I read this article long back and it really resonated with me https://threader.app/thread/1218724150312751104 . It explains why people solving problems proactively before they become huge issues get much less credit than people doing it reactively when the problem has become much worse and putting heroic efforts.
It's pretty much the same thing as the classic hero problem solver and it's in computer programming too. The person who does a good design, tests, finds bugs ... doesn't get as much credit as the person who puts in Herculean efforts at the last moment to save the day.
The balance is that there are orders of magnitude more problems that might happen than problems that do happen.
So the devil is in the statistical details... Which is greater? The average effort required to prepare for all the possible problems, or the average damage caused by the subset of those issues that will actually develop into problems.
One need only look at the dismantelling of our strategic stockpiles of respirators following 2002/2003 SARS to find a relevant example today. Stupid choices are inevitable in a political climate that looks at any spending on human life as a costly line item to be eliminated.
The social engineering aspect of pandemic control is fascinating and something I had never considered before. It's not enough to put the right policies in place. You have to get people to actually follow them (voluntarily). It's like writing a user story on a grand scale.
There are basically three groups of people now: those who are taking this seriously and social distancing, those who think this is some kind of hoax and are gleefully ignoring any advice or orders from the government, and those that are "essential" and have no choice in the matter.
The hoaxers are a clear and present threat to the essential workers. The number of MBTA staff infected with COVID-19 has more than doubled in the past week; they can't avoid people, and they're being infected by those who won't.
I agree. I think the issue with mask recommendations was ultimately that politicians/public health officials were worried people would put on a mask and then feel invincible, therefore leading to more spread.
I think that is the case with lots of calls to re-open now. There are so many businesses that could return safely now if people followed safety protocol, but realistically not only will there be unintentional safety errors but loosening of some government restrictions will lead to the loosening of people's personal safetly restrictions they have been doing since the start.
The world isn't software engineering; if anything, it's philosophy.
I look at it this way, and it sounds harsh but it's big-time decision-making life:
1. You could compel people to listen to something to ensure their safety by force, and then have a riot.
OR
2. You could urge sensible people do something for their own safety while letting the idiots commit suicide and clean-up the gene pool in the process.
I say take option #2 all-day, everyday because it's easier, cheaper, and better for others who do listen to have one less fewer, stupid liability in the world who would otherwise put others in danger.
The revisionist history attempts by the "scientists" in Seattle are staggering.
On Feb 26th, every single level of the Seattle "scientific" community laughed at Ms. Reid, the Superintendent of the Northshore School District when she closed Bothell High School over a potent positive case of a staff member that travelled overseas. She wanted to make sure her students were safe and the building was disinfected.
The "scientific" King County Deptartment of Health went as far as to specifcally send out a document stating that closure was unwarranted - they did not just sit there and let her do her job - they went out of their way to ensure the public was informed they thought she was nuts.
You do not get to do that and then claim to be the greatest organization of all time 2 days later.
I have a different understanding. Before there was evidence, the health depts were not pushing things. The article goes over that. As soon as they got evidence (that's what those pesky scientists like, darn them), then they started doing what this article says.
One of the earliest public things I'm aware of this posting from a scientist in Seattle on Feb 29th, by researcher Trevor Bedford, part of the Seattle Flu Study about covid-19 tracing genetically. They were testing flu samples for covid-19 (the govt refused permission for them to do that but eventually they just did it, because it was so important). https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426
I'd love to agree with this article, but I don't think it holds much water.
* Washington schools closed very late. My friends' schools in Indianapolis had already been closed a week.
* Barely any of the volunteer WFH was taken, at least among my group at Microsoft. Maybe 10% participation.
* Volunteer child removal from school was spotty, maybe 25%, not enough to make a huge difference.
While I like most of how our governor has managed it, and I like science, I have a hard time saying that it's more than marginally responsible for the NYC - SEA disparity. In fact as the article alludes, many of the decisions were driven by factors beyond the need to minimize covid deaths, like providing school lunches for families who couldn't afford them. So coming to the conclusion that these decisions are responsible for the disparity is disingenuous.
All the other points in the article, including luck, carry a lot more weight. NYC is the city that never sleeps. SEA is the city where if one person is Sleepless then they make a bestselling movie about it....
The other things really that might make a difference, that few have mentioned is that
* The first hit of the virus was ripping through a life care center. That put people naturally on edge.
* Knicks and Nets both had long homestands during the beginning of the outbreak, whereas let's just say the Sonics have been on a rather long road trip.
Seattle public schools closed before the whole state, which is what you would expect.
I think if the experts of evaluating these policies are saying that putting them in place without delay saved lives, it's probably unwise for all us armchair epidemiologists to sit around coming up with other things we think might explain it.
> Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.
Lockdowns are definitively, absolutely effective in curbing spread. It is backed by solid evidence of reduction is spread in places where lockdown was implemented, AND we have logical scientific reasoning to explain why. The only debatable aspect is whether they are the best solution, given all the trade-offs. And that is a difficult choice. But given no other solutions, if you can afford a lockdown, it is the right first step while you figure out other options.
Countries have been able to avoid a lockdown if they have sufficient quarantine facilities, contact tracing and hospital capacity. But in the absence of these, lockdown is the most effective way to navigate this.
If you read the article you'll see that doesn't matter. By the time Seattle took action the disease was already widespread in the population at large.
Other factors, like size, density, and use of public transport, are discussed in the article.
> The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.
The countries we have the best data on are developed countries.
Again, read the discussion on the different tactics and approaches -- lockdown is only one of the issues.
Looking at 2019 passenger statistics for the big 3:
JFK[1] = 62.6 MM
LGA[2] = 31.1 MM
EWR[3] = 46.3 MM
Total = 140.0 MM
> How many does Seattle receive?
Equivalent 2019 metric for SEA[4] puts it at 51.8 MM.
So as a ballpark measure, greater NYC process 3x more than SEA.
The CDC[5] reports ~13k cases in WA, whereas NY alone is at ~267k cases; add another ~102k for nearby NJ.
Extending the benefit of the doubt, that's ~20x positive incident for 3x flight activity. Even if we pretend that WA is under-reporting by a factor of 2, and half of NY cases are false positive, the argument still falls flat on its face...keep in mind, NJ isn't even being accounted for in this thought experiment.
I agree. de Blasio did terrible and Inslee acted way faster than Cuomo, but there is a reason that Buffalo is much better off than NYC even though they are both under the jurisdiction of New York law. Anyone who has lived in NYC as well as other cities knows just how different it is.
My family is in New England. Massachusetts has 10x more deaths per capita than New Hampshire even though, if anything, Massachusetts has been a bit ahead in terms of closures and interventions.
Here's some stats i dug up the last time when we were comparing LA to NYC...Seattle's differences are probably even more extreme. Sure they could have done better from a policy perspective, but the difference in outcome is not purely driven by policy and the stats between areas with widely divergent levels of transmission opportunity aren't really that comparable.
--
'More subway' doesn't really capture it. NYC has ~70x the daily ridership on metro rapid transit.
NYC also has the lowest car ownership in the nation, so you're basically left with walking or uber/taxi/public transportation just to get to the store/doctor/etc.
> The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't.
I disagree.
Specifically, Deblasio took forever to close the schools. I don’t live in NYC, and I remember when before they closed the schools wondering why they hadn’t done it yet.
King County has had ~400 confirmed COVID deaths while NYC has had ~12,000. Number of flights, population, all that stuff doesn't explain a x30 increase in deaths.
If you read the article, they largely discuss NYC's inability to arrive a decision promptly, which allowed things to spread. Also, resistance to the idea of social distancing looks like it made things much worse.
It's like everyone who is commenting here didn't even read the article and is just spouting opinions.
Arguing against the short term effectiveness of lockdowns is like arguing against physics. If on average the number of people a person come in contact with decreases, it will definitely decrease the infection rate.
The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected.
If you don't think lockdowns have dramatically reduced the number of infections, you are incorrect.
More visitors may kick off more chains of infection (so higher numbers) but that's just linear growth. Stopping exponential spread is what prevented something far worse than what we have seen.
It's actually suspected that the whole epidemic in Europe originated from the first confirmed infection in Germany.
A woman from Shanghai who had a business trip with her car manufacturer. That same manufacturer happens to have a factory in northern Italy.
Some Italian scientists did an RNA analysis on samples from infected people from Italy, and confirmed they descended from the first German case.
Basically, if this hypothesis is true then German quarantine and/or exposure tracking failed. Had they played it safe and properly quarantined the entire staff of the office building , Europe's coronavirus pandemic might have gone entirely differently.
This just makes it worse. NYC is denser, more interconnected, more unqeual, more public transit oriented, and all these other things that make it high risk. Being a higher outbreak risk, they should have taken more precautions earlier, rather than fewer precautions later. The difference in number of cases in each region isn't the story. It couldn't be, precisely because these places are so different. The story is the differences how each region approached precautions. You'd hope NY, as a higher outbreak risk, would have been more cautious and more willing to listen to experts than Seattle.
More specifically, NYC/NJ had lots of flights from the European epicenter. The west coast has more flights from Asia, which had a comparatively small number of cases.
As I see it, lockdowns are not effective and were a massive mistake. You may find this epidemiologist's perspective to be interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
In a few years, not now, we'll be able to look back and say with some confidence which actions saved lives (and didn't have an equivalently large negative effect on the economy). It does seem likely that, in areas with dense populations like cities, rapid early isolation made a significant difference in the overall impact on the care system. It is still entirely unclear what the longer term outcomes will be, since we can't all isolate indefinitely, so presumably, everybody will get infected eventually.
As a New Yorker it's been eye opening to see the extent of the Cuomo worship nation (world?!) wide during the COVID outbreak. The view of Cuomo from many in the city was quite negative before, and I've been waiting to see how long it'll be before perceptions snap back to reality. Stories like this feel like the start of that, and there will be much more to come.
NYC, to put it bluntly is a country of its own. It requires a completely different calibre of management in the City Hall. Definitely not what they have right now
I think this kind of retrospective look at these two datapoints is probably not focused on the right thing at this point.
This article picks on DeBlasio / Cuomo and indirectly DeBlasio’s health commissioner heavily for encouraging continued going out to restaurants and events and riding the subway in late Feb and into mid-March. But remember in late Feb the President was still saying it was going to just magically go away. Bay Area politicians including the speaker of the house Pelosi were encouraging lots of people to come to Chinatown parades. Florida even left their beaches open all the way through mid March for spring breakers to come. While those events have almost certainly led to additional cases and deaths, other areas of the country seem to have largely gotten away with a less proactive and later response than Seattle.
I think we are probably going to see that the real challenge on NY is that we just don’t have another city in the US with New York’s density, air travel volume, and high utilization of public transit. Comparing NY to Seattle just because they are both in the US is probably not as relevant. Given what we know now about the propensity of high volume super spreader events to drive the bulk of the R0, NY can probably only really fairly be compared to London and Paris in the Western world, at least.
No, I'm sorry, you're missing the point of the article. One of those places had politicians using more economic and political considerations leading to their choices. Seattle has those forces but generally acceded to the guidance of scientists.
I see some states saying that they want to reopen by a certain day. I appreciate my governor’s proclamation that she’s not going to give a date but the lock down will continue until she says so. That seems a lot more logical than setting a arbitrary date in the future and either disappointing people when it turns out to not be realistic or going for it anyway and creating a massive health crisis.
I think that many large corporations announced March 6th, that their workforce stay home until at least end of month helped raise awareness throughout the Seattle area, and made people become a lot more conscious.
The government did not act as fast on the West Coast either.
This is a rosy take to fit the narrative, although the article is correct that New York made some big mistakes. Seattle leaders have also taken missteps. For example they closed all the parks on Easter weekend, an unnecessarily drastic step that probably just resulted in people grouping elsewhere in smaller, more crowded spaces. The parking lots at most parks remain closed, making it much harder for people needing a mental break to deal with all this. More broadly, Washington state also has restrictions other states don’t - for instance fishing is banned, which makes no sense given that it is a pastime that naturally requires distancing. Same with golfing. Private construction is banned but public construction is not. State parks and national forest lands are closed, despite most being desolate and full of space. Cycling and jogging on Seattle’s popular citywide trails however, are not banned, despite it being a much more likely vector for spreading via aerosol particles (note, some other areas like France have banned cycling for this reason).
There is an inconsistency and inequality in how these restrictions were selected. The arbitrary nature makes me think it is simply was what was politically expedient, rather some principled design. As for an example of political expediency, right now the city’s socialist council is trying to pass an “Amazon tax” under the auspices of the mayor’s emergency proclamation, which due to a technicality would make it immune to subsequent referendum even after the emergency expires (https://sccinsight.com/2020/04/08/the-amazon-tax-bill-is-des...).
If Seattle or Washington were truly responsible, they should’ve shut port traffic (at airports) early and aggressively. Even if that wouldn’t have stopped the coronavirus from arriving ultimately, it would have at least delayed it and provided more time to prepare. I think they should also have taken steps to make their shelter orders more nuanced, rather than the blunt weapon one size fits all approach.
[...] For three days, dozens of that man’s family members had sat at his bedside in the hospital [...] The next day, the man with all the family visitors died. [...]
So I am not easily impressed, but this freaked me out for a second. Just to be clear - one man had died on that day, not dozens of people. Sheesh.
I suppose there's some valuable comma somewhere in that sentence, or absence thereof, that should have kept me on the even keel? Or did they just did that on purpose?
I would have written it off as just another error, but I am having hard time accepting that The New Yorker would let that slip through by accident.
I think it’s a good thing that the states have taken different approaches at solving the problem. This is how we experiment and improve on the system. You can’t make innovation without experimentation.
If the federal government rolled in with a heavy hand, we’re all stuck with whatever they think is best. The governors should be the ones that decide for their state, and the federal government should support that in whatever way possible.
The same is said for countries. When the dust settles we can examine the data and see what really worked and what made things worse. This is how we become stronger.
> Tom Frieden, the former C.D.C. director, has estimated that, if New York had started implementing stay-at-home orders ten days earlier than it did, it might have reduced COVID-19 deaths by fifty to eighty per cent.
Obviously that's one person's view, but if it's true that means somewhere between 5,550 and 8,800 people have died needlessly. Innovation is good, but not at any cost.
>If the federal government rolled in with a heavy hand, we’re all stuck with whatever they think is best.
Yeah, like saving people's lives instead of entertaining some muppet's idea of what it means to be scientific.
Hint: If you're not listening to trained, professional scientists while attempting to sound scientific and curious, you're probably just performing an intellectual jerk off.
[+] [-] enitihas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
So the devil is in the statistical details... Which is greater? The average effort required to prepare for all the possible problems, or the average damage caused by the subset of those issues that will actually develop into problems.
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
Covid-19 makes clear that we should be showering the people who stopped SARS, the many Ebola outbreaks, and more with gratitude.
[+] [-] asdff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jniedrauer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomascgalvin|5 years ago|reply
The hoaxers are a clear and present threat to the essential workers. The number of MBTA staff infected with COVID-19 has more than doubled in the past week; they can't avoid people, and they're being infected by those who won't.
[+] [-] bb2018|5 years ago|reply
I think that is the case with lots of calls to re-open now. There are so many businesses that could return safely now if people followed safety protocol, but realistically not only will there be unintentional safety errors but loosening of some government restrictions will lead to the loosening of people's personal safetly restrictions they have been doing since the start.
[+] [-] paypalcust83|5 years ago|reply
I look at it this way, and it sounds harsh but it's big-time decision-making life:
1. You could compel people to listen to something to ensure their safety by force, and then have a riot.
OR
2. You could urge sensible people do something for their own safety while letting the idiots commit suicide and clean-up the gene pool in the process.
I say take option #2 all-day, everyday because it's easier, cheaper, and better for others who do listen to have one less fewer, stupid liability in the world who would otherwise put others in danger.
[+] [-] wishdev|5 years ago|reply
On Feb 26th, every single level of the Seattle "scientific" community laughed at Ms. Reid, the Superintendent of the Northshore School District when she closed Bothell High School over a potent positive case of a staff member that travelled overseas. She wanted to make sure her students were safe and the building was disinfected.
The "scientific" King County Deptartment of Health went as far as to specifcally send out a document stating that closure was unwarranted - they did not just sit there and let her do her job - they went out of their way to ensure the public was informed they thought she was nuts.
You do not get to do that and then claim to be the greatest organization of all time 2 days later.
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|5 years ago|reply
One of the earliest public things I'm aware of this posting from a scientist in Seattle on Feb 29th, by researcher Trevor Bedford, part of the Seattle Flu Study about covid-19 tracing genetically. They were testing flu samples for covid-19 (the govt refused permission for them to do that but eventually they just did it, because it was so important). https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1233970271318503426
[+] [-] daxfohl|5 years ago|reply
* Washington schools closed very late. My friends' schools in Indianapolis had already been closed a week.
* Barely any of the volunteer WFH was taken, at least among my group at Microsoft. Maybe 10% participation.
* Volunteer child removal from school was spotty, maybe 25%, not enough to make a huge difference.
While I like most of how our governor has managed it, and I like science, I have a hard time saying that it's more than marginally responsible for the NYC - SEA disparity. In fact as the article alludes, many of the decisions were driven by factors beyond the need to minimize covid deaths, like providing school lunches for families who couldn't afford them. So coming to the conclusion that these decisions are responsible for the disparity is disingenuous.
All the other points in the article, including luck, carry a lot more weight. NYC is the city that never sleeps. SEA is the city where if one person is Sleepless then they make a bestselling movie about it....
The other things really that might make a difference, that few have mentioned is that
* The first hit of the virus was ripping through a life care center. That put people naturally on edge.
* Knicks and Nets both had long homestands during the beginning of the outbreak, whereas let's just say the Sonics have been on a rather long road trip.
[+] [-] kixiQu|5 years ago|reply
I think if the experts of evaluating these policies are saying that putting them in place without delay saved lives, it's probably unwise for all us armchair epidemiologists to sit around coming up with other things we think might explain it.
[+] [-] phasnox|5 years ago|reply
How many does Seattle receive?
The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't.
Same thing with Europe. The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.
[+] [-] raz32dust|5 years ago|reply
Lockdowns are definitively, absolutely effective in curbing spread. It is backed by solid evidence of reduction is spread in places where lockdown was implemented, AND we have logical scientific reasoning to explain why. The only debatable aspect is whether they are the best solution, given all the trade-offs. And that is a difficult choice. But given no other solutions, if you can afford a lockdown, it is the right first step while you figure out other options.
Countries have been able to avoid a lockdown if they have sufficient quarantine facilities, contact tracing and hospital capacity. But in the absence of these, lockdown is the most effective way to navigate this.
[+] [-] gumby|5 years ago|reply
If you read the article you'll see that doesn't matter. By the time Seattle took action the disease was already widespread in the population at large.
Other factors, like size, density, and use of public transport, are discussed in the article.
> The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.
The countries we have the best data on are developed countries. Again, read the discussion on the different tactics and approaches -- lockdown is only one of the issues.
[+] [-] metaphor|5 years ago|reply
Looking at 2019 passenger statistics for the big 3:
> How many does Seattle receive?Equivalent 2019 metric for SEA[4] puts it at 51.8 MM.
So as a ballpark measure, greater NYC process 3x more than SEA.
The CDC[5] reports ~13k cases in WA, whereas NY alone is at ~267k cases; add another ~102k for nearby NJ.
Extending the benefit of the doubt, that's ~20x positive incident for 3x flight activity. Even if we pretend that WA is under-reporting by a factor of 2, and half of NY cases are false positive, the argument still falls flat on its face...keep in mind, NJ isn't even being accounted for in this thought experiment.
[1] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati...
[2] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati...
[3] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati...
[4] https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-statistics
[5] https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html
[+] [-] bb2018|5 years ago|reply
My family is in New England. Massachusetts has 10x more deaths per capita than New Hampshire even though, if anything, Massachusetts has been a bit ahead in terms of closures and interventions.
[+] [-] mkolodny|5 years ago|reply
A tiny number compared to NYC or Seattle. Yet, the state hasn't issued stay-at-home orders, and now they have a major outbreak.
[+] [-] jcims|5 years ago|reply
--
'More subway' doesn't really capture it. NYC has ~70x the daily ridership on metro rapid transit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tr...
Overall population density is much higher as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
NYC also has the lowest car ownership in the nation, so you're basically left with walking or uber/taxi/public transportation just to get to the store/doctor/etc.
https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-...
Also ~25% more airline traffic hauling bugs in from everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_city_airport_s...
Combined with a long transmissable dwell time before symptoms, wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of the people in NYC were materially exposed.
[+] [-] MR4D|5 years ago|reply
I disagree.
Specifically, Deblasio took forever to close the schools. I don’t live in NYC, and I remember when before they closed the schools wondering why they hadn’t done it yet.
So some actions matter more than most.
[+] [-] jdc|5 years ago|reply
What's your source on that though?
[+] [-] jorblumesea|5 years ago|reply
If you read the article, they largely discuss NYC's inability to arrive a decision promptly, which allowed things to spread. Also, resistance to the idea of social distancing looks like it made things much worse.
It's like everyone who is commenting here didn't even read the article and is just spouting opinions.
[+] [-] bigpumpkin|5 years ago|reply
The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected.
[+] [-] sub7|5 years ago|reply
More visitors may kick off more chains of infection (so higher numbers) but that's just linear growth. Stopping exponential spread is what prevented something far worse than what we have seen.
[+] [-] user_50123890|5 years ago|reply
Some Italian scientists did an RNA analysis on samples from infected people from Italy, and confirmed they descended from the first German case.
Basically, if this hypothesis is true then German quarantine and/or exposure tracking failed. Had they played it safe and properly quarantined the entire staff of the office building , Europe's coronavirus pandemic might have gone entirely differently.
[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rishirishi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dekhn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grej|5 years ago|reply
This article picks on DeBlasio / Cuomo and indirectly DeBlasio’s health commissioner heavily for encouraging continued going out to restaurants and events and riding the subway in late Feb and into mid-March. But remember in late Feb the President was still saying it was going to just magically go away. Bay Area politicians including the speaker of the house Pelosi were encouraging lots of people to come to Chinatown parades. Florida even left their beaches open all the way through mid March for spring breakers to come. While those events have almost certainly led to additional cases and deaths, other areas of the country seem to have largely gotten away with a less proactive and later response than Seattle.
I think we are probably going to see that the real challenge on NY is that we just don’t have another city in the US with New York’s density, air travel volume, and high utilization of public transit. Comparing NY to Seattle just because they are both in the US is probably not as relevant. Given what we know now about the propensity of high volume super spreader events to drive the bulk of the R0, NY can probably only really fairly be compared to London and Paris in the Western world, at least.
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianlevesque|5 years ago|reply
This assessment is really premature.
[+] [-] ddebernardy|5 years ago|reply
That seems like a rather murky assertion...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-tweet-chinatown-tou...
[+] [-] yters|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jfnixon|5 years ago|reply
https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/seattle-flu-study-alle...
[+] [-] irrational|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerng|5 years ago|reply
The government did not act as fast on the West Coast either.
[+] [-] paypalcust83|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sigzero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaysea|5 years ago|reply
There is an inconsistency and inequality in how these restrictions were selected. The arbitrary nature makes me think it is simply was what was politically expedient, rather some principled design. As for an example of political expediency, right now the city’s socialist council is trying to pass an “Amazon tax” under the auspices of the mayor’s emergency proclamation, which due to a technicality would make it immune to subsequent referendum even after the emergency expires (https://sccinsight.com/2020/04/08/the-amazon-tax-bill-is-des...).
If Seattle or Washington were truly responsible, they should’ve shut port traffic (at airports) early and aggressively. Even if that wouldn’t have stopped the coronavirus from arriving ultimately, it would have at least delayed it and provided more time to prepare. I think they should also have taken steps to make their shelter orders more nuanced, rather than the blunt weapon one size fits all approach.
[+] [-] DenisM|5 years ago|reply
So I am not easily impressed, but this freaked me out for a second. Just to be clear - one man had died on that day, not dozens of people. Sheesh.
I suppose there's some valuable comma somewhere in that sentence, or absence thereof, that should have kept me on the even keel? Or did they just did that on purpose?
I would have written it off as just another error, but I am having hard time accepting that The New Yorker would let that slip through by accident.
[+] [-] 3fe9a03ccd14ca5|5 years ago|reply
If the federal government rolled in with a heavy hand, we’re all stuck with whatever they think is best. The governors should be the ones that decide for their state, and the federal government should support that in whatever way possible.
The same is said for countries. When the dust settles we can examine the data and see what really worked and what made things worse. This is how we become stronger.
[+] [-] untog|5 years ago|reply
Obviously that's one person's view, but if it's true that means somewhere between 5,550 and 8,800 people have died needlessly. Innovation is good, but not at any cost.
[+] [-] pgsbathhouse2|5 years ago|reply
Yeah, like saving people's lives instead of entertaining some muppet's idea of what it means to be scientific.
Hint: If you're not listening to trained, professional scientists while attempting to sound scientific and curious, you're probably just performing an intellectual jerk off.