COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (3 Viewers)

[DaveXA]

I keep seeing the phrase 'too soon'. But i have to ask what it is too soon for? Will something change if we wait longer?

I think the plan laid out by the White House did outline guidance on when to implement each phase. Iirc, 2 weeks of sustained downward trend. I don't recall if that's based on number of deaths or number of cases though.

I think too soon would be when we have little room to respond to a spike in cases. You want to give yourself some flexibility to respond to an uptick or spike if opening back up turns bad.

I think it's tough to know what the metrics should be, but as a general rule, those are the thoughts I have.

And yes, I do think waiting a bit longer can do two things. One, ensure that the downward trend is real, and not a temporary dip, and two, further lower the number of overall cases so that if a spike in cases does happen, hospitals have a bit more capacity to work with when the spike happens.

 

[Dago]

The $600 federal boost to unemployment checks that was meant to aid struggling families is triggering some confusion

"How do I say no to employees who asked to be laid off so they can get a raise?" one restaurant owner asked.

www.yahoo.com

 

[Bill]

Speaking of testis, interesting how so far to date that a larger portion of females in MS are being affected...going against the trend

COVID-19 - Mississippi State Department of Health

msdh.ms.gov

Isn't anyone worried about that 0.4% number?

 

[Eeyore]

I never would have guessed!

Security Researchers Say The Reopen America Campaign Is Being Astroturfed

Gun advocacy and conservative groups are responsible for astroturfing the reopen America campaign that has swept the US in recent days, according to research from cybersecurity experts.

www.forbes.com

 

[Brennan77]

I think the plan laid out by the White House did outline guidance on when to implement each phase. Iirc, 2 weeks of sustained downward trend. I don't recall if that's based on number of deaths or number of cases though.

I think too soon would be when we have little room to respond to a spike in cases. You want to give yourself some flexibility to respond to an uptick or spike if opening back up turns bad.

I think it's tough to know what the metrics should be, but as a general rule, those are the thoughts I have.

And yes, I do think waiting a bit longer can do two things. One, ensure that the downward trend is real, and not a temporary dip, and two, further lower the number of overall cases so that if a spike in cases does happen, hospitals have a bit more capacity to work with when the spike happens.

Speaking from a perspective in Nola, the hospitals are more or less returning to normal operation this week and are more than prepared for an inevitable spike. They were prepared for way more than what they saw actually.

 

[Eeyore]

Illinois had another record day. Is making face covering a rule.

 

[Taurus]

So here in a week or two we'll be getting to the "dance" part of things.

Openings and closings, getting as much back to normal as we can while hoping we aren't screwing ourselves for the fall. A dance that'll likely last until A: We see a nationwide spike that necessitates another general quarantine or B: Effective treatment/vaccines are developed and deployed.

Those antibody tests pointed out as showing a lower lethality for C19 have a flip side, too. This virus is silently everywhere. If we go back all la-dee-dah to business as usual, it won't start up again from a couple-three individual points, like lighting a few matches under some kindling. It'll come back from all over all at once, like igniting a puddle of gasoline.

This has got to be just maddening for researchers and policymakers. If those asymptomatic numbers hold up, it means C19 is dangerously random. How do you plan for a thing that in location A can infect 40% of the population with only a few deaths and manageable hospitalizations while location B has a 20% infection rate and the entire healthcare system teeters on the brink of collapse?
You can't just roll the dice with other people's lives. Not unless you're an insane death-cultist like the mayor of Las Vegas.

 

[efil4stnias]

Speaking from a perspective in Nola, the hospitals are more or less returning to normal operation this week and are more than prepared for an inevitable spike. They were prepared for way more than what they saw actually.

They are but aren't forgetting how quick it can turn.
The issue still remains supplies. Testing in particular.

And consensus is the fall will see a spike and be prepared.

 

[Turfie]

So many of these tests I presume are only able to give you a positive or negative result on Covid-19.

Isn’t it possible that a different virus could be to blame for a certain percentage of the flu-related deaths?

I’m assuming you could have enough Covid19 in your system to register a positive sample while also having another virus in you.

 

[sfbaysaint]

I found this very interesting read... a longish read. The author takes a long view and multiple viewpoints of the current pandemic with an essay on humans, the history of humans to want to take control and the views on death itself. In some way, he is saying that the virus is sort of providing a reset button to us, and showing that if we want, we can make massive changes on a dime.

Some excerpts from the essay.

The answer is revealing. Simply, in the face of world hunger, addiction, autoimmunity, suicide, or ecological collapse, we as a society do not know what to do. That's because there is nothing external against which to fight. Our go-to crisis responses, all of which are some version of control, aren’t very effective in addressing these conditions. Now along comes a contagious epidemic, and finally we can spring into action. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies. That makes Covid a convenient receptacle for our inchoate fears, a place to channel our growing sense of helplessness in the face of the changes overtaking the world. Covid-19 is a threat that we know how to meet. Unlike so many of our other fears, Covid-19 offers a plan.

Our civilization’s established institutions are increasingly helpless to meet the challenges of our time. How they welcome a challenge that they finally can meet. How eager they are to embrace it as a paramount crisis. How naturally their systems of information management select for the most alarming portrayals of it. How easily the public joins the panic, embracing a threat that the authorities can handle as a proxy for the various unspeakable threats that they cannot.

The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Despite security systems in almost every upper middle-class home, people are no less anxious or insecure than they were a generation ago. Despite elaborate security measures, the schools are not seeing fewer mass shootings. Despite phenomenal progress in medical technology, people have if anything become less healthy over the past thirty years, as chronic disease has proliferated and life expectancy stagnated and, in the USA and Britain, started to decline.

The measures being instituted to control Covid-19, likewise, may end up causing more suffering and death than they prevent. Minimizing deaths means minimizing the deaths that we know how to predict and measure. It is impossible to measure the added deaths that might come from isolation-induced depression, for instance, or the despair caused by unemployment, or the lowered immunity and deterioration in health that chronic fear can cause. Loneliness and lack of social contact has been shown to increase inflammation, depression, and dementia. According to Lissa Rankin, M.D., air pollution increases risk of dying by 6%, obesity by 23%, alcohol abuse by 37%, and loneliness by 45%.

There is an alternative to the paradise of perfect control that our civilization has so long pursued, and that recedes as fast as our progress, like a mirage on the horizon. Yes, we can proceed as before down the path toward greater insulation, isolation, domination, and separation. We can normalize heightened levels of separation and control, believe that they are necessary to keep us safe, and accept a world in which we are afraid to be near each other. Or we can take advantage of this pause, this break in normal, to turn onto a path of reunion, of holism, of the restoring of lost connections, of the repair of community and the rejoining of the web of life.

Do we double down on protecting the separate self, or do we accept the invitation into a world where all of us are in this together? It isn’t just in medicine we encounter this question: it visits us politically, economically, and in our personal lives as well. Take for example the issue of hoarding, which embodies the idea, “There won’t be enough for everyone, so I am going to make sure there is enough for me.” Another response might be, “Some don’t have enough, so I will share what I have with them.” Are we to be survivalists or helpers? What is life for?

https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation/

 

[SaintRob]

Now this from ER doctors in Bakersfield, CA.
I'm not saying I advocate what these doctors are saying. I'm just putting it out here because I do think it needs to be part of the debate.

Pro: These are medical professionals who are dealing with the virus up front and in person, so their opinions have some validity

Con: They are in a small town, and the reality concerning the subject of the danger of spreading the virus in small towns is very different to the reality of the danger in large cities.

I know this is a story from the news that used a clip from the doctor's youtube video. But is the youtube video really a press conference or is it staged to look like a press conference? Do these doctors who were ER doctors, but opened their own urgent care office really have the ability to even call a press conference to discuss their agenda filled presentation? This doesn't pass the smell test.

 

[bonnjer]

Question on supplies - anyone out there seeing disinfectant spray (Lysol or store brand) or disinfectant wipes in any store anywhere? If not, where is it at? Surely, they're cranking this stuff out around the clock?

 

[superchuck500]

Question on supplies - anyone out there seeing disinfectant spray (Lysol or store brand) or disinfectant wipes in any store anywhere? If not, where is it at? Surely, they're cranking this stuff out around the clock?

Ward found wipes at Costco (I think) a couple of weeks ago. I haven't seen it anywhere, nor have I seen hand sanitizer.

I have seen toilet paper once or twice. But no disinfectant at all.

 

[St. Widge]

Speaking from a perspective in Nola, the hospitals are more or less returning to normal operation this week and are more than prepared for an inevitable spike. They were prepared for way more than what they saw actually.

I tend to agree it's time for the next step but even under the Federal Phase Guidelines that means we need a robust testing program for all healthcare workers. I don't know if that is happening or even possible.

And then when you open you are supposed to have mass testing and tracking the contacts of those that tested positive. I don't think we have the tests available to do that, but I could be wrong. We are even supposed to be testing for asymptomatic cases which I don't think we are doing or able to do at this point. Then we have to have two more weeks meeting the original phase One criteria before moving to phase two.

The problem it seems to me is the lack of the ability to test. Yes, our numbers are looking very encouraging, but I don't think we have the tests that we need to move forward. Unless we decide to ignore the Federal Guidelines. And I don't see LaToya doing that.

But I do think that in New Orleans at least, it's probably time to start letting some businesses open up with strict limits on the number of people allowed and strict social distancing. But, I also think that businesses that can do work from home should be ordered to do so whenever it is possible. But, to be honest, I fear that once we let the cat out of the bag people are going to start ignoring all the social distancing rules and try to return to life as normal without masks or social distancing and we are going to end up with another stay at home order with businesses shut down in another month. But we might be able to avoid that if we could actually do wide spread testing.

 

[St. Geezy]

Now this from ER doctors in Bakersfield, CA.
I'm not saying I advocate what these doctors are saying. I'm just putting it out here because I do think it needs to be part of the debate.

Pro: These are medical professionals who are dealing with the virus up front and in person, so their opinions have some validity

Con: They are in a small town, and the reality concerning the subject of the danger of spreading the virus in small towns is very different to the reality of the danger in large cities.

This has been something that has bothered me since the beginning of this pandemic back in March, at least as far as locally. Honestly, it is a bit of a sore subject for me personally, as there was a situation at my place of employment in which I refused to have myself or my staff perform a specific task that would have put us directly in harms way for several days, dealing with thousands of members of the public, and my employer brought in their doctor they "had been consulting with regarding the pandemic" to try to ease my fears.

Of course, this was no CDC doctor or anyone of that ilk mind you - just a plain ol' local family practice doctor that they had been relying on for assessments of the situation.

After I listened to the Dr.'s spiel about how this pandemic is no big deal - there are only 30 something cases in the area right now, that even if I get it, I won't die, and in a week or two there would be no cases because it is contained and this is no different than the flu (sounds familiar I'm sure) - I then took the floor and delivered this message to both he and one of our senior executives that was in the room with us that clearly was buying everything this guy had been telling them: Being a medical doctor does not make a person a social-distancing or pandemic control expert!

A family practice medical doctor is an expert at four things - 1. A thorough understanding of how the human body works, 2.) Being able to diagnose a sickness within a human's body, 3.) Telling a human how he or she may have gotten sick, and 4.) How to treat said sickness....that's it. Him trying to explain to me anything about pandemic control or the need to social distance or not is no different than him trying to explain to me how the Cover 2 defense works - that is not your field. It is something that effects your field to a very large degree, but it is not your field.

It was a very professional and polite, but obviously contentious conversation.

Granted, and I said this to him, doctors have very sharp minds, and they are fully capable of analyzing data just like any other analytics expert can or just like any other intelligent person that has decided to pay close attention to something can, and because of that sharp mind, they may be able to come up with more accurate conclusions more times than not than the average person; but unless you work for the CDC and specialize in this specific thing, having "Dr." in front of your name does not add to your credibility with assessing a pandemic spread and the need to socially distance, nor does it give you a sudden thorough understanding of how this brand new virus works, what types of surfaces it can live on, and how long it can live on it, etc. - no one had a clue back then about any of that stuff! Opinions were all over the place and still are today, but you know it all because you are local family doctor?!

I told the doctor in that meeting that there were already hundreds of examples around the globe that clearly showed to anyone that is paying attention that if you have 30 cases and your city is still open, you will soon have 200 cases, and that will soon be thousands of cases within a few short weeks. I even also told him that the task my employer is asking us to do right now will be moot in the next 10 to 14 days anyway, as we won't even have a choice in the matter because things will be shut down in a governmental-mandatory fashion; he essentially laughed at that notion in a smug manner, and after ending the conversation politely and respectfully, we went our separate ways.

I won't callously state that I was "happy" to be right, but I did take a level of satisfaction in knowing that the analysis and research I had done myself from simply paying attention and not turning a blind eye, came to fruition. And literally, in even less than the 10 days I mentioned to him in that meeting, we were all given the "work from home" mandate by the local government, and shortly thereafter, the state, and my conversation with the doctor "consultant" became moot, just as I told him it would.