Social Distanced said:

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I keep hearing this argument of "opening too soon". Can someone explain what this even means? What is going to be different or change anything if we open in a month, or two, or three?

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Well, it looks to me like you're trying to engage me in a different conversation but I'll give this a try. My comment was specific to keeping the COVID-19 deaths in year one to under 250K. Staying at home longer helps slow the transmission and therefore lowers the total deaths during this discrete time period. Now, you may argue that it will eventually happen anyway and you may be right. But, we may also have a vaccine in a year and or better treatments that lowers the mortality of the disease. That is all I meant by opening too soon and it was not my intent to claim that there's a mythical objective standard to determine when is the right time. There are lots of factors and the economy is a big one. As I told you over a month ago, the second and third order effects of shutting down our economy will result in some number of deaths.

I wasn't engaging anyone in particular, you just happened to make me think of something I have been pondering. I am genuinely waiting to hear a legitimate reason behind shutting down our economy. Not that I necessarily agree, but if it was to prevent overwhelming our medical resources, fine. I can accept that, but that didn't happen. So what is it now? I am seriously looking for a reasonable response. I might have responded to your post, but the question was not directed at you specifically. Sorry about the confusion.

The too soon point is kind of interesting. If we haven't achieved a significant amount of herd immunity and you go back to what you were doing before, you just get another outbreak in a bit. Neither "side" wants that because we absolutely can not deal with another shutdown.

So the question is what do you differently? I think individuals are behaving differently now than before, even "open" still has provisos and whatnot so that's not the same as before either. And we have a lot more testing capacity than we did in March, which will help with test and trace.

All of those add up to a reduced rate of spread, with the result of a longer epidemic, but fewer total infections (if they're sustained indefinitely).

Too soon only comes into play if whatever we have in place today is insufficient to keep the transmission rate fairly low, and we wind up with a bad outbreak.

As I've mentioned, the President did a good job, I think, with communicating the 15 days to slow the spread to the American people - and people listened. From there the messaging went off the rails. I don't know what our goal is now, so I don't know what "too soon" means. I do know that every day we wait comes at an economic cost. It's unclear what the objective is - and that's not good.

How do you get herd immunity if you try to keep everyone away from each other?

15 days has turned into 45, then 60, then 3 months, then end of the year, then 2022...I realize Trump did not say this all specifically, but these are things that have been said over the last 6 weeks.

cone said:

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I remember when saying we'd be over 100k in the calendar year got you called a doomer

goalposts got moved tremendously in 60 days

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Really? I don't remember that but I may have missed it.

If you hold the transmission rate low enough for long enough the barrier to herd immunity drops along with it. That would be the route of suppression to end the outbreak. But even if we say that's not possible (and it probably isn't), and we actually need to hit 60% or whatever to end it, the slower you cruise into 60% the fewer people get infected in the end, because of overshoot.

We haven't stopped the outbreak. It's been basically flat for two weeks, which means the way things were, we were at a transmission rate of about 1... constant number of infected people. Ignoring economic cost that would be the best way to get there - least overshoot. But it would take forever and the economic cost would be staggering, so it's not an option. Never has been, in my opinion.

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As I've mentioned, the President did a good job, I think, with communicating the 15 days to slow the spread to the American people - and people listened. From there the messaging went off the rails. I don't know what our goal is now.

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Let us stipulate that the lockdown has helped us reach the original goal of flattening the curve in our pre-vaccine/pre-herd immunity world.

Is another goal involving lockdowns necessary?

cone said:

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floomers went from no way we hit 60k this year to 250k is no big deal and means we did a great job in the same amount of time

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No it just means the "experts" would have missed the mark by 88.5%.

k2aggie07 said:

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As I've mentioned, the President did a good job, I think, with communicating the 15 days to slow the spread to the American people - and people listened. From there the messaging went off the rails. I don't know what our goal is now, so I don't know what "too soon" means. I do know that every day we wait comes at an economic cost. It's unclear what the objective is - and that's not good.

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Totally agree.

NonReg already responded to you , quite eloquently I should add, in regards to the 250k deaths comment and I, like he it seems, have been suggesting COVID-related deaths in the 200k-250k or less range should be considered a 'good result' for at least a month now. Of course that only considers the healthcare response. And from the perspective of our medial/healthcare response, I don't think its heartless to be an optimist even in the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths.

What's a lockdown? Telling people to say home, not go to parks, whatever? Because it looks like those were ineffective. So no, we never need to do that. No benefit and huge moral hazard.

If lockdowns is limiting large gatherings, closing schools, asking people to work from home if possible, whatever, sure - there may a bad local outbreak that makes those things make sense, even if we move away from that. Like maybe we're back to normal in August, but there's an outbreak in Chicago or something next fall. That might happen.

My assumption back in March was we'd do a nation-wide suppression effort for a while to buy time and orient ourselves. Then move to a mitigation stance, which is where you try to walk the line to herd immunity without big overshoot and without the huge economic cost of suppression. Step two never really materialized, and I think that's a failure of leadership (state, local, federal, wherever).

k2aggie07 said:

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What's a lockdown? Telling people to say home, not go to parks, whatever? Because it looks like those were ineffective. So no, we never need to do that. No benefit and huge moral hazard.

If lockdowns is limiting large gatherings, closing schools, asking people to work from home if possible, whatever, sure - there may a bad local outbreak that makes those things make sense, even if we move away from that. Like maybe we're back to normal in August, but there's an outbreak in Chicago or something next fall. That might happen.

My assumption back in March was we'd do a nation-wide suppression effort for a while to buy time and orient ourselves. Then move to a mitigation stance, which is where you try to walk the line to herd immunity without big overshoot and without the huge economic cost of suppression. Step two never really materialized, and I think that's a failure of leadership (state, local, federal, wherever).

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Fair enough. Describe your mitigation stance, though. What would that involve?

k2aggie07 said:

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My assumption back in March was we'd do a nation-wide suppression effort for a while to buy time and orient ourselves. Then move to a mitigation stance, which is where you try to walk the line to herd immunity without big overshoot and without the huge economic cost of suppression. Step two never really materialized, and I think that's a failure of leadership (state, local, federal, wherever).

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Totally agree with that too. The message was completely lost on what seems like the great majority of the population.

no one is happy about this. everything about this sucks.

but you've been a denier since jump and you're not going to deflect on that. it's a horrible disease it's not the flu and you're wrong about how deadly it has been and will continue to be.

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If lockdowns is limiting large gatherings

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This would be economically cataclysmic if it is drawn out. People must not truly understand how much of a consumer nation we and the world is. Movie theaters, concerts, festivals, conferences/expos, sporting events, churches, etc.. That list can go on and on and employs millions directly and indirectly. That's just talking about the US. That doesn't even figure in global impact of those things disappearing.

Cutting out outdoor activities was the most absurd thing about all of this. Absolutely ridiculous. Then come to find out vitamin D deficiency is bad? No ***** Doing outdoor activities is what people, particularly those that lost their jobs, SHOULD be doing. Get outside. Keep your morale up. Keep your health up. It was insane from the get go. Particularly in Texas. We aren't and were never causing a super spread of this disease because of outdoor activity in Texas.

Rapier108 said:

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Social Distanced said:

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I keep hearing this argument of "opening too soon". Can someone explain what this even means? What is going to be different or change anything if we open in a month, or two, or three?

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The goal for the Coronabros went from "flatten the curve" to "no one can be sick" before we can come off lock down.

So it is always two more week, a month, 2 months, etc. etc. etc. The truth is, they never want it to end.

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Keep it closed, literally steal the election via mail, then turn America communist in January. Don't have to take away rights when they have been gone for 11 months.

agsalaska said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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My assumption back in March was we'd do a nation-wide suppression effort for a while to buy time and orient ourselves. Then move to a mitigation stance, which is where you try to walk the line to herd immunity without big overshoot and without the huge economic cost of suppression. Step two never really materialized, and I think that's a failure of leadership (state, local, federal, wherever).

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Totally agree with that too. The message was completely lost on what seems like the great majority of the population.

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Sounds like you two need to get a room. The amount of common ground the both of you see in the Coronavirus is exponential.

See ya'll in...two weeks?

Kanyes psychiatrist said:

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Biggest scam in American history!!!

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200,000 people die every year from medical negligence/malpractice. I bet a lot of people from this group are being counted as Chinese Virus.

Case isolation, tracing and test and quarantine of those exposed
Limiting large public gatherings
Big efforts for PSAs like wash yo hands and don't lick doorknobs
Recommended voluntary social distancing of the elderly and at risk
Asking businesses to support work from home and reduce face to face meetings
Maybe closing schools - maybe just one school like we already do for the flu if there's an outbreak.

Note this isn't my stuff, this is from the CDC.

cone said:

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I remember when saying we'd be over 100k in the calendar year got you called a doomer


goalposts got moved tremendously in 60 days

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You are not being truthful. The number the "experts " were putting out there was 1.5% to 2% deaths. That works out to at minimum a 30 fold increase over your new, new, new, new, new number. You have an agenda to come on here and latch onto a crappy new report. Why don't you go back to the china virus board you'll have a much better audience for your obvious bs.

I think you might have misunderstood me. I think those efforts should be local and on an as-needed basis. The only excuse for a one-size-fits-all was in the absence of information. Basically we assumed everyone in the US was possibly infected and acted that way. It's not the same situation as March 13, and if a nationwide lockdown ever made sense (I don't think it did, and I appreciated the Federal approach that we started with) it doesn't right now.

100% agree.

well, it's not going to be easy to convince people to crowd into enclosed places during a droplet spread quasi-airborne pandemic

"It's your duty as an American to hit up Applebee's. Get out there and consume."

I am being truthful. People on this website called me alarmist for suggesting 6 figure death totals.

k2aggie07 said:

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Case isolation, tracing and test and quarantine of those exposed
Limiting large public gatherings
Big efforts for PSAs like wash yo hands and don't lick doorknobs
Recommended voluntary social distancing of the elderly and at risk
Asking businesses to support work from home and reduce face to face meetings
Maybe closing schools - maybe just one school like we already do for the flu if there's an outbreak.

Note this isn't my stuff, this is from the CDC.

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Except for heavy weight contract tracing, most of this is happening organically now, isn't it?

cone said:

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well, it's not going to be easy to convince people to crowd into enclosed places during a droplet spread quasi-airborne pandemic

"It's your duty as an American to hit up Applebee's. Get out their and consume."

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Wanna bet? People are itching for their lives back and the villagers are getting restless. Have you not seen pictures of people at the beaches and lakes? If the Astros started to play tomorrow at Minute Maid, it would be a sold out crowd

k2aggie07 said:

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I think you might have misunderstood me. I think those efforts should be local and on an as-needed basis. The only excuse for a one-size-fits-all was in the absence of information. Basically we assumed everyone in the US was possibly infected and acted that way. It's not the same situation as March 13, and if a nationwide lockdown ever made sense (I don't think it did, and I appreciated the Federal approach that we started with) it doesn't right now.

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You are an engineer. Assumptions are how we come to solutions, but this was a really poor assumption to make decisions, don't you think?

herd immunity is not really a viable objective. Obviously the economy must be re-opened. If you look at the handful of things that can mitigate the death toll in a pandemic, on most counts things are better than they were 6 weeks ago.
Ppe supply is better. Cant run an ER without PPE by slowing the spread fewer ERs needed the ppe when supplies were very tight
Drs are getting better at treating it , ERs were stressed but able to deliver care and find ways to improve care, for example ventilators usage and technique improved
Therapeutic regimens again the ERs were stressed but were able to run studies to improve patient outcome remdasivir
important data from outbreaks can be studied and we can learn from them ( USS Roosevelt )
School closures something the policy makers never directly address but i think it was the driving factor behinf the length of the shutdown. if the sips were shorter schools would have had no choice but to reopen . The decisions makers did not want to take the chance that one kid who went skiing and brought back the covid could infect an entire community
testing nobodys fault testing is a mess , too many false negatives on the nasal swab and likely too many false positives on the antibody test.
Keeping it from getting into the senior population, maybe the month + sip created new behaviors and fewer of the Srs will catch it while better treatments are discovered.

cone said:

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well, it's not going to be easy to convince people to crowd into enclosed places during a droplet spread quasi-airborne pandemic

"It's your duty as an American to hit up Applebee's. Get out there and consume."

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Who here is referring to it as a "duty?" Choice =/ Duty.
It seems to me most people here want options so they can make their own risk assessments. If anything, it should be 'duty' for some us to be purposefully infected so society can build up a herd immunity.

k2aggie07 said:

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The too soon point is kind of interesting. If we haven't achieved a significant amount of herd immunity and you go back to what you were doing before, you just get another outbreak in a bit. Neither "side" wants that because we absolutely can not deal with another shutdown.

So the question is what do you differently? I think individuals are behaving differently now than before, even "open" still has provisos and whatnot so that's not the same as before either. And we have a lot more testing capacity than we did in March, which will help with test and trace.

All of those add up to a reduced rate of spread, with the result of a longer epidemic, but fewer total infections (if they're sustained indefinitely).

Too soon only comes into play if whatever we have in place today is insufficient to keep the transmission rate fairly low, and we wind up with a bad outbreak.

As I've mentioned, the President did a good job, I think, with communicating the 15 days to slow the spread to the American people - and people listened. From there the messaging went off the rails. I don't know what our goal is now, so I don't know what "too soon" means. I do know that every day we wait comes at an economic cost. It's unclear what the objective is - and that's not good.

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The shutdown is impeding the ability to achieve herd immunity. The longer we stay shutdown, the longer it takes to get to the necessary herd immunity.

And, since a vaccine will not be a near term solution, herd immunity is our next best option.

Which means open things up...

Mostly, yes - which is the best way anyway. I figure part of the 15 days was to try to impart some of the seriousness and habits onto people in general.

I think big time test and trace is a key. It's been presented that way by several people that seem smart to me, like Ziehan. I mean, if you can sustain that and you only prevent 25% of infections a disease that's R0 of 2.5 gets chopped down to 1.875. In the long run that is herd immunity at 46% instead of 60%. 44.8 million infections in that hypothetical.

tysker said:

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cone said:

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well, it's not going to be easy to convince people to crowd into enclosed places during a droplet spread quasi-airborne pandemic

"It's your duty as an American to hit up Applebee's. Get out there and consume."

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Who here is referring to it as a "duty?" Choice =/ Duty.
It seems to me most people here want options so they can make their own risk assessments. If anything, it should be 'duty' for some us to be purposefully infected so society can build up a herd immunity.

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My doctor is about 80% sure I've already had it because of a convention I went to and quite a few Chinese nationals were there, with a dozen of them being my customers. I'm just too cheap to do the antibody test. Even if I haven't, I don't give a rat's ass if I get it. 32, nonsmoker, relatively healthy (minus the alcoholism), no high blood pressure, no diabeetus, no lung issues. I'm at the point that if I I could, I would pay to be infected just to be over with it and I could tell the Karens to take their mask gripes and go **** themselves...though I do that anyways

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You are an engineer. Assumptions are how we come to solutions, but this was a really poor assumption to make decisions, don't you think?

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No, I don't think so. We didn't assume it in the sense of, we think it's true, so perhaps I didn't phrase that right. We assumed it in the sense of, it's prudent to treat everyone as if they are infected, to prevent the continued growth of the epidemic.

It was a behavioral assumption, not an analytical one.

k2aggie07 said:

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You are an engineer. Assumptions are how we come to solutions, but this was a really poor assumption to make decisions, don't you think?

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No, I don't think so. We didn't assume it in the sense of, we think it's true, so perhaps I didn't phrase that right. We assumed it in the sense of, it's prudent to treat everyone as if they are infected, to prevent the continued growth of the epidemic.

It was a behavioral assumption, not an analytical one.

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Wasn't it also an analytical one since we were using ****ty data sets out of China and Italy?