COVID-19 Thread [V2.0]

[Fear The Chorizo]

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.

 

Spanish flu's outbreak occurred at a time when most people were reliant on trains to travel further than 10 miles from home by land and cruise ships by water - air travel wasn't even a commercial option yet...and news traveled at an even slower rate - It would have been infinitely easier to impose a strict quarantine then on even a military base compared to now and to prolong the rate of the virus' spread, because population centers in general were much more isolated 100 years ago. Estimates were that the globe had roughly 2 billion people on it around the time of the Spanish flu.

 

Multiply that 1920 global population estimate by 4 to get near today's population coupled with an incalculable increase in the developed world's ability to get around (not only locally but also internationally), and I'm just thrilled COVID-19 isn't nearly as fatal/medically harmful to the vast majority of humanity as Spanish flu was.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

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.

 

We go against that line of thinking every single day with many things, so yes it's stupid, but this is actually not the point I'm making here specifically (though it is a valid one). I'm actually not talking about the economic of it at all.

 

My inclination is that a lockdown as lame as our attempt at one doesn't actually achieve the "slow the spread" goal at any significant level, for a bunch of reasons. Most obvious is tons of people just ignored it, but also that even those that do make a bunch of exceptions they don't grant others. All those little exceptions add up to millions. Then there's also just the sheer amount of trips to places and errands to run that are assumed to be of zero risk if masked, etc. Then there are those who do get sick, but are never sick enough to think they are spreaders and engage in things they otherwise would not. If I knew I had Covid, I wouldn't go anywhere. If all I had is a sore throat, I'd probably just keep trucking.

 

Add all of this stuff up together and I'm skeptical that the end result is any different due to the explosive nature of exponential spread. I am not stating any of this as fact. But my guess is that eventually general health of the population, population density and weather are far larger factors than half-hearted lockdowns and masks.

[PeaveyFury]

My inclination is that a lockdown as lame as our attempt at one doesn't actually achieve the "slow the spread" goal at any significant level

 

I appreciate your disclaimer that you're not stating this as anything beyond your inclination. But I'll again state my view that it doesn't seem like the logical inclination here to believe that it didn't 'help at any significant level'. At a minimum, it did seem to 'flatten the curve' in the initial wave, and it undoubtedly bought time between then and the current explosion of cases to figure out how to treat cases better medically and to buy additional time for the seemingly imminent vaccine. I can't factually quantify it, but I'd personally be astounded if that didn't help reduce deaths at a significant level.

[tmwiese55]

You argued they did nothing. Those places show that it worked and works. And directly disproves what you said about no/minimal lives being saved (you might not have directly said that so apologies if overstated). Yet people continue to just put their heads in the sand as if nothing can be done when the proof is right there that it can be done. In a way, you're saying I can't use places that did a lockdown as proof lockdown worked.

 

For the places you said like WI/FL, and everywhere really. All their numbers spiked once restrictions were lifted and people started doing more and more things. First, undoubtedly lives were saved in the beginning for how long it lasted and delaying. And for those who are still adhering it is reducing the numbers by at least some percentage. Believe it or not, a good chunk of people are still staying home. If they all started mixing it up too, the number would go up. I simply have no idea how one can argue that. ETA: just saw your post a few before this one and this would go to your 2nd paragraph.

 

I've agreed with you many times lately on the 'horse is out of the barn' type thing on many things. And on things similar to your Lowes comment of micro analysing things. And at this point so many people have a whatever attitude among themselves that micro analyzing certain public things becomes a blip on the radar. I get that. But we have to stop spreading false things about how it's bs and doesn't work to at least try. I just can't get behind the laissez fair attitude to just give up. Sure it's probably too late, these people won't' listen anyway but you have to try.

 

something else popped in my head bars/restaurants. In the sense that if we lifted restrictions in major cities, would enough people even be willing to go? As in does the 25 or 50% rule even matter if not enough people would go to get above those numbers. Which then would get into a talk on things like you did blaming the shutdown rules for the bankrupting as opposed to the virus itself. Pure guess off the top of my head, I still think people in Madison/MKE would be going out. Not like it was, but I'd guess above the 50% threshold.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

You argued they did nothing.

 

No, I did not. I argued that they did nothing in Wisconsin. Because they never really took place at the level necessary to be effective. I don't know how many times I have to say this. I've never once argued here that lockdowns don't work.

 

For the places you said like WI/FL, and everywhere really. All their numbers spiked once restrictions were lifted and people started doing more and more things.

 

 

Highly debatable. There just isn't strong evidence to say this one way or another since the measures coincided with seasonal changes that drove people in or outdoors for other reasons. It's kind of hard to say how much of that was a lockdown vs. summer break or any of the things that increase in the summer. That Orlando's massive entertainment district hasn't been able to pinpoint a large outbreak despite lots of people trying to find one doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's not helping your argument and it would seem like it easily would do so.

 

As far as lives being saved, as I've already said, I believe that anecdotally lives were saved by a small number of very high-risk people not going anywhere at all. But I don't think that the overall numbers would look much different than they do because I think that group is incredibly small. Despite a lot of dead people, we're still talking about something that's killed 4k people in a state of nearly 6 million. I don't say that to downplay what it's done, but to point out that tons and tons of people have been exposed to this by now. I don't think it could be spreading much worse than it has been.

[tmwiese55]

This is the line that started this chain of events: "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."

 

If you've since reduced to "our current environment, which isn't really a lockdown, doesn't work" and acknowledge that the earlier lockdowns worked. Yes I don't have a disagreement. Like I said, I agree with you on a lot of that now. Your Disney points falls in line, when FL doesn't have a real lockdown of any kind then Disney is a blip on the radar and nothing that'll stand out. But keep in mind there's been plenty of other large events that have been tied. The motorcycle rally got a lot of headlines, but you specifically have pointed out weddings a few times.

 

However, you still just argued somehow that the massive increase in interactions isn't a huge factor in the spike is just shocking at this point.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

However, you still just argued somehow that the massive increase in interactions isn't a huge factor in the spike is just shocking at this point.

 

I'm sorry, but you haven't really argued anything you claim without hyperbole. It's always this same "I thought people were smart" and "how you can say this is just crazy" type stuff.

 

My point was that you're making a causation/correlation error and claiming that because cases went up when the lockdown ended that means the lockdown worked. The problem is that a bunch of other stuff coincided with the lockdown ending and you can't just toss that factors aside.

 

Further, my point is that there was no massive increase/decrease in interactions that you're suggesting. We just shifted most of our interactions from one place to another and IMO you're really exaggerating the number of people who did even that. I don't know why you bolded what you did either. It's referring to Wisconsin and the same thing I've been saying all along. So some people didn't go out to dinner anymore and instead filled the Home Depot parking lot to the brim every Saturday.

 

I don't know how to whittle it down anymore. A hypothetical stoppage of people interacting with each other would slow a virus down. The problem is, that never happened in this state. I'm telling you, you would have been mortified by the scene almost nightly in the Dells the entire summer.

 

A virus doesn't spread to everybody in the vicinity if no measures are taken at all. Some people just won't get it. It's not like without the measures, the entire state of WI would have been having one big orgy under the same roof. It's hard for me to envision a scenario with modern standards of hygiene and sanitation and personal space, in a state with WI's population density, that we'd be doing worse than 441,000 confirmed (likely way more) cases. 

 

What we do know now vs. February is:

It's not as lethal as we thought

It's not as contagious as we thought (ex. surface transmission)

 

Despite that, TONS of people have still had it. That tells me a whole lot of people were exposed. So my skepticism that our version of a lockdown "worked", stems from a belief that with those numbers and what we know about Covid...we didn't really do a whole lot of inorganic "slowing it down."

 

I can't say this as it just based on experience, but I feel like (outside of the first 2 weeks when people seemed genuinely spooked) there's actually more adherence to rules now than there has been the last few months, with the election over with. It's no longer a political play now and I see more people just accepting things. A lot of people who have been pretty stuck in the mud about doing whatever actually sat out Thanksgiving which shocked me.

[Machu Peach]

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.

The plural of an antidote is not data and the plural of data is not knowledge. Also, declaring something beyond debate without being willing to provide a citation is about as anti-science as it gets.

 

Now on the specific logical fallacy here... You mention that the "death graph" in reference to the timing of the lockdown in NY. Here is the mortality by date graph in GA with the date their mandatory lockdown was ended (indicated by the "Shelter in Place extended for at risk"). See how the mortality rate starts to drop dramatically when the lockdowns ended? Thus we can conclude that ending mandatory lockdowns decreases COVID mortality, right?

 

...of course that line of thinking is ridiculous. I'm just using it as an example of how the mortality rate vs time of mandatory lockdowns (or end of mandatory lockdown) is an extremely poor measure of the efficacy of mandatory lockdowns. I don't even necessarily disagree with your point, but these sorts of observations do not support it.

[tmwiese55]

Wow just wow. I guess you're ignoring the obvious time lag. There is no restrictions, leads to huge spike in deaths, lockdowns start and it goes down and down. Restrictions lift and it goes up over time. This happened virtually everywhere in the world. But let's keep arguing about it.

 

Movement data site for WI: https://geods.geography.wisc.edu/covid19/physical-distancing/ . Take for what you will.

 

ETA: apologies for any tone. It's just so frustrating this clear stuff somehow continues to be argued.

[homer]

Guys, let's pull back on the condescension.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Wow just wow. I guess you're ignoring the obvious time lag. There is no restrictions, leads to huge spike in deaths, lockdowns start and it goes down and down. Restrictions lift and it goes up over time. This happened virtually everywhere in the world. But let's keep arguing about it.

 

Movement data site for WI: https://geods.geography.wisc.edu/covid19/physical-distancing/ . Take for what you will.

 

You're consistently the only person that has to talk with this tone throughout this thread.

[homer]

OK, time to drop it and move on. Thanks.

[Machu Peach]

When searching for that Spanish Flu/Army base study that I mentioned earlier (I sadly am unable to find it), I came across this interesting paper published about a month ago. It's a very methodical look at viral spread among US Marine recruits under a reportedly strict quarantine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717

[owbc]

I just saw this in my email inbox from Alaska Airlines...

 

CALIFORNIA FLIGHTS

BUY ONE,

GET ONE

for just the taxes and fees.*

Start 2021 with a trip for two for the price of one.

 

Meanwhile the news headline for California from the Guardian:

 

Fatigued Californians are back in lockdown. Will it work?

 

Hmm...

[DHonks]

I think a lot of people misunderstand many concepts thrown around in the media:

community spread- they don't understand the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate all transmission, just to lower the amount of spread occurring

flatten the curve- they think the goal was to end all infection. But flatten the curve is a concept to keep hospitals and health care capacity at a sustainable level. When hospitals are too full, people can't get adequate care, and more people will die of COVID, heart attacks, diabetes, the flu, cancer, and countless other ailments.

[FVBrewerFan]

I think a lot of people misunderstand many concepts thrown around in the media:

community spread- they don't understand the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate all transmission, just to lower the amount of spread occurring

flatten the curve- they think the goal was to end all infection. But flatten the curve is a concept to keep hospitals and health care capacity at a sustainable level. When hospitals are too full, people can't get adequate care, and more people will die of COVID, heart attacks, diabetes, the flu, cancer, and countless other ailments.

 

Yes, it's common for people to misunderstand these concepts. For example, community spread is not at all how you're describing it. Community spread refers to the source of how one contracted the virus is unknown. I'm guessing you're conflating herd immunity with community spread.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I think a lot of people misunderstand many concepts thrown around in the media:

community spread- they don't understand the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate all transmission, just to lower the amount of spread occurring

flatten the curve- they think the goal was to end all infection. But flatten the curve is a concept to keep hospitals and health care capacity at a sustainable level. When hospitals are too full, people can't get adequate care, and more people will die of COVID, heart attacks, diabetes, the flu, cancer, and countless other ailments.

 

Yes, it's common for people to misunderstand these concepts. For example, community spread is not at all how you're describing it. Community spread refers to the source of how one contracted the virus is unknown. I'm guessing you're conflating herd immunity with community spread.

 

No, he isn't wrong at all. The goal of mitigating community spread is to get to the point where infections can be traced to a source. So yes, the goal is to, in effect, eliminate community spread. There are people out there who think that when someone says the goal is to eliminate community spread, it means to eliminate all transmission, but that simply isn't the case. I don't want to speak for DHonks, but I believe that's what he was getting at.

[MrTPlush]

I am pretty ashamed of Wisconsin at this point. I don't know how it is in the rest of the state, but my closest school district is still in person. They are the only district in the county and surrounding area still in school. Almost every other school has been totally virtual for weeks...there is simply no excuse for our school to be open at this point. It is a rural area that has very obvious signs of a major outbreak going on and I know for a fact the two closest hospitals have full ICUs. Someone in my household tested positive a few days ago. Not surprising since they work at a daycare, but the person who owns the daycare has handled things poorly in my opinion. When an employee tests positive the close contacts are never sent home too. They would have to send kids home if they started sending home close contacts due to staffing concerns so instead only the infected workers go home. Of course (not the person in my household) many younger people in their lower 20s that work at the local school/daycare go out to bars/parties/weddings all the time...just terrible. One of the girls at this daycare had a big wedding in June that was indoors with zero masks. Do you think they were banned from the daycare for weeks along with all the other workers who went? Nope, right back to work.

 

I am not a stay at home, never leave, don't see family, etc. kind of person....but jeez. The amount of reckless just downright stupid behavior still going on in December is pathetic. I know someone who insisted on holding their wedding last Saturday and their elderly grandparents were strapped with N95 masks and full shield sitting way way far away from everyone. Who does that to their grandparents?

 

I honestly wonder how some people sleep at night.

[TURBO]

 

I honestly wonder how some people sleep at night.

 

People like that sleep just fine, they don't care about anyone but themselves and their own personal wants and needs.

 

These people are everywhere, not just in your area of WI.

 

Our country has been infested with instant gratification for quite some time now, it's no surprise that people have zero self-control or care for the greater good of the community. If they want to go to the bar, they will go to the bar, who cares if you get the virus, infect others, that trip to the bar can't wait...

 

Relates to people who simply can't stay off their phones while driving. Must check that text, must send that text, must search amazon even in traffic. People will do what they want, and don't care if they put others in danger. Instant gratification.

 

Judging by behaviors before the pandemic, is it really surprising that people act like they do?

 

It's disgusting really...

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I am pretty ashamed of Wisconsin at this point. I don't know how it is in the rest of the state, but my closest school district is still in person. They are the only district in the county and surrounding area still in school. Almost every other school has been totally virtual for weeks...there is simply no excuse for our school to be open at this point. It is a rural area that has very obvious signs of a major outbreak going on and I know for a fact the two closest hospitals have full ICUs. Someone in my household tested positive a few days ago. Not surprising since they work at a daycare, but the person who owns the daycare has handled things poorly in my opinion. When an employee tests positive the close contacts are never sent home too. They would have to send kids home if they started sending home close contacts due to staffing concerns so instead only the infected workers go home. Of course (not the person in my household) many younger people in their lower 20s that work at the local school/daycare go out to bars/parties/weddings all the time...just terrible. One of the girls at this daycare had a big wedding in June that was indoors with zero masks. Do you think they were banned from the daycare for weeks along with all the other workers who went? Nope, right back to work.

 

I am not a stay at home, never leave, don't see family, etc. kind of person....but jeez. The amount of reckless just downright stupid behavior still going on in December is pathetic. I know someone who insisted on holding their wedding last Saturday and their elderly grandparents were strapped with N95 masks and full shield sitting way way far away from everyone. Who does that to their grandparents?

 

I honestly wonder how some people sleep at night.

 

I'm not aware of evidence of widespread secondary transmission at school. If a school is closed, every case of this I have seen (as far as schools that opened, then closed) is because they do not have staff to operate, and there are no subs - anywhere. It is generally not because of widespread student body infection. If they do have staff, schools are open for the most part. And there is lots of support for keeping them open among medical professionals.

 

As far as daycare goes I am not sure what other policy is reasonable. If a teacher tested positive at a daycare, the safest thing possible would be to close the school for 2-3 weeks. It's simply not a feasible solution as they are among the most essential businesses there are, and they would all be closed under these guidelines. Daycares operate on very thin margins, they can't just send teachers home as a precaution without also telling a bunch of kids they no longer have the required staff to teach them. Their T:S ratio is strictly mandated by law. As far as I know they've followed the schools. They close once they have to, because they do not have healthy staff.

[MrTPlush]

Many of the schools by me closed for precautionary reasons...not necessarily widespread infection or lack of teachers. I know a few did close because a lack of teachers, but there have certainly been some that did not. I believe the other school that kept doing in school sessions stopped for Thanksgiving-January as planned, which I know a lot of schools around the country planned on.

 

I am not saying the schools plan is poor for having in school, but I think it has gotten to the point it flat out just shouldn't be happening. You aren't going to find widespread infections at schools because kids rarely show meaningful symptoms (if any) and aren't tested much. Their infections are almost always going to be caught when they give it to older family members in their household. The person in my household is with one year olds all day. I bet there are no cases of someone getting infected via a one year old or toddler. why? Well, how many one year olds has the state tested? Kids are so often asymptomatic or have minor symptoms you could have pretty large outbreaks at a school and be quite unaware that it is happening.

 

I mean shouldn't a daycare follow close contact protocols? I am no expert, but I bet the state has specifically told them to follow such guidance. At this daycare you are going to be a close contact to at least one other person during the day....I would think that person would have to quarantine.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I bet there are no cases of someone getting infected via a one year old or toddler. why?

 

Because their viral loads are far too low for adults to be infected. Kids are frequently tested when a parent has a confirmed case or is a close contact to one. Elementary aged kids and younger can be infected by adults, but there is little to no evidence pointing to them being able to infect adults at any significant rate.

 

Dr. Fauci recently said it best - close the bars and open the schools....it's not the schools being open that cause transmission, it's the bars that adults continue frequenting and interacting (faculty/teachers/staff included, or their close contacts that continue with making poor choices) that are the much bigger problem.

 

And despite there being some improvements with it, elearning is once again proving to be a trainwreck when it comes to actually educating kids, particularly young children. I think college and high school kids are still able to pick up some kind of value, however arguably the most important aspects of their education and development towards being young adults (interacting with their peers person to person) have been taken from them for close to a year now - and the US is in the group of countries where that is the minority policy.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

You aren't going to find widespread infections at schools because kids rarely show meaningful symptoms (if any) and aren't tested much. Their infections are almost always going to be caught when they give it to older family members in their household.

 

You're not finding widespread infections at school because kids don't spread COVID at the rate adults do. There's as close to universal agreement on this as can be expected this early in the process.

 

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/kids-school-and-covid-19-what-we-know-and-what-we-don-t

 

This doesn't mean there's zero spread at school and in communities where is more infection there will be more spread at school. But school isn't a root source of spread, which it was feared to be at the start.

 

More importantly though, there's been plenty of rage about the economics of more closures but far less about the disaster remote learning has been in low-income areas, something predicted by just about everyone. The absentee rates are through the roof, and there is more or less no ability to ID and help kids who are falling behind.

[PeaveyFury]

And despite there being some improvements with it, elearning is once again proving to be a trainwreck when it comes to actually educating kids, particularly young children.

 

Is there any legitimate evidence of this at this point beyond personal assumptions and anecdotal experiences/opinions?

[Machu Peach]

And despite there being some improvements with it, elearning is once again proving to be a trainwreck when it comes to actually educating kids, particularly young children.

 

Is there any legitimate evidence of this at this point beyond personal assumptions and anecdotal experiences/opinions?

Here's a statement from AAP in August. I'm not sure one could consider it legitimate evidence, but it an informed opinion from a relevant professional organization. They don't describe e-learning as a 'trainwreck', but do highlight negative consequences.

https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/

 

 

Edit: This is first time I've bothered looking into in personal vs remote learning as it seems highly emotionally (sometimes politically) charged and I don't really have a dog in the fight. However it seems well documented that e-learning exacerbates the achievement gap experienced by minority students. That's not really an issue for a lot of places in WI, but it is for a large fraction of the country.