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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On July 20 2020 09:58 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 09:08 LegalLord wrote:
This entire line of argument around why we can just go ahead and open schools seems patently absurd from the get-go. I'm surprised that this is even being talked as if it were a good idea under the circumstances the US is under. Those states and nations that failed to close schools in a timely fashion had among the worst infection rates in the world, there's evidence of significant spread under the circumstances that DPB posted, and yet one study under completely different conditions is justification for enabling one form of highly routine large public gatherings? I not only don't buy it, but further consider it absurd on its face. Problem is the infection rate is very isolated to parts of Florida. I live just outside of Jacksonville and our county has had very few cases. It feels completely safe to go out and shop and continue life while following the basic socially distancing guidelines. Schools reopening in my county feels safe and the teachers who live on my street feel confident going back. However, there's no chance I'd feel comfortable with the same lifestyle if I lived twenty minutes north of here which would put me in the city portion of Jacksonville.
It's generally a fair bit more concentrated in large urban areas as a rule, yes. But if you feel safe when the infection is raging just 20 minutes away, that feeling is probably rather misplaced. Interacting with people who live up to an hour away is a regular occurrence in many lines of work, so it wouldn't take long for the spread to come your way. Probably a good time not to start reopening major infection vectors, no matter how "confident" you feel personally.
Although to be honest, looking at a map of Florida I don't see many places south of Jacksonville that look particularly good. Every county in that wide swath of Florida is either deeply infected or surrounded on all side by counties that are.
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Bisutopia19246 Posts
On July 20 2020 11:20 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 09:58 BisuDagger wrote:On July 20 2020 09:08 LegalLord wrote:
This entire line of argument around why we can just go ahead and open schools seems patently absurd from the get-go. I'm surprised that this is even being talked as if it were a good idea under the circumstances the US is under. Those states and nations that failed to close schools in a timely fashion had among the worst infection rates in the world, there's evidence of significant spread under the circumstances that DPB posted, and yet one study under completely different conditions is justification for enabling one form of highly routine large public gatherings? I not only don't buy it, but further consider it absurd on its face. Problem is the infection rate is very isolated to parts of Florida. I live just outside of Jacksonville and our county has had very few cases. It feels completely safe to go out and shop and continue life while following the basic socially distancing guidelines. Schools reopening in my county feels safe and the teachers who live on my street feel confident going back. However, there's no chance I'd feel comfortable with the same lifestyle if I lived twenty minutes north of here which would put me in the city portion of Jacksonville. It's generally a fair bit more concentrated in large urban areas as a rule, yes. But if you feel safe when the infection is raging just 20 minutes away, that feeling is probably rather misplaced. Interacting with people who live up to an hour away is a regular occurrence in many lines of work, so it wouldn't take long for the spread to come your way. Probably a good time not to start reopening major infection vectors, no matter how "confident" you feel personally. Although to be honest, looking at a map of Florida I don't see many places south of Jacksonville that look particularly good. Every county in that wide swath of Florida is either deeply infected or surrounded on all side by counties that are.
Twenty minutes south of Jacksonville is a huge difference if you were familiar with the layout. I live in the Clay County area which is a very large rural area. We have 2500 confirmed cases versus 16,500 in Duval (Jacksonville).
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I'm not hearing much about India and its troubles with the coronavirus, but they're surely catching up. Their amount of new cases rises just about every day and it hit over 40k yesterday according to www.worldometers.info. Considering their population size and density, if they don't start getting the virus under control anytime soon things could get really tragic.
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On July 20 2020 01:10 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 22:42 StalkerTL wrote:
So this goes into the discussion we had before in the thread. People latched onto one paragraph in the AAP's statement and ran with it. They saw the AAP say all kids do best in school and decided to use it as justification to re-open schools, ignoring the rest of statement that argues that there is no one size fits all solution and measures have to be implemented to ensure the safety of not only children but adults.
Not surprisingly at all, Florida's AAP has sent a letter to DeSantis stating just that. Kids need to go back to school but you can't open schools in Florida because coronavirus is not controlled in Florida. Kids go to school, get infected with coronavirus, bring it home, get parents sick and potentially put them out of work with long term illnesses or kill them. Its not a sustainable strategy without the virus being controlled. You don't have to eradicate it but you can't have 10,000 cases per day. My mom is a 2nd grade teacher in her 60's here in Florida. I think it's ridiculous that everyone is concerned about kids, but no one seems to give a shit about teachers. The government should pay 100% for all teachers insurance if they plan on sending them in front of 12-32 students. I also can't believe teachers value themselves so little as to not protest going back or just quit. I wish people weren't so afraid of leaving their job and teaching in those conditions doesn't make you a hero. You can make more managing at Costco anyway and probably end up with equal or safer conditions.
From what I have seen there hasn't been any particular spread of the disease in schools. In Sweden we have had a lot of community spread, but according to the national health agency the schools were never particularly dangerous. To me it would make a lot more sense to let people who are in a risk group (such as being 60+ years old) stay at home with full pay rather than closing down important parts of society - as you say, it doesn't make sense to be more concerned about the kids in that case. Anyway, I hope your mother stays safe.
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There's been a fair bit of positive news about the Oxford vaccine.
There's also currently efforts to stockpile the vaccine, ahead of phase 3 human trial results in order to be prepared to immediately vaccinate populations if it is successful.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53469839
One interesting part of this, is that due to how poorly the USA is managing the virus, the USA is a country where much of the trial is occurring. 30k in the USA, 2k in South Africa and 3k in Brazil. The UK has it under control enough that it would be hard to determine efficacy of the vaccine.
70% chance of fever/headache from the vaccine, but no serious side-effects otherwise.
Even with the build-up of the potential vaccine starting now, it's unlikely going to be widely available to the general population by years end.
For most of us I guess that means a full year of restrictions on normal activities - From March this year to March next year.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Looks like Sweden has finally brought things meaningfully under control (same link as always, etc etc). Ultimately, whereas it had an opportunity to have numbers an order of magnitude lower, its per-capita infection and death rate look to be on par with nations like Italy and Spain rather than its Finnish and Norwegian neighbors who, under similar conditions, took a much more cautious approach. Oh well, guess the "experiment" is finally done.
India is still on a wild tear. Still a lot of potential to get a whole lot worse.
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India is what an uncontrolled China would've looked like.
In hindsight, we could argue all we want about it, but China locked down incredibly hard which had a fairly dramatic impact on spread in the country.
In other news, a lesson in why we can't have nice things:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/huuvuw/july_20th_covid19_update_dr_bonnie_henry_says/
BC saw 102 cases over the last 72 hours.
At our lowest point, we were about 5x lower than this, in the single digits per day.
Almost all cases are linked to nightclubs, bars, house parties and other such gatherings. Specifically, 60+ of those are linked to one party. Some kids who KNEW they were sick with something went and partied anyways at a private gathering, then barhopped for a few nights.
I'm going to place my trust in our health officer, because she's done a world-class job so far. She doesn't want to close public indoor spaces if at all possible, because that tends to force people to private gatherings which are even harder to police. Hopefully a mask mandate in high interaction areas can be enforced.
Edit::
One very stark difference in the press conference is that in March, April and some of May, patients, and contact tracers only had to worry about 3-4 close contacts per case. Now, the average case comes with 20-30 contacts that need to be traced, which drastically increases the workload for contact tracers. People are having relatively massive gatherings, which really hurts our containment of the spread.
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India could be far better than China, for all we know. China’s official numbers look like they got some other type of virus. Any actual comparison is an exercise in rank speculation.
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On July 21 2020 10:02 Danglars wrote:
India could be far better than China, for all we know. China’s official numbers look like they got some other type of virus. Any actual comparison is an exercise in rank speculation.
Could, but unlikely to. China's probably fudged the numbers a fair bit, but it seems like they've gotten it under control at this point.
The cultural awareness around masks/distancing has really helped in South Korea and Japan. About half a year ago, there was speculation that it would get out of control in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and the other megacities, but that hasn't really happened. It's been fairly similar to Tokyo, Seoul etc, where they've seen measurable, but not huge spikes. Throughput from Chinese factories has largely resumed, barring the shipping delays and backlogs.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
China's numbers beggar belief, but it's hard to deny that the measures they took were far more aggressive - and with far more competent execution - than was done in countries such as the US. They did exactly what had to be done, and without the slightest bit of waffling or hesitation. It looks quite well-contained for now, albeit at a significant cost.
Maybe, when all is said and done, the death toll was 100k rather than 4k. In countries that are sufficiently large and sufficiently impoverished, people underestimate how easy it is to hide large death tolls. But two months of complete lockdown seems to have better staying power than 4-6 months of an extremely half-hearted one.
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On July 21 2020 15:28 Lmui wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2020 10:02 Danglars wrote:
India could be far better than China, for all we know. China’s official numbers look like they got some other type of virus. Any actual comparison is an exercise in rank speculation. Could, but unlikely to. China's probably fudged the numbers a fair bit, but it seems like they've gotten it under control at this point.
Again, speculation in terms of likelihood. India never arrested and disappeared doctors and journalists at the beginning of this who warned of the danger. For all we know, China tried an impossible task long after the spread was uncontrollable, which is why I don't think speculation is profitable. It didn't help that journalists from major US papers were kicked out in March, who might've pieced together some information not taken from official state sources.
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They only kicked out US journos. There were plenty of international ones still there. The official line that the local government messed up horribly and tried to hide the number of deaths but the central government's response was way more competent seems accurate by the vast majority of accounts. Now, there is still room for it to be underestimated by a factor of 10, but that's true of everywhere that isn't testing everyone right now
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On July 21 2020 15:37 LegalLord wrote:
But two months of complete lockdown seems to have better staying power than 4-6 months of an extremely half-hearted one.
This is what I have been thinking from the start. The world should have locked hard, like China did, when Spain and Italy started seeing 600+ deaths daily.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On July 22 2020 05:28 Bleak wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2020 15:37 LegalLord wrote:
But two months of complete lockdown seems to have better staying power than 4-6 months of an extremely half-hearted one. This is what I have been thinking from the start. The world should have locked hard, like China did, when Spain and Italy started seeing 600+ deaths daily.
When the pandemic has that frightening combo of being as deadly and rapid-spreading as it is, it's easier to find poor handling of the disease than effective handling. There's a lot of ways to do it wrong, and very few ways to get it right at every turn. All in all, I can't criticize countries like Italy for how aggressively things went badly, because at the end of the day they took it seriously the moment it became clear that this was going to be as bad as it ended up being. Even so, the death toll was substantial.
The current trifecta of disaster - India, US, and Brazil - clearly handled it badly throughout a major portion of the pandemic. It's no surprise that these countries but not too many others are seeing no end in sight to the crisis, at the same time that much of the world is getting it under control. No amount of poor circumstance can explain a long string of poor decisions that led to where things are right now.
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China likely hasn’t produced accurate numbers but they’re clearly able to use a sledgehammer to domestic problems that few, if any, other countries are able to use or stomach because of the sheer abuse of human rights. That’s exactly what they did in Wuhan so it wouldn’t be out of the world to assume that they’ve actually flattened the curve to manageable levels.
There’s zero chance India is doing better than China. They don’t have the resources, the government is corrupt, lumbering and there’s so much informal land usage (business, residential, industrial) that there’s no way to put out all of the fires with a lockdown and contact tracing.
You don’t need statistics to know this is extremely likely to be true.
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Northern Ireland25506 Posts
Even if China’s numbers are fudged in some ways they aggressively locked down when shit hit the fan.
Are India doing that? I’m not even sure they have the capacity if the will was there.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On July 22 2020 10:20 Wombat_NI wrote:
Even if China’s numbers are fudged in some ways they aggressively locked down when shit hit the fan.
Are India doing that? I’m not even sure they have the capacity if the will was there.
India tried to lock down in the earlier months, in what was apparently a very aggressive lockdown, but it didn’t really work. Maybe they just don’t have the power to enforce that China did. Eventually widespread poverty forced them to open as the case load was growing, and it’s not hard to see what happens next.
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They have neither the power, resources or capability of enforcing a true lockdown.
A significant number of Indians migrate seasonally for work and something like 80% of Indians are working informally, without proper contracts or government oversight. Even if you lock down the cities, it’s incredibly hard to keep track of all the informal behaviour occurring behind the scenes.
For situations like this, China just brings out their army and suppresses everything into submission. You don’t need to keep track of informal behaviour when the army basically bars your front door shut.
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On July 22 2020 10:20 Wombat_NI wrote:
Even if China’s numbers are fudged in some ways they aggressively locked down when shit hit the fan.
Are India doing that? I’m not even sure they have the capacity if the will was there.
Worth remembering that India's per capita GDP is ~1/5 that of China which is less than 1/5th that of the US. Which means US's GDP per capita is ~30x that of India (PPP is closer).
From a strictly managerial perspective it can't be glossed over the vast differences in the potentially available resources/strategies to both actively contain covid-19 and absorb economic losses from the things we know work like shutting stuff down and severely limiting in-person contacts (then contact tracing/isolation from there).
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