I'm from California and what blows my mind is that places like gyms, bars, and restaurants were allowed to have people indoors before places personal care places like hair and nail salons, barbers, waxing centers, and tattoo parlors because all these professions (for the most part) follow good sanitization practices. And unlike restaurants and bars, these are not places you'd bring large groups as the services rendered are 1-on-1 typically. Liquor stores are still open, why are bars needed? I cannot cut my own hair (well) for example, and tattoo parlors, waxing centers, and salons all have specialty tools and services you simply cannot do at home.
Also, why are we not focused on making sure education is able to start back up in the fall? Why did we prioritize opening restaurants (who already has a revenue stream: togo orders) and bars? I get recreational stuff is needed, but the bars, for example should be among the last to open. It sucks for the business owner, and they need more federal support to stay afloat. How are paying this much in tax and getting nothing when we need it the most?
I agree with most of your points, but not some of the conclusions.
Re-opening schools is very high priority, and very very difficult (some say not possible until we have a cure, full stop). Re-opening a restaurant is fairly low priority, and very very easy.
This isn't a board game where a player can only make one decision every turn. Opening restaurants and bars now does not mean that schools open earlier, or later, or at all.
("re-opening will cause another spike, which is pushing out the epidemic longer" Re-opening is going fine in NYC, terribly in the sunbelt. It can be done safely or it can be done badly.)
>How are we paying this much in tax and getting nothing when we need it the most?
Corruption. Just look at the types of organizations that did get enormous PPP "loans" (actually grants, free money when used spent at least 60% on wages).
1) Helping to make sure business (specifically bars and restaurants) don't keep closing
2) Getting people off unemployment
And just telling restaurants to stay on to go orders doesn't pay the bills. Most of these also sell alcohol. So revenue alone from to go may not pay the rent, not to mention you don't have the same amount of staff on either.
Schools aren't going to close if we keep kids out of them longer, and in theory teachers can still be paid because it comes from property tax money. Unless of course people can't pay their taxes anymore because they're unemployed/broke.
So I think they're two separate problems. The issue with school at this point is most likely a societal one which consists of:
- Parents who will have to go back to work at some point, have to have a place to send their children during the day (this is a whole other WFH conversation where appropriate).
- Parents who do WFH but have no time to do learning during the day with their kids (or being unwilling for whatever reason).
- Parents aren't teachers, so learning/development will probably suffer anyway.
- Not all districts were setup to work like this. Think about underfunded urban schools or rural ones where technology might be a problem.
Personal care places involves the employee being in extremely close proximity to the customer for tens of minutes, which is impossible to socially distance. The risk of transfer is going to be much higher than places like gyms and restaurants, where you can separate patrons, and employees are in close proximity only for very brief amounts of time.
It is still (so far as I'm aware) unknown just how effective the masks are versus social distancing, so the comparative risk of a maskless-but-distanced restaurant environment versus a masked-but-not-distanced barber shop is unknown to me. Were we more focused on actually dealing with coronavirus, we'd be aggressively testing and tracing these places to find out the answers, but the US seems to have generally forgotten that testing and tracing matters.
Because restaurant and bar owners have a lot more political connections than hair and nail salons, barbers, waxing centers, and tattoo parlors. This isn't particular to California or the US, it is true worldwide.
School starting is going to be such an unmitigated disaster. With the utterly inept handling of this pandemic (not just Trump, but our entire rotting neoliberal government) it just won't be feasible. Even if they do open, many teachers won't show up, and many parents will keep their kids home.
Talk of social distancing in schools is just ludicrous. It makes one wonder whether these officials have ever stepped foot inside of a school. Resources would be far better spent on trying to do remote learning passably well. For example, making sure that all schoolchildren have access to fast and reliable internet on a real computer, etc.
One of the massive secondary effects is the huge rise in alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) cannot meat in many States during lockdowns. Something like substance abuse accountability cannot be done effectively via video conference. They need to happen in person, without masks, where you can look into each other's eyes and tell people it's going to be alright.
Liquor stores and weed stores (in places where it's legal) are open, but AA is not. Child abuse ER visits have gone up 35%[0], and keep in mind, when a child goes to an ER for child abuse--they've been abused to the point where they have broken bones or critical injuries.
The current death rate for all Americans is 0.0022% if you look at a pure population vs fatality rate, even including the inflated numbers (and they are inflated; people with gunshot wounds who die with CoV-2 are COVID-19 deaths). The idea the lockdowns are stopping the spread just doesn't pan out when you compare countries across the planet with their different methods and levels of lockdowns and how they haven't really done a damn thing. I wrote a post on all the secondary effects recently: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/
I wish our leaders would stop dicking, around, stop making this political, and realize nothing is going to stop this spread, hospitals aren't being overrun and Gates/GAVIs mythical vaccine won't show up before this thing has already burned through the entire population.
This, emphatically. All that will happen is places will explode with plague: the way to prevent that happening is to lock down completely, and the way to keep it within 'we still have sort of an economy' parameters is to cope with severe economic hits due to the change in people's behavior.
Otherwise, it's arguing with physics, which seems to be in fashion and has really predictable results with no outliers or exceptions.
We've already made sure the 'before times' economy is gone forever. We're now working out what we can have, instead. That's an interesting design challenge and we're certainly not out of ideas, but 'keep the old economy' is simply not on the table.
We have this incredibly long history of taking short term gain at the cost of long term loss that far outweighs it, and yet we continue to make the same mistakes time and time again.
The countries that spent the most and locked down the hardest took the smallest hit because they were able to mitigate most of the damage, which is much more expensive.
People have to stop pretending countries are people economically, the cost of locking down is something developed countries can bear, and should.
Of course, this is all a microcosm of the same problem we face with climate change. It'd be really nice if we could finally learn the lesson and start paying the price now, rather than waiting and paying far more down the line.
I keep seeing and hearing this sentiment, but I think it is a false dichotomy. There have been places that responded effectively to the crisis without lockdowns (Iceland, for example). The choices are not strict, widespread, extended lockdowns or no response at all, with nothing in between. We may yet find that those who undertook either of those strategies have both poor economic and health outcomes.
Strange, I first read this as "Governments that try to trade the economy for safety will end up with neither" and wholeheartedly agreed. I think both versions are right, unfortunately.
It's pretty Orwellian to take a phrase calling out the dangers of trading freedom for security ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety") and twist it into the exact opposite.
Something obviously happened in early June that drove new cases up. What worries me is the only place you'll get better compliance with mask wearing and social distancing in the US is NYC, leading me to think "just wear a mask" isn't enough. There's no version of reopening anything indoors that works.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a city that has generally had COVID-19 under control, has just banned gatherings of more than four people. There a case report from China, I think, where people seated more than six feet apart at a restaurant got infected, possibly through fans or an HVAC system.
I also saw the slightly disingenuous (he didn't quite say that) headline that "Dr. Anthony Fauci says U.S. coronavirus cases are surging because nation didn’t totally shut down." Ignoring the bit about a surge, a longer, harder shutdown isn't a fix, either. Look at countries that had stricter shutdowns. Pockets are still popping up.
If the virus is active at all in an area, anything indoors risks spreading it, and there's no escape from whack-a-mole lockdowns...unless you're New Zealand. Maybe.
There's increasing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is spread through aerosolized transmission. This means that the longer people are in the same air space, the greater the risk of infection. Masks will help a little with this, but it changes the dynamics of social distancing in indoor spaces dramatically.
The thing that is forgotten in these reductio analyses is that the economy is made of people, so if they die you have no economy either.
The evidence from 1918/19 is that early opening, or failure to close down again when opening fails, leads to stronger economic growth. It’s a shame some wish to learn this from themselves instead of from the suffering of people a century ago.
I've spoken at length with my best friend, a doctor, and a neighbor, also a doctor -- both of whom believe it's not rational to shut down the economy for the risks of this pandemic, particularly w/r/t the demographics of those most at risk given the (relatively low) mortality rate. Neither are Trump/GOP supporters.
I've spoken at length with others.. not doctors.. who think it's not rational to open up at all, and that things need to be shut down further until progress is made.
My workplace recently sent out a survey and asked if we were ready to come back to the office, if there were those who were interested in volunteering for a Back to Office pilot project. My team all voted against, with "commuting on Bart" as the first and conclusive deal-breaker. I also don't want to sit in an office with a mask on all day. So, for now, WFH.
Of course, if I was subject to unemployment... I don't think I'd change my vote but I would have a different emotional response to the question.
(FWIW, I was let go from a contract gig during the first week of SIP, and was hired a week later by a company I'd been in process with for a few weeks).
Where your doctor friends virologists? Doctors are some of the worst people to ask, in my opinion, about what to do if they do not have subject expertise. They have just enough knowledge to speak authoritatively and not nearly enough subject expertise to really know what they're talking about.
The old adage that doctors are the worst patients, I think, rings true.
I'm in Ann Arbor Michigan, and we've been back in the office for a month now (with lots of precautions). While not as safe for others, an N95 mask isn't too bad to wear if you can get one - about the only issue is the elastic carves indentations into the soft tissue of your skull that takes several hours to return to normal - I'm kind of worried that I'm permanently damaging the bone - but I figure Doctors/Nurses do this for 8 hours/day as well.
Oh, also Coffee can only be drunk on officially (socially distanced) coffee breaks. Which is kind of weird. I figure as long as everyone is wearing a mask, the office is well ventilated (we have open windows), you are socially distanced and clorox-the-hell out of everything a couple times.
And we are also essentially bathing in Ethyl-Alcohol at this point. Dispensers placed around the office and people scrubbing down anytime you touch anything.
Our "leaders" likely know little better than we and we barely know what is happening. Under such circumstances it is difficult to know "the right thing" to do.
The public is so naive that they cannot comprehend a monotonically increasing function (e.g., total deaths/cases). The news daily points out "the total number of deaths/cases is increasing &c...", a trivial truism in an epidemic, yet it engenders fear and panic.
Here in Austin our city had some decent plans to combat the coronavirus and deal with the shutdown. Unfortunately, Greg Abbott decided to override local leadership across the state and force reopening. Now our state leadership is having a slapfight over mask requirements being a violation of our state constitution while our medical groups are begging us to stay home or wear masks [1].
So if you ever wanted to see an example of what a place is going to look like without any leadership versus the virus, Texas is the place to watch.
Likewise, having the millions of people who don't die but end up in the hospital for weeks, get permanently disabled, cognitive damage, etc etc. I think people are over-indexing on fatalities which greatly underestimates the scope here.
Only in the context of "for the economy" (moral and humanitarian perspective not withstanding) this sounds like the parable of the broken window. ~95% of death is age 60+? This group largely consumes without producing. Parts of the economy that would be hit the hardest by this would include the health care industry not getting 10 more years of spending from them?
I'm not sure calculations of economic spending is the best way to make the argument "we need to protect the most vulnerable, at the expense of the least," precisely because the least vulnerable are the ones producing most of the economic output, and that output is what is being curtailed to protect those not working. Almost any argument for shutdown would be better than trying to quantify the economic cost/gain of losing a double digit percentage of the elderly, because at the end of the day, I don't think that calculation would go the way the people making the economic argument think it will.
Why don't we....
1. Allow pharmacies to test for COVID (currently illegal in California)
2. Make COVID testing mandatory every 2 weeks via a statewide digital system (like jury duty). California could then partner will pharmacies to allow wider spread testing. We could even create jobs by hiring and training those who are unemployed to administer the actual tests.
3. Make it mandatory that every business/person use the statewide system to scan people to ensure they have been tested recently. That, combined with temperature checks at the door will serve to catch any issues quickly; as well as providing REAL TIME feed back to the state about possible infections and outbreaks
It seems to me that pandemics are the new normal. We aren't going to have a vaccine ready for every virus within 1-2 years; so it seems prudent for us to invest in a good system now with a virus that isn't as deadly.
What does everyone else think? I really would like to create a thread and have some of the best minds (yes that's you) work on a real solution. Let's plan it and build it!
Thank you for posting the CNN text-only version instead of the "full experience" version. For those who aren't aware, https://lite.cnn.com is text only, but has all the same articles/headlines as the main site.. [Edit] Additionally, There's also https://text.npr.org
Mortality is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot more people get hospitalized. Some end up with permanent cognitive disorders. Long term lung and/ or heart damage is also common.
> The UK National Health Service assumes that of Covid-19 patients who have required hospitalization, 45 percent will need ongoing medical care, 4 percent will require inpatient rehabilitation, and 1 percent will permanently require acute care. Other preliminary evidence, as well as historical research on other coronaviruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), suggests that for some people, a full recovery might still be years off. For others, there may be no returning to normal.
Strokes and permanent cognitive disorder are also common:
> Blood clots that form in or reach the brain can cause a stroke. Although strokes are more typically seen in older people, strokes are now being reported even in young Covid-19 patients. In Wuhan, China, about 5 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients had strokes, and a similar pattern was reported with SARS.
[+] [-] samtho|5 years ago|reply
Also, why are we not focused on making sure education is able to start back up in the fall? Why did we prioritize opening restaurants (who already has a revenue stream: togo orders) and bars? I get recreational stuff is needed, but the bars, for example should be among the last to open. It sucks for the business owner, and they need more federal support to stay afloat. How are paying this much in tax and getting nothing when we need it the most?
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|5 years ago|reply
Re-opening schools is very high priority, and very very difficult (some say not possible until we have a cure, full stop). Re-opening a restaurant is fairly low priority, and very very easy.
This isn't a board game where a player can only make one decision every turn. Opening restaurants and bars now does not mean that schools open earlier, or later, or at all.
("re-opening will cause another spike, which is pushing out the epidemic longer" Re-opening is going fine in NYC, terribly in the sunbelt. It can be done safely or it can be done badly.)
[+] [-] tenuousemphasis|5 years ago|reply
Corruption. Just look at the types of organizations that did get enormous PPP "loans" (actually grants, free money when used spent at least 60% on wages).
[+] [-] supergeek133|5 years ago|reply
1) Helping to make sure business (specifically bars and restaurants) don't keep closing
2) Getting people off unemployment
And just telling restaurants to stay on to go orders doesn't pay the bills. Most of these also sell alcohol. So revenue alone from to go may not pay the rent, not to mention you don't have the same amount of staff on either.
Schools aren't going to close if we keep kids out of them longer, and in theory teachers can still be paid because it comes from property tax money. Unless of course people can't pay their taxes anymore because they're unemployed/broke.
So I think they're two separate problems. The issue with school at this point is most likely a societal one which consists of:
- Parents who will have to go back to work at some point, have to have a place to send their children during the day (this is a whole other WFH conversation where appropriate).
- Parents who do WFH but have no time to do learning during the day with their kids (or being unwilling for whatever reason).
- Parents aren't teachers, so learning/development will probably suffer anyway.
- Not all districts were setup to work like this. Think about underfunded urban schools or rural ones where technology might be a problem.
[+] [-] viburnum|5 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/@philrocco/life-and-death-in-the-fiscal-v...
[+] [-] jcranmer|5 years ago|reply
It is still (so far as I'm aware) unknown just how effective the masks are versus social distancing, so the comparative risk of a maskless-but-distanced restaurant environment versus a masked-but-not-distanced barber shop is unknown to me. Were we more focused on actually dealing with coronavirus, we'd be aggressively testing and tracing these places to find out the answers, but the US seems to have generally forgotten that testing and tracing matters.
[+] [-] PeterStuer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cultus|5 years ago|reply
Talk of social distancing in schools is just ludicrous. It makes one wonder whether these officials have ever stepped foot inside of a school. Resources would be far better spent on trying to do remote learning passably well. For example, making sure that all schoolchildren have access to fast and reliable internet on a real computer, etc.
[+] [-] ykevinator|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] djsumdog|5 years ago|reply
One of the massive secondary effects is the huge rise in alcoholism. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) cannot meat in many States during lockdowns. Something like substance abuse accountability cannot be done effectively via video conference. They need to happen in person, without masks, where you can look into each other's eyes and tell people it's going to be alright.
Liquor stores and weed stores (in places where it's legal) are open, but AA is not. Child abuse ER visits have gone up 35%[0], and keep in mind, when a child goes to an ER for child abuse--they've been abused to the point where they have broken bones or critical injuries.
The current death rate for all Americans is 0.0022% if you look at a pure population vs fatality rate, even including the inflated numbers (and they are inflated; people with gunshot wounds who die with CoV-2 are COVID-19 deaths). The idea the lockdowns are stopping the spread just doesn't pan out when you compare countries across the planet with their different methods and levels of lockdowns and how they haven't really done a damn thing. I wrote a post on all the secondary effects recently: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/
I wish our leaders would stop dicking, around, stop making this political, and realize nothing is going to stop this spread, hospitals aren't being overrun and Gates/GAVIs mythical vaccine won't show up before this thing has already burned through the entire population.
[0]: http://adam.curry.com/enc/1593719588.319_scottatlasonschools...
[+] [-] erehweb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Applejinx|5 years ago|reply
Otherwise, it's arguing with physics, which seems to be in fashion and has really predictable results with no outliers or exceptions.
We've already made sure the 'before times' economy is gone forever. We're now working out what we can have, instead. That's an interesting design challenge and we're certainly not out of ideas, but 'keep the old economy' is simply not on the table.
[+] [-] Latty|5 years ago|reply
The countries that spent the most and locked down the hardest took the smallest hit because they were able to mitigate most of the damage, which is much more expensive.
People have to stop pretending countries are people economically, the cost of locking down is something developed countries can bear, and should.
Of course, this is all a microcosm of the same problem we face with climate change. It'd be really nice if we could finally learn the lesson and start paying the price now, rather than waiting and paying far more down the line.
[+] [-] briefcomment|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...
[+] [-] LaMarseillaise|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daenz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sdinsn|5 years ago|reply
[Citation needed]
[+] [-] matz1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpodgursky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|5 years ago|reply
https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-map/
Something obviously happened in early June that drove new cases up. What worries me is the only place you'll get better compliance with mask wearing and social distancing in the US is NYC, leading me to think "just wear a mask" isn't enough. There's no version of reopening anything indoors that works.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a city that has generally had COVID-19 under control, has just banned gatherings of more than four people. There a case report from China, I think, where people seated more than six feet apart at a restaurant got infected, possibly through fans or an HVAC system.
I also saw the slightly disingenuous (he didn't quite say that) headline that "Dr. Anthony Fauci says U.S. coronavirus cases are surging because nation didn’t totally shut down." Ignoring the bit about a surge, a longer, harder shutdown isn't a fix, either. Look at countries that had stricter shutdowns. Pockets are still popping up.
If the virus is active at all in an area, anything indoors risks spreading it, and there's no escape from whack-a-mole lockdowns...unless you're New Zealand. Maybe.
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
It's likely secondary infections from people who caught it Memorial Day weekend.
[+] [-] greedo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|5 years ago|reply
The evidence from 1918/19 is that early opening, or failure to close down again when opening fails, leads to stronger economic growth. It’s a shame some wish to learn this from themselves instead of from the suffering of people a century ago.
[+] [-] robotron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonv|5 years ago|reply
I've spoken at length with my best friend, a doctor, and a neighbor, also a doctor -- both of whom believe it's not rational to shut down the economy for the risks of this pandemic, particularly w/r/t the demographics of those most at risk given the (relatively low) mortality rate. Neither are Trump/GOP supporters.
I've spoken at length with others.. not doctors.. who think it's not rational to open up at all, and that things need to be shut down further until progress is made.
My workplace recently sent out a survey and asked if we were ready to come back to the office, if there were those who were interested in volunteering for a Back to Office pilot project. My team all voted against, with "commuting on Bart" as the first and conclusive deal-breaker. I also don't want to sit in an office with a mask on all day. So, for now, WFH.
Of course, if I was subject to unemployment... I don't think I'd change my vote but I would have a different emotional response to the question.
(FWIW, I was let go from a contract gig during the first week of SIP, and was hired a week later by a company I'd been in process with for a few weeks).
[+] [-] voxl|5 years ago|reply
The old adage that doctors are the worst patients, I think, rings true.
[+] [-] ghshephard|5 years ago|reply
Oh, also Coffee can only be drunk on officially (socially distanced) coffee breaks. Which is kind of weird. I figure as long as everyone is wearing a mask, the office is well ventilated (we have open windows), you are socially distanced and clorox-the-hell out of everything a couple times.
And we are also essentially bathing in Ethyl-Alcohol at this point. Dispensers placed around the office and people scrubbing down anytime you touch anything.
[+] [-] robotron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] option|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giardini|5 years ago|reply
The public is so naive that they cannot comprehend a monotonically increasing function (e.g., total deaths/cases). The news daily points out "the total number of deaths/cases is increasing &c...", a trivial truism in an epidemic, yet it engenders fear and panic.
[+] [-] apocalyptic0n3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzeroracer|5 years ago|reply
So if you ever wanted to see an example of what a place is going to look like without any leadership versus the virus, Texas is the place to watch.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv4kCwo1JMc
[+] [-] squabble|5 years ago|reply
Help people who are affected by the disruption, but not outdated systems.
[+] [-] beefok|5 years ago|reply
Uhh, racking up deaths WILL be way more brutal for the economy.
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basch|5 years ago|reply
I'm not sure calculations of economic spending is the best way to make the argument "we need to protect the most vulnerable, at the expense of the least," precisely because the least vulnerable are the ones producing most of the economic output, and that output is what is being curtailed to protect those not working. Almost any argument for shutdown would be better than trying to quantify the economic cost/gain of losing a double digit percentage of the elderly, because at the end of the day, I don't think that calculation would go the way the people making the economic argument think it will.
[+] [-] matz1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcdramamean|5 years ago|reply
It seems to me that pandemics are the new normal. We aren't going to have a vaccine ready for every virus within 1-2 years; so it seems prudent for us to invest in a good system now with a virus that isn't as deadly.
What does everyone else think? I really would like to create a thread and have some of the best minds (yes that's you) work on a real solution. Let's plan it and build it!
[+] [-] daveslash|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiffEq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
> The UK National Health Service assumes that of Covid-19 patients who have required hospitalization, 45 percent will need ongoing medical care, 4 percent will require inpatient rehabilitation, and 1 percent will permanently require acute care. Other preliminary evidence, as well as historical research on other coronaviruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), suggests that for some people, a full recovery might still be years off. For others, there may be no returning to normal.
Strokes and permanent cognitive disorder are also common:
> Blood clots that form in or reach the brain can cause a stroke. Although strokes are more typically seen in older people, strokes are now being reported even in young Covid-19 patients. In Wuhan, China, about 5 percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients had strokes, and a similar pattern was reported with SARS.
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21251899/coronavirus-long-term-...
[+] [-] chipuni|5 years ago|reply
(BIG CLUE: Use closed cases for estimating mortality of an illness.)