COVID-19 Thread [V2.0]

[owbc]

Where is the cheap vacation...asking for a friend...

 

Hawaii:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/05/business/hawaii-free-trip-remote-workers-trnd/index.html

 

Ooof, I visited Hawaii once. Super cool, but definitely want nothing to do with living there! Haha

 

I just threw Chicago to Kona in the search engine and it's bringing up ~$400 round trip for basically all of January and February. Millions of people are going to be vaccinated by February...just saying...

[Jimbo]

England had fans at their soccer matches in London this weekend for the first time since March 9. London is Tier 2 and Manchester is Tier 3. Maybe the first step back to normalcy?

[LouisEly]

Millions of people are going to be vaccinated by February...just saying...

As a healthy, Caucasian male under the age of 50 who does not work in patient care or is a first responder, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be last on the list of those eligible for a vaccination and doubt I will have one by then.

[FVBrewerFan]

England had fans at their soccer matches in London this weekend for the first time since March 9. London is Tier 2 and Manchester is Tier 3. Maybe the first step back to normalcy?

 

I watched Man City match, and looked like there weren't any fans yet. If there were any at all they were few and well-hidden.

[Jimbo]

England had fans at their soccer matches in London this weekend for the first time since March 9. London is Tier 2 and Manchester is Tier 3. Maybe the first step back to normalcy?

 

I watched Man City match, and looked like there weren't any fans yet. If there were any at all they were few and well-hidden.

 

I watched that match as well. Manchester is in a Tier 3 zone, so no fans yet. London is Tier 2, So Saturday's West Ham United men's match and Sunday's Chelsea women's match had limited number of spectators.

[DHonks]

a small vocal minority of parents have harassed and threatened my district's superintendent and family enough over us returning to online learning that he has resigned. They held protests at his house, published his address on Facebook, have threatened him, have harassed his young children. It's awful

[jerichoholicninja]

NEW DELHI -- At least one person has died and 200 others have been hospitalized due to an unidentified illness in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, reports said Monday.

 

The illness was detected Saturday evening in Eluru, an ancient city famous for its hand-woven products. Since then, patients have experienced symptoms ranging from nausea and anxiety to loss of consciousness, doctors said.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/hundreds-ill-dead-due-unidentified-disease-india-74579553

 

It was almost exactly one year ago that I read an article about hundreds of people getting sick from a mysterious flu in a Chinese village. I figured I would never hear a word about it again.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Nobody besides healthcare workers actually wants people to lockdown. It's all lip service. Whole industries are barely scraping by and are desperate for any business they can get.

 

The marketing emails from all of the travel companies have been begging me to book a winter getaway. The safety protocols are emphasized. There are no domestic travel restrictions other than soft advisories and guidelines. And everything is absurdly cheap.

 

Did my wife and I snap and book a vacation? Yep. Do we feel bad about it? Sort of...but not really.

 

I think Alaska and Hawaii are still requiring tests to get in and others have 14-day quarantines. But the bigger problem is that visiting a lot of areas just isn't all that great because you can't dine in or do any festival etc. The price of the airfare is moot when there is little to do once you get there, depending on the state.

 

The Hawaii thing is kind of a joke. Free airfare to live there for 3 months? So you save $400 but have to pay their prices for everything else and find somewhere to live...

 

Besides, the cost of flights to Hawaii was undergoing a steep drop pre-Covid. There are more carriers serving HI now than ever before.

 

FWIW I don't fault you or anyone else traveling. This 50% participation thing where millions of people don't care and millions of others are living in constant fear isn't bringing an end to this any faster. All people can do at this point is minimize contact as much as possible and hope they can last until they get drugs. We've been moving from event to event for a year now warning people off it and it doesn't achieve anything. All we seem to have done is killed off a bunch of restaurants and not slowed the virus at all.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

a small vocal minority of parents have harassed and threatened my district's superintendent and family enough over us returning to online learning that he has resigned. They held protests at his house, published his address on Facebook, have threatened him, have harassed his young children. It's awful

 

We were closed basically all of November and my kids went back 11/30. They are both home sick today.

[tmwiese55]

Call me crazy, but I think if we just operated like normal this whole time with things like full restaurants/bars everywhere, festivals, sporting events, schools etc I think we'd have many more people dead.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Call me crazy, but I think if we just operated like normal this whole time with things like full restaurants/bars everywhere, festivals, sporting events, schools etc I think we'd have many more people dead.

 

Well, this won't be popular, I don't agree. I know this is the thing everyone likes to say because it makes us feel good about what we've done but I genuinely question the impact that it had, if any significant one at all. If Milwaukee were to green light everything this instant, the people who are scared to walk outside wouldn't be lining up at Sanford. They would continue to proceed with caution.

 

Reckless people have continued to behave recklessly throughout the 10 months. Enormous parts of Florida have all but ignored Covid completely and there is no discernible difference between FL and WI. They have just over 2x the documented cases and 4x the people. They've had (daily festivals) Disney World and Universal open since June.

 

Call me crazy, I just don't think our half-hearted distancing measures did anything at all. Most of the times I was out and about I found them being ignored all over the place. I remember trying to arrange curbside pickup at a restaurant in April and the guy just told me to come inside when I got there. I walk in and there are 10 people inside, half without masks, just getting their food.

 

The thing is moving its way through WI at will and I don't actually believe it would be worse if the public messaging were any different. People are doing what they're comfortable with and for a lot of them that means whatever they want.

 

I don't think most of the US mitigated anything. We just did the worst of both methods. Closed a bunch of stuff, made it impossible for lots of service-oriented businesses to survive, and locked down so ineptly that we didn't stop the sickness at all either.

[Fear The Chorizo]

a small vocal minority of parents have harassed and threatened my district's superintendent and family enough over us returning to online learning that he has resigned. They held protests at his house, published his address on Facebook, have threatened him, have harassed his young children. It's awful

 

We were closed basically all of November and my kids went back 11/30. They are both home sick today.

 

Cold and flu season don't quit, either...especially when boatloads of kids and other population groups that actually have a greater chance at becoming significantly sick from those type of viruses vs COVID have largely been sequestered for most of a year, giving their still developing immune systems a big and harmful delay in learning how to deal with any number of diseases. All 3 of my kids instantly picked up colds at two different schools within the first week they returned to in-person school back in September, too, causing them to miss a few days while we waited on testing results to confirm what we suspected - COVID negative but in all likelihood sicker than they otherwise would have been if more was available for them to do with their peers from March - August. It's not like we were under a rock all summer, either - but next to no activities/camps/schools/public places open or available at all during the summer months made it very difficult for continued interactions.

 

Disappointed hearing superintendent/public officials' family members being harassed by misplaced parental anger, regardless of the point of view. That shoe has just as easily been on the other foot for this issue as well - many local school district officials in my neck of the woods who have pushed to keep schools open by making the valid case COVID spread simply isn't happening in elementary/middle schools at levels that warrant them closing face a daily barrage of unfiltered hate coming their way from disgruntled parents who think they should be closed - even as they aren't forced to have their kids in school and have had the benefit of an improved elearning option this entire school year, with the opportunity to put their kids back in school if/whenever they are comfortable doing so.

[tmwiese55]

Call me crazy, but I think if we just operated like normal this whole time with things like full restaurants/bars everywhere, festivals, sporting events, schools etc I think we'd have many more people dead.

 

Well, this won't be popular, I don't agree. I know this is the thing everyone likes to say because it makes us feel good about what we've done but I genuinely question the impact that it had, if any significant one at all. If Milwaukee were to green light everything this instant, the people who are scared to walk outside wouldn't be lining up at Sanford. They would continue to proceed with caution.

 

Reckless people have continued to behave recklessly throughout the 10 months. Enormous parts of Florida have all but ignored Covid completely and there is no discernible difference between FL and WI. They have just over 2x the documented cases and 4x the people. They've had (daily festivals) Disney World and Universal open since June.

 

Call me crazy, I just don't think our half-hearted distancing measures did anything at all. Most of the times I was out and about I found them being ignored all over the place. I remember trying to arrange curbside pickup at a restaurant in April and the guy just told me to come inside when I got there. I walk in and there are 10 people inside, half without masks, just getting their food.

 

The thing is moving its way through WI at will and I don't actually believe it would be worse if the public messaging were any different. People are doing what they're comfortable with and for a lot of them that means whatever they want.

 

I don't think most of the US mitigated anything. We just did the worst of both methods. Closed a bunch of stuff, made it impossible for lots of service-oriented businesses to survive, and locked down so ineptly that we didn't stop the sickness at all either.

 

OK. So way more human interactions wouldn't have led to less human to human spread. Gotcha.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Call me crazy, but I think if we just operated like normal this whole time with things like full restaurants/bars everywhere, festivals, sporting events, schools etc I think we'd have many more people dead.

 

Well, this won't be popular, I don't agree. I know this is the thing everyone likes to say because it makes us feel good about what we've done but I genuinely question the impact that it had, if any significant one at all. If Milwaukee were to green light everything this instant, the people who are scared to walk outside wouldn't be lining up at Sanford. They would continue to proceed with caution.

 

Reckless people have continued to behave recklessly throughout the 10 months. Enormous parts of Florida have all but ignored Covid completely and there is no discernible difference between FL and WI. They have just over 2x the documented cases and 4x the people. They've had (daily festivals) Disney World and Universal open since June.

 

Call me crazy, I just don't think our half-hearted distancing measures did anything at all. Most of the times I was out and about I found them being ignored all over the place. I remember trying to arrange curbside pickup at a restaurant in April and the guy just told me to come inside when I got there. I walk in and there are 10 people inside, half without masks, just getting their food.

 

The thing is moving its way through WI at will and I don't actually believe it would be worse if the public messaging were any different. People are doing what they're comfortable with and for a lot of them that means whatever they want.

 

I don't think most of the US mitigated anything. We just did the worst of both methods. Closed a bunch of stuff, made it impossible for lots of service-oriented businesses to survive, and locked down so ineptly that we didn't stop the sickness at all either.

 

OK. So way more human interactions wouldn't have led to less human to human spread. Gotcha.

 

You're not getting my point but just opting to be sassy and dismissive instead. Gotcha.

 

We didn't decrease interactions on any significant scale. Schools were open for most of the time and the people who would frequent a dine-in restaurant in Milwaukee right now, aren't curtailing their interactions, they just find new ones. Did you see Lake Geneva, or the Dells ALL summer?

 

My point is that we did the worst of both things. We took away any chance for these places to be profitable while being laughably bad at limiting contact simultaneously.

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that locking stuff down means the virus has nowhere to go. The problem is we didn't actually do that. We had ice cream stands with lines around the block on day one and arbitrary rules about what's "essential."

 

You're conflating my point "lockdowns don't work." My point is that joke lockdowns don't work and that's exactly what we had.

 

Although, since you brought up human to human contact, it should be reiterated that Disney/Universal are seeing 100k people a day and have been for 6 months there's been no conclusive link to an outbreak at either place, while the state is overall doing a lot better with infection rate than WI. Even if their numbers are fudged, they would have to be drastically fudged to be where WI is.

[Machu Peach]

For what is worth, I remember attending a plenary talk maybe 10 years ago about an analysis of a couple dozen US Army bases during the Spanish Flu showed that the 3 bases with the strictest quarantine measures greatly limited spread. The bases that chose intermediate quarantine measures showed no difference that those that had no quarantine. I wish I could find the study, but I don't even remember the speaker's name.

[jerichoholicninja]

For what is worth, I remember attending a plenary talk maybe 10 years ago about an analysis of a couple dozen US Army bases during the Spanish Flu showed that the 3 bases with the strictest quarantine measures greatly limited spread. The bases that chose intermediate quarantine measures showed no difference that those that had no quarantine. I wish I could find the study, but I don't even remember the speaker's name.

 

You can't compare military personnel to the general public when it comes to following orders. You can make all the quarantine, social distance, whatever rules you want but John Q Public (and apparently a whole lot of the same people that are making the rules) is still going to do whatever they want.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

For what is worth, I remember attending a plenary talk maybe 10 years ago about an analysis of a couple dozen US Army bases during the Spanish Flu showed that the 3 bases with the strictest quarantine measures greatly limited spread. The bases that chose intermediate quarantine measures showed no difference that those that had no quarantine. I wish I could find the study, but I don't even remember the speaker's name.

 

You can't compare military personnel to the general public when it comes to following orders. You can make all the quarantine, social distance, whatever rules you want but John Q Public (and apparently a whole lot of the same people that are making the rules) is still going to do whatever they want.

 

This would make them the ideal sample. If intermediate quarantine measures didn't work with a group of people who don't have free will it would only strengthen the point I made above, that it's not the sort of thing you can cherry-pick isolation with. You either stay inside or you don't. Home Depot and Leon's aren't exempt.

 

I would be extremely interested in this link if it can be found.

[Machu Peach]

For what is worth, I remember attending a plenary talk maybe 10 years ago about an analysis of a couple dozen US Army bases during the Spanish Flu showed that the 3 bases with the strictest quarantine measures greatly limited spread. The bases that chose intermediate quarantine measures showed no difference that those that had no quarantine. I wish I could find the study, but I don't even remember the speaker's name.

 

You can't compare military personnel to the general public when it comes to following orders. You can make all the quarantine, social distance, whatever rules you want but John Q Public (and apparently a whole lot of the same people that are making the rules) is still going to do whatever they want.

For what it's (sic) worth...

[tmwiese55]

 

Well, this won't be popular, I don't agree. I know this is the thing everyone likes to say because it makes us feel good about what we've done but I genuinely question the impact that it had, if any significant one at all. If Milwaukee were to green light everything this instant, the people who are scared to walk outside wouldn't be lining up at Sanford. They would continue to proceed with caution.

 

Reckless people have continued to behave recklessly throughout the 10 months. Enormous parts of Florida have all but ignored Covid completely and there is no discernible difference between FL and WI. They have just over 2x the documented cases and 4x the people. They've had (daily festivals) Disney World and Universal open since June.

 

Call me crazy, I just don't think our half-hearted distancing measures did anything at all. Most of the times I was out and about I found them being ignored all over the place. I remember trying to arrange curbside pickup at a restaurant in April and the guy just told me to come inside when I got there. I walk in and there are 10 people inside, half without masks, just getting their food.

 

The thing is moving its way through WI at will and I don't actually believe it would be worse if the public messaging were any different. People are doing what they're comfortable with and for a lot of them that means whatever they want.

 

I don't think most of the US mitigated anything. We just did the worst of both methods. Closed a bunch of stuff, made it impossible for lots of service-oriented businesses to survive, and locked down so ineptly that we didn't stop the sickness at all either.

 

OK. So way more human interactions wouldn't have led to less human to human spread. Gotcha.

 

You're not getting my point but just opting to be sassy and dismissive instead. Gotcha.

 

We didn't decrease interactions on any significant scale. Schools were open for most of the time and the people who would frequent a dine-in restaurant in Milwaukee right now, aren't curtailing their interactions, they just find new ones. Did you see Lake Geneva, or the Dells ALL summer?

 

My point is that we did the worst of both things. We took away any chance for these places to be profitable while being laughably bad at limiting contact simultaneously.

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that locking stuff down means the virus has nowhere to go. The problem is we didn't actually do that. We had ice cream stands with lines around the block on day one and arbitrary rules about what's "essential."

 

You're conflating my point "lockdowns don't work." My point is that joke lockdowns don't work and that's exactly what we had.

 

Although, since you brought up human to human contact, it should be reiterated that Disney/Universal are seeing 100k people a day and have been for 6 months there's been no conclusive link to an outbreak at either place, while the state is overall doing a lot better with infection rate than WI. Even if their numbers are fudged, they would have to be drastically fudged to be where WI is.

 

 

 

You're going too black and white on it. Did our half baked lockdowns "work", I agree no. But it's not necessarily all or nothing. Did they work better than doing nothing, 100% absolutely factual. It's just shocking this is still debated this long into all this, especially with generally smart people. If folks weren't running around everywhere the whole time telling people this stuff doesn't work then maybe we'd have actually gotten more people on board so it worked better/more than it did.

 

Whether it was worth the economic cost for however extra it helped/worked is debatable and a discussion. But to act like we'd have the same dead right now if we'd have simply gone on like normal is just 100% wrong.

[Machu Peach]

Did they work better than doing nothing, 100% absolutely factual.

Citation(s) please. Not that I necessarily disagree, but if one is going to call something "100% absolutely factual" one should cite some pretty definitive study(s).

 

Edit: I'm terrible with grammar

[OldSchoolSnapper]

You're going too black and white on it. Did our half baked lockdowns "work", I agree no. But it's not necessarily all or nothing. Did they work better than doing nothing, 100% absolutely factual. It's just shocking this is still debated this long into all this, especially with generally smart people. If folks weren't running around everywhere the whole time telling people this stuff doesn't work then maybe we'd have actually gotten more people on board so it worked better/more than it did.

 

Whether it was worth the economic cost for however extra it helped/worked is debatable and a discussion. But to act like we'd have the same dead right now if we'd have simply gone on like normal is just 100% wrong.

 

Sorry. You don't get to claim stuff like "100% factual" and "100% wrong" without a shred of reliable evidence to prove it.

 

Tracking and measuring a "lockdown" as bad as ours was is so futile there is just no way to substantiate what you're saying. You can keep acting like it's ridiculous but it won't change the fact you're just speaking emotionally about it and not from any place of proof.

 

I would be interested in the study Machu is mentioning because it seems to corroborate exactly the perspective I'm sharing. No that doesn't make me unquestionably right, but it would suggest that isn't something you can half commit to. There probably isn't a single person in this thread who didn't go at least one stupid place in 10 months, and lots of people make those kinds of trips semi-often but still otherwise follow all the rules.

 

When a couple million people exempt themselves from the rules weekly, monthly, whatever, it's no longer one simple chore or task, it's millions of them. Covid doesn't care if you adhere 90% of the time if you happen to be positive the other 10% of the time you bend the rules. It doesn't take a great deal of lax behavior for exponential spread to explode. You seem to be really underestimating this aspect of things.

 

And as aside, please stop with this "I can't believe smart people disagree with me!" stuff. It's so tired.

[PeaveyFury]

It's impossible to speak with certainty, but I'd be surprised if the lock downs didn't reduce transmissions/death numbers somewhat significantly. Obviously, that's IMO, but it seems the logical conclusion. I think it's also logical to conclude that a lock down that was applied better/had more teeth/had better compliance would have yielded better results to that end.

 

I think it's also logical to conclude that OSS's overall point of 'people are making poor decisions and that would have spread the virus anyway' would have been true regardless (outside of a legitimate full lock down). But to suggest that the measures that were taken didn't have some positive effect on the death numbers doesn't seem the logical conclusion.

[tmwiese55]

Simply look at NYC death graph and try to convince yourself lockdowns don't work. Look at it and go, so if we'd kept on the path that led to those deaths in March/April would we have more or less deaths now than with what we did instead. Look at every major country that did one and the decrease it led to in all of them. And then look at how they've gone up since lockdowns/restrictions were lifted. Yes there isn't a shred of evidence, it's an overwhelming amount that it shouldn't even be debatable, yet here we are. Yes, this is 100% factual that less people are dead now because of it. Again, did it help enough to warrant the economic burden is a fair debate but to act like this doesn't work is just wrong to continue to spread to the world.

 

OSS, for some reason a stupid analogy popped into my head thinking about this. Remember the Jurassic Park back and forth of "so you're telling me a population of females will...breed?" and Malcolm says the "uhh, life finds a way" line. In this case, me saying "so you mean to tell me that people not interacting will pass a disease that needs interacting?" and you saying "well, yea stupidity/selfishness finds a way". Haha. Essentially that's kind of what you're getting at, we weren't gonna stop the people anyway so why bother. it kind of comes down to that, like I said it worked in the limited degree it did. You'd rather say, well that didn't really work all that great anyway, so whatever just do nothing. I'd say, we need to stop telling people this is BS so that it works better.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Simply look at NYC death graph and try to convince yourself lockdowns don't work. Look at it and go, so if we'd kept on the path that led to those deaths in March/April would we have more or less deaths now than with what we did instead. Look at every major country that did one and the decrease it led to in all of them

 

You're conflating things again though. You're arguing that lockdowns work, against nobody. NYC was among the first and worst places hit. It was taken very seriously and became a ghost town as the thing exploded. I have family there, it was NOT a comp to the measures taken in WI. Loads of people who work in NYC and are STILL working remote in their homes in Jersey and CT. Other countries that locked down actually locked down. It was enforced. These just aren't good comps. NYC is an incredibly densely populated area that was partially evacuated, almost completely locked down and a small land area that's far easier to control.

 

That's not what happened in Wisconsin and it is not what happened in Florida. As such, I don't think WI really did a thing to slow this. I think it did what it was going to do with peaks and valleys caused by weather. There are anecdotal cases where I'm sure an elderly person who could have been infected hasn't left their home in 10 months, but the total numbers probably come close to balancing out in such a way that I don't really think anything we did significantly curbed it.

 

The numbers look better than the very first ones because the virus was less deadly than thought, but I remain highly skeptical that the kinds of "BW3 must close but Lowe's is essential" measures stop anything at all. That just isn't how exponential spread works, where a person can do everything right and still get infected via 10 degrees of separation.

[jerichoholicninja]

It's not did they "work" to stop the spread or not. It's was the spread that was stopped worth the other costs. Killing the economy, killing small businesses, keeping people from going to the doctor for other health reasons, mental health, lost classroom time for kids, etc. I don't have the answer because it's not a black and white answer. It's a million shades of gray and anyone who claims to have an answer made up their mind well beforehand. I don't remember who said it but I think it was some health official in New York said if we prevented one COVID death then it was all worth it. Sorry to sound cold hearted but that line of thinking is flat out stupid and goes against all logic.