COVID-19 Talk

[Inverted_Trough]

 

4 minutes ago, SnowGolfBro said:

With all due respect, this comment is perhaps the biggest load of BS I’ve read to date from someone who’s posts I’ve always enjoyed reading.  I wasn’t even making a political argument. This is anecdotal but it’s relevant.  My sister is Nurse Practitioner in California, also a lifelong Liberal.  She said that we have completely blown this out of proportion.  And unbelievably she said she might consider voting for Donald Trump because he is the only person that seems willing to get us back to normal.  

California was basically the first state that did the stay-at-home orders and their numbers have been remarkably low.  I think Dr. Fauci said it best:  If people think you over-reacted, that means you did a great job.  And your sister just admitted California has done a great job.  Kudos!

[SnowGolfBro]

Just now, DCTeacherman said:

I’m just getting tired of the framing of this debate I see from right wing media.  Of course you’re free to think my ideas are a load of BS and I’d be happy to hear about why if you want to explain. 

Sure.  You brought up the one percent and the super rich.  Well they are the ones who are going to survive this shutdown and economic turmoil.  I am worried about the 99% of people who don’t earn 7 figures.  The people that are having their life savings wiped out.  The people that are suffering severe depression from “the response” to the Pandemic.  I’m not saying that there should be no weight given to concerns about the virus and the deaths it has caused and will cause.  Those are tragedies.  I am happy to hear opinions for staying shut down for months on end.  But that is not my opinion.  I believe we need to get moving again as a society before things deteriorate any further.  And i got a little worked up with the BS comment.  My apology for the brashness of that statement.  Just felt i was giving an opinion in support of letting people live their lives again and you threw “Fox News” at me.  I still don’t understand that

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

5 minutes ago, supernovasky said:

DCteacherman’s comment went pretty far into politics and @DCTeacherman it’s generally not allowed here. That said I’m not going to get in an uproar myself over it because tbh, we have been talking politics this entire time just with innuendo.

Ok well for the sake of this thread I’ll take it offline.  But if @showmethesnow or @SnowGolfBro want to continue further in the politics forum I’d be happy to. 

[SnowGolfBro]

2 minutes ago, Inverted_Trough said:

 

California was basically the first state that did the stay-at-home orders and their numbers have been remarkably low.  I think Dr. Fauci said it best:  If people think you over-reacted, that means you did a great job.  And your sister just admitted California has done a great job.  Kudos!

She is on the front line so i value her opinion.  She agreed with the social distancing policies in the short term.  As most everybody did.  But that attitude is changing quickly in my interactions with people.

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

1 minute ago, SnowGolfBro said:

Sure.  You brought up the one percent and the super rich.  Well they are the ones who are going to survive this shutdown and economic turmoil.  I am worried about the 99% of people who don’t earn 7 figures.  The people that are having their life savings wiped out.  The people that are suffering severe depression from “the response” to the Pandemic.  I’m not saying that there should be no weight given to concerns about the virus and the deaths it has caused and will cause.  Those are tragedies.  I am happy to hear opinions for staying shut down for months on end.  But that is not my opinion.  I believe we need to get moving again as a society before things deteriorate any further.  And i got a little worked up with the BS comment.  My apology for the brashness of that statement.  Just felt i was giving an opinion in support of letting people live their lives again and you threw “Fox News” at me.  I still don’t understand that

I apologize for throwing the Fox News at you.  I understand where you’re coming from.  I’m going to stop the politics now because I was told it’s not allowed in this thread. No hard feelings. 

[SnowGolfBro]

Just now, DCTeacherman said:

I apologize for throwing the Fox News at you.  I understand where you’re coming from.  I’m going to stop the politics now because I was told it’s not allowed in this thread. No hard feelings. 

My man we are going to be tracking winter weather again in a matter of months (maybe even this week lol).  No hard feelings at all.  I think we can all agree we want this virus to die a quick and unceremonious death!

[CAPE]

2 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

Ok well for the sake of this thread I’ll take it offline.  But if @showmethesnow or @SnowGolfBro want to continue further in the politics forum I’d be happy to. 

Ever been on there? Little to no intellectually honest discourse takes place lol. Even if you 3 attempted to do it, you would be trolled mercilessly. 

[Inverted_Trough]

The economy isn't going back to 'normal' until the threat of the virus is assuaged in the public's minds.  You can "open it up" on paper all you want - the economy is not going to be back to 100% for a couple years.  It'll be running at a degraded state.  Focus on getting treatments/vaccines and preserving our hospital system and our economy will come back in a few years.  I think we have to stop kidding ourselves and idealize this notion of "going back to normal" anytime soon even after we 'reopen'.  Normal is not happening for awhile.  It is what it is.

The restrictions are made by the states anyway.  Most of the world is shut-down.  Some states will lift some restrictions while others will wait longer.  Same thing with each country.

 

[CAPE]

1 minute ago, Inverted_Trough said:

The economy isn't going back to 'normal' until the threat of the virus is assuaged in the public's minds.  You can "open it up" on paper all you want - the economy is not going to be back to 100% for a couple years.  It'll be running at a degraded state.  Focus on getting treatments/vaccines and preserving our hospital system and our economy will come back in a few years.  I think we have to stop kidding ourselves and idealize this notion of "going back to normal" anytime soon even after we 'reopen'.  Normal is not happening for awhile.  It is what it is.

The restrictions are made by the states anyway.  Most of the world is shut-down.  Some states will lift some restrictions while others will wait longer.  Same thing with each country.

 

The first 'phase' will be relaxation of some of the restrictions, and it will occur state by state. Its not like Trump is just going to say, OK we all open for business now! Some of the red state governors may go with that, but it wont happen that way in most states. In MD, Hogan will make the call as to when it is prudent to remove the stay at home order, and when to  allow restaurants, etc to reopen.

[Wonderdog]

9 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

I don’t like the idea of a quicker reopening (i.e. early/mid May) because I think it’d be more devastating to both public health and the economy to let this virus spread again without a good testing, isolation, and contact tracing infrastructure. Maybe we have testing in a good place (I’m not sold on that yet) but we definitely don’t have any isolation and contact tracing infrastructure in place—especially in states with thousands of cases. 

If we throw the doors open even halfway right now, in 6-8 weeks we’d see a situation as bad or worse than what we’re living through right now.

10,302 Americans died in the last week and that was the very best case scenario from projections a week ago. Imagine millions being required to go back to work and social spaces opening up again and being forced to close again. It wouldn’t be good. 

I don’t think a large portion of the population has contracted this but even if you think 25% of the population has had it (0.15% of the population is currently confirmed to have it) that’d still leave 75% of the population open to contract this. 

We have to be patient, and congress needs to make sure that our tax dollars are going to supporting our front line workers, small businesses, and people, rather than big corporations.

When they do reopen it will be phased in by the individual states. No other logical way to do it. 

[ErinInTheSky]

When scientists eventually save the world, I hope we come out of the other end of this valuing science more than we currently do.

[CAPE]

32 minutes ago, supernovasky said:

When scientists eventually save the world, I hope we come out of the other end of this valuing science more than we currently do.

There is no collective "we" when it comes to this.

[WxUSAF]

1 hour ago, C.A.P.E. said:

There is no collective "we" when it comes to this.

I agree, but I think the large majority of the population supports and respects science and scientists.  Unfortunately the minority have big platforms and loud mouths.

[H2O]

I hid some of the more political side posts and ask again that we try to keep that out of this. Let’s just do facts and numbers and not policy decisions on a federal level. I think it’s safe to say that is where everyone will have differing opinions 

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

We might be near the peak in terms of deaths per day, but the problem is Italy is about 2 weeks off its peak deaths and is still recording like 60-70% of its peak deaths each day.  Coming down the backside of this peak won’t be quick. 

[Maestrobjwa]

34 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

We might be near the peak in terms of deaths per day, but the problem is Italy is about 2 weeks off its peak deaths and is still recording like 60-70% of its peak deaths each day.  Coming down the backside of this peak won’t be quick. 

Well, we can put that on the list of the cons of trying to open up on May 1st...

Ya know, it's a frustrating thing...being caught between the economy of public health. I honestly can't get a handle on which side of the argument to lean towards. To me, it doesn't seem like we are prepared to open that soon and still reduce the infections. It sounds like we are gonna need a rather rigorous system of testing and contact tracing in order satisfy both economic and health concerns) And for those saying "just keep the vulnerable at home"...is it really that simple?...

Forgive my somewhat scattered thoughts. The unknowns of this are frustrating...because ya really don't know if we're doing just enough or doing too much!

 

 

[Baltimorewx]

54 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

We might be near the peak in terms of deaths per day, but the problem is Italy is about 2 weeks off its peak deaths and is still recording like 60-70% of its peak deaths each day.  Coming down the backside of this peak won’t be quick. 

Idk...11,000 people in critical, it’s been 9,000 so that went up. Probably gonna take some more time to reach peak

[ErinInTheSky]

5 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

Idk...11,000 people in critical, it’s been 9,000 so that went up. Probably gonna take some more time to reach peak

We're not doing this evenly throughout the country so while some places go down (New York), others go up (Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia), and others are just sort of flatlined and not going up or down.

 

I mean... I guess this is life now? We open back up and we're going to be on our way to 5k-10k-20k  etc deaths per day, we stay patchwork we are just frozen.

[snowfan]

The detroit metro area is looking ugly. 

Approx 18,000 cases and over 1100 deaths between MaComb, Wayne, and Oakland counties.

[poolz1]

So, 20k deaths a day and 4- 5 years until we return to normal... Got it.

My list of nominees for MA forum motivational speaker keeps getting longer.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[Inverted_Trough]

Need a robust, agile contact tracing infrastructure in order to stay in containment mode and not have to lock down again.  They say we need at least 100,000 workers for contact-tracing.  Google and Apple can help with technology.  We need a strategic plan before we "open it up"

Contact tracing can only be done at scale when you have a manageable number of cases per day.  When you have 30000+ per day, it's impossible, so nobody is contact-tracing right now except in a few cases.

[jaydreb]

2 hours ago, Inverted_Trough said:

Need a robust, agile contact tracing infrastructure in order to stay in containment mode and not have to lock down again.  They say we need at least 100,000 workers for contact-tracing.  Google and Apple can help with technology.  We need a strategic plan before we "open it up"

Contact tracing can only be done at scale when you have a manageable number of cases per day.  When you have 30000+ per day, it's impossible, so nobody is contact-tracing right now except in a few cases.

Fauci and Birx say this at every briefing these days.  We can begin to lift the guidelines when:

1. It is clear that we are at the bottom of the curve, the health care system has sufficient capacity and there are a small enough amount of cases to do contact tracing;

2.  We have the ability to surveillance test and do contact tracing so we can stop any new outbreaks when they pop up;

3. As a supplement to the above, we have better therapeutics so that the damage caused by any outbreak is not as bad.  

They’ve also said that it’s not going to be like flipping a switch where everything opens at once.  We are gradually going to reduce the guidelines and the guidelines won’t necessarily be the same in Baltimore that they are in Montana.  

Fauci, who I trust, said he is confident we will have the ability to do contact tracing later in the summer.   He also said that he is optimistic that we will have a therapeutic option in time for the next flu season.  He doesn’t sugarcoat things, so if he’s saying these things I believe it.  

[ErinInTheSky]

RIP to a legendary thinker.

 

 

[ErinInTheSky]

Relevant to what we were talking about earlier:

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/charlotte-woman-hasnt-left-her-house-in-three-weeks-but-tested-positive-for-covid-19/ar-BB12sjy4?ocid=st

 

She didn’t leave her house for 3 weeks and had groceries delivered and STILL caught COVID via grocery delivery.

 

This is why I have an intense process for dealing with deliveries.

[showmethesnow]

Just going by the IHME, which has had its issues, our nation as a whole is well into the downward curve on infection rates. This is in consideration of a roughly 14 day period from infection until death given globally that I noted a couple of weeks ago (Numbers may have since changed). Going by that, as well as hospital resources which can be loosely correlated to deaths, we can get a good idea of where we now stand as far as the infection rate occurring at this time. And at this point the IHME has the national death rate peak as of 2 days ago and the resource usage at 1 day. Which means peak infection rates were seen 2+weeks ago. And this is actually a conservative figure as I have noted numbers coming out of 3+ weeks from infection to death in the US itself. So the more probable number since peak of infection is more like 3+ weeks. Of course these numbers will vary state to state and region to region but all told we are beyond the most perilous part of this virus and well on the way to a semblance of recovery.

eta: Just rough figures here but y my estimates we are probably looking at a range on the infection rate of 59% of peak going by the conservative 2 week period above, down to 45% for 3 weeks.

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

27 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Just going by the IHME, which has had its issues, our nation as a whole is well into the downward curve on infection rates. This is in consideration of a roughly 14 day period from infection until death given globally that I noted a couple of weeks ago (Numbers may have since changed). Going by that, as well as hospital resources which can be loosely correlated to deaths, we can get a good idea of where we now stand as far as the infection rate occurring at this time. And at this point the IHME has the national death rate peak as of 2 days ago and the resource usage at 1 day. Which means peak infection rates were seen 2+weeks ago. And this is actually a conservative figure as I have noted numbers coming out of 3+ weeks from infection to death in the US itself. So the more probable number since peak of infection is more like 3+ weeks. Of course these numbers will vary state to state and region to region but all told we are beyond the most perilous part of this virus and well on the way to a semblance of recovery.

I think this is a very optimistic analysis of the situation.  We’re still adding 30,000+ cases a day nationally, and just in MD/DC/VA we’re adding over 1,000 cases per day with limited testing criteria. That’s a lot of sick people and an indication that virus is extremely widespread. IMO we have a long ways to go. 

[showmethesnow]

3 minutes ago, DCTeacherman said:

I think this is a very optimistic analysis of the situation.  We’re still adding 30,000+ cases a day nationally, and just in MD/DC/VA we’re adding over 1,000 cases per day with limited testing criteria. That’s a lot of sick people and an indication that virus is extremely widespread. IMO we have a long ways to go. 

You really can't go by the testing. Really just no way to establish a base line with all the unknowns we have seen as far as testing. Much better way is to look at deaths and extrapolate from that which can give you a far more accurate baseline and even that has some issues as well. 

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

Just now, showmethesnow said:

You really can't go by the testing. Really just no way to establish a base line with all the unknowns we have seen as far as testing. Much better way is to look at deaths and extrapolate from that which can give you a far more accurate baseline and even that has some issues as well. 

Without any baseline the testing still shows an incredible amount of sick people.  And I know Maryland cleared out it’s big backlog of testing so these aren’t people who got tested very long ago anymore.  The testing data absolutely is indicative of the virus being very widespread. 

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

I’ll say this @showmethesnow, I think again you’re sort of overthinking it. Its pretty simple to me, once the number of new cases and then hospitalizations/deaths are steadily dropping that’s when we can say we’re on the downswing.

[showmethesnow]

Just now, DCTeacherman said:

Without any baseline the testing still shows an incredible amount of sick people.  And I know Maryland cleared out it’s big backlog of testing so these aren’t people who got tested very long ago anymore.  The testing data absolutely is indicative of the virus being very widespread. 

I have said from day 1 that this virus has been far more widespread then the models and the authorities have been aware of. Reports now starting to come out are supporting this. But that aside, I never said things were fine and dandy all I am doing is comparing what we are seeing now compared to peak and nothing more.