Inverted_Trough

I think if the American people were okay with letting two million people die with the herd immunity approach, that would be our policy. But 85% of our country want to proritize lives over the economy. Hence that's our policy. Even with the herd immunity approach, our economy is screwed anyway. The entire world is shut down. And you'll have severe supply shocks due to people getting sick, and severe demand shocks because of fear (people don't want to travel, eat out, go to concerts, etc). So either way, the "deaths of despair" due to a poor economy will occur regardless.

I think this option was studied too. The problem is how exactly do you segregate the over-65 crowd from the rest of the population? 15% of our population is over 65. Many of them live with their children. How exactly do you lock down the elderly? Do business have "elderly-only" business hours and "under-65-only" business hours so that both cohorts don't intermingle? Are there separate grocery stores for the elderly and the under-65 crowd so that both populations don't intermingle? The elderly are lonely as it is - locking them down for 18 months until we either get either a vaccine or herd immunity seems tortuous. From a policy perspective, it seems infeasible to implement something like this, so they went with general restrictions for now.

Only 2.8% infected? You have people on this forum who claim that 30% of the population has already been infected. I've been thinking it's closer to 3%. The IMHE model assumes 5% of people will be infected by August 1st. so it seems like their assumption was a good one.

Build.The.Wall. Around Florida. Have a Gaza Strip style checkpoints at their border.

I never mentioned socialized medicine. A communal mindset means you consider how your actions affect others, you do things for a collective benefit, you have some faith in institutions, etc. That's what's needed to get through a pandemic. All of that is anathema to Ayn Randers. John Galt isn't a public health kind of guy.

Ayn Randers really struggle with pandemics. Overcoming a pandemic requires a communal way of thinking which is anathema to them. Plus you can only read The Fountainhead so many times while quarantined

It's about 20% for all confirmed cases. Yes, I realize many symptomatic people don't get diagnosed. But that's still very high. On average, heart disease kills ~1800 people per day. Cancer kills about 1650 people daily. Covid is killing more people than heart disease and cancer right now. So while we can argue about IFR -- which is unknowable and a completely academic exercise to calculate -- morgues filled with bodies represent real facts on the ground.

I suspect the reason there are so many asymptomatic people is because the virus has a long incubation period. It can take up to two weeks after infection to experience symptoms. The flu and common cold typically takes just a couple days. Too much focus on IFR - which appears to be at least 10x higher than the flu but it's an academic exercise at this point. The hospitalization rate for this virus is very high. The hospitalization rate for the flu is between 1% and 2%. It's about ~20% for symptomatic covid patients. The flu is an upper respiratory infection, which very rarely triggers a hospitalization. Covid seem to attack the lower respiratory system. That causes shortness of breath which leads you to the hospital. Our assumption is also that people who recover simply go back to normal - just like is the case with the flu or cold. There are some studies out there showing that a significant portion (20% or so) of people have lung scarring, heart damage and liver problems after they've recovered. Obviously the virus is only a few months old and we'd need to have longitudinal studies done on the patients who have recovered from covid, to see how they fare long-term. But those initial studies are concerning. In the meantime, we need to 1) collect data - lots of data, and research the heck out of this virus to remove the uncertainty surrounding it; 2) build a testing capacity such that we can test everyone. Yes, we might need to test 330 million people. Maybe that's impractical but I think we might have to strive for that. 3) Hire millions of people to help with contact-tracing. We have 17 million recently unemployed: Hire some of them to do this until we finally get a vaccine.

It's legit moderate snow out near Hagerstown with some accumulation on mulch and cars.

Temperatures are crashing under that band. Some folks in the northern counties are going to get a slushy accumulation. Although it'll probably melt before sunrise.

Car has officially been topped. Successful event in my book.

In terms of daily positive cases, I suspect that the counts are based on when the test results are received. While some of these tests come back within a day, many of these tests take several days to come back. I think the positive counts should be attributed to the date the test was taken. Then, perhaps you'll see a true 'curve'. I suspect the "plateau-effect" we see on these curves are in part due to lagged reporting, so in reality we could be in a downturn but the curve looks like a plateau because of the lag.

today might be the worst day in terms of death counts. might be due to lags in reporting.

You should read these 80 pages of e-mails as part of your "research". https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6879-2020-covid-19-red-dawn-rising/66f590d5cd41e11bea0f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1

In case anyone is interested, here's a PDF containing 80 pages of e-mails between public health officials from late January through mid March. The e-mails were obtained by a FOIA request. https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6879-2020-covid-19-red-dawn-rising/66f590d5cd41e11bea0f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 It appears the public health community raised the alarm very early. Started advocating for social distancing in early February.

Because there is very little data and evidence to support this assertion. It doesn't mean it's not possible, but it's a hypothesis based on assumption and beliefs. Assumption and beliefs are shaped by politics. And that's where this discussion starts getting political which I'm sure is what most people want to avoid.

Need a robust, agile contact tracing infrastructure in order to stay in containment mode and not have to lock down again. They say we need at least 100,000 workers for contact-tracing. Google and Apple can help with technology. We need a strategic plan before we "open it up" Contact tracing can only be done at scale when you have a manageable number of cases per day. When you have 30000+ per day, it's impossible, so nobody is contact-tracing right now except in a few cases.

The economy isn't going back to 'normal' until the threat of the virus is assuaged in the public's minds. You can "open it up" on paper all you want - the economy is not going to be back to 100% for a couple years. It'll be running at a degraded state. Focus on getting treatments/vaccines and preserving our hospital system and our economy will come back in a few years. I think we have to stop kidding ourselves and idealize this notion of "going back to normal" anytime soon even after we 'reopen'. Normal is not happening for awhile. It is what it is. The restrictions are made by the states anyway. Most of the world is shut-down. Some states will lift some restrictions while others will wait longer. Same thing with each country.

California was basically the first state that did the stay-at-home orders and their numbers have been remarkably low. I think Dr. Fauci said it best: If people think you over-reacted, that means you did a great job. And your sister just admitted California has done a great job. Kudos!

Wow, now we're arguing about whether social distancing works. Next we will argue about whether gravity is real or just a philosophical principle

Yes, social distancing being one of them

UK initially tried the 'herd immunity' approach. That strategy didn't last very long but now their death counts are the highest in Europe right now. Sweden is also trying a laissez-faire approach (though large crowds are still banned but restaurants/bars are open). Their death count is eight times higher than neighboring Norway. Will Sweden's GDP growth be higher than Norway's this month? Maybe. But maybe not. Was that worth it? That's up to their society. In this country, I think 85% favor saving lives over saving GDP. based on recent polling Obviously most Americans believe we are doing the right thing (albeit much, much later than we should have)

Not sure. But, for your reference, car accidents have about a 0.6% mortality rate and are not contagious.

I should have clarified: If car accidents were contagious and nobody had immunity, we had no treatments or a vaccine - and because of that, it would grow exponentially - would anyone drive?

and my 401(k) is in the tank like everyone else's. But the long term viability of my 401(k) is based on not allowing this to happen again. So I favor a slow, phased approach. It is what it is.