Many Americans are underestimating how disruptive a mass uncontrolled pandemic is going to be to their lives. If hospitals are completely overflowing and most people who get serious symptoms die for lack of available treatment capacity, and everyone knows friends and family members who've already died form it, do you think life isn't going to be massively disrupted anyway? People will hunker down and go nowhere out of a sheer sense of self-preservation, without the government needing to tell them to.
The pandemic itself is what's causing all the disruption and economic hardship. The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.
> The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.
I don't share your high level of certainty about that.
I don't believe an uncontrolled pandemic would have caused the amount of business closures and layoffs and mass unemployment the lockdowns have already caused. It would certainly be bad for business, and there would be some layoffs, and we would almost definitely have a recession, but many businesses that are now closed would have remained open, motivated purely by self-preservation.
Even now we see people out and about, even though the government tells them to stay home, and I don't believe that would change very much if the disease was uncontrolled. The rich can afford to stay at home, but the poor need to go to work. Self-preservation includes the desire to earn an income.
Hopefully we don't find out later on that the total amount of human suffering caused by the lockdowns outweighs the suffering caused by the disease. I think it probably won't, but we need to consider the possibility.
That is likely true but if this runs it’s course naturally we will see an enormous peak and then just as rapid a drop as we reach herd immunity in a couple months
The true choice here is between a lot of deaths and a couple months of staying at home and fewer deaths but years of staying at home.
Hate to break it to you, but hospitals are going to be overrun either way. 70-year-olds outnumber ICU beds 1,000 to one in many counties, some counties have no ICUs, some counties have no hospitals! [1]
Because hospitals will be overwhelmed by a factor of 10 or so, social-distancing to slow things down by 50% is not going to change that.
The numbers paint a pretty clear picture, for those who bother to look at them.
Saying Americans is possibly too broad because from the looks of it, there really are some attempts to walk a different route. The same is with some nations.
Let’s see, for example, if the Texas more relaxed approach performs better than California. The nuances between approaches may blossom into a wider difference. It’s not obvious that Americans are all sailing in the same boat.
The societal cost of covid19 vs social distancing depends on the time scale. Three to six months? Covid19 is almost certainly worse. Nine to twelve months? Fifteen months? Two years? Strict social distancing will be much much worse at those time scales. People will starve and segments of the logistical network necessary to sustain the medical industry will be in danger of collapsing. Not to mention the enormous strain on governments and services caring for tens if not hundreds of millions of people.
Lucky for us, South Korea has shown that this thing is beatable, even without a vaccine. Exhaustive testing, contact tracing, and enhanced hygiene measure are a great follow up for social distancing (though I have no idea what's going to happen in southeast Asia or Africa). But larger countries will require more supplies and time to manage the virus. The question I haven't heard the answer to yet is how long can the shutdown last before it effects our ability to treat covid19 and provide for basic necessities? I'd rather not we not figure that one out the hard way. We need to be looking for active solutions and this article provides some good ideas.
Disruption from Spanish Flu was short-lived, and yes the damage caused is from the lockdown, not the pandemic.
In the worst-affected areas (except maybe on small city level), the deaths are still a blip. If there was no media circus around it, everybody would still be mostly unaware; any kind of reaction would just be starting now with some areas having issues in hospitals, and even then judging by how people ignored the lockdown in Seattle when it was partial, it wouldn't be as bad as now.
Then, by CA govt's own admission in the worst case they'd be near herd immunity (iirc they listed 56% infected) in 8 weeks. That includes the times where the deaths are still a blip compared to flu, and hospitals are not overwhelmed. So let's say 5 weeks of panic. And then that's it.
Hospitals are not overflowing. We have 6,100 hospitals,989,000 hospital beds available. And my best friend is a Registered Nurse (California) and says they are not even close to capacity. She also stated what is presented on the news is 100% a lie.
I've been telling my wife and friends I expect this to last well over a year. I've been told I "sound like an idiot" and that my negativity isn't helping. We'll see.
Back in January, my friends were trying to convince me to do a spring break type vacation in Miami in March. I said, I dunno if we should book just yet, this Coronavirus in China is certainly going to become a global pandemic. They thought I was a tinfoil hat lunatic.
Then, in early March, right when SF starts it's social distance / lockdown, and SXSW and stuff like that starts getting canceled -- the Spring break thing we wanted to do in Miami is canceled, too. No surprise.
Immediately after, my friends try to convince me that we should do this thing in Chicago in early May. Flights and hotels are stupid cheap right now, they say. We should take advantage.
I'm like, guys, there is enough data from China, SK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, and Iran to know that this is going to be at its worst by early May.
They think I'm insane. This will be over in a week or two at best, they say.
Now there's yet another event in October. They're trying to convince me to do that now! I'm like, GUYS! Hopefully the world is somewhat back to normal by then, but who knows? Why don't we just wait a bit. The deals will be around for a while.
It really seems like Fusion energy. Instead of always being 40 years away, everyone seems to think Coronavirus is always 2 weeks from just going away in its own.
The current nearly total shutdown of retail businesses cannot and will not last for a year. If it needs to last for a year in order to contain the virus, it still can't and won't, and people will die from the virus.
I think it should last between 18 to 24 months too, but the confinement measures will be lifted much sooner. Once the epidemic curve is going down and its well under control, people will be allowed to go back to work with face masks, slowly industry by industry before the end of the year. This should only take a couple of months.
Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an agenda we're not aware of.
It is just as likely that health experts are overestimating how long Americans can stop the economy. This happened so fast that most people really could not even wrap their head around the changes. I would love for us to keep working from home, reduce travel, and get this thing under control, but at least up until now, I have a salary, and am not being adversely impacted.
The number of Americans being adversely impacted is in excess of 10 million today, likely closer to 20 million, and pretty soon almost everyone is going to share some level of pain.
I am reminded of the factoid about how airlines will often announce a extended delay by first announcing a shorter delay and then continuing to push it back several times. That is supposedly done to increase moral. Apparently several smaller disappointments are easier for people to process, accept, and forgive rather than one large disappointment. I wonder if this is the government's approach, because no one looking at the facts of the situation could have believed resuming things by Easter or anytime in the next few weeks was likely.
I guess on an emotional level it makes sense for people to believe that if we do a good job of social distancing, we will be rewarded by finishing it sooner. That's usually how hard things work. But according to my understanding, there is no such thing as a local end to the coronavirus. Even if some locality (city, region, country) implements such effective measures that the virus stops spreading there, they will still be vulnerable to outbreaks so long as they have enough unexposed, non-immune people to sustain person-to-person spread. Unless you hermetically seal your borders a la Plague Inc., the way for a community to go back to normal life is for a critical percentage of people to be exposed so we get herd immunity under the conditions of normal life.
In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve. The better we do it, the longer it will take.
P.S. Since this is inevitably political: in my personal experience the misconception that "the better we do it the sooner we can stop" is being spread by liberal/lefty people who are in favor of strict social distancing for as long as it takes. I think they're trying to rally enthusiasm for compliance, but the fact that this optimistic spin coincides with the political rhetoric from certain conservative ideologues should give them pause. Some politicians are anticipating and subtly fomenting a loss of patience with social distancing, and anything that raises unrealistic expectations plays right into their hands.
By that point almost everyone will have been exposed anyway no matter what quarantine measures we take. At this point we're just trying to slow the spread, but essential activities have to continue (food, transportation, utilities, healthcare, infrastructure, military, emergency services, etc) and so everyone involved in those is going to act as transmission vectors. Once the vast majority of people have been exposed, any further widespread quarantine measures will become moot.
The airline industry is going to be crippled though, and might still be operating at limited capacity in October.
What do you think 80% normal will look like? I'm currently planning a small (30-50 people) event in October and I'm trying to figure out if I need to postpone/reschedule.
I was actually wondering about Christmas yesterday. I moved across the country a decade ago and go home for two weeks at Christmas each year. Assuming there is no vaccine by then (which seems to be the most likely case), I was wondering what was worse: 2 4+ hour flights and the airport time or taking the 3 days and 2 hotel stays to drive (or even sleeping in my car at a rest stop if that is even allowed). And that's all assuming there aren't travel restrictions in place in 8 months.
Part of this is due to many institutions, companies, governments, etc, just closing 'for the next month or so'. Then after a few weeks, they extend it another month, and so on.
It seems like many expect the pandemic to just magically disappear when you do a very low-effort quarantine and sit back and relax for a bit.
Remember, this entire pandemic started from one person being infected. As long as there exists one person with this virus, it can start back up and easily scale to millions of cases all over again. Victory is not easy, and some of the main reasons we are doing quarantine are to learn a lot more about treatments, cures, how to cope with these changes to our supply chain, and many other things; that is, to buy us time. The levels of quarantine most countries are doing obviously slow the spread down, but are not sufficient enough to completely stop it. This is a long-term event and will be with us for a long time.
I think the real question here is whether or not the disruption will continue?
If things continue as they are for months, there’s simply going to be a change in mindset and we’re going to realize that there is a new “normal”. Full protective gear for a normal workday could easily become the norm.
Maybe they underestimate how long “this” will continue, because they expect “this” will drastically change normal life.
The article doesn't say we are all going to be shut in for he next 12-18 months, it just says life is going to be different for a while. Once the number of cases is dropped down to a manageable level again, which for many states in the US is projected to be somewhere from the end of April to the end of June, we can open things up a bit provided we have a strategy for extensive testing, following exposures and isolating people that test positive. Yes that will still be significantly different than our previous lives, but for many people it will be much closer to how things were before. The key is we need to continue to ramp up testing and we need a system in place for authorities to randomly test healthy people so that they can monitor the extent of the outbreak before it turns into hundreds or thousands of deaths a day again. So the average person will be able to go to work, socialize and more or less return to life as normal but they may have to submit to a nasal swab once in a while on the way into the grocery store or something like that. It doesn't seem like a terrible trade-off.
Serious question: how long does it take for humans to permanently adjust their sense of normalcy? There is a concept of `creeping normality`[0] that gets at this, but there isn't a lot of discussion about how to speed it up and make it permanent.
We know from South Korea that public mask-wearing is probably the most effective form of dropping the R0 quickly. If somehow 100% of Americans could get access to face shields (via 3d printing, for example), then the engineering and logistic problem is solved.
But the bigger problem is the social one. How do you socialize the acceptable use of masks or face shields in everyday public life? If enough people feel enough distress, I could see every person wearing masks, forever. If that happened, the talking points about this dragging on or immediately rebounding start to change.
Given enough technical choices in lifestyle design, there has to be some optimal solution that minimizes droplet emission while maximizing freedom of movement.
What do others think the right timeline to plan for is, and is there anything different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or longer? Personally, I'm assuming this will last until at least September. Better to be pleasantly surprised if it's earlier.
We've only got a few months in the tank economically and flattening the curve alone will keep us on lock-down for years.
They aren't talking too much about it but the plan is almost certainly to buy time to transition to a new strategy. The keys to this IMO will be squashing new cases, those 15 minute tests(billions of them), a health enforcement agency of some sort to conduct tracing and targeted quarantines, and increasing the capacity of the health system.
The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.
> Is there anything different people should be doing if it's going to be another 6 months or longer?
With the sort of open-ended timeline we’re talking about, it’s important to take as broad a look as you can at the things you’ve had to cut out, what need they were filling for you, and what substitute activities can cover those needs.
Most people instinctively understand this for things like food, shelter, and income, but the needs higher up Maslow’s hierarchy also need to be considered. That’s things like stress reduction, emotional support, physical activity, intellectual stimulation, comraderie, creativity, escapism, etc.
It's unlikely most Americans will tolerate a 5-6 month lockdown. Eventually quarantine violations will hit a tipping point and the transmission rate will jump, likely overwhelming our healthcare system.
I'm planning on stay at home lasting (here in the U.S.) until sometime between early June and late-July. I think once it is lifted (probably in stages) we'll have all sorts of restrictions on larger gatherings throughout at least the end of the year. That's not to say that it will be over by then, just that the rate of cases will be manageable and hospitals will have the resources they need to handle them.
As for what to do to plan for it, I'm mainly just keeping a good supply of easy to prepare food on hand with a long shelf life. Other than that, I'm not sure what can be done that doesn't start to venture into tinfoil hat territory.
I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem.
Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.
At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?
Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.
> I think there's a shard of truth in the assertion that: if you ask an epidemiologist how long people should remain locked in their homes, they'd tell you "forever". If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today". Neither of these answers are realistic solutions to this problem.
> Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.
> At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?
> Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.
The philosophical capitalists would state that actors should be free to choose their desired level of risk.
You statement suggests a stereotyped version of a capitalist who might order everyone to go out and work.
The economic restrictions can be lifted in a just couple of months since the curve is under control, but people will have to go to work wearing face masks while the pandemic runs its course through 2021.
> If you ask a capitalist how long, they'd say "lets re-open today".
The economists are flat-out NOT saying this, because they understand that the long-term negative economic impact of an unchecked pandemic will be worse than one which is at least partially controlled.
The problem is that public health officials are completely misusing terminology and sending contradictory messages, and it is 100% not the fault of Americans misunderstanding it (this is from the same article!):
> Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the epidemic curve of new cases
vs
> “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases.
Getting near zero cases is not flattening the curve -- that's suppression! Flattening the curve is an assumption that everyone will eventually get the disease, and trying to not overload the health system. THAT is what Americans have gotten onboard for, and what a 2-4 week lockdown would set us up to do (give us time to expand hospital capacity, etc)
But if on the other hand, past the propaganda, the public health plan is ACTUALLY to eliminate the disease entirely, that's a completely different plan, and it will take months or years. It's not the fault of Americans for not understanding the implications, when they are being actively lied to about what the plan IS.
Yeah. The more I learn, the more confident I am that nobody has a real plan, and it's just a fiesta of acronyms and agencies who are only pseudo-educated (e.g. couldn't recite essential statistics about mortality rate once one a ventilator off the top of their head) on the topic.
It's hard to say though, how much of it is raw political ignorance versus hiding bad news.
Once there is a cheap and high reliability antibody test widely available, there are going to become two classes.
Those who move freely about and do what they want, and those that live in fear of the others because they can still get infected and don't know who is who.
Imagine a dystopian near future where you have to carry a government approved ID showing your immunities to get into establishments or to even move about the country.
This is the world I'm already living in. I got coronavirus in mid-March and have since recovered from it. Now I'm walking about with impunity. I still try to maintain social distancing to keep others at ease, but I'm not worried when people violate it.
If only there were restaurants for me to go to ...
(And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the blood antibody test because I want to know for sure; my symptoms were pretty textbook coronavirus, but not serious to warrant hospitalization, and hence no test was available for me.)
> carry a government approved ID showing your immunities
Bill Gates is funding an effort to tattoo it into your skin [1].
At best, Mr. Gates is dangerously naive, assuming that because he has good intentions, governments will never abuse his idea for evil purposes.
Governments' track record on this subject is not great.
(The last time a government tried to tattoo a unique identifier into a large number of people, it was the Nazis. They wanted to keep track of Jews and other undesirables, so they could more efficiently be run through the systematic processes of captivity, enslavement and mass murder.)
Sweden is the country to watch as they are the policy outlier.
It appears that their infection, hospitalization, and death rates are not higher than other countries which implemented lockdowns.
It also appears that their economic activity has declined by a similar amount as did that of countries which implemented lockdowns.
So if staying at home is made voluntary, the economy won't reflate all of a sudden, and illness and mortality probably won't increase. Because even if staying at home is voluntary, many people will still stay at home, including potential patrons of reopened businesses.
We'll see how things progress in the months ahead, but our course seems set regardless of policy.
We can and should reframe the economic disruption as an opportunity to build a new and more humane economy, even before the virus is brought under control.
We should be able to flatten the curve and tackle our economic issues at the same time: the resources required are orthogonal while the benefits are synergistic.
Folks in the developing countries don't have any safety net(no $1200 IRS check; no unemployment tax; etc). Most of them are day laborers or small scale business people selling food on the street side. If this will continue, many in the developed world, esp in cities, will struggle for food.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
The pandemic itself is what's causing all the disruption and economic hardship. The social distancing measures are NOT the cause -- in the absence of them we'd be doing even worse off in the long run.
[+] [-] twblalock|6 years ago|reply
I don't share your high level of certainty about that.
I don't believe an uncontrolled pandemic would have caused the amount of business closures and layoffs and mass unemployment the lockdowns have already caused. It would certainly be bad for business, and there would be some layoffs, and we would almost definitely have a recession, but many businesses that are now closed would have remained open, motivated purely by self-preservation.
Even now we see people out and about, even though the government tells them to stay home, and I don't believe that would change very much if the disease was uncontrolled. The rich can afford to stay at home, but the poor need to go to work. Self-preservation includes the desire to earn an income.
Hopefully we don't find out later on that the total amount of human suffering caused by the lockdowns outweighs the suffering caused by the disease. I think it probably won't, but we need to consider the possibility.
[+] [-] ls612|6 years ago|reply
The true choice here is between a lot of deaths and a couple months of staying at home and fewer deaths but years of staying at home.
[+] [-] alexandercrohde|6 years ago|reply
Because hospitals will be overwhelmed by a factor of 10 or so, social-distancing to slow things down by 50% is not going to change that.
The numbers paint a pretty clear picture, for those who bother to look at them.
1. https://khn.org/news/as-coronavirus-spreads-widely-millions-...
[+] [-] umanwizard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threatofrain|6 years ago|reply
Let’s see, for example, if the Texas more relaxed approach performs better than California. The nuances between approaches may blossom into a wider difference. It’s not obvious that Americans are all sailing in the same boat.
[+] [-] tynpeddler|6 years ago|reply
Lucky for us, South Korea has shown that this thing is beatable, even without a vaccine. Exhaustive testing, contact tracing, and enhanced hygiene measure are a great follow up for social distancing (though I have no idea what's going to happen in southeast Asia or Africa). But larger countries will require more supplies and time to manage the virus. The question I haven't heard the answer to yet is how long can the shutdown last before it effects our ability to treat covid19 and provide for basic necessities? I'd rather not we not figure that one out the hard way. We need to be looking for active solutions and this article provides some good ideas.
[+] [-] sershe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ok1234567890|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donatj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|6 years ago|reply
Then, in early March, right when SF starts it's social distance / lockdown, and SXSW and stuff like that starts getting canceled -- the Spring break thing we wanted to do in Miami is canceled, too. No surprise.
Immediately after, my friends try to convince me that we should do this thing in Chicago in early May. Flights and hotels are stupid cheap right now, they say. We should take advantage.
I'm like, guys, there is enough data from China, SK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, and Iran to know that this is going to be at its worst by early May.
They think I'm insane. This will be over in a week or two at best, they say.
Now there's yet another event in October. They're trying to convince me to do that now! I'm like, GUYS! Hopefully the world is somewhat back to normal by then, but who knows? Why don't we just wait a bit. The deals will be around for a while.
It really seems like Fusion energy. Instead of always being 40 years away, everyone seems to think Coronavirus is always 2 weeks from just going away in its own.
[+] [-] GordonS|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umanwizard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protonimitate|6 years ago|reply
I'm highly skeptical of the "economy will just unpause" theory.
[+] [-] vfc1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zabana|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtvanhest|6 years ago|reply
The number of Americans being adversely impacted is in excess of 10 million today, likely closer to 20 million, and pretty soon almost everyone is going to share some level of pain.
This is going to be a very tumultuous 2 years.
[+] [-] slg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EarthIsHome|6 years ago|reply
We're constantly lied to. It's not the fault of the people in America. It's the fault of those in charge.
[+] [-] dkarl|6 years ago|reply
In short: It's flattening the curve, not shrinking the area under the curve. The better we do it, the longer it will take.
P.S. Since this is inevitably political: in my personal experience the misconception that "the better we do it the sooner we can stop" is being spread by liberal/lefty people who are in favor of strict social distancing for as long as it takes. I think they're trying to rally enthusiasm for compliance, but the fact that this optimistic spin coincides with the political rhetoric from certain conservative ideologues should give them pause. Some politicians are anticipating and subtly fomenting a loss of patience with social distancing, and anything that raises unrealistic expectations plays right into their hands.
[+] [-] hprotagonist|6 years ago|reply
At this point I hope to but do not expect to be able to make my normal Christmastime holiday travel, and that's about my horizon.
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
The airline industry is going to be crippled though, and might still be operating at limited capacity in October.
[+] [-] alleyshack|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apocalyptic0n3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ve55|6 years ago|reply
It seems like many expect the pandemic to just magically disappear when you do a very low-effort quarantine and sit back and relax for a bit.
Remember, this entire pandemic started from one person being infected. As long as there exists one person with this virus, it can start back up and easily scale to millions of cases all over again. Victory is not easy, and some of the main reasons we are doing quarantine are to learn a lot more about treatments, cures, how to cope with these changes to our supply chain, and many other things; that is, to buy us time. The levels of quarantine most countries are doing obviously slow the spread down, but are not sufficient enough to completely stop it. This is a long-term event and will be with us for a long time.
[+] [-] chrismeller|6 years ago|reply
If things continue as they are for months, there’s simply going to be a change in mindset and we’re going to realize that there is a new “normal”. Full protective gear for a normal workday could easily become the norm.
Maybe they underestimate how long “this” will continue, because they expect “this” will drastically change normal life.
[+] [-] glitcher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiftyfifty|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmartinez|6 years ago|reply
We know from South Korea that public mask-wearing is probably the most effective form of dropping the R0 quickly. If somehow 100% of Americans could get access to face shields (via 3d printing, for example), then the engineering and logistic problem is solved.
But the bigger problem is the social one. How do you socialize the acceptable use of masks or face shields in everyday public life? If enough people feel enough distress, I could see every person wearing masks, forever. If that happened, the talking points about this dragging on or immediately rebounding start to change.
Given enough technical choices in lifestyle design, there has to be some optimal solution that minimizes droplet emission while maximizing freedom of movement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality
[+] [-] treis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbish|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rapzid|6 years ago|reply
They aren't talking too much about it but the plan is almost certainly to buy time to transition to a new strategy. The keys to this IMO will be squashing new cases, those 15 minute tests(billions of them), a health enforcement agency of some sort to conduct tracing and targeted quarantines, and increasing the capacity of the health system.
The pieces could be in place July-ish.. Unfortunately it's going to take an impressive display of administrative competency at the federal level.
[+] [-] kd5bjo|6 years ago|reply
With the sort of open-ended timeline we’re talking about, it’s important to take as broad a look as you can at the things you’ve had to cut out, what need they were filling for you, and what substitute activities can cover those needs.
Most people instinctively understand this for things like food, shelter, and income, but the needs higher up Maslow’s hierarchy also need to be considered. That’s things like stress reduction, emotional support, physical activity, intellectual stimulation, comraderie, creativity, escapism, etc.
[+] [-] standardUser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blihp|6 years ago|reply
As for what to do to plan for it, I'm mainly just keeping a good supply of easy to prepare food on hand with a long shelf life. Other than that, I'm not sure what can be done that doesn't start to venture into tinfoil hat territory.
[+] [-] LandR|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intopieces|6 years ago|reply
If I see the inside of a movie theater in Summer 2021 I will be pleasantly surprised.
Buy two of whatever you get 1 of every time you go to the grocery store, which should be no more than once per week.
[+] [-] 013a|6 years ago|reply
Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.
At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?
Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.
[+] [-] generalpass|6 years ago|reply
> Dr Fauci says "the virus sets the timeline; not us". This is, unfortunately, false. Western governments do not have the teeth necessary to enable this to be true, and it is not "naturally" true. Humans, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want. Americans are a weird, maybe beautiful, breed; there's a surprising number of us who would rather just get sick and possibly die than sacrifice the freedoms and amenities of normal life.
> At some point, maybe a month or three from now, people will get restless. They'll re-open businesses, remove WFH policies, try to get back to normal. There will be another surge in cases. At that point, what does the government do? Remind people "hey, we never lifted the stay at home 'suggestion', please stop"? Do they put more teeth behind it? Or, maybe then we'll have better therapeutics + small herd immunity, and we should just let the disease run its course without as many economically disruptive mitigations?
> Point being, this isn't a situation where predictions about the future are useful. Its constantly evolving.
The philosophical capitalists would state that actors should be free to choose their desired level of risk.
You statement suggests a stereotyped version of a capitalist who might order everyone to go out and work.
[+] [-] vfc1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
The economists are flat-out NOT saying this, because they understand that the long-term negative economic impact of an unchecked pandemic will be worse than one which is at least partially controlled.
[+] [-] bpodgursky|6 years ago|reply
> Public health experts have said the near-term goal is to flatten the epidemic curve of new cases
vs
> “We let things get out of hand,” said Mina, who is also associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “So now the place that we’re left in is we have to absolutely beat this down with a hammer and get to near zero cases.
Getting near zero cases is not flattening the curve -- that's suppression! Flattening the curve is an assumption that everyone will eventually get the disease, and trying to not overload the health system. THAT is what Americans have gotten onboard for, and what a 2-4 week lockdown would set us up to do (give us time to expand hospital capacity, etc)
But if on the other hand, past the propaganda, the public health plan is ACTUALLY to eliminate the disease entirely, that's a completely different plan, and it will take months or years. It's not the fault of Americans for not understanding the implications, when they are being actively lied to about what the plan IS.
[+] [-] alexandercrohde|6 years ago|reply
It's hard to say though, how much of it is raw political ignorance versus hiding bad news.
[+] [-] ck2|6 years ago|reply
Those who move freely about and do what they want, and those that live in fear of the others because they can still get infected and don't know who is who.
Imagine a dystopian near future where you have to carry a government approved ID showing your immunities to get into establishments or to even move about the country.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
If only there were restaurants for me to go to ...
(And yes, I'm eagerly awaiting the blood antibody test because I want to know for sure; my symptoms were pretty textbook coronavirus, but not serious to warrant hospitalization, and hence no test was available for me.)
[+] [-] csense|6 years ago|reply
Bill Gates is funding an effort to tattoo it into your skin [1].
At best, Mr. Gates is dangerously naive, assuming that because he has good intentions, governments will never abuse his idea for evil purposes.
Governments' track record on this subject is not great.
(The last time a government tried to tattoo a unique identifier into a large number of people, it was the Nazis. They wanted to keep track of Jews and other undesirables, so they could more efficiently be run through the systematic processes of captivity, enslavement and mass murder.)
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...
[+] [-] generalpass|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackcosgrove|6 years ago|reply
It appears that their infection, hospitalization, and death rates are not higher than other countries which implemented lockdowns.
It also appears that their economic activity has declined by a similar amount as did that of countries which implemented lockdowns.
So if staying at home is made voluntary, the economy won't reflate all of a sudden, and illness and mortality probably won't increase. Because even if staying at home is voluntary, many people will still stay at home, including potential patrons of reopened businesses.
We'll see how things progress in the months ahead, but our course seems set regardless of policy.
[+] [-] carapace|6 years ago|reply
We should be able to flatten the curve and tackle our economic issues at the same time: the resources required are orthogonal while the benefits are synergistic.
[+] [-] raincom|6 years ago|reply