At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[Bo Diddley]

We will have only delayed the inevitable, and this delay of the inevitable should have been balanced against the massive societal cost of delaying the inevitable. I don't know if there will be a second spike or what it will look like. I'm just articulating that if there's a second spike, it's an argument for not having done the shutdown in the first place. Some may counter that that's an argument for staying shut down (some radicals are advocating this, actually), but that's not going to happen.

It would be an argument with the benefit of hindsight. A big reason for doing the social distancing is to give people time to develop a vaccine or other treatment.

[wapiti]

It would be an argument with the benefit of hindsight. A big reason for doing the social distancing is to give people time to develop a vaccine or other treatment.

It would be better to go through the peak than to go through the economic effects that we are experiencing now for an extended period. Shutting down through April has prompted over $4 Trillion in stimulus. That's basically for 6 weeks of shutdown. The stimulus is also wildly inefficient and can't possibly hit all the right targets. A 1 year shut down would send us into a multi-year economic catastrophe that rivals the depression.

[Omaha 680]

It would be an argument with the benefit of hindsight. A big reason for doing the social distancing is to give people time to develop a vaccine or other treatment.

Hmmm. I don't think that is right. Everyone has always said a vaccine was 12-18 months away. If their plan all along was to slow peddle rolling shutdowns for 18 months, then screw them. Fortunately(?) they are not that devious because they don't appear to have a real plan. The shutdown as sold to us was to buy time to ramp up medical capacity and also spread the infection curve over time to avoid overwhelming the system, which would lead to preventable deaths. Everyone is all over SU (and I would prefer he be less bombastic and personal in his arguments) but I think he has a point about the second wave. If a second wave was always unavoidable and the same number of people would be infected over time (leading to the same number of deaths), then what TF are we doing this for?

We were all on board for the shutdown when Imperial College said 2 million dead if we stayed open. When that rapidly came down, we were all on board to ramp up medical capacity to avoid deaths in treatable cases. Now we want a plan forward. We want to know the real mortality rate for different age groups and at-risk conditions. Then we want some common sense opening up and allowing people to make their own risk calculations. Give us the real data and let us decide. And common sense opening would recognize that it is absurd to treat the entire country like the tri-state area, which clearly was in a uniquely vulnerable situation in America. Note the IHME model initially projected 125k to 200k deaths WITH FULL MITIGATION through June. Look around, we are doing our part but Utah and many other parts of the country are nowhere near "full mitigation". Yet the cases continue to peak very early everywhere. I am not anti-science or anti-models. I love Fauci and Birx and think all the modelers have made good faith efforts with the data available. But the more I watch the numbers the more I think something is going on besides distancing to cause the numbers to come in so much lower. I'm not saying open up everything now, antibody surveys are an important piece of the puzzle and should be happening at a much higher rate than they are.

It appears MBN and NWC are for hunkering down for the next few months until the case load comes way down and then testing 10s of millions and contact tracing millions more and I certainly respect their knowledge on the subject (I'm just a humble train engineer). I don't think that is practical at all in the US. Also if the choice is 18 months of rolling lockdowns with smartphone notifications and ankle bracelets and certificates of immunity and endless stimulus and debt, or taking some educated and calculated risks for the bulk of the population who are the least vulnerable, then count me out for the former. I think doing that would so irreparably alter the economy and our relationship with our government that it would be nowhere near worth it.

[Omaha 680]

It would be better to go through the peak than to go through the economic effects that we are experiencing now for an extended period. Shutting down through April has prompted over $4 Trillion in stimulus. That's basically for 6 weeks of shutdown. The stimulus is also wildly inefficient and can't possibly hit all the right targets. A 1 year shut down would send us into a multi-year economic catastrophe that rivals the depression.

1 year shutdown would be orders of magnitude worse than the great depression. This really is unprecedented and it's not alarmist to point it out. Annualized GDP contraction for 2Q is predicted anywhere from 40% to 70%. We can't do that over a full year. We are going to hit 30% unemployment already. Do we want 40 or 50? There would be riots in the streets.

[Bo Diddley]

Hmmm. I don't think that is right. Everyone has always said a vaccine was 12-18 months away. If their plan all along was to slow peddle rolling shutdowns for 18 months, then screw them. Fortunately(?) they are not that devious because they don't appear to have a real plan. The shutdown as sold to us was to buy time to ramp up medical capacity and also spread the infection curve over time to avoid overwhelming the system, which would lead to preventable deaths. Everyone is all over SU (and I would prefer he be less bombastic and personal in his arguments) but I think he has a point about the second wave. If a second wave was always unavoidable and the same number of people would be infected over time (leading to the same number of deaths), then what TF are we doing this for?

We were all on board for the shutdown when Imperial College said 2 million dead if we stayed open. When that rapidly came down, we were all on board to ramp up medical capacity to avoid deaths in treatable cases. Now we want a plan forward. We want to know the real mortality rate for different age groups and at-risk conditions. Then we want some common sense opening up and allowing people to make their own risk calculations. Give us the real data and let us decide. And common sense opening would recognize that it is absurd to treat the entire country like the tri-state area, which clearly was in a uniquely vulnerable situation in America. Note the IHME model initially projected 125k to 200k deaths WITH FULL MITIGATION through June. Look around, we are doing our part but Utah and many other parts of the country are nowhere near "full mitigation". Yet the cases continue to peak very early everywhere. I am not anti-science or anti-models. I love Fauci and Birx and think all the modelers have made good faith efforts with the data available. But the more I watch the numbers the more I think something is going on besides distancing to cause the numbers to come in so much lower. I'm not saying open up everything now, antibody surveys are an important piece of the puzzle and should be happening at a much higher rate than they are.

It appears MBN and NWC are for hunkering down for the next few months until the case load comes way down and then testing 10s of millions and contact tracing millions more and I certainly respect their knowledge on the subject (I'm just a humble train engineer). But if the choice is 18 months of rolling lockdowns with smartphone notifications and ankle bracelets and certificates of immunity and endless stimulus and debt, or taking some educated and calculated risks for the bulk of the population who are the least vulnerable, then count me out for the former. I think doing that would so irreparably alter the economy and our relationship with our government that it would be nowhere near worth it.

I remember reading it early on that one of the big reasons for social distancing was to give time to develop a vaccine. Even now if you google social distancing and vaccine, you'll fine many people saying that we will continue some level of social distancing until we have a vaccine. That seems to make my point.

[Omaha 680]

I remember reading it early on that one of the big reasons for social distancing was to give time to develop a vaccine. Even now if you google social distancing and vaccine, you'll fine many people saying that we will continue some level of social distancing until we have a vaccine. That seems to make my point.

Come on, at least give some links Uncle Ted style! Maybe you are right. My recollection is "flattening the curve" was all about avoiding overwhelming the system. We saw the graph with the two infection curves (unmitigated and flattened) and the horizontal medical capacity line in almost every article early on. That graphic has disappeared now that we have successfully avoided overwhelming the system. And I realize there are many voices now saying we will continue social distancing until we have a vaccine. I just don't think that was said very loudly in the beginning.

I'm not even opposed to continuing forms of distancing. I am absolutely opposed to broad shutdowns for very much longer.

[Bo Diddley]

Come on, at least give some links Uncle Ted style! Maybe you are right. My recollection is "flattening the curve" was all about avoiding overwhelming the system. We saw the graph with the two infection curves (unmitigated and flattened) and the horizontal medical capacity line in almost every article early on. That graphic has disappeared now that we have successfully avoided overwhelming the system. And I realize there are many voices now saying we will continue social distancing until we have a vaccine. I just don't think that was said very loudly in the beginning.

I'm not even opposed to continuing forms of distancing. I am absolutely opposed to broad shutdowns for very much longer.

Heh. Too much work, especially on a phone. Ted works hard!

I think it's inevitable that we'll open things up in stages, likely within the next month. Just as social distancing was about acting responsibly for those who are vulnerable, opening things up is responsible for all those struggling economically.

No doubt we'll have debates rage for a long time about what we should have done. For my part, I really believe the US dropped the ball on testing. What we have really need to properly fight this and make decisions is data.

[SeattleUte]

I wish everyone’s posts were as thoughtful, informative, and reasoned as Omaha’s.

[SeattleUte]

I remember reading it early on that one of the big reasons for social distancing was to give time to develop a vaccine. Even now if you google social distancing and vaccine, you'll fine many people saying that we will continue some level of social distancing until we have a vaccine. That seems to make my point.

This is false. They’ve said from the beginning that vaccine was 18 months away (I don’t know if that’s true, but what they said!). Nobody said this shutdown was to wait for a vaccine. People would not have been so quiescent. You won’t find anything supporting that assertion. Even if you did, it would be totally ill-informed. The problem from the beginning (which I noted from the beginning) wa that the purpose was to “flatten the curve” (what a vacuous term people like to repeat), and some of us were asking, then what? Well, here we are.

[tooblue]

This is false. They’ve said from the beginning that vaccine was 18 months away (I don’t know if that’s true, but what they said!). Nobody said this shutdown was to wait for a vaccine. People would not have been so quiescent. You won’t find anything supporting that assertion. Even if you did, it would be totally ill-informed. The problem from the beginning (which I noted from the beginning) wa that the purpose was to “flatten the curve” (what a vacuous term people like to repeat), and some of us were asking, then what? Well, here we are.

Herd immunity in California? A Stanford expert on why we're nowhere close

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/california-coronavirus-herd-immunity-early-spread-stanford-expert-interview

"With a disease like this, you probably need somewhere on the order of 60% or more people to have immunity in order to prevent an epidemic. Right now, if we’re at less than 5%; you would need at least ten- to twelve-fold that level. The only way to get there is to vaccinate people or else have horrific transmissions, and we can’t do the latter. So we’re going to have to continue some social distancing efforts."

[Moliere]

Come on, at least give some links Uncle Ted style! Maybe you are right. My recollection is "flattening the curve" was all about avoiding overwhelming the system. We saw the graph with the two infection curves (unmitigated and flattened) and the horizontal medical capacity line in almost every article early on. That graphic has disappeared now that we have successfully avoided overwhelming the system. And I realize there are many voices now saying we will continue social distancing until we have a vaccine. I just don't think that was said very loudly in the beginning.

I'm not even opposed to continuing forms of distancing. I am absolutely opposed to broad shutdowns for very much longer.

Social distancing will continue but not the shut down. I went to the woodworking store today (they are essential because they are a hardware store) and bought some stuff. The store had probably 6-8 people in it shopping which was typical before the pandemic. Everything was normal except people stayed 6 feet away. No one was wearing a mask. We were all safe. I washed my hands when I got home.

It is ridiculous that all stores are closed. I get restaurants, movie theaters, arenas/stadiums, etc. but stores, offices and parks (yes, Houston closed the local parks last weekend), that’s insane.

[Uncle Ted]

0.3% death rate among the infected. Not very high

And dropping . . .

Now, only 3x of the seasonal flu... and we usually have a vaccine for the flu that the fatties and high risk folk all get.

[Bo Diddley]

This is false. They’ve said from the beginning that vaccine was 18 months away (I don’t know if that’s true, but what they said!). Nobody said this shutdown was to wait for a vaccine. People would not have been so quiescent. You won’t find anything supporting that assertion. Even if you did, it would be totally ill-informed. The problem from the beginning (which I noted from the beginning) wa that the purpose was to “flatten the curve” (what a vacuous term people like to repeat), and some of us were asking, then what? Well, here we are.

I echo your lament. I wish everyone’s posts were as thoughtful, informative, and reasoned as Omaha’s.

And nice touch with the caveat that if (after a simple google search) anyone who said it was ill informed.

So the goal from the beginning was to flatten the curve? For no other reason than to flatten the curve? That's a nice piece of logic there.

[myboynoah]

I echo your lament. I wish everyone’s posts were as thoughtful, informative, and reasoned as Omaha’s.

And nice touch with the caveat that if (after a simple google search) anyone who said it was ill informed.

So the goal from the beginning was to flatten the curve? For no other reason than to flatten the curve? That's a nice piece of logic there.

Yep, it's like climbing mountains.

[tooblue]

0.3% death rate among the infected. Not very high

It's not just an issue of deaths, it's an issue of how many are sick and unable to work for 3 - 4 weeks at a time. Now, if we were talking about lawyers sure who cares, but we are talking about highly trained and skilled health care workers.

If 0.3% is no big deal, why are states and countries calling on retirees and relaxing regulatory procedures to allow for more health care workers to immediately help deal with the epidemic:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/25/820706226/states-get-creative-to-find-and-deploy-more-health-workers-in-covid-19-fight

"'The reality is that we're facing the inevitable shortage of health care providers,' says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "The people that are coming into close contact — and therefore in greatest danger — are the doctors and nurses and people directly examining patients who possibly have coronavirus."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/nhs-dads-army-plan-for-coronavirus-spread-pandemic-strategy

"Britain has asked 65,000 former nurses and doctors to return to work and will deploy final-year medical students to fight the coronavirus health crisis, the health ministry said ... Final year medical students and student nurses are also being offered the chance to take temporary roles to boost the NHS frontline even further."