COVID-19 Thread [V2.0]

[PeaveyFury]

Trick or treat? Playing soccer at the park? Meh. There has to be some middle ground. Everyone lock down and watch Netflix isn't a feasible plan for 8 months.

 

Problem is, almost no one is pushing back on playing soccer at the park, etc.. It's the other stuff that's increasingly the problem.

[PrestigeWorldwide]

 

[sarcasm]Why do you want grandma to die?[/sarcasm]

 

But seriously, this is where I and a whole lot of other people are too. But if you say this you're called a hoaxer, or a Trumper, don't believe science, or a whole bunch of other irrelevant nonsense.

 

What I would call you is someone who must be fortunate enough to not have had someone close to you affected by this, because if you had I can't understand how you could be where you are at on this. You made the joke about grandma dying, well my wife's family lost a grandpa this weekend. An otherwise healthy grandpa in his early 60's, who if the bars were not open, would be here today. He was, as OldSchoolSnapper put it, "getting on with life" and he and the family he left behind paid the price.

 

Instead of saying "well the bars are open, why shouldn't there be trick-or-treating?" maybe question whether the bars should be open. And while I'm sure you and others would call me a liberal sap, left-wing nutjob, etc, I think of myself as someone who simply doesn't want to see more people die when they don't have to.

[igor67]

As a follow-up to my post last week all of these activities carry some level of risk, and it is important to consider both the intrinsic risk of the activity on a per-event or per person basis as well as the number of people doing the activity. Probably more importantly based on years of education research we know that humans are really bad at estimating those types of problems. Ideally consistent public health messaging could help deal with our inherent awfulness at solving these problems ourselves. Instead we are wallowing in the classical grammar/ statistical mistake that the plural of anecdote is anecdata.

 

Putting that aside I do think it is helpful to be mindful of pigeonholing posts or even the news. It's too easy to over read into a short post extreme positions. Even introverts want to see other people, and thinking Trick or Treat could go doesn't mean your a shill for Big Dentist. Remember back to ~2017 when we started to see how crazy good social media was at presenting us with super distorted versions of reality. I avoid most of that but after clicking just 1 story about school uniforms I still get links to other ridiculous stories advocating positions I've never heard an actual human say. Obviously I stopped reading those after awhile recognizing them as crazy and not remotely representative of anything but for awhile the insistence of that type of story sure made it seem like there was a substantial amount of will towards that nonsense. I suspect that absent any kind of cues that answering one way or another suggests allegiance to a group or cause 90+% of people would agree that the goals of any pandemic policy would be make things as normal as possible and save as many people as possible.

[reillymcshane]

I have talked about the stress COVID is starting to put on our health care systems, and there was a good article from the Journal Sentinel today that covered this. And in a very local, and easy to digest way.

 

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/10/19/aspirus-wausau-hospital-staff-urge-wisconsin-take-covid-seriously/3669849001/

 

Aspirus Healthcare - which has 10 hospitals in Wisconsin - set up a COVID unit with 25 beds. Now they have 98 beds for COVID, 80 of which are filled.

 

215 staff members have COVID or are isolating because someone they interact with has tested positive.

 

This is leading to staff shortages, which affects healthcare of all types in our state. And it's leading to tired and frustrated healthcare workers.

 

The sad part is that, when it's too late, almost everyone who passes wishes they had done something more. Instead of another Christmas with kids or grandkids, they're saying goodbye over FaceTime (with the nurse holding the phone for the patient).

 

I think the trickle of deaths - a few here, a few there - makes people not realize how serious it is.

[PeaveyFury]

We had our first familial close-call over the weekend. On Friday, my wife found out that her closest-in-proximity co-worker's daughter tested positive on Thursday. Fortunately, my wife wears her mask religiously and so does the co-worker. Other than my son having cold-like symptoms this weekend/today, no other issues thus far on our end.

 

The really scary thing, though, is that my in-laws downsized to a retirement condo recently, and last week I was over to help lug some of the heavy stuff. I'm very glad I wore a mask despite how annoying it was while moving, but that goes to show how quickly/unexpectedly we could have passed that to more at-risk family members....

[reillymcshane]

We had our first familial close-call over the weekend. On Friday, my wife found out that her closest-in-proximity co-worker's daughter tested positive on Thursday. Fortunately, my wife wears her mask religiously and so does the co-worker. Other than my son having cold-like symptoms this weekend/today, no other issues thus far on our end.

 

The really scary thing, though, is that my in-laws downsized to a retirement condo recently, and last week I was over to help lug some of the heavy stuff. I'm very glad I wore a mask despite how annoying it was while moving, but that goes to show how quickly/unexpectedly we could have passed that to more at-risk family members....

My brother's father-in-law test positive yesterday. He's elderly - over 90 - but in good health (at least for a guy over 90). Still not a good situation. We're really scared for his wife, who is (I think) 87. But she's not healthy. Just hoping she doesn't get it.

[TURBO]

I am walking amongst positive teenagers all day, everyday... It is a given that at anytime, we might have 10-30 positive cases in our building and they might not even know it. Then there are the idiots who have symptoms, but don't want to quarantine, so they try to hide it. Half of one of our sports teams just went into quarantine because of a positive test on the team. Then we have the idiot parents who send their kids to school even with symptoms because they don't want to be inconvenienced with taking their kids for tests or taking off from work.

 

It is a sh*t show, as I have outlined before.

 

We had 16 new quarantine kids today alone. 2 teachers. If we start losing teachers to positive tests and quarantine, we will shut down as we have no subs. None.

 

Every day I walk into this building feels like I'm walking the corona gauntlet.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I am wondering how my son's first grade class hasn't been shut down when I know for a fact that one of the kids is out because both her parents tested positive after going to a wedding. The dad is a teacher at the local high school.

 

I assume the child also has it but even if not, I don't know how the "cohort" hasn't been shut down. She must have tested negative? But there is no way the school doesn't know this.

 

The blame for sick kids showing up at school rests with employers collectively and not parents. Nobody that can't afford it is going to tell their boss they're not coming in for at least 2 weeks and likely longer because their kid has COVID. Especially if that kid is coughing and otherwise fine. There is just no way that somebody one paycheck from the street is going to do that. We can easily say 'people should have some money saved' but it doesn't help us now, because they don't, whatever the reason may be.

 

I think this is one of the reasons the US did much worse than other first-world countries.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

I am walking amongst positive teenagers all day, everyday... It is a given that at anytime, we might have 10-30 positive cases in our building and they might not even know it. Then there are the idiots who have symptoms, but don't want to quarantine, so they try to hide it. Half of one of our sports teams just went into quarantine because of a positive test on the team. Then we have the idiot parents who send their kids to school even with symptoms because they don't want to be inconvenienced with taking their kids for tests or taking off from work.

 

It is a sh*t show, as I have outlined before.

 

We had 16 new quarantine kids today alone. 2 teachers. If we start losing teachers to positive tests and quarantine, we will shut down as we have no subs. None.

 

Every day I walk into this building feels like I'm walking the corona gauntlet.

 

 

I get it. I’m safer than most. In our school district if you have a cold you must stay home for 14 days. Kids can test negative, but the school won’t allow the student or their siblings to come back until after 14 days.

 

Both my children are asthmatic and my youngest has extreme sensitive allergies. The littlest sniffle or cough and the school is ready to shut them down.

 

We had flu shots a few weeks ago and my oldest gets head aches after as a side effect. They were really bad last year. This year we made sure she hydrated as much as possible, but she still got a head ache. We told her not to go to the office under any circumstances. Gave her Tylenol. As she’s allergic to Advil and had her secretly take another dose during the day.

[tmwiese55]

Seems these schools could be operating similar to what I said a week or two back for my friend who is a little kid teacher where it's essentially 'we don't wanna know' situation and they're just not testing or making kids get tested.

 

I went to the dentist today and I know the technician decently well over the years so I asked what her kids are doing. She said they were in person to start then were forced to 2 weeks remote for the whole school because "all the teachers kept getting it", obviously hyperbole but those were her words. And now they're starting back up in person again, which with the current numbers seems you might as well have delayed it. But, I guess if a bunch of teachers already got it and you're not testing kids...

 

To reilly's healthcare post. My friend in the hospital just gave me an update a few days ago on a lot of stuff she can't believe is happening on their policies. First, they're no longer testing patients unless symptomatic. Employees can't proactively get themselves tested. Since they now don't test the patients, if an exposure gets found out after the fact the employee is made aware and told to quarantine for two weeks outside of work, but still to come to work. There was more too. Very surprising as you'd think they'd be so much more thorough there, of course it's just one place and could be just some bad decisions by their administration, so who knows how that compares to other places. I know we talked about it on here recently, but to me it just seems so logical to proactively test patients and employees, especially since they have the capabilities to do it so quickly and easy right there. I mean, they're running the screening tests for the UW athletes but you don't do it for their employees. Testing like we're doing for athletes, tv/movies etc should be applied to many more areas of essential workers.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I'm not sure what people expected to happen once the decision was made to open schools and and employers (many months ago) generally stopped telling people they didn't have to come in. If you need money and your kids aren't dying they are going to go to school in about 90% of circumstances. School should not have opened if that was a major concern.

 

It's not like it's much better to have grandma come watch them. I doubt she wants to anyway. I think it's much more likely every school administrator knew this, and listened to the advice that more closures would have severe consequences and little benefit.

 

I haven't read a lot of evidence that mass spread is occurring at school. I'm sure that some is, but there is spread going on all over the place and I don't think closing school would have us any better off right now. That doesn't do anything for parties and weddings and all the other problems. I needn't look beyond my own community for a high school history teacher that was humming along fine until contracting it at a wedding at the beginning of this month. Not a great look for him.

 

This is all to say that at this point, after we failed the first line of defense way back in February, I think this thing is just going to do what it does. Spotty closing of this thing, but not this other thing, isn't going to do anything at all.

[stoutdude04]

A 1st grade student at our school has just tested positive. Our district is already at virtual for the week because we are short on staff.

[FVBrewerFan]

I'm not sure what people expected to happen once the decision was made to open schools and and employers (many months ago) generally stopped telling people they didn't have to come in. If you need money and your kids aren't dying they are going to go to school in about 90% of circumstances. School should not have opened if that was a major concern.

 

It's not like it's much better to have grandma come watch them. I doubt she wants to anyway. I think it's much more likely every school administrator knew this, and listened to the advice that more closures would have severe consequences and little benefit.

 

I haven't read a lot of evidence that mass spread is occurring at school. I'm sure that some is, but there is spread going on all over the place and I don't think closing school would have us any better off right now. That doesn't do anything for parties and weddings and all the other problems. I needn't look beyond my own community for a high school history teacher that was humming along fine until contracting it at a wedding at the beginning of this month. Not a great look for him.

 

This is all to say that at this point, after we failed the first line of defense way back in February, I think this thing is just going to do what it does. Spotty closing of this thing, but not this other thing, isn't going to do anything at all.

 

I agree, February was the chance for China to come clean. Thing is, it wouldn't have mattered, it just would have delayed the inevitable. We're seeing this throughout Europe, throughout South America. Travel bans, lockdowns, masks, are all just good optics. Viruses do what they do, but people don;t want to hear that as an answer. They want to hear government is doing something, and that they can be empowered to do something.

 

You can't. You can protect the vulnerable as best you can, and in the meantime do everything you can to develop vaccines and therapeudics.

[homer]

I'm not sure what people expected to happen once the decision was made to open schools and and employers (many months ago) generally stopped telling people they didn't have to come in. If you need money and your kids aren't dying they are going to go to school in about 90% of circumstances. School should not have opened if that was a major concern.

 

It's not like it's much better to have grandma come watch them. I doubt she wants to anyway. I think it's much more likely every school administrator knew this, and listened to the advice that more closures would have severe consequences and little benefit.

 

I haven't read a lot of evidence that mass spread is occurring at school. I'm sure that some is, but there is spread going on all over the place and I don't think closing school would have us any better off right now. That doesn't do anything for parties and weddings and all the other problems. I needn't look beyond my own community for a high school history teacher that was humming along fine until contracting it at a wedding at the beginning of this month. Not a great look for him.

 

This is all to say that at this point, after we failed the first line of defense way back in February, I think this thing is just going to do what it does. Spotty closing of this thing, but not this other thing, isn't going to do anything at all.

 

I agree, February was the chance for China to come clean. Thing is, it wouldn't have mattered, it just would have delayed the inevitable. We're seeing this throughout Europe, throughout South America. Travel bans, lockdowns, masks, are all just good optics. Viruses do what they do, but people don;t want to hear that as an answer. They want to hear government is doing something, and that they can be empowered to do something.

 

You can't. You can protect the vulnerable as best you can, and in the meantime do everything you can to develop vaccines and therapeudics.

 

Also, you prevent your healthcare system from getting overrun.

[tmwiese55]

Along with saving lots of lives in the process while you buy time for the vaccines and therapeutics.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Along with saving lots of lives in the process while you buy time for the vaccines and therapeutics.

 

Why is that idea so difficult for some to grasp? No one has floated masks and social distancing as a cure. If they did, they were extremely under informed and/or naive. What those actions do is simply buy time and mitigate the stress on the healthcare infrastructure while a viable vaccine is developed. What does it really matter at this point what country this originated in, or who seemingly covered it up?

 

I agree on protecting the vulnerable. That is where our country is failing.

[adambr2]

I am wondering how my son's first grade class hasn't been shut down when I know for a fact that one of the kids is out because both her parents tested positive after going to a wedding. The dad is a teacher at the local high school.

 

I assume the child also has it but even if not, I don't know how the "cohort" hasn't been shut down. She must have tested negative? But there is no way the school doesn't know this.

 

The blame for sick kids showing up at school rests with employers collectively and not parents. Nobody that can't afford it is going to tell their boss they're not coming in for at least 2 weeks and likely longer because their kid has COVID. Especially if that kid is coughing and otherwise fine. There is just no way that somebody one paycheck from the street is going to do that. We can easily say 'people should have some money saved' but it doesn't help us now, because they don't, whatever the reason may be.

 

I think this is one of the reasons the US did much worse than other first-world countries.

 

If anyone in my 5 person household gets COVID-19 I am off for up to 2 weeks with pay. I am expecting it to happen inevitably, but it's huge piece of mind for me to not have to worry about taking a huge financial hit if it happens.

[igor67]

As would be terribly easy to demonstrate epidemiologists easily recognized the probability of increases in infection rates with the fall. The fact that this is happening all over in Europe is not proof of a lassie faire attitude. Very much the opposite Sweden deaths' as of Oct 12 5899

Denmark 674

Finland 346

Norway 277

 

Yet all are still grappling with resurgence. Just Denmark, Norway, and Finland have thousands more citizens who are still alive because of their earlier decisions.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coronavirus-deaths-in-the-nordics/

 

The numbers are less stark, but there are significant signs that treatment is already substantially better today than April and this is without any huge breakthrough. That's a relative benefit to getting sick today vs. April as an additional reason for having mitigated (and there are any number of studies demonstrating the relative values of various mitigation strategies (https://connect.biorxiv.org/relate/content/181). We're not trading any kind of permanent loss of freedom, we're talking about incremental trade-offs of quality of life for quantity of life on a timescale of months.

[stoutdude04]

I am wondering how my son's first grade class hasn't been shut down when I know for a fact that one of the kids is out because both her parents tested positive after going to a wedding. The dad is a teacher at the local high school.

 

I assume the child also has it but even if not, I don't know how the "cohort" hasn't been shut down. She must have tested negative? But there is no way the school doesn't know this.

 

The blame for sick kids showing up at school rests with employers collectively and not parents. Nobody that can't afford it is going to tell their boss they're not coming in for at least 2 weeks and likely longer because their kid has COVID. Especially if that kid is coughing and otherwise fine. There is just no way that somebody one paycheck from the street is going to do that. We can easily say 'people should have some money saved' but it doesn't help us now, because they don't, whatever the reason may be.

 

I think this is one of the reasons the US did much worse than other first-world countries.

 

If anyone in my 5 person household gets COVID-19 I am off for up to 2 weeks with pay. I am expecting it to happen inevitably, but it's huge piece of mind for me to not have to worry about taking a huge financial hit if it happens.

 

What if one gets it...then a month later another gets it? I believe you only get one round of 10 days paid. Correct?

[Fear The Chorizo]

Along with saving lots of lives in the process while you buy time for the vaccines and therapeutics.

 

Generally agreed, but there's also the tradeoff to prolonged societal shutdowns in western economies that ultimately lead to health and poverty crises in developing countries dependant on those economic engines. Even after a vaccine that gets the US and European countries somewhat back to a sense of normalcy, the prolonged fallout will largely impact many of the same vulnerable groups of people, particularly the impoverished. That has to be taken into account when weighing how restrictive public activity is when there really is no established finish line we know will be the end of COVID as issue #1.

 

The global strife and conflict resulting from COVID response to date will be terrible over the next few years, and it will have little to do with the health effects of the virus itself and much more to do with the unavoidable economic hardships it brought to the world. That is why some in the WHO are adamant about not using lockdowns indefinitely until developed nations feel comfy to go out and get drunk at a bar after 100k of them catch a soccer match in a stadium. They are concerned about the modest progress made in overall health of developing countries being completely ruined for more than half the world's population who rarely know where their next meal is going to come from - particularly in areas that are already overpopulated and malnourished.

[jerichoholicninja]

 

[sarcasm]Why do you want grandma to die?[/sarcasm]

 

But seriously, this is where I and a whole lot of other people are too. But if you say this you're called a hoaxer, or a Trumper, don't believe science, or a whole bunch of other irrelevant nonsense.

 

What I would call you is someone who must be fortunate enough to not have had someone close to you affected by this, because if you had I can't understand how you could be where you are at on this. You made the joke about grandma dying, well my wife's family lost a grandpa this weekend. An otherwise healthy grandpa in his early 60's, who if the bars were not open, would be here today. He was, as OldSchoolSnapper put it, "getting on with life" and he and the family he left behind paid the price.

 

Instead of saying "well the bars are open, why shouldn't there be trick-or-treating?" maybe question whether the bars should be open. And while I'm sure you and others would call me a liberal sap, left-wing nutjob, etc, I think of myself as someone who simply doesn't want to see more people die when they don't have to.

 

Actually I have had a few family members and acquaintances get it. Including my wife's 95 year old great uncle who came out fine. And, yes, I do believe that this kills people. Even, very rarely, young "healthy" people.

 

As someone posted before we need to get over the "but what is government doing about it!?!?!" and take care of ourselves. I don't want people to die of anything, ever. But people are free to make their own choices. They smoke, they drink to excess, they're overweight, they have a crap diet full of sugar and processed food, they get no physical activity, they avoid sleep and live on energy drinks. If people are going to go to bars or go party with large groups of people right now that's their choice. I'm not gonna be doing that but I'm also not going to get upset about it any more than I would about people that live generally unhealthy lives. Yes, I understand keep the medical system from being strained but how much is/has been the medical system already stressed by people suffering the consequences of their own poor choices without government stepping in to save people from themselves. If we really wanted to save a lot of lives and save medical resources we'd make tobacco products illegal but that will never happen.

[PeaveyFury]

If people are going to go to bars or go party with large groups of people right now that's their choice. I'm not gonna be doing that but I'm also not going to get upset about it any more than I would about people that live generally unhealthy lives.

 

I really don't understand how there can continue to be a lack of understanding that this has far, far less about people going out and putting themselves at risk by choosing to go to bars as it does the fact that they go to those bars and then go to work, go to church, etc. and literally spread the virus to people who aren't choosing to engage in that risky behavior. That is literally nothing like someone choosing to drink themselves to death or over eating. It's astounding that 7+ months into this thing, there are still so many people who don't get that.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

If people are going to go to bars or go party with large groups of people right now that's their choice. I'm not gonna be doing that but I'm also not going to get upset about it any more than I would about people that live generally unhealthy lives.

 

I really don't understand how there can continue to be a lack of understanding that this has far, far less about people going out and putting themselves at risk by choosing to go to bars as it does the fact that they go to those bars and then go to work, go to church, etc. and literally spread the virus to people who aren't choosing to engage in that risky behavior. That is literally nothing like someone choosing to drink themselves to death or over eating. It's astounding that 7+ months into this thing, there are still so many people who don't get that.

 

I have sympathy for people who have no choice but to, I don't know the word, cross-pollinate with every group of people, like cashiers, teachers, etc. But for people not in those lines of work it would seem really easy to mitigate your risks if you're really that worried about it. If you have a bunch of health problems, are in a risk group, or are just a nervous person, a lot of the onus is on you. This is something that doesn't really get mentioned much, but how many of the dead made risky choices?

 

There are an awful lot of weddings going on and a lot of questionable people attending them. Bars, restaurants, going to Ace without a mask, breathing on the help there, etc. I mean my own Dad is 70, a diabetic, and really has not come within 10 feet of a person for 8 months about 95% of the time.

 

I see a lot of folks who are in the crosshairs of who this is killing just being really sloppy about things. I guess my point is that this whole campaign sort of implies that everyone who contracted this and died was due to someone else being irresponsible when in a bunch of cases it was them.

 

If we are talking about something as mundane as wearing a mask, people need to just do it. But hypothetically, if the government announced tonight they've got a vaccine set for distribution on November 20, 2021, do we really expect people to avoid bars and airplanes for another year? I just can't get behind shaming people who want to go out for a burger or visiting a beach.

 

Some people are naturally inclined toward more of a homebody lifestyle and those are the people, at least in my circle, doing most of the "shaming." Their lifestyle has been minimally disrupted so they can't comprehend why anybody would struggle with this. I'm kind of in the middle. 8 months into this with no end in sight, I just can't judge anybody for doing what they need to do to be happy. But I think you can do that without being reckless. And unfortunately a bunch of people ARE being reckless, even defiant in some cases to make some point about freedom.

[Outlander]

I'm not a hunter but concerned about my Dad and Uncles that go deer hunting every year at a family house in Upper Michigan and they bring other friends/relatives. They are alone most of the day but get back together at night. Lots of older people there and then going back home to their older spouses.

[JackNicholson1974]

Does anyone know if any schools in Waukesha County are virtual? Here in Winnebago County we are 100% virtual, and I dont think Appleton even had one day in the classroom. How can a county as large as Waukesha be 100% in person like there is no problems and an hour North we are living in a bunker like it's WW3?