Don't throw around terms if you have no idea what they mean. Postmodernism implies exactly the opposite. Post-modernism is a response to the failure of science and reason to bring about the evolution of permanent peace and prosperity. It is an acceptance of the misery of the human condition, and an abandoning of absolute truth for "your truth" and "my truth." Post-modern generations include Gen-Xers, Millennials, and Gen Y.queso1 said:
Postmodernism has brought this idea that everything has to be safe and we are going to live forever.
Did Sweden end up taking the best approach?
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Last: 6 mo ago by Enzomatic
I will concede when I am wrong on a term. I still stand by my position (wrong term) that life is not safe.
California Ag 90 said:i'm not arguing that we should open up or making any statements about opening the economy.Gordo14 said:California Ag 90 said:
'flatten the curve' was THE public statement of intention behind the broad directives to shut down non-essential enterprises.
pointing out that has changed as an objective, after the fact, is NOT 'calling everything about controlling spread' goal post moving.
to the broad American public, the objective as communicated by leaders at every level was to flatten the curve. that's just reality.
it falls into the same category of 'masks don't help'. communication that was, at best, partial honesty because authorities were worried about PPE shortages and buy-in to 'stay-home' directives.
when leaders choose to use this approach, then the backlash that comes once the truth comes out has to be expected.
You're just being ridiculous. Yes that was the public statement. That was easy for people to understand. We are flattening the curve. It is helping the hospitals. But if you open things up without controlling the curve... Guess what happens???? Flattening the curve is literally about everything we do from today to a vaccine. It's still the same objective, it's just a shifting strategy based on data which will change and evolve over time. It should evolve with time.
DTP stated that the public argument for shutdown was flattening the curve, and now in many quarters is to eliminate cases or deaths or other arguments that 'move the goal posts'. you attacked him for stating this.
that's the discussion we are having. not about the merits of shutting down anything.
you believe that partial information to the public is justified to ensure alignment with a policy objective. fair enough. i'm only pointing out that there is a cost to this - public resentment and loss of trust when the actual reality becomes known.
finally, your faith in a vaccine is pretty absolute but see the other thread for some interesting perspectives on the impact of flu vaccines on death rates - i'm a hypochondriac guy who gets a flu shot every year, and have been vaccinated for every exotic bug there is due to travel overseas. but the data on flu vaccine efficacy is not what i expected. there is no way to project if/when a vaccine for COVID will be available, nor how effective it will be once it is deployed.
Eliminating cases and deaths is what flattening the curve is. You have a vaccine in say 12 months. You're never going to be able to keep the curve flat enough for the medical system without aggressively keeping infected case count down. You aggressively keep infected case count down, you get fewer people infected. It's the same thing! So it's not moving the goal posts. That's our best hope for a positive outcome by every metric period.
Sure the their is a risk in the vaccine, but it's our best chance and their are like 18 different vaccines being run through the pipeline right now. Never before has there been this many resources dedicated to a vaccine. Even a vaccine that provides partial immunity such that this becomes more like a flu would be good enough to normalize. We just need to get to the point where we are not defenseless without overwhelming the medical system.
Flattening the curve as stated during the original proposed "15 days" was to reduce the likelihood that health care providers would be overrun, thus reducing the ethical and liability scenarios of rationed care.
This has been successful.
Flattening the curve was never, and should not be, about reducing the area under the COVID19 curve.
If you can avoid the rationed care flattening the curve does nothing but delay the inevitable. Because stopping everything for a vaccine in 12 months for a type of virus that we have no history of creating successful vaccines for is foolish, and has a significant likelihood of never being successful.
This has been successful.
Flattening the curve was never, and should not be, about reducing the area under the COVID19 curve.
If you can avoid the rationed care flattening the curve does nothing but delay the inevitable. Because stopping everything for a vaccine in 12 months for a type of virus that we have no history of creating successful vaccines for is foolish, and has a significant likelihood of never being successful.
DTP02 said:
Well, you're going to have a tough time claiming the moral high ground when your very first sentence is a false characterization. That's as far as I got. I've spent more than enough time on someone who can't argue without insulting, and who either can't or won't comprehend what's been written.
I never claimed the moral high ground. I claimed the better informed ground.
I'm just sick of people who are willing to ignore the data, ignore models, and pretend nobody cares about the economy say empty phrases like "moving goal posts" for their own personal agenda without actually critically analyzing things. That phrase not a value added part of any discussion. Sure my parience has been thin on here and I probably have been too critical. But let's be honest here... There are plenty of people trying to shut down any symblance of ctitical thinking with dumb platitudes and anti-intellectualism. It's so much easier to have that attitude to what is absolutely a ****ty situation for all of us.
fightingfarmer09 said:
Flattening the curve as stated during the original proposed "15 days" was to reduce the likelihood that health care providers would be overrun, thus reducing the ethical and liability scenarios of rationed care.
This has been successful.
Flattening the curve was, and should not be, about reducing the area under the COVID19 curve.
If you can avoid the rationed care flattening the curve does nothing but delay the inevitable. Because stopping everything for a vaccine in 12 months for a type of virus that we have no history of creating successful vaccines for is foolish, and has a significant likelihood of never being successful.
You have to reduce the area under the curve our it will go out of control again. That's the point. Making sure the curve doesn't overwhelm the medical system means we have to minimize cases. We are never going to be in control of this thing such that we can ride the line of our medical capacity.
I'm not ready to concede that the possibility of the best possible outcome (which isn't about lowest death count - I've advocated repeatedly for openning things up in measured ways when we can control case count). There's never been this much effort into getting a vaccine for a coronavirus. Many coronaviruses are just the common cold, and the bad ones never were around for long enough.
They never developed a vaccine for SARS. Either because it wasn't necessary, or they couldn't (like HIV), I don't know. From the reading I did, I couldn't find an answer.
Why didn't we see flair ups with SARS or MERS?
Why didn't we see flair ups with SARS or MERS?
Mike Shaw - Class of '03
Much lower R0.NASAg03 said:
They never developed a vaccine for SARS. Either because it wasn't necessary, or they couldn't (like HIV), I don't know. From the reading I did, I couldn't find an answer.
Why didn't we see flair ups with SARS or MERS?
In addition COVID-19 likes to live on surfaces and has a fairly long incubation period where it can spread.
the SARS vaccine, from what I have read, had horrible results with worse outcomes in animals. The MERS vaccine was looking good but was scrapped due to lack of funding when MERS died off. Developed @ Baylor College of Medicine actually.
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
given the similarity of COVID and SARS, how confident should we be that a vaccine can be developed? a lot of the objectives around restoring normalcy seem to be dependent on a vaccine being available. is this a reasonable expectation given the issues they had with SARS?KidDoc said:Much lower R0.NASAg03 said:
They never developed a vaccine for SARS. Either because it wasn't necessary, or they couldn't (like HIV), I don't know. From the reading I did, I couldn't find an answer.
Why didn't we see flair ups with SARS or MERS?
In addition COVID-19 likes to live on surfaces and has a fairly long incubation period where it can spread.
the SARS vaccine, from what I have read, had horrible results with worse outcomes in animals. The MERS vaccine was looking good but was scrapped due to lack of funding when MERS died off. Developed @ Baylor College of Medicine actually.
i know nothing's certain just curious about your view on this.
We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
and little towns all around this land...
IHME has revised Sweden's projected fatalities upward from 13,000 to 18,000.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
Last update was 3 days ago?
Gordo14 said:California Ag 90 said:i'm not arguing that we should open up or making any statements about opening the economy.Gordo14 said:California Ag 90 said:
'flatten the curve' was THE public statement of intention behind the broad directives to shut down non-essential enterprises.
pointing out that has changed as an objective, after the fact, is NOT 'calling everything about controlling spread' goal post moving.
to the broad American public, the objective as communicated by leaders at every level was to flatten the curve. that's just reality.
it falls into the same category of 'masks don't help'. communication that was, at best, partial honesty because authorities were worried about PPE shortages and buy-in to 'stay-home' directives.
when leaders choose to use this approach, then the backlash that comes once the truth comes out has to be expected.
You're just being ridiculous. Yes that was the public statement. That was easy for people to understand. We are flattening the curve. It is helping the hospitals. But if you open things up without controlling the curve... Guess what happens???? Flattening the curve is literally about everything we do from today to a vaccine. It's still the same objective, it's just a shifting strategy based on data which will change and evolve over time. It should evolve with time.
DTP stated that the public argument for shutdown was flattening the curve, and now in many quarters is to eliminate cases or deaths or other arguments that 'move the goal posts'. you attacked him for stating this.
that's the discussion we are having. not about the merits of shutting down anything.
you believe that partial information to the public is justified to ensure alignment with a policy objective. fair enough. i'm only pointing out that there is a cost to this - public resentment and loss of trust when the actual reality becomes known.
finally, your faith in a vaccine is pretty absolute but see the other thread for some interesting perspectives on the impact of flu vaccines on death rates - i'm a hypochondriac guy who gets a flu shot every year, and have been vaccinated for every exotic bug there is due to travel overseas. but the data on flu vaccine efficacy is not what i expected. there is no way to project if/when a vaccine for COVID will be available, nor how effective it will be once it is deployed.
Eliminating cases and deaths is what flattening the curve is. You have a vaccine in say 12 months. You're never going to be able to keep the curve flat enough for the medical system without aggressively keeping infected case count down. You aggressively keep infected case count down, you get fewer people infected. It's the same thing! So it's not moving the goal posts. That's our best hope for a positive outcome by every metric period.
Sure the their is a risk in the vaccine, but it's our best chance and their are like 18 different vaccines being run through the pipeline right now. Never before has there been this many resources dedicated to a vaccine. Even a vaccine that provides partial immunity such that this becomes more like a flu would be good enough to normalize. We just need to get to the point where we are not defenseless without overwhelming the medical system.
70 vaccines out there, three in phase 1 testing.
AgLiving06 said:
Last update was 3 days ago?
I used today's data.
fightingfarmer09 said:
Flattening the curve was never, and should not be, about reducing the area under the COVID19 curve.
This is just wrong. Maybe political leaders have done a bad job of communicating it, but transmission rate and attack rate are directly related. The faster an infection moves through a population, the more people ultimately get it.
If we flatten the curve, we reduce total infections. The longer you suppress the transmission rate, the fewer people will get it. If we hold this to 1.3, like seasonal flu, ~20% will get it. If it runs over 2, >50% will get it.
I don't think it's economically feasible or even sensible to do what we're doing now for a long time. But there are degrees of non-pharmaceutical interventions ranging from hand washing PSAs to full on lockdown. All flatten the curve to some extent, and all reduce total infections / area under the curve.
California Ag 90 said:given the similarity of COVID and SARS, how confident should we be that a vaccine can be developed? a lot of the objectives around restoring normalcy seem to be dependent on a vaccine being available. is this a reasonable expectation given the issues they had with SARS?KidDoc said:Much lower R0.NASAg03 said:
They never developed a vaccine for SARS. Either because it wasn't necessary, or they couldn't (like HIV), I don't know. From the reading I did, I couldn't find an answer.
Why didn't we see flair ups with SARS or MERS?
In addition COVID-19 likes to live on surfaces and has a fairly long incubation period where it can spread.
the SARS vaccine, from what I have read, had horrible results with worse outcomes in animals. The MERS vaccine was looking good but was scrapped due to lack of funding when MERS died off. Developed @ Baylor College of Medicine actually.
i know nothing's certain just curious about your view on this.
There is such a huge financial and moral incentive for this vaccine that I am certain one will be developed. The technologies being used are really mind blowing and innovative and will help the human race in general. The Baylor MERS vaccine looked good in animal trials and is in human trials now there just was not any funding for further testing in humans.
The vaccine out of Israel is really fascinating it uses your own cells ribosomes to produce antibodies. Think of using that tech for bacteria or even cancer.
Fascinating science.
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
To answer the OP, the answer is yes. Sweden's death rate per million is essentially the same as the USA. Yet they haven't destroyed their economy, haven't eliminated jobs and haven't triggered increases in domestic violence that we've seen in the USA.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
Isn't that how I Am Legend started?
EDIT: was looking at the wrong number.
Quote:
To answer the OP, the answer is yes. Sweden's death rate per million is essentially the same as the USA. Yet they haven't destroyed their economy, haven't eliminated jobs and haven't triggered increases in domestic violence that we've seen in the USA.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
Quote:
Although the longer-term impact is obviously unknown, Sweden's strategy is not expected to preserve the country's economy this year any more than those of countries imposing stricter lockdowns: Magdalena Andersson, the finance minister, said on Wednesday GDP could shrink by 10% this year and unemployment rise to 13.5%.
Sweden strictly counts test confirmed deaths via Covid-19, the US does not. Even so they are running at higher per capita death and they are doing much, much worse than their neighbors.
Sweden is doing terribly in deaths but not in cases because (surprise!) they aren't testing in the same #s as their neighbors.
Federale01 said:
Isn't that how I Am Legend started?
Wasn't the issue in I am legend( at least the movie) that se idiot created a virus to attack cancer, and it mutated "unexpectedly"
NorCal said:
To answer the OP, the answer is yes. Sweden's death rate per million is essentially the same as the USA. Yet they haven't destroyed their economy, haven't eliminated jobs and haven't triggered increases in domestic violence that we've seen in the USA.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
Norway, Population = 5.37 million, Coronavirus Cases = 6937, Deaths = 158
Sweden, Population = 10.23 million, Coronavirus Cases = 13216, Deaths = 1400
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
As of today, In terms of reported cases per million, Sweden is slightly worse. In terms of Deaths per million, Sweden is significantly worse by about 5X that of Norway.
I don't see how it is arguable that as of right now, a lot more people per capita are dying from COVID in Sweden versus Norway. It isn't even close. A lot more are dying apparently in Sweden. The debate is whether that is okay and Sweden is still doing the 'right thing'.
the debate is whatever statistics props up personal bias. Maybe lots more people in norway die in months 2-6 of the pandemic and Sweden is frontloading all of the death. Until we have more fatality data over several months can not make an informed judgement on what the better approach is.
Correct. As said early on in these threads you won't be able to judge these actions for probably a year, there may be additional waves that are worse in the countries most locked down vs a country more open now. WHo knows. Everyone is rushing to judge to validate something they think we should be doing in America.
it would also be really convenient if countries had a uniform reporting for fatalities, it does not look like that will be the case
The answer may be in urban population density. Stockholm, for instance, has a density of 14,000 per square mile whereas New York City is more complicated: Manhattan has about 66,000 people per square mile. Bronx is about 35,000 per square mile.Brooklyn is about 37,000.NorCal said:
To answer the OP, the answer is yes. Sweden's death rate per million is essentially the same as the USA. Yet they haven't destroyed their economy, haven't eliminated jobs and haven't triggered increases in domestic violence that we've seen in the USA.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
We can't even do this on a county by county level.Sq 17 said:
it would also be really convenient if countries had a uniform reporting for fatalities, it does not look like that will be the case
It's crazy to look at the population size in some of these countries and realize that multiple of our metro areas are of comparable size or larger.
Herd immunity happens around, what, 60-80%? Call me pessimistic, but I just don't see how that's achievable without a vaccine.
Herd immunity happens around, what, 60-80%? Call me pessimistic, but I just don't see how that's achievable without a vaccine.
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Without some effective treatments, getting to 60-80% is going to be pretty ugly.
unless we are much closer to herd immunity than i think we are yes it is going to get ugly, hopefully the TB vaccine, Plasma Therapy, HCQ, and Resmavir all turn out to be game changers. The hardworking docs are going to need more than one club in their bag.
interesting.UTExan said:The answer may be in urban population density. Stockholm, for instance, has a density of 14,000 per square mile whereas New York City is more complicated: Manhattan has about 66,000 people per square mile. Bronx is about 35,000 per square mile.Brooklyn is about 37,000.NorCal said:
To answer the OP, the answer is yes. Sweden's death rate per million is essentially the same as the USA. Yet they haven't destroyed their economy, haven't eliminated jobs and haven't triggered increases in domestic violence that we've seen in the USA.
In fact, to compare Sweden to its neighbor Norway, there are more cases per million in Norway than Sweden. Yet Norway has followed the same approach as the USA. As for deaths per million, when applied to the entire population, is there a legitimate statistical difference between Sweden and Norway? It's definitely arguable that there's no true difference.
Oslo (largest city in Norway) is 3500 per square mile.
Helsinki (largest city in Finland) is 1400 per square mile.
We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
and little towns all around this land...
Quote:
There is such a huge financial and moral incentive for this vaccine that I am certain one will be developed. The technologies being used are really mind blowing and innovative and will help the human race in general.
I'm hoping the intense focus on this will turn out to pay dividends into all sorts of other things like the space program once did.
Population density of Albany GA?
I will hang up and listen
I will hang up and listen
not sure your point. folks have been using Finland and Norway as peer comparisons to Sweden. UTexan brought up population density in urban areas and I found that interesting as it is another piece of factual data to assist in comparisons of approaches to containing this disaster, and as another of the many variables that may play into infection and death rates from this cursed bug.Sq 17 said:
Population density of Albany GA?
I will hang up and listen
you seem a little defensive.
oh, and to answer your question, Albany GA population density is 1374 per square mile.
We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
and little towns all around this land...
Sq 17 said:
Population density of Albany GA?
I will hang up and listen
It is amazing that Albany is in the middle of one of our worst hit areas with a population density of 1,374 per sq mile.
(that dark red splotch in SW Georgia)
Having said that, I would way rather ride this thing out in a place like that than in NY City.
i haven't heard what they attribute this to. was there a festival or something in Albany that triggered this?PJYoung said:Sq 17 said:
Population density of Albany GA?
I will hang up and listen
It is amazing that Albany is in the middle of one of our worst hit areas with a population density of 1,374 per sq mile.
(that dark red splotch in SW Georgia)
Having said that, I would way rather ride this thing out in a place like that than in NY City.
We're from North California, and South Alabam
and little towns all around this land...
and little towns all around this land...