Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I don't know about you, but I'll take my chances of not dying from this. Let's open back up and keep people who are at risk isolated and let everyone else get back to work.

 

Just some other random numbers in case you never want to leave your house again. We flattened the curve. That was the goal. We accomplished that goal. Now lets get back and open things up. If people want to wear a mask everywhere, go for it. If a place wants to restrict people entering without a mask, that is their right. If you are scared and want to stay home, no one is stopping you, but don't expect to be paid. Time to move on.

 

Here's the thing with populist ideas, they offer simple solutions to complex problems when in reality complex problems require complex solutions.

Take your suggestion for example, sounds like a simple solution doesn't it? Well, let's get down to the details. Who do you consider to be "at risk"? How do you plan to keep them isolated? What do you think the impact to the society and the economy will be in doing so?

These are just the very first steps to executing your seemingly simple solution. Answer those questions and you'll start to see how complex the situation really is.

That's not the goal. Flattening the curve is a mean to a goal, not the goal itself. The actual goal is to reduce deaths with the least amount of economic damage possible. Flattening the curve is the first step toward achieving that goal, the next step is to use the time flattening the curve has bought us to develop testing (including better/quicker tests, sufficient testing capacity, contact tracing, etc.) and treatment (including PPEs, medications, vaccines, etc.) strategy. The places that have done that can start a coordinated, goal-directed reopening. Failing to do so will not get us any closer to our goal.

 

The problem with this type of graph is that it is calculated at a fixed point in time while the virus is still active. You could have done the same thing early into the bubonic plague and gotten some pretty reassuring numbers too! The real issue is that as the plague keeps spreading the numbers will only look worse and worse.

It's better to show the stats of how many people die per thousand when infected. Even if you have to assume that 3-6 times as many people are infected as actually have a positive test. This kind of graph is as useful as predicting the future lifespan of Russian citizens during World War 2 using statistics 2 weeks into the German invasion.

 

It's funny how people react when they see something that goes against what they thought to be true. Everyone is saying it's doom and gloom. It's not. I'm a numbers person. The data we have says this is nothing to someone under the age of 24. That's not up for debate. Now that person shouldn't be near someone who is elderly or have health issues. The rest of the country should be back to work and wear masks if needed.

 

I’ll take my chances is a very different statement than we know everything about the virus. The former is an expression of personal values, to which everyone has a right. The latter is a factual statement, which at this time has a very small chance of being accurate.

But the two statements are related, as dingy points out above. We need the factual information in order to best make value judgements.

Personally, I agree that you have a small chance of dying from the virus. Is that the only info we would want to make this decision though?

 

What's populist about facts and data? We as Americans were told we needed to shut everything down to not overload the hospitals. Period. That didn't happen anywhere in the US. So now we need to get back to work, smartly. No idea why kids wouldn't be back on campus in the fall. They mostly congregate with other young people. If the professors want to wear masks, then go for it.

 

What do you mean? Questioning the effectiveness of inaccurate statistics? That IS funny!!!

Whatever the risk/reward is for people, everyone should at least have the ability to weigh it based on something at least close to the reality on the ground. I've already done some general number crunching in Florida based on the number in Florida (positive tests and randomized studies) and the number for my age group is somewhere around 1 to 3 in 10,000 (number of cases in an age group being 3-6% of true # of infections and the number of deaths in that age group). To me this is not significant risk but still WAAAYYY higher than your posted risk of 5 in 100,000 because yours is based on bullsh*t assumptions.

Your figures only have value if NO ONE else dies from March 8 until . . . forever? Is that realistic? Because I think some people might have already died in the past 5 days. Like thousands in fact. Was the pandemic cancelled on March 8th and those people didn't get the memo? How does anyone even bother to create useless statistics like that for general consumption? It would be like checking the air supply in the Space Shuttle by looking at a sample reading taken 5 days ago. I can't imagine anyone with a college degree or even a rudimentary understanding of math thinking . . . "Wow, this is really useful stuff!!!"

For someone who is a self-proclaimed "numbers person" I have serious lack of confidence in your "understanding" of numbers.

 

This whole thing you just wrote is so obtuse i'm not going to waste my time replying. We are all dumber for having read it. Thanks.

 

I would consider myself a number person as well, but numbers can be tricky. Again, I wouldn’t think of calling your values wrong, but I do think we should be able to agree on the numbers used to inform our decisions.

What you are advocating is basically the sweden model. It seems to be going ok for them, but what number of deaths are they really accruing due to this decision? Mathematician Nassim Taleb (and Trump) thinks they are costing many lives.

 

I didn't call for Sweden at all. We've already been shut down for basically 2 months. Sweden never did that. We flattened the curve. Keep the sick and elderly isolated and let everyone else go back to work and let people wear masks if needed. Apples and oranges to me.

 

Your idea:

Keep the sick and elderly isolated and let everyone go back to work.

Sweden’s idea:

Sweden didn’t go into lockdown or impose strict social-distancing policies. Instead, it rolled out voluntary, ‘trust-based’ measures: it advised older people to avoid social contact and recommended that people work from home, wash their hands regularly and avoid non-essential travel. But borders and schools for under-16s remain open — as do many businesses, including restaurants and bars.

The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy


These two approaches seem pretty similar to me.

Where you draw a distinction, the US previous shutdown, I see a distinction with no difference. The previous curve doesn’t affect the future curve, at least until we’ve reached some kind of herd immunity, which basically everyone agrees we have not. If anything, the previous curve indicates that we have a lot of virus around to seed a future outbreak, much like how a larger size of principle investment in an account earning compounding interest speeds the growth of the investment.

Again, none of this is to suggest that you are wrong to want everyone to go back to work, but it seems we still haven’t agreed on the cost of that decision.

 

Excellent. I have no problem experimenting with coronavirus re-opening using you and your family as lab rats.

Damn sure not me and mine, though.

 

No problem. My son already started back baseball practice last night. Ate out already this week.

 

Snowflake? in fetal position? How intelligent of you.

 

Let's start with the basic questions: how does one stay isolated completely from the raging spread outside if it starts? How would we get those isolated people food and basic necessities safely? Second, do we also excuse those cohabitating from working and risking their loved ones? If so, how do we deal with that economically? We seemingly don't have a plan for that yet. Third, how do we handle travel and movement around the country and internationally? Those are just the three basic questions, then we will start getting into the more complicated questions, but let's start there.

 

This is a pretty substantial difference, in my opinion.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Easy. Drop off food to someone who is isolated or use Instacart. Problem solved. Wear a mask and gloves when doing it. It's not rocket science. If people are worried. wear a mask and gloves at work. The odds are already very rare to get Covid 19 so wearing a mask and gloves would make it that much safer. Travel, have everyone wear a mask if you want. Internationally, monitor the areas that have outbreaks and restrict all travel to and from. It's not complicated at all.