Cases rising, will they close it again
- Thread starter TUMe
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#Stittiot won’t. He lacks any actual leadership character. Hell, Abbott screwed the pooch with the restrictions he enacted today stopping all sorts of outdoor gatherings and events when recent contact tracing points to bars, churches, weddings, funerals, and house parties as the most likely culprits in boosting spread again. So Abbott restricts large outdoor gatherings, theme parks, rafting and tubing businesse (really?), and bars (at least he got one right). Stitt will do absolutely nothing and OK will soon lead the nation in COVID cases per capita.
And WTf are all of you in Jenks doing?
And WTf are all of you in Jenks doing?
It’s never been about cases rather hospitalizations and deaths. Younger people getting the virus over the summer will help the situation this fall and winter when conditions are more favorable for mass spread. Our strategy should be to protect the elderly at all cost and the rest of the population use reasonable precautions. We certainly don’t want to repeat the policies we saw in New York where they intentionally infected the elderly. Hospitalizations are unfortunately rising and need to be watched. If the trend continues I can see bars closing and restaurants going back to half capacity like Texas.
Again, as long as people continue to stay silent about the protests that immediately proceeded this spike, pretend California doesn’t exist, and coddle the governor of the state that has more deaths than Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma combined I will not take these criticisms seriously. States couldn’t stay closed and now that there’s been an uptick in cases again we have to be adults and learn to live with it without shutting down.
I have some sympathy for the situation Cuomo had with NYC being the densest place in the US by far. There’s nothing he could do about that and it matters, but he made some real missteps and no one has a single criticism for him while they’ve been screaming at Desantis and Abbott for what exactly?
I have some sympathy for the situation Cuomo had with NYC being the densest place in the US by far. There’s nothing he could do about that and it matters, but he made some real missteps and no one has a single criticism for him while they’ve been screaming at Desantis and Abbott for what exactly?
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In a not shocking at all turn of events the TW(via bloomberg) is heavily implying the uptick in cases is related to the trump rally. Unfortunately for them this is about the easiest thing possible to debunk. Now, I don't think anyone can conclude with certainty that protests did this. Memorial day weekend was around the same time, etc. BUT it's possible, and it's also possible that the general permissiveness shown toward them led regular people to change their behavior around the same time as well. What's not possible is it being caused by a rally occurring 3 weeks after the rise began.
https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/blo...m_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_tulsaworld
https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/blo...m_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_tulsaworld
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Okay, as far as blame, rioters and cops screaming at each other can spread disease, a rally can spread disease but one night is not as long as the riots lasted. I want to clearly say that those unfortunate individuals who died did little to spread the disease after their death.
My question, however, was what do we think will happen now. Trump is gone from Oklahoma, there no longer seem to be riots in Oklahoma and less nationwide (or maybe I just quit watching the news) and the dead are not causing this spike. I think rather than shut down we will freeze in place. A few like Texas will go back some, masks maybe become more common. I don't see how wearing a mask is an undo burden, since the above graph shows it saves lives along with distancing.
My question, however, was what do we think will happen now. Trump is gone from Oklahoma, there no longer seem to be riots in Oklahoma and less nationwide (or maybe I just quit watching the news) and the dead are not causing this spike. I think rather than shut down we will freeze in place. A few like Texas will go back some, masks maybe become more common. I don't see how wearing a mask is an undo burden, since the above graph shows it saves lives along with distancing.
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The "Summer will end it" theory looks less valid everyday. Our numbers, along those of several states, are setting new records. This is a new thing and we have no history to judge by.
When large chunks of the population get the flu or a cold they do things to build their immune system and focus on personal hygiene (hand washing, cleaning). More people are testing positive but the death rate from people who contracted Covid is still under 1%. It’s not worth wasting one second thinking about!
I think it’s funny how many of these MAGA nuts claim to be American patriots who would, and I quote here, “Lay down their lives for their country” but they never served in the military and when asked to do the most simple version of self sacrifice in wearing a mask, they raise hell about it.
It’s become a form of virtue signaling in some corners of the right. An “I won’t be told what to do” thing. Childish I agree. Probably a bit of it is irritation with some of the more over the top measures that have been taken, but it’s really the tiniest of burdens to make other people feel safer even if you think it’s pointless. It just sort of seems like a polite thing to do like holding a door open.
That said, studies on mask wearing are a pretty mixed bag. Lots of them prior to this outbreak said they were ineffective in most circumstances, which is partly why there was a lot of mixed messaging on whether people should wear them or not. There’s a lot of disagreement between medical professionals about whether they make much of an impact. BUT it’s basically a zero risk, high reward situation so why not wear them?
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I would argue we've already seen the benefits in places like Japan, Korea, and various European nations where it was mandatory for at least some period of time. Their infection rates have not mirrored ours at all, even though we live in a much more spread out society.
Yeah that's the gist of the argument now, but there are lots of other plausible explanations, especially for places in Asia that probably deal with a new coronavirus from China on a regular basis. There are confounding variables everywhere you look. Either way, seems reasonable to go ahead and wear one.
For Europe it really depends on what country you look at just like it depends on what state you look at here. Antibody testing looks pretty similar in a lot of places outside of the NJ, NY, MA corridor. That's one of the reasons FL, TX, AZ, and CA may have a long way to go before it goes away. They're only showing 3-4% of their populations with antibodies at most.
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This^^^
The protests and rioters definitely spread some disease, but are not the driving force behind the massive spikes across the country. Florida had very few protests, but they are right there in the thick of it. Meanwhile, Chicago, New York, and Louisville all had weeks of protests with huge crowds. Both those state's numbers are more or less flat.
I'm not saying there is no correlation because I am sure the protest events had an effect. But the size of that effect is very much open to debate. I think the biggest problem is two-fold. There are lots of people going back to their retail jobs and having to deal with half the customers not wearing masks. And then there is the bars/restaurants issue.... I have walked/driven by and seen far too many people inside bars/restaurants in Santa Fe (all without masks) to be considered "safe".
We can argue about the wisdom of the people that go into restaurants and crowded bars and spread the disease, but it is hard not to also place some blame on the leaders across the country that have allowed that to happen in the first place.
If you tell a business it can open at 50% capacity, you can't blame them for doing just that, and perhaps being slightly generous about what their maximum capacity is. If you tell retail shops that they no longer need to count heads indoors, they will stop. A great many of the Covid-shaming pictures and posts have seen across the internet fail to acknowledge that much of what is happening is completely permissible by the local regulations. So why blame someone for doing something that local/state leadership is telling them is okay to do?
I think there should be a mandatory public mask order for all states at this point.
I agree some of the mask pushback is due to some of the lockdown conditions that were overkill. But I disagree that masks are a mixed bag in terms of stopping the spread. They aren't perfect, and even N95 masks won't stop it 100%. And if you are talking closely or are in close proximity with someone for a couple of minutes (say an elevator), it may not help as much as we'd like it to. But for casually passing someone in the aisle of a grocery store? If both people are wearing masks it will stop a transmission a large percentage of the time. I don't think there is very much argument about that.
I don't want to be a mask truther here or anything lol. I do support wearing them. But prior to this pandemic there really had been several studies on masks' effect on the transmission of other viruses and in many of them there wasn't confidence they had much impact beyond signaling to other people to stay away from the sick person with the mask. Even at the end of May The New England Journal of Medicine published this below and it leads off with:
"We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.10...ZlFtXaAhGj5friyguXZ5Y#article_citing_articles
You are right that hospitalizations and deaths are more important, and that circulation amongst young and healthy people is less of a concern.
But I think you are in error that caseload doesn't matter at all in relation to that. Of course it should matter. It means you have that many more disease vectors out there, even if they are young and healthy and not dying. Those numbers should be used to inform policy decisions to protect those who aren't so young or healthy, based on the knowledge that x% of people out there are carriers and create a dangerous situation for the rest of the public.
As for the part I bolded... You might be right, but you are making an awful lot of assumptions based on facts not in evidence. The biggest is your assumption that getting the illness right now will confer an immunity that lasts until January. We do not know that at all. It could even make it worse if people think they can't get it again and act accordingly.
I'm not saying that there is no long term immunity. It could turn out that you get immunity for years once you beat it. I'm just saying I don't know, and that we shouldn't rationalize the current situation based on things we don't know. Right now, more rampant spread is bad and should be treated as bad.
I agree that a homemade facemask is not going to help much with what this paper calls "a significant exposure to Covid-19". Face-to-face contact within 6 feet of a symptomatic person sustained for several minutes? Yikes. Yeah, no way is a homemade mask helping with that a statistically significant percentage of the time. An N95 might, but I still wouldn't want to be in that position at all. That's also why they wear faceshields in the hospital units that treat COVID, to reduce the "face to face" exposures, even with an N95.
A homemade mask is still probably better than nothing, but at that point you are hoping that your pocket bible stops the five bullets headed your way. Good luck.
What it can and does help with is the more nominal exposures that come from standing in the same line for a coffee as someone infected.
I’m not a doctor (got a C in organic Chem in college to be honest) but if those who contract the disease can be re-infected a few months later isn’t that a problem with any vaccine? I was going off our experience with other coronaviruses and immunity after infection. If large percent can be re-infected then we have a far more serious issue than we ever imagined imo.
Also not a doctor and have no medical background, but I thought I read that even those that don't produce antibodies or whose antibodies diminish over time are likely to have T-cell memory and still have some level of immunity? If it mutates significantly I'd guess that changes the picture, but who knows. I think there has still yet to be a confirmed case or re-infection so hopefully that remains true
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Outside my bailiwick as well. I am unsure if vaccines create the same chemical antibodies in the same way in the same numbers. It is a whole field of medical science that I have only a layman's understanding of.
But it is certainly true that we have no idea if getting the disease confers any long term immunity: https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/what-to-know/diagnosis-symptoms/immunity
There is reason to be doubtful, and also reason for hope. From the webpage: "Other types of coronaviruses, such as MERS, do induce immunity, often for several years. Many hope that SARS-CoV-2 will behave similarly. Unfortunately, the data is not cut-and-dry. Most studies of immunity to coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, focus on people who had severe disease and were hospitalized for their condition. There is significantly less data on the immune response in people who had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic."
So, MERS and SARS1 killed half the people that got it. Early studies on SARS-Cov-2 have so far been on the very sick as well. In MERS and SARS1, the survivors had antibodies for years, and reports of reinfection of very sick people who recovered from SARS-Cov-2 have been sporadic at best, lending credence to the idea of some kind of immunity. But all of that data is mostly looking at people that were gravely ill. There just weren't very many people that had a "mild" or asymptomatic case of MERS of SARS1, and we really haven't studied the mild cases of SARS-Cov-2 yet, so we really don't know.
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Side Note:I agree that a homemade facemask is not going to help much with what this paper calls "a significant exposure to Covid-19". Face-to-face contact within 6 feet of a symptomatic person sustained for several minutes? Yikes. Yeah, no way is a homemade mask helping with that a statistically significant percentage of the time. An N95 might, but I still wouldn't want to be in that position at all. That's also why they wear faceshields in the hospital units that treat COVID, to reduce the "face to face" exposures, even with an N95.
A homemade mask is still probably better than nothing, but at that point you are hoping that your pocket bible stops the five bullets headed your way. Good luck.
What it can and does help with is the more nominal exposures that come from standing in the same line for a coffee as someone infected.
I have one of those masks w/ a pollution filter(used by bike riders) & a shop towel liner. Taping a shop towel liner on the inside of the homemade mask, or using shop towels(two ply) to make the homemade mask provide 75%-95% protection.(Long as it ain't Scott brand)
The range is determined by how well the mask fits, whether or not it is double, and/or the material of the mask.(if it the shop towel is only a liner) That's one way to make homemade masks close to, or equal to an n95 masks. But everybody is either not aware, too lazy, or not crafty enough to utilize this method. A surgical mask is around 55% and a cotton mask without a liner is even less effective.(I'd use five Bibles to stop one Bullet. 6 or 8" fits in all my shirt pockets.)
I'm not a doctor but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once, and I approve this message.
P.S. if a folded up speech is good for Teddy Roosevelt, it should be good enough for you.
If you doubt me, the percentages were validated from two different medical studies. It's not a difficult or time consuming study to come to a conclusion on, one way or the other. Otherwise quit playing the condescending superiority card.I'm not a doctor but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once, and I approve this message.
P.S. if a folded up speech is good for Teddy Roosevelt, it should be good enough for you.
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I’m in Appalachia this week. There are no masks in sight. It has nothing to do with politics.
I’m still waiting for a productive discussion from people in authority who are willing to take responsibility for the fact that probably a third or better of the population in this region must work daily in an environment much more threatening to respiratory health than a virus with little or no protection. Coal mining, painting, laying insulation, feed and grain processing, wood mulching, I could go on and on. Most of these people saw their Daddy die from black lung or some horrible industrial accident. A tractor turned over on their uncle. Mom’s dying of diabetes and won’t stop drinking milkshakes with her daily Big Mac.
Why should any of these people care what Fauci says or who dies in NYC from sitting in a leather office chair in a glass conference room?
I’m still waiting for a productive discussion from people in authority who are willing to take responsibility for the fact that probably a third or better of the population in this region must work daily in an environment much more threatening to respiratory health than a virus with little or no protection. Coal mining, painting, laying insulation, feed and grain processing, wood mulching, I could go on and on. Most of these people saw their Daddy die from black lung or some horrible industrial accident. A tractor turned over on their uncle. Mom’s dying of diabetes and won’t stop drinking milkshakes with her daily Big Mac.
Why should any of these people care what Fauci says or who dies in NYC from sitting in a leather office chair in a glass conference room?
Except for the fact that the person(s) you are talking about had the choice to work the job they were working. While the virus they might catch, could infect others that don't have that choice to be around others, unless they don't go out in public. Also those working in jobs that can be protected by a mask, have the choice to wear one on the job.
Many of these people don’t have a choice. This is their home and the only jobs besides welfare are inherently dangerous. and no matter what OSHA says, they either can’t wear Them and meet production goals or arent given masks. It seems simple and I normally take your point of view, but when you are confronted with it, you start to understand.
Everybody has a choice, they just may not like the consequences of their choice. But that doesn't change the issue of whether an at risk person's right to go out in public, and have a low risk of being infected by others, is being infringed upon.
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I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying that these folks have their own reasons for not wearing masks that go beyond the President suggesting they don’t have to or selfishly refusing to be told what to do and dressing up with political justifications. That’s the narrative being pushed and it’s not entirely right but sure does help the Dems get ready for November.
Everyone needs to be courteous to others and do what they can to not get someone else sick, but choice cuts both ways. Ultimately it's the at risk person's job to provide for their own safety and mitigate risks, because you can't guarantee any situation is low risk. With mostly young people getting infected at bars and other social situations right now who is to blame? The person who infected them or each of them for putting themselves in a situation where they were more likely to be infected?
You ever considered how many old people each of us has probably at least indirectly infected and killed with the flu, either by spreading it to them or spreading it to someone else who spread it to them?
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My conception of "rights" is not the same as yours, but we agree that people should take care to not infect other people
No one has a “right” to go out in public without the possibility of getting sick. That is not realistic at all.
You do have a right to your government promoting your safety. It's been expected of the government from time immemorial. Just like the government is expected to keep you safe in terms of not being shot at by employing generals, soldiers, and police officers... they should be expected to keep people safe from transmittable but preventable illnesses.
Except for the people who live in the south side of Chicago as there’s apparently nothing we can do to protect them
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