Personally I do not agree with the move. But I would not interpret it more than an attempt to control the narrative on the origin of COVID-19 amid an intense propaganda war between China and the US. It cannot be used as an evidence to link the virus to the Wuhan lab. The US Intelligence Community had released the following statement on the origin of the virus: Here is an excerpt from a recent CNN report on the topic: By the way, what is your opinion of this report? It looks like US local governments also try to avoid being blamed for spreading the virus. Excerpt: Last month China had revised the official death count of confirmed cases in Wuhan from 2579 to 3869. The work took nearly one month and involved multiple government departments. According to the press, the work requires consolidating multiple data sources, removing duplicate and incorrect data, as well as tracing down every confirmed case and filling missing data. Therefore, the work of tracking people dying at home before they could get a test requires a lot more effort and time. Moreover, local governments in Wuhan released the total death toll only once per year before COVID-19 so I am not sure there are monthly official numbers available to compare with the numbers this year. One may have to wait for the demographic statistics released next year to get an idea of how many excess deaths there were.
I missed where he covered that testing has skyrocketed. If we had zero tests then we would have zero cases. Spectacularly Trumpian logic by the opinion writer. Anyhow, I'll be curious where the trend goes in the coming weeks. In Texas, we are still in the same range of percentage of tests positive that we have been in for about 2 weeks.
First of all we have seen this scope of death in our lives. We are just blindly accustomed to it because it is our gratuitous, sedentary American lifestyle of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, pill dependency, and violence against ourselves or against others here and abroad. However, I do get your point. Also, I fully understand a lot of the points you are making. You are right we don't know the long term effects of covid-19 infection, however we won't know that for a long time either. The respiratory issues have no indication that they are long term or chronic unless you are put on a ventilator or life support. This is simply not a risk for anyone under 50 (and older depending on health) to worry about. The sense of smell returns in almost all cases so far. What other longer term risks are you concerned about? Specifically, what risks do you feel necessitate the shutdown of everything until we understand them? My point with the elderly is that we will likely end up seeing that a very large percentage of the deaths in elderly populations will come from long term care facilities. It sucks and it's crude to do, but I think separating out these deaths is necessary. Currently we know about 33% of deaths from covid have happened at these facilities. I suspect it's actually a good bit higher due to the NY reporting data. They are only reporting about 20% of their deaths have from LTCF versus neighboring states which are MUCH higher. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/state-data-and-policy-actions-to-address-coronavirus/ CT - 46% NJ - 53% MA - 60% PA - 70% In all likelihood we are probably closer to 40%+ of deaths coming from LTCF. That would also more closely match up with Spain, Italy, Sweden, etc which are all around 40%-50% of deaths coming from LTCF. Total speculation on my part, but it seems to make more sense. Anyhow, I'm not saying sacrifice them for the good of society. I'm saying how do we model what risks we are truly looking at for the vast majority of American society. One way I tried to model it was from the New York City data. It was easy to access and I think they do a good job tracking things. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page They were also a major infection site and they have done some decent antibody testing so far that seems to indicate 15%-25% of the population was infected. Obviously, we won't know for sure until the Roche tests become widespread. I'll let you go wild with the numbers but I saw it as something that is roughly about 5x-10x more deadly than the flu+pneumonia depending on your age group...if I'm remembering right. You can also see from the NYC data just how much harder this thing hammers anyone with any of those underlying conditions stated. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-05072020-1.pdf Yes I am fully aware that probably like half of America falls in that category (that kind of goes back to my point in my first sentence of the post). So what is your plan? Shut everything down until the virus is completely gone? Keep things locked down another month nationwide? Maybe only the hot spots? Is it acceptable to execute this state by state? Do we wait until we have a full understanding of the depth of infection in each state? That new Roche antibody test finally seems like the true game changer on that front. Do we wait for fully proven therapeutics? What metric are you looking for? There's a ton of questions I could pose, but I think my point is what exactly do you do other than shut everything down indefinitely? Your points are valid and I understand them, but they aren't working towards any solutions from how I read them.
When in our lifetimes have we seen over 70K Americans die from primarily one cause in less than 2 months? Yes I fully understand that people die all the time but this argument frankly seems rather morbid. I don't recall this argument made during 9/11 when the death toll was about equal to one day of COVID-19. There is quite a bit of evidence that the virus causes blood clots that cause organ damage to organs besides the lungs. There is evidence of neurological effects. A lot of this information has already been posted in this thread. This is a novel virus. By definition we don't know anything about what the long term effects are. It's a guess to just presume there isn't long term effects. You've specifically cited 50 plus. The vast majority of people in their 50's don't live in LTCF and are contributing to society. How do you factor those in? What the plan should be has already been out there. We need to rapidly increase testing (and yes the Roche test is a good sign but it's not yet widely in use). We need have a system for contact tracing. We need to see a flattening off of the curve nationwide, because of free movement we can't do this state by state. We're already seeing rural areas starting to get hit by this disease hard. Basically we should've followed what the CDC put out, what SK and Taiwan are doing. We're not anywhere near those steps.. Frankly what you and others are proposing is essentially surrender to the virus. What's most unsettling is that practically the decision has already been made. With states relaxing or repealing standards. With many people no longer doing even the simple stuff like wear masks and socially distance to fight this virus.
The solution is for Donald Trump, Congress and every politician to get off their ass and do their damn job in a public health crisis by providing the tests needed for every American to be tested for COVID-19, whether they are symptomatic or not, free of charge. Assign people or families certain days and testing locations to visit according to their last name. Also, a national contact tracing program should be implemented. Furthermore, how about we use the CDC guidelines that states were supposed to meet before beginning any reopening efforts? No state has met the criteria for reopening, yet we have numerous states reopening while Trump is trying to wish the disease away, and Republicans are blocking the release of public health reports concerning when it is safe enough to reopen the country if they don’t support their position. Texas has tested a whopping 2% of its population. That’s not nearly enough to warrant safely reopening the state in any capacity. The story is similar across America. Also, even if businesses open up right now, many people do not have the disposable income to use on non-essential activities, and good luck getting sensible people to sit down in a restaurant, workout in a gym, go get a haircut, etc when less than 10% of Americans have been tested to date.
This is physically not possible. All the tests in the entire world wouldn't be able to test 10% of Americans, and that's ignoring the fact that one test doesn't solve the problem because you could still get the virus next week. The US is at about 2.5% of people tested (assuming 1 test/person). The best of the major developed countries is Spain at 4%. The gold standard, South Korea, is at 1.2%. The European gold standard, Germany, is at 3.3%. The "we need more testing" is true today, will be true next month, and will likely be true this fall. With unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, and the fact that people have not been spending the last 6 weeks, a large number of people have more cash now than before - disposable income in the short-term largely isn't an issue. It may become one, though, in several months if jobs don't return and UI benefits run out. That said, I don't understand this argument. If you don't think people will spend on non-essential activities, that addresses the "everyone's running out not protecting themselves" issue, right? If businesses are empty, then that means people are social distancing. Keep in mind the CDC is a medical agency - they provide gold standard info on medical things. Their standards are the ideal time to open from a purely Covid-19 health standpoint and in a theoretical world where everyone follows all guidelines. But they don't consider, for example, how many people are getting sick or dying from other diseases as a result of this. Their social distancing guidelines don't consider that people might simply stop listening at some point. They don't consider the health effects of an economic depression. You wouldn't want to listen to economists on medical issues, and you don't want to listen to doctors on economic issues. Re-opening an economy should be a partnership between medicine, economists, and sociologists (the latter to help figure out if guidelines become less effective over time, what the best strategy to get people to listen is, etc). In theory, a task force is the right solution there - the big problem is our task forces are mostly politicized. Right now, we're in an economic pause - it can go a bit longer, but we're not really sure how much, before it becomes a long-term depression and has an endless series of its own short and long-term health consequences. The challenge here is how to balance the immediate crisis with the potential future one and prevent temporary job losses from becoming permanent ones, while also not getting people killed in the process. Anyone who claims to know the absolute right answer to this is delusional. It's not just Trump or the GOP - every country in the world is struggling with these questions and making guesses in real-time on how to handle this. Left-leaning states that are "listening to the science" are also starting processes of opening up as well.
Fair enough, but it’s still the giant elephant in the room. Until every nation can effectively test its citizens, there’s no way people will be comfortable in situations involving close personal contact with another person. Economic gains will be minimal until customer confidence changes dramatically for the better. The only way to accomplish that is with more testing. Also, how hard is it for every state in America to follow the CDC guidelines for reopening that were established from the beginning? That would be a good start. If unemployed Americans use their stimulus checks and unemployment benefits on non-essential activities right now, they haven’t learned anything from this pandemic about the importance of having money saved in crisis situations. Also, the argument is states are ignoring the CDC reopening guidelines for minimal economic gain, if any. Sensible people aren’t going to be rushing out to spend money on non-essential activities when they don’t have a job, and consumer confidence is at a record low. I’m happy that the vast majority of Americans are still social distancing and only going out when absolutely necessary, but, for the economy to truly recover, you have to improve consumer confidence, which isn’t going to happen by reopening before the CDC guidelines are met. In a public health crisis, states should follow the recommendations and guidelines established by the country’s preeminent public health agency (the CDC) for lifting stay-at-home orders. It isn’t that hard. They are the expert in this field, after all. If certain individuals think they are above following special crisis orders, punish them accordingly. The problem is states aren’t following recommendations and guidelines from medical experts for reopening, which should be the first step in the process to relaunch the economy. After those standards have been met, you then create a joint task force to develop an economic plan moving forward. I’m not suggesting that we continue stay-at-home orders forever. However, they should be continued on a state-by-state basis until each individual state has met the CDC guidelines for reopening. Considering it took Wuhan 76 days to reopen, that would make June 1 a reasonable target date.
I feel like we're ****ed no matter what we do, Re: re-opening. personally, my family is fine with the current situation. but if I or the mrs get laid off (not likely but not impossible) then that changes. I worry about the death and lowering of quality of life that will come from the depression that will inevitably result from this shutdown. I worry about the increase in deaths and long-term health issues that will inevitably result from a re-opening. I worry about the ratchet effect, where the govt seizes control over more aspects of everyday life during a crisis then does not scale back a commensurate amount after the crisis. I worry about this being an election year, so the incumbent's primary motive is to be popular (and therefore re-elected) as policies that are beneficial in the immediate tend to be harmful in the long run (this is especially true of economic policies, hence Keynes' "we're all dead in the long run."). So I have no answers. I honestly don't know if we have any options other than to let this thing run its course until there is a widely-available vaccine, which is a shitty and awful thing. But that's where I'm at right now, 10:45am on 5/8/20.
How badly are states doing on this, though? There are three core tests: #1 Symptoms: I'm not sure that we even track this info, so I'm not sure how we'd get this one right. #2 Cases: There are two options on cases - one is decreasing case #s and the other is decreasing positive-test rate. Nationally, our positive test rate has been decreasing substantially, so presumably, a bunch of states must have done so as well. #3 Hospitals: Most (or all?) states are able to treat all patients without crisis case, and healthcare worker testing is up dramatically. So many states have likely met #2 and #3, and I don't know if they are even capable of measuring #1.
Pretty much this. We've practically already decided as a society that we're going to let this run the course. Too many states have backed off doing what's necessary to contain it and too may people are not doing the simple things. Contagious diseases are the Achilles heal of our a largely open and mobile society.
So, they are now pretty much testing everyone that works at the White House everyday. They clearly see the importance of testing in the workplace. It’s really going to be difficult to convince people it’s safe to return to work when it’s not even safe to work at the White House. We need way more free available testing. Not sure how to get it done, but we’ve already spent trillions on this virus. Spend whatever it takes to make testing available on a massive scale.
given current modes of testing (time consuming, resource intensive) this is beyond our reach. Am hopeful for some new techniques coming online and am still hopeful for good antibody testing.
This is really sad. Love me some Sweet Tomatoes, totally going to miss it. Better than any soup/salad place on the planet Sweet Tomatoes closing for good amid coronavirus pandemic, report says https://www.click2houston.com/news/...r-good-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-report-says/
