OT (not really): COVID-19 Discussion Thread
With sports currently shut down, there is little to talk about other than the current pandemic. There have been a few threads on this, but nothing today and nothing currently on the page 1 of the board.
With life drastically altered, I, for one, miss so many of the mundane aspects of life, one of which is my discussions / arguments / laughs with the community on this board. Hence, this topic.
Here are a few questions / comments to get the discussion started, but feel free to chime in with your own:
1. When do you think that we will resume primarily normal activities in this country. By that, I don't mean 100% normal, but open bars and restaurants, most kids back in school, resumption of sports and open offices?
The decision is not so clear. On the one hand, we want to protect people from this scourge. On the other, locking down the world is going to have devastating real life financial consequences (not just the markets, but real people losing real jobs that won't come back for quite some time) if this goes on for more than a week or so. My prediction is that on or around April 1, the Fed government will announce that the 15 days to stop the spread did enough to slow the disease that the medical resources can deal with this disease. The reality is that almost all of the fatalities have been in a very defined group of people - older people or those with compromised immune systems. I can see a lifting of many of the shutdowns, but with advisories and restrictions left in place for such people. I can also see more localized shutdowns remaining in place in hot spots such as NY and Cali.
2. If the country is open for business by May, why would the NCAA not consider hosting "March Madness" then. Yes, it would require a massive amount of logistical work, but (a) the athletes who worked so hard deserve the opportunity to play; and (b) it would be a huge positive for the country's morale and for the economy (which is very needed). In my view, hosting the Tourney in May or June is the right, and patriotic, thing to do.
So trust your economic predictions but don't trust any predictions on COVID-19.
Got it.
No, the 5 million per month number is worldwide. I thought I was replying to a post about worldwide deaths, but it wasn't clear.
Anybody can create a computer model. That doesn't immediately translate to reality. It's somebody's best guess, given what is known at the time.
Projections are fine, but the fear-mongering turns projections into absolutes. "If we do nothing now, XYZ will happen in ABC timeframe." People turn probabilities Into absolutes very easily.
Did anyone watch Bill Ackman’s interview yesterday? He may have a negative bias but he painted a damn grim picture. His view was 30 days hard core lock down.
I agree with him, ok
Lol, stick with me ok, he was clearly having a bad day, ok, probably because of his dad, ok. But his viewpoints were compelling.
Ackman is an interesting guy and he's right about Herbalife even though he took a bath on it. But I can't help but wonder if he has some other short positions that would benefit from such a shutdown.
LOL...OP be like, "is calling Chinese food "Chinese" food racist?!!?
It is remarkable to me how so many people still believe they can rely on competent government officials, some of them pulling down salaries of $100K to $190K plus, to set strategic plans in motion and execute relief programs, law enforcement edicts, supplies, etc. during such crises like a pandemic.
Except we Americans have so much direct experience that directly points to the contrary - regional and national disasters that repeatedly and consistently prove that YOU CANNOT RELY on federal, state and municipal governments to respond quickly, correctly and competently in such serious matters. Terrorist attacks, tornadoes & storm relief and clean ups, floods, hurricanes (Katrina) earthquakes, LA riots, etc.
Don't get me wrong. Americans are very generous and helpful to each other, and this is sense of being good neighbors can't be found everywhere. There are so many great stories.
I'm learning a lot of embarrassing lessons about preparedness from this ordeal, and will be changing my own life priorities going forward. I'm sure I'm not alone.
This is a larger human problem. If you somehow believe that a singular being can address your "complaints" better than an organized group...you are profoundly mistaken. This is what separates us humans from other species-our ability to organize and cooperate (read Harari's stuff). Yes, here we often underperform and fail-and often for bad reason/motives. However, to be clear, here the major failure at this time is at the federal level.
There is a great deal to think about when assessing how well government responds
1. Government is not some completely separate entity. We all have a say in our government. If you value competency in handling disasters you need to make that clear at the ballot box. When many people actively vote and put into office people who don’t believe government works, it is not surprising that government doesn’t always work as well as it could.
2. It is inevitable that bad things are going to happen in disaster situations. There is only so well you can expect any entity to perform.
3. While one can point out times government has failed, that is hardly always the case. I worked in NYC during the first trade center bombing in 1993. It was amazing how quickly New York and New Jersey coordinated to develop alternative transportation plans for commuters who went through the Trade Center. I’ve actually been pretty impressed at how well some states have picked up the slack where the federal government has fallen short in this instance.
4. I can also point to many instances where corporations have failed (recently Boeing for instance). Unfortunately large organizations public or private are managed by people. It should be no surprise that just like people they sometimes rise to the challenge and sometimes don’t.
By their very nature, responding to large scale disasters/acts of god is going to be messy and mistakes will be made. At the same time hero’s will step up. On both sides of the equation that is likely to include governments, business entities, non-profits, and people acting as individuals. I absolutely think we both should expect more of government than it sometimes delivers, but as you point out, we all as individuals need to step up too.
You nailed it - I think a huge problem in this country is that its OK to have an attitude that the government does not and should not work. I'm not saying its perfect or can solve all our problems but it has the power and capability to do a lot. When we put in people who don't care or who don't believe the government should do things (or even exist) the government fails. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy. When a crisis comes along and the government doesn't do what it needs to do, they point and say "see, the government failed". But, it's only as good as we make it. After all, this is a government 'of, for and by the people'. It's US!!
And to those who argue otherwise I say: we won two World Wars, dug the Panama Canal and put a man on the moon! And we did that through the government! We can defeat this as well (I think Dr. Fauci has been doing a great job).
And I agree- the private sector is also made up of people as well, and it is prone to human error like anything else.
I mean, I agree with markusr that we shouldn't be reliant on the government and everyone should look after themselves but the government isnt' and shouldn't be totally ineffective.
March 19th, 2020 at 10:31 PM ^
Right. It's explicitly been the right's MO to strip the government and make it weak and ineffectual and then, lo and behold, those are the results we get.
No "normal" activity until we have manufactured enough virus fighting tools ... masks, gloves, suits and most importantly ventilators. We need to stock pile enough to risk going back to school, work and gathering socially. The Federal Government is now in charge of ventilator production into 3 shifts of 24/7 "war time" production ... by calling the Defense Production Act.
Testing is also huge and there have been recent breakthroughs providing thru-put to handle 1 million tests. This needs to ramp up further so we can test anyone with symptoms and find the folks that are spreading the virus then quarantine them for 3-4 weeks. That will really contain this way better than social distancing which is helping but nothing like mass testing and quarantines.
Also, the FDA is testing a 1955 malaria drug that has proved highly effective in France. Basically in 30 patients it wiped out the virus in about 5-6 days of use combined with antibiotics to treat the lung infection. If that protocol works well here, then this thing could get virtually wiped out by end of April. Just need to manufacture enough of that drug ... it is FDA approved already, so ramping up 24/7 shifts of production over the next month could be enough for everyone in America.
To me, a combination of the world's greatest minds and effort will get us back to near normal by May 1 if not sooner. Weather may play a factor into how speedy it ends as well.
Stay healthy !
30 days would be an optimistic and good goal. If we can slow the curve and get caught up then the healthy and able need to get back to work to support the country. The high risk will need to self quarantine.
If we crawl into the fetal position and hide the death toll and misery from poverty will be far worse. And fuck China’s leadership for not being open about this from the very beginning and hardly at all. My wife does business with the Chinese and they are wonderful people.
edit
I read a lot of different opinions here . the truth is we just don't know. So many people are not social distancing because they think it's bullshit' others are hoarding food and turning off the lights drawing their blinds and hiding. I don't think the country can be shut down much past the middle of May without causing a long-lasting depression.
Seems like ALL countries need to get it under control before things are back to normal. When the US gets through it there will still be other countries dealing with it, and the threat to bring it here will still exist.
May 1st. It took China over 3 months to turn the tide and they eventually took harsher action than we have.
I work for a major regional utility, and we've been told to expect to be working remotely (save for storm-related duties or any functions which require us to be on-site somewhere) for at least most of the spring, possibly into the summer. Not every classification where I work can work remotely, but those of us that can pretty much are at this point.
When the numbers get better and the virus is on the decline, I'm guessing people will probably return to work in waves instead of all at once.
I’m curious if anybody has done a real thoughtful analysis of economic impact pros and cons. I keep hearing the argument that we have to get back to working or it will be a global Economic catastrophe. I grant this may be true, but I dont see people weighing the flip side. If we resume back to normal too quickly, what is the economic impact of having millions of incremental deaths in the US alone, especially if you add the secondary impact of deaths cause by lack of resources to address the normal illnesses that people get.
I think we are in a fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t situation and I’m curious if someone is trying to quantify the impact of the shitty alternatives.
If we're going to have "millions of deaths in the US alone," we may as well stop the countermeasures that we're taking and let everybody go back to work. Again, the point of "flattening the curve" is to slow things down. The effect on the infection rate is negligible, and the effect on the fatality rate depends upon staying below hospital capacity. But if we're going to have "millions of deaths," the hospitals will be overwhelmed anyway, so we may as well not voluntarily create a recession to go with it.
J. You should take a deep breathe and read. He was suggesting millions of deaths from stopping the countermeasures, not with them. That is at least one of the key unknowns, what is the incremental number of deaths for various levels of countermeasures.
There is no scenario where millions of people die without the countermeasures that does not also include millions of people dying with the countermeasures. That "flatten the curve" graph is meant to show an inflection point when you pass the hospitals' capacity. Millions of deaths means tens of millions of hospitalized patients. That's far in excess of capacity unless we're able to spread it over years.
I think this is a premise that the world health community would disagree with.
“There is no scenario where millions of people die without the countermeasures that does not also include millions of people dying with the countermeasures”
Not if they understand the metrics they're putting out there.
People are going to get this virus. They have approximately the same likelihood of getting this virus whether we have countermeasures or not. The difference in the number of deaths is largely due to whether or not there is enough hospital space (and healthy doctors / nurses / etc) to cure them.
The current recovery rate among hospitalized patients is, what, 85%? If that dropped to zero, the fatality rate would increase by a factor of 7. So, if you start from the 2.2 million US deaths from that UK projection, and you assume that the worst case is that everybody who would need hospitalization dies, you'd have "only" 300,000 as your baseline with countermeasures.
But that's ridiculous; the recovery rate wouldn't go to zero. There are still hundreds of thousands of ventilators in the US. So, let's suppose a more realistic calculation might be that the recovery rate rose to 40% -- still terrible! But that means that your baseline, with countermeasures, is still about one million Americans.
And, of course, America represents about 5% of the world's population, so that's a without-countermeasures estimate of about 20 million dead under that scenario.
I stand by what I wrote. The problem is that people have latched onto these worst-case scenarios as an absolute roadmap to the future if nothing is done to change them. That's not reasonable.
If your analysis is correct -- I skimmed it, and it seems reasonable -- then, my argument would be that I don't think we can handle 10.5 million hospitalized patients over 90 days any better than we can over 30.
Oh, BTW, you also mentioned the flu vaccine, and you weren't the first. I don't get why people have suddenly glommed onto that as a big factor in preventing the spread of influenza A. It's relatively new -- within the last 15 years or so, I think -- and has never been particularly effective because we have to produce the flu shot before anybody really knows which strain is going to be most prevalent during a given flu season. And I don't think flu vaccinations are particularly common, in the US or worldwide.
Natural immunity might be a factor, but I really don't think the flu shot is a huge factor in slowing the rate of flu infection. (Yes, of course it's a non-zero factor, but it's not like flu death rates have dropped by two orders of magnitude or anything).
March 19th, 2020 at 10:24 PM ^
I don't think we can handle 10.5 million hospitalized patients over 90 days any better than we can over 30.
IDK where you got these numbers from, my post there had no mention of 10.5 M in 3 months, but let's have fun with 4th grade math:
10.5M/90days = 120k patients per day across the USA. According to the AHA there are over 6100 hospitals in the USA. Thats additional 20 patients per hospital per day. Significant but perhaps managable? IDK the throughput details for these patients but depends of course on hospital recovery time for this virus so I just don't know. My inclination is these won't be too bad in rural areas where contraction rates will be lower due to simple populations density, but in NYC, Bos, LA, SF, etc there will have MUCH bigger problems (that we are already seeing).
Obviously, you would triple that if it were 30 days instead and that's 60 pateints per day so almost 3 new patients per hour per hospital. Seems MUCH less managable to me, but again IDK the throughput. 5 days/patient ? so in 5 days you have 100 patients or 300 patients piled up. That's the choice.
I estimated 100,000,000 infections and a 1% hosp. rate so of course 1M patients in lets say 150 days (5months) to make the math easier. 1M/150/6100 Hospitals so thats 1 patient every day or so. That's (maybe?) best case scenario (with our current isolation policies extending the timeframe): less than 1/3 of the population getting this in 5 months at only 1% hospitalization rate gets you ONE more patient per hospital every day.
What people are worried about is if it's 2/3 the population (x2) in half the time (x2) at 5% hospitalization rate (x5). Now instead of 1 patient/ day its 20 patients per day in every hospital in the US. big difference b/c if a hospital stay is 5 days (WAG) that's 5 patients piling up or 100.
March 19th, 2020 at 10:50 PM ^
I'd say the flu vaccine prevents about 16-25% of illnesses in the US, probably a bit more or on the high side given the slight herd immunity at 40% vaccinated year to year.
Your analysis is bs. Look at countries where it is reasonably contained. South Korea and Italy had exactly the same situation at the same time yet too very different approaches. Your fatalist assumption ignores the facts. Expect more state lockdowns. Historical fact show it is possible to bring under control.
Further, even flattening the curve is more than just helping the healthcare system which reduces deaths. It delays things for medicine to kick in. Drugs will likely be available this summer and vaccines later.
And you're certain that the potential treatments that may get rolled out in the coming weeks or months are not going to reduce the death rate? Because if they do, that aspect alone with save many lives if we "flatten the curve."
No, of course I'm not certain about that. And, you're right, that could save many lives. But the recession that's being created, voluntarily, could cost many lives.
All I know is that what I see is panic, and panic is rarely the right response. It's possible that we've happened to panic directly into the best course of action, but it's also possible that we've done something that will make the situation worse.
Biggest obstacle atm is test kits still. More people than kits. My wifes group reads xrays for 3 local hospitals in California. Theyve read numerous xrays that fit the exact criteria to test, public health denies them due to availability. You cant control a virus if you cant track it. Hospitals cant hold people if they're healthy enough to leave but they also cant tell them they have it. So theres lots of bodies walking with it and my county is still not locked down.