few customers that many are contemplating closing again. And this is in a situation in which the actual numbers are still small enough that few people personally know someone who was infected, much less hospitalized or died.
Given that the actual impact on random Americans is so small, why is it that people are refusing in droves to go out even when their governments tell them to? Simple: Because they know the government decisions are based on politics, not on medical science or even real economics (nearly all professional economists in America say we're not ready to reopen). Now fast forward a few months, with the virus given a chance to spread much more widely, creating even more distrust of government competence and a situation in which most Americans have been directly impacted by the virus, meaning someone in their social circle has been injured or killed by it. What do you think will happen then? Uncontrolled shutdown, that's what. Essential employees refusing to go to work.
If you think a partial, managed shutdown is bad for the economy, what do you think will happen when large but more or less random segments of the workforce starts refusing to show up? The damage will be more widespread and -- perhaps more importantly -- unpredictable. Business leaders can deal with all kinds of crazy shit, as long as they know what crazy shit, and can plan around it.
We're already seeing a microcosm of this problem in the meatpacking industry. Rampant COVID-19 cases caused lots of meatpacking plants to decide to shut down. Trump ordered them to remain open... but the plants are seeing huge numbers of workers just refuse to show up. But we're still in the early stages of dealing with this virus.
The bottom line is that I think reopening before we have testing and tracing capacity to enable us to shift from a general quarantine approach to a targeted quarantine approach will actually do more damage to the economy than just staying shut down until we're ready to reopen. We may die and kick the economy off a cliff without a rope.
Re: Yeah, it might. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apples and oranges.
In the ages of small pox and cholera, we didn't even really know what viruses were or how they actually spread.
Now we do.
If virology had been as mature in those ages as it is now, I do not think you would be making the same comparisons. People who get sick need to stay at home, that is just common sense. Today.
But part of why COVID19 is taking so long to quell is because most of the people who are actually spreading it are not exhibiting any outward symptoms, and because they haven't been tested as positive, have no incentive to isolate themselves other than to be told by governments that they need to be staying home. The illnesses you mentioned do not have such an atypically long asymptomatic spread period, so if we had known what we know today in those days, they probably would not have been enough of a problem for you to even be making that comparison.
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Most of us on Slashdot can work remotely, you insensitive clod!
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Starve? Yeah? Good lord, you Americans and your black and white mentality. "We have to go to work because else EVERYONE stays home and NOBODY works and we will starve and there will be no electricity and ..."
Seriously? If it wasn't for your weapons, we wouldn't just laugh behind your back.
We don't need to starve (Score:2)
And we have plenty of food to feed everyone and have for a while now.
The problem is distribution.
As for it being "worth" going to work, yeah, when you set up a system where the alternative is death by starvation and/or the elements it's worth it.
But don't pretend that system doesn't exist, or that it needs to.
Yeah and (Score:2)
they died.
Re:There will be minor outbreaks, but it's OK (Score:5, Insightful)
. as we started locking down before, they were worried that even with the lockdown hospitals would all be overwhelmed.
Nope they literally weren't. Are you another one of those people who doesn't understand the word "unmitigated" ?
Yet no-where was that true
Of course, because we prevented that.
even before the lockdown should have started showing an effect.
It did. That's what the exponential rise in cases and ICU admissions was showing.
Look if the senate committee ever needs an expert on armchair trolling I'm sure they'll give you a call. In the meantime we'll defer to actual experts on this topic. After all you have if nothing else demonstrated in the past 4 months that you literally know nothing about infectious disease control.
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I see, so multiple cities opened up field hospitals in conventions centers just for the fun of it? Or because they were just bored?
As I said, a moron who doesn't know what unmitigated means.
Re:There will be minor outbreaks, but it's OK (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the thing... as we started locking down before, they were worried that even with the lockdown hospitals would all be overwhelmed. Yet no-where was that true, even before the lockdown should have started showing an effect.
On the corona virus, why do you continuously post things that are outright false. Apparently you have never heard of New York City [newscientist.com]
So then it follows that even with some kind of second wave from opening up, hospitals will still not be overwhelmed - and now people are more cautious with many wearing masks, and distancing.
Extrapolation one situation with another is terrible logic. If a spike of 1000x more cases appears, the hospitals will be overwhelmed.
So it really doesn't matter if we have further outbreaks because we'll never get as close to overwhelming hospital capacity as we were.
This statement is baffling in the sheer misunderstanding of basic numbers. If 1% of the US population has to be hospitalized, that’s 2M more than total US hospital capacity.
Also a lot of the most susceptible have already been sick, so that reduces the numbers from a second round even further.
And what facts is this based upon? I fail to see any evidence of this outrageous claim. Anecdotally I know of 50 or so people who would be considered susceptible and none of them have had it.
Re:There will be minor outbreaks, but it's OK (Score:4, Informative)
Since you are a man of math, you understand that the cases of COVID were doubling every 1-3 days, and you understand how quickly that kind of growth can overwhelm.....anything.
Re:There will be minor outbreaks, but it's OK (Score:4, Insightful)
In addition to a misleading and exaggerated Y axis
Linear with a zero origin is misleading and exaggerated?
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Squirrels? Where?!?
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Squirrels? Where?!?
I adore you too, bro. Cheers!
They're reacting to other people's anger (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead they take this to mean they're winning.
It's a weird behavior and took me a bit to wrap my head around it. The problem is they're approaching it like sports game. In sports if the other side is "on the ropes" so to speak you can see them visibly upset.
When we s
Re:They're reacting to other people's anger (Score:5, Insightful)
It might not be for such confrontational, tribal or nefarious reasons.
It may be simply that people are going BROKE and do not have money to pay rent, mortgage or buy food.
They need to work to earn money.
This is not a minority of people in the US, this is growing, you have people in food lines for handouts that have NEVER before needed handouts.
Life is all a risk/reward balance....we can't keep the economy down as it is much longer, especially if the goal is to wait it out till there is a vaccine or even what many would consider sufficient testing, people are starting to get desperate and that situation is only going to get worse.
And the longer small businesses are shut down, the more of them that will go out of business and never re-open, compounding the job problems.
I'm not for the reckless behaviors we've seen by many, but the general push to get things going again, isn't just us/them...it is for being able to attain the basic necessities for life....food, shelter, etc.
I don't see people protesting for that (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes sense. Such protests would be centered around increased unemployment benefits and stimulus payments, not just getting back to work. Also polls show nobody's expecting to get back to normal when the official lock downs are over.
To be blunt, the protesters are really just being organized by right wing media and think tanks with specific goal of reopening before it's safe. This isn't just to keep profits high or secure Donald Trump's re-election, it's also to ensure that people don't realize how much money the country has and how little of it they have.
If we let people have food and shelter for a protracted period without working there is a real danger they'll come to expect those things as rights. Americans have very, very low self esteem (speaking as a nerd I recognized the signs) and our betters aim to keep it that way.
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one of the problems I see with the anti-lock down folks is that they see the rest of the country freaking out over dangerous protests and they don't take that as a reason to pay attention, be cautious or reevaluate their decisions. Instead they take this to mean they're winning.
At first I thought I was seeing a faint glimmer of self awareness in you. But then I realized you weren't saying to reevaluate your own decisions on deriding and gleefully watching the suffering of people that are willing to risk their health and freedom to stand up for yours. But no, they are all just idiots too tribal to see your superior, enlightened view.
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The goal was not to flatten the curve,
Everyone at the time said the goal was to flatten the curve, every medical expert, every politician. So I don't know WFT you're smoking, but you should probably cut back.
The goal of flattening the curve is not herd immunity>/quote>
OK, so the goal was flattening the curve then. Good, we agree. Herd immunity is not precisely the goal here, it's the inevitable outcome. For anything that spreads fast, you're going to get herd immunity before you get a vaccine. That's just exponential growth for you. The goal of flattening the curve is to reduce lives lost through hospitals being over capacity while we make it to herd immunity.
Did your parents not love you enough?
I get that you don't have an argument here against only yhr vulnerable isolating themselves, but I don't even understand the emotional basis for objecting. Everyone should isolate themselves out of ... sympathy for those who have to?
Look, this thing doesn't stop until herd immunity. We want it to spread quickly though people who have little risk when they get to to protect those who are at risk! As long as we don't overwhelm hospitals, the quicker we get to herd immunity while isolating the vulnerable, the fewer will die.
But we didn't achieve that, and now, because people always cheat eventually, the Rona is spreading through elderly communities. We didn't get herd immunity in time. The virus didn't burn itself out. It's sadly too late.
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Everyone at the time said the goal was to flatten the curve, every medical expert, every politician. So I don't know WFT you're smoking, but you should probably cut back.
"flatten the curve" is a soundbite. Go back and look at the pictures they were showing and the explanation of what they were doing and why. And you'll see that the end goal was never to simply make the curve flat and then go back to work.
Just because we're in a covid pandemic doesn't mean you shouldn't exercise your brain a bit.
Re: 15 Days to Flatten The Curve! (Score:2)
Now try actually answering rather than obviously deliberately misunderstanding?
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Now that we know elderly groups are the most vulnerable to COVID-19 we should ask that the most vulnerable among us isolate themselves while the rest of us go back to our lives.
Did your parents not love you enough? Your grandma not bake you enough cookies when you were young? Or is this just the typical: I want mine, fuck everyone else, attitude?
You're the reason we can't have nice things like freedom, as you demonstrate clearly you will use it to fuck over others.
You're way out of line here. If there is a segment of the population that is most vulnerable it stands to reason they need to take more precautions. That doesn't mean we don't care about them or care for them.
Just because some people can't swim is no reason to close the pools and beaches to people who can.
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Great, so go and swim, but try not to get everyone else wet in the process.
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You're way out of line here. If there is a segment of the population that is most vulnerable it stands to reason they need to take more precautions. That doesn't mean we don't care about them or care for them.
Just because some people can't swim is no reason to close the pools and beaches to people who can.
Actually, isolating the vulnerable doesn't work. It helps, but it doesn't help nearly enough. The point where that approach falls apart is when you consider assisted living facilities. Those facilities require skilled nursing, doctors, etc. And it just takes one nurse or doctor becoming an asymptomatic spreader to start the fire, at which point it burns through the facility like a plasma cutter through a steel plate.
So now, you don't just have to isolate the people who live there. You have to isolate t
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"Prematurely" means "there is a spike in coronavirus infections" as far as this guy is concerned. He's positioning himself to say "See! I TOLD YOU SO. If only you had been smart enough to LISTEN TO ME!!!"....
Of course, if nothing much happens, he can say "Look, they listened to me. So of course nothing went wrong"....
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Of course, if nothing much happens, he can say "Look, they listened to me. So of course nothing went wrong"....
I guess we can safely assume he won't have to resort to that.
Re:The fella should define "prematurely" (Score:5, Informative)
Why won't this learned fella define what "prematurely" actually is?
I'm confused by your post and that of another responder, what about his articulate response wasn't enough of a definition for you? What about the lead-up and follow-up from Senator Patty Murray? I interpreted his answer as being one that encouraged a slow-roll back to normality that met Murray's question head-on.
"...a guideline framework of how to safely open America again and there are several checkpoints in that... depending on the dynamics of an outbreak in a city or area which would determine the speed and the pace with which one re-enters or re-opens... {talks about going by guidelines and checkpoints which have been very well thought out and delineated}..." - so prematurely is before they meet the official checkpoints. To which Sen. Murray brought up the commitment to meet their testing goals for May and June, then referenced the strategic plan, etc.. Following that was a discussion on improving the supply chain for testing & PPE "as we progressively open".
Based on listening to the entire testimony and all parties therein, it sounds like the opening is based on the number of cases in an area, which also hinges on the availability of testing materials, and that there isn't a specific date but rather a process that's late out in the aforementioned guideline. Dr. Fauci has clearly said in the past that rural areas with a sparse population can open up sooner than dense areas of concern, like Detroit, for example.
Re: The fella should define "prematurely" (Score:2)
The anti intellectual "view".
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Very obviously it's a political and not a scientific decision to do so. Scientific ethics would have required to do animal testing first before trying it on humans.
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Or maybe you don't comprehend how many deaths there will be from the extreme shutdown that was carried too far and made too many businesses close that didn't really need to.
The UN says there will be hundreds of thousands of children dead because of that, outweighing the body count from virus which is mostly old people anyway.
What's in your water, you shill for child starvation and disease?
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How is what I said "brain dead"? It is becoming reality as tens of millions in the USA are being thrust into poverty.
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It's not necessarily that people don't understand basic math - this is just a nerd holier than thou projection onto *everyone else* - to feed our constant need for self-worth after our childhoods.
It's that people just don't think it can happen to them, or the thing *they* are doing is fine, but everyone *else* is an idiot propagating an exponential curve.
*I'm just seeing my close friend* or
*I'm just going to the store* or
**my* trip is necessary* or
*my* work is necessary
But of course when viewed to the *othe