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COVID-19 Check-in

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Comments

  • CaliforniaDawgCaliforniaDawg Posts: 674 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Out here in California, I have heard lots of speculation about why California hasn't had as many cases. I have seen any concrete information. On one hand, California was the first state to implement shelter-in-place. On the other hand, because we had the first US case, thus the timeline from when California got its first case to when it implemented sheltering in place was actually a lot longer than for most other states including New York that has gotten hit so hard. Also, everyone I know, including myself and including someone who went to the ER with respitory problems could not get tested. For every country that has been successful keeping Covid19 low, testing has been a major part of the strategy and California had virtually no testing except on the most at risk patients.

    So, if we had a long-time frame from first case to sheltering in place and we have had poor testing, why does California have low numbers?

    The three most common things I have heard for why our numbers are low are:

    1. California has some level of immunity. We did have the majority of the 40,000 people coming from Wuhan after the travel ban on January 31st coming through or to California and perhaps 100,000 more from mid-December to Januarry 31st (the 40,000 number is accurate the 100,000 number is a guess). So exposure on a widespread scale is plausible. But, there is ZERO evidence for this theory and this theory goes against a lot of what we know about Covid19 in terms of infection rates and percent that are severe, result in deaths, etc.
    2. California has very good health levels. It has the second lowest rate of smoking in the US (after Utah thanks to the Mormon restrictions on it). It has the 5th lowest obeisity rate. It has one of the 5 lowest median ages among the 50 states. Interestingly, it ranks very poorly on hospital beds per 1000 people at 1.8 beds or 47th out of 50 states. South Dakota is #1 with 4.8 beds per 1000 people and they are getting hit pretty hard right now.
    3. The average Californian took Covid19 pretty seriously from the beginning. There are incidents of young folks going to bars and having parties, but overall, the adherence to sheltering in place and social distancing has been high and consistent. In other words, sheltering in place is a broad definition and within that, there is a lot of variation from state to state. California probably has the nation's most restrictive shelter-in-place as from the beginning people got tickets for groups larger than 10, going to parks or schools,grocery stores put tape on the floor for where one could lineup to checkout and back in March all stores started limiting how many people could come in at once.

    So at the end of the day, no one knows. The most likely is that some combination of #2 and #3 preventing California from reaching a tipping point but it is only likely because as of now we don't have a better answer. I wonder if we will ever know, I'm definitely curious about why.

  • LORLOR Posts: 1,011 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Do you realize the order of magnitude of deaths you’re talking about would be larger than world war 2? When we open it up I hope we don’t see anything near those types of numbers.

    Second, if it spreads rapidly throughout the country the more susceptible won’t be protected. That many deaths will also cripple the economy. Not to mention the pressure it’s already put on hospitals within such a limited timeframe.

    Politics aside, a recession/depression is almost a certainty. I know people are impatient but this is the new reality for a while.

  • ghostofuga1ghostofuga1 Posts: 9,216 mod

    Again, let's keep politics out of this discussion. As tough as it may be, there can be some good discussion brought here on the subject without interjecting politics into it. Warnings will be issued to those that continue and disregard what has been stated numerous times in this thread.

    Thanks!!

  • Steve_ZissouSteve_Zissou Posts: 307 ✭✭✭ Junior

    The reason Democrats, Public Health experts and generally educated people globally don’t think an open the economy all at once is intelligent is because losing 1-2% worlds population is 100x worse than a quarter of economic slowdown.

    US healthcare system cannot handle the cases it currently has. You are suggesting immensely increasing the stress on this system

    It has nothing to do w Donald Trumps re-election. Globally, No one cares about him or listens to his nonsense outside of the hopeless lost-causes.

    IMO- they should re-open the economy On 5/1 just for trump rallies. Decrease the surplus population

  • deutcshland_dawgdeutcshland_dawg Posts: 1,595 mod

    Doing well still over in Germany. Weather is amazing right now but can't travel which kinda takes the fun out of living overseas. Its mandatory to wear face masks on base now so that's taken some getting used to. I'm not a big fan of it. Makes me feel like i'm playing red dead redemption and i'm about to get robbed. Still no word on when restrictions will be lifted.

  • Dawgsince76Dawgsince76 Posts: 728 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    My social distancing a few minutes ago.

  • Canedawg2140Canedawg2140 Posts: 1,832 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    What happened in Michigan yesterday will continue. Some will protest lockdowns, some will protest hunger, some will protest poverty.

    Hope that doesn't get nasty in big cities.

    There are several barometers for this situation - sports is a good one.

    I think I may know another - Disney World...

    Give me your guess to when it opens up (the actual parks) for business...

  • UGA_2019UGA_2019 Posts: 157 ✭✭✭ Junior

    28 states offer mail-in ballots and 5 conduct their elections entirely through mail. Not only that, but the president himself voted by mail in Florida’s primary election last month and in the 2018 midterms. If it is in fact “extremely fraudulent”, you’d think he wouldn’t do it himself in addition to nearly half the country. If things are still hot by November, mail-in is the way to go in order to protect the population. Don’t even get me started on the Diebold voting machines used in GA, now that’s extremely fraudulent.

  • GrayDawgGrayDawg Posts: 1,907 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    The problem with making any decision in this climate is we have no idea what the real consequences are. Some models predict 40,000 US deaths while others predict 2,000,000. If I were making the call, I might go two different directions based on which numbers I thought were most accurate.

    Another unknown is the actual economic detriment a sustained shelter-in-place will have, how soon we can recover from it, etc. How many jobs will be permanently destroyed? What psychological affects will follow? And while we really don't know any specific answers, the generalities are pretty clear. Everyone will be affected to some extent. I consider myself fortunate to have a job that is very stable. I could ignore this side of the equation as I will likely be affected less than most. But that would be unrealistic.

    All this to say, the only sure things are that some people will die from COVID 19 and everyone will be affected by the economy. I don't know that I can firmly make a decision on that, but I think it is pretty obvious which way I'm leaning on the issue.

    BTW, I couldn't care less about the political ramifications. I've been blissfully excusing myself from political discord for years now.

  • LORLOR Posts: 1,011 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    To be clear, I’m certain of very little. Much more intelligent people than me are also certain of very little. I feel as though this won’t pass soon, and I’d be happy to be wrong.

    My comment on recession/depression comes down to 2 awful options; first is that shelter in place stops or slows business to a halt and there’s just an extension of the unemployment we’re already seeing. Second is that we open things up a bit more and subject more people to the virus, which will cause more hospital issues and most likely infect more people on the front lines - first responders, people in charge of shipping and distributing food. What happens if your local office has a case of covid? Are we going to have rolling outages of work as this hits every corner of the country? The psychological impact is also going to take a toll where a lot of people won’t go to restaurants, theaters, museums, get on planes - those businesses are going to get crushed. To me, it seems a recession is inevitable because we are sandwiched between the proverbial rock and a hard place. I doubt opening things up avoids a recession, and shelter in place definitely won’t work economically for long. Again, no good options and we’re all in this together.

  • Denmen185Denmen185 Posts: 7,504 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    The opening up of the economy in the manner that you suggest has untold consequences. The infection rate of healthcare workers indicates just how difficult it is to prevent infection even with masks and gloves. The post I made earlier to get to the number of deaths at 2.6 million assumed that the current apparent mortality rate of 8% of "Cases" (not infections) continues. If you start opening up sporting events, movies, concerts etc. it is impossible to socially distance. This will lead to the health system being brought to it's knees and the rate could easily doubled. Of those currently hospitalized 80% recover and are discharged. As the rate of spread increases many of the "80%" won't even get admitted to get the life-saving care that they need due to lack of space and equipment. Further response times to "normal" 911 calls will be extended and many more such incidents be it GSW, road accidents, heart attacks etc. will result in avoidable deaths. The misconception is that only the old will die. Most of the indirect deaths impact all genders and ages alike.

    The issue I have with "Let Americans decide for themselves what risks they choose to live with." is that the risks will be felt by those that choose not to take them as well. For example, a restaurant worker goes to a sporting event and contracts the virus, goes to work the next day and infects customers and coworkers who then die. The same would apply to any worker that has contact with customers.

    The economy can only recover when this pandemic is under better control than it is today. We are after all a consumer driven economy (which has been increasingly debt driven) and politicians and CEOs can decide to open all they want but if the consumer thinks that it is even less safe to go to the restaurant, store or whatever, the business will not succeed nor survive.

  • texdawgtexdawg Posts: 11,581 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate
This discussion has been closed.