You've showed that before and yes it does. If it followed that pattern it would've been dying off here in April/May while it ramped up in South America.Keegan99 said:
Except that's not how seasonality works.
You've showed that before and yes it does. If it followed that pattern it would've been dying off here in April/May while it ramped up in South America.Keegan99 said:
Except that's not how seasonality works.
First off, I'm a geographer - and no, we're not subtropical. If we were, then flu season wouldn't be a thing here. It is.Keegan99 said:
We're subtropical and more closely tied to the climate of Mexico and the Carribean than New England.
That states below roughly 35 latitude behaved similarly despite a variety of policy prescriptions is not at all a surprise.
one problem was the people that said it would be gone in April had a very narrow view of the seasonality data on corona viruses. It varies by latitude. While the data shows an earlier seasonality for norther temperate latitudes (NY, Europe), tropical and subtropical latitudes have a later seasonality. Additionally, there is the obvious difference between northern hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere.deadbq03 said:I don't know why you keep beating the seasonality drum.Keegan99 said:
To what extent do you consider latitude and seasonality difference impacting trends? Particularly when compared to pubic policy? And how do those factors differ in the US in comparison to Europe?
The central conceit of most is the belief that we have some great control over a very primal natural phenomenon, of which we understand very little.
That's the exact logic of the folks who thought this would be dead in the water in April when weather got warm and therefore did nothing. Conceit indeed.
The east to west with flu is due to new strains evolving in high-population centers in SE Asia, where the flu never dies because they are tropical.Keegan99 said:
Hope-Simpson was probably a little too simple, as there seems to be a longitude element at play as well. We know flu moves east to west, for example.
Climate. Seasonality. Geography.
This is a brand new disease because? There will likely be more genetic diversity between the next flu strain out of SE Asia and the last flu strain than there is between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2. Should we assume the next flu will have completely different seasonality than the last flu?deadbq03 said:The east to west with flu is due to new strains evolving in high-population centers in SE Asia, where the flu never dies because they are tropical.Keegan99 said:
Hope-Simpson was probably a little too simple, as there seems to be a longitude element at play as well. We know flu moves east to west, for example.
Climate. Seasonality. Geography.
As you said, this is something we know very little about. Can you not at least concede that making geographic claims about a brand new disease is potentially as spurrious as other claims about Covid that you disagree with?
GAC06 said:
Could probably use its own thread
fig96 said:Specifically, hard to say, this isn't an area I have expertise in and I'm just going by what I've learned in lots of reading. It's also easy to look back and point at things we know now that we hadn't figured out early on.J. Walter Weatherman said:Out of curiosity when you say "if we'd been responsible" what would you have liked the plan to be? I see vague statements like this or "we should have done better" all the time but never any actual policies offered. At the end of the day we can't stay shut down forever and, as we're learning now, shutdowns seem to just delay the eventual spike anyways.fig96 said:So because I said if we'd been responsible all along we'd be in much better shape with case numbers I now think we're all going to die.RandyAg98 said:
You're right. Your virus is going to kill us all. Board up the windows! You watch too much Today Show. Their lead in yesterday was "On The Brink".
And y'all wonder why we can't have intelligent discussions about this.
But it seems obvious at a base level that we failed on a few levels, both governmental response (which admittedly isn't directly addressed in "if we'd been responsible") and personal response.
Governmentally, especially at the federal level, I don't know how we can look at this as anything more than an abject failure. We shut down most of the country for two months, and in that time developed absolutely no semblance of a national plan for testing, response, etc. The virus was politicized early on on all sides and that didn't help matters, but I feel like the federal government in particular did very little to address the pandemic and left it all up to the states. That's something that the states in general weren't equipped to do, and from the top down the name of the game was passing responsibility down to someone lower in the order.
As far as personal responsibility, a whole lot of people seem to be putting their own personal interests ahead of everyone else and not trying to do simple things like wearing masks (and again, politicized). We've had everything from people throwing fits in stores to cussing out employees to faking ADA badges because of whatever beliefs they have about wearing a mask. We've got tons of people out and about now like nothing ever happened, and when things opened back many seem to have generally ignored any safety protocols in places as evidenced by the spike in cases in early June.
Case numbers are absolutely only an indicator, but when we're 10x-20x more than most western countries and not declining in daily case numbers you can't just chalk that up to us testing more. Yes, early failures in New York definitely hurt the overall numbers and I'm glad to see our mortality rates improving as we learn more about how to treat this, but we don't know much about other long term effects yet. And for all the comments of "those other countries spiked early" those other countries had also at least started to taper off by this point in their cycle, and our numbers aren't doing that yet.
What makes me laugh is that by expressing regret that we didn't handle this better I get intelligent responses about how I think the virus is going to kill us all and that I watch too much of the Today Show. I actually do think some of the fear of this is overblown and that we can find a happy medium of responsibility while carrying on with our normal lives. But that doesn't mean I can't also be disappointed that we're the only country that can't seem to get a handle on this.
Forgive my poor writing.BiochemAg97 said:This is a brand new disease because? There will likely be more genetic diversity between the next flu strain out of SE Asia and the last flu strain than there is between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2. Should we assume the next flu will have completely different seasonality than the last flu?deadbq03 said:
The east to west with flu is due to new strains evolving in high-population centers in SE Asia, where the flu never dies because they are tropical.
As you said, this is something we know very little about. Can you not at least concede that making geographic claims about a brand new disease is potentially as spurrious as other claims about Covid that you disagree with?
Quote:
Sweden is tackling the COVID-19 pandemic through both legally binding measures and recommendations. The government and the Swedish Public Health Agency have taken a number of decisions involving a wide range of new regulations and recommendations that affect the whole of society, including people's private lives. There is no full lockdown in force, but many parts of Swedish society have shut down.
Life is not carrying on as normal in Sweden. Many people are staying at home and many have stopped travelling. This has had severe effects on Swedes as well as on the Swedish economy. Many businesses are folding. Unemployment is expected to rise dramatically. The Government has taken several measures to mitigate the economic effects and to stabilise the economy.
Sweden shares the same aim as all other countries: to protect the life and health of its population. Fundamentally, Sweden's measures only differ from other countries in two regards: we are not shutting down schools for younger children or childcare facilities and we have no regulation that forces citizens to remain in their homes.
And next, we'll have people post, see, Sweden took a hit anyway--they might as well have shutdown and prevented all those deaths. This is wrong on several counts: (1) the eurozone as a whole did 50% worse, and that's nothing to sneeze at; (2) the point of this discussion is not so much where would one isolated country be by pursuing the Swedish approach, but rather, what if the whole world had--if global GDP loss was one third less than what we're seeing, that would be worth quite a bit, not only economically in the short run, but also, to lives in the long run; and, (3) there's no guarantee that Sweden's death numbers would be much different, apart from nursing homes, which they know they should have treated differently (but see New York for an example of screwing this up while locking down).dragmagpuff said:
There was a post earlier predicting Sweden's GDP drop at 4.2%. Based on Sweden's released numbers, it was actually 8.6%.
8.6% vs Eurozone average of 12.1%. That's a still significant difference.
Spain at -18.5%!
Germany, probably the best European country's response using the lockdown strategy, dropped 10.1%.
For reference, the US was -9.5%.
Interesting to see deaths trend down across the EU over the last several years and then see spikes during the winter months (flu season I assume).Quote:
The aim of the EuroMOMO project (European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action) is to operate coordinated timely mortality monitoring and analyses in as many European countries as possible, using a standardized approach to ensure that signals are comparable between countries.
EuroMOMO thereby aims to enhance European capacity to assess and manage serious public health risks such as pandemic influenza and other emerging infections, as well as environmental conditions with an impact on public health, e.g. heat waves or cold snaps.
Jet Black said:
Yes. Sweden wins.
fig96 said:
I don't know WTF a corona bro is, but like lots of people I'm still curious to see how this all plays out long term everywhere.