Author Topic: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?  (Read 675269 times)

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3650 on: August 20, 2020, 10:39:15 PM »

I can't see the lockdown being extended for longer than 13 September. The chorus of voices is starting to build. There might even be cautious easing before the official date.

It's really hard to tell general public opinion, the only polls have been by partisan types, like The Guardian. At best we can see shifts in opinion, and absolutely there's been a shift - but from where to where? Hard to say.



I imagine we don't need to hire them.  It's not about expertise.  We just need the will, and a lot more testing.

It's very much about expertise. They built on their experiences of SARS-Cov-1 more than 10 years ago.

And of course, as Sutton noted today we could double testing but we'd double the time to get people's results back, giving those actually infected more time to infect others. The symptomatic need to be tested, those without symptoms aren't a priority, since they're not very infectious. So more testing than we're already doing (among the most in the world) would just slow things down - why? Because we don't have the systems. That's why some contacts of cases have taken weeks to be contacted by the tracers.

We actually half had a system - they'd wargamed out a pandemic plan a few times. But they abandoned it, and changed who was in charge each month - and if the State Controller is changing each month, you can bet the rest is in chaos, too. And so you get things like the security guards being given no PPE and being given hygiene training where they were asked, "can masks prevent covid?" and if they tick "yes" they're told they're wrong and have to do it again. Because there were no systems, it was just a jumble of people.

Expertise and systems. Success in anything significant is built on systems, that's why for example McDs does well - they have designed systems that even a dumb 15 year old can handle.
« Last Edit: August 22, 2020, 03:53:56 AM by Kyle Schuant »

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3651 on: August 24, 2020, 09:38:41 AM »
I can't see the lockdown being extended for longer than 13 September. The chorus of voices is starting to build. There might even be cautious easing before the official date.
You still think this?

Bloop will know, but others won't: legally, the state of emergency must expire after 6 months. The Premier is returning to parliament in the hopes of altering the legislation to allow him to extend it another 12 months. He's not doing this just so he can get people to wear face masks. He has 17 seats in the upper house, which has 40 members in all, and so he must secure the support of 4 of the crossbenchers. He's put some offside by only talking to them after he did a press conference announcing it, and asking for their support without bothering to present them with a draft bill.

On top of the state of emergency, he has as well the state of disaster, which can be wrangled to give him similar powers - and requires no parliamentary approval, nor does it have a time limit, only that he must "report" to parliament within seven days of its proclamation (which he hasn't done).

Meanwhile...

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-magnate-sails-away-from-face-masks-and-lockdown-20200824-p55otv.html

and I don't blame that useless rich cunt, I'd go too, if I could. Should the legislation be amended as the Premier wishes, my family will look to move interstate. Should that prove too difficult, or the rest of Australia slip back into this madness, we'll have to look internationally.


Let this be a warning to all of you: if there are powers in the legislation, at some point a leader will use them, and they will be abused, and somehow the time will never quite be right for them to set their power aside. Never concede your freedoms.

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3652 on: August 24, 2020, 09:52:17 AM »
First confirmed case of C19 reinfection.  https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/ 

So much for flattening the curve?  Or at least any idea that that was going to be a temporary thing that we had to do.  Not to mention hopes for herd immunity. 

HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3653 on: August 24, 2020, 10:09:01 AM »
First confirmed case of C19 reinfection.  https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/ 

So much for flattening the curve?  Or at least any idea that that was going to be a temporary thing that we had to do.  Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.

Eh, one confirmed reinfection out of 24 million confirmed cases is not something to freak out about.  Way too soon to draw such a drastic extreme conclusion. 

The Spanish flu, which was far more deadly, had reinfection on a larger scale and that pandemic ultimately died off without vaccine.


If you read your article:

"Experts cautioned that this patient’s case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months. They said that ongoing studies tracking patients who had recovered from Covid-19 would help reach more definitive conclusions.

“There’s been more than 24 million cases reported to date,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a coronavirus expert at the World Health Organization, said at a briefing Monday, when asked about the Hong Kong report. “And we need to look at something like this at a population level.”
« Last Edit: August 24, 2020, 10:14:23 AM by HBFIRE »

former player

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3654 on: August 24, 2020, 10:17:30 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

Shane

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3655 on: August 24, 2020, 11:03:09 AM »
First confirmed case of C19 reinfection.  https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/ 

So much for flattening the curve?  Or at least any idea that that was going to be a temporary thing that we had to do.  Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.

Eh, one confirmed reinfection out of 24 million confirmed cases is not something to freak out about.  Way too soon to draw such a drastic extreme conclusion. 

The Spanish flu, which was far more deadly, had reinfection on a larger scale and that pandemic ultimately died off without vaccine.


If you read your article:

"Experts cautioned that this patient’s case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months. They said that ongoing studies tracking patients who had recovered from Covid-19 would help reach more definitive conclusions.

“There’s been more than 24 million cases reported to date,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a coronavirus expert at the World Health Organization, said at a briefing Monday, when asked about the Hong Kong report. “And we need to look at something like this at a population level.”


Also, the second infection "caused no disease" in the patient, i.e., he didn't get sick, at all. No headache. No cough. etc...

Shane

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3656 on: August 24, 2020, 11:05:19 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

Why not? People use the word "dick," all the time to refer to "despicable" people they don't like. Is that term offensive to you, as well?

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3657 on: August 24, 2020, 11:25:15 AM »
First confirmed case of C19 reinfection.  https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/ 

So much for flattening the curve?  Or at least any idea that that was going to be a temporary thing that we had to do.  Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.

Eh, one confirmed reinfection out of 24 million confirmed cases is not something to freak out about.  Way too soon to draw such a drastic extreme conclusion. 

The Spanish flu, which was far more deadly, had reinfection on a larger scale and that pandemic ultimately died off without vaccine.


If you read your article:

"Experts cautioned that this patient’s case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months. They said that ongoing studies tracking patients who had recovered from Covid-19 would help reach more definitive conclusions.

“There’s been more than 24 million cases reported to date,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a coronavirus expert at the World Health Organization, said at a briefing Monday, when asked about the Hong Kong report. “And we need to look at something like this at a population level.”


Unwarranted optimism is also not called for. For instance, 24 million confirmed cases is an incorrect and misleading number to look at.  A good portion of those people haven't even recovered from their first bout, much less had time to contract it a second time, report symptoms (or not as noted), be tested and have the genome sequenced.  This man was on the early side for initial cases, so it's not surprising if he ends up on the early side of reinfections.

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3658 on: August 24, 2020, 11:28:34 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”

HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3659 on: August 24, 2020, 11:37:30 AM »


Unwarranted optimism is also not called for. For instance, 24 million confirmed cases is an incorrect and misleading number to look at.

I'm not being optimistic, I'm being realistic.  Your statement was:

So much for flattening the curve? Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.

It's ridiculous and hyperbolic to draw this conclusion from one confirmed reinfection.

For instance, 24 million confirmed cases is an incorrect and misleading number to look at.

Correct, from serological studies we know the actual number of infections is several magnitudes higher than 24 M which means one confirmed reinfection is not a reason to think the sky is falling.  Apparently from your article the experts agree with this sentiment.
« Last Edit: August 24, 2020, 11:41:59 AM by HBFIRE »

deborah

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3660 on: August 24, 2020, 11:38:09 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”
Actually, no. It is less vulgar, but it’s still quite misogynistic.

RetiredAt63

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3661 on: August 24, 2020, 11:42:20 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”

Definitely a rude word in Canada.

If the b and c words are misogynistic, what are the p and d words?  Or is the difference that men do and women don't use the c and b words (especially the c word), but everyone uses the p and d words?

Language on an international forum is fraught.  Rude language is even more dangerous. 

Kris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3662 on: August 24, 2020, 11:45:11 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”
Actually, no. It is less vulgar, but it’s still quite misogynistic.

I mean, sure. But definitely much less vulgar. And a lot more common.

I think I’m in the mood to defend Kyle because a week or so ago, an Australian friend of mine (female) got into an online stir where she was quite horribly excoriated for saying someone had acted like a “twat.” Of course, she meant it in the Australian context (and pronunciation) but some Americans got super angry and proceeded to rake her over the coals all over social media. It was quite depressing to see.

JGS1980

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3663 on: August 24, 2020, 11:46:10 AM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”

Definitely a rude word in Canada.

If the b and c words are misogynistic, what are the p and d words?  Or is the difference that men do and women don't use the c and b words (especially the c word), but everyone uses the p and d words?

Language on an international forum is fraught.  Rude language is even more dangerous.

Can't we all just agree to call everyone assholes if their behavior merits it? I believe most everyone has an asshole.

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3664 on: August 24, 2020, 11:48:56 AM »


Unwarranted optimism is also not called for. For instance, 24 million confirmed cases is an incorrect and misleading number to look at.

I'm not being optimistic, I'm being realistic. 
And I wasn't "freaking out". The common cold does the same thing and I don't freak out about that, either. I asked a question (or are you not familiar with "? to stimulate conversation and your first response is to tell someone they're freaking out and offer misleading and incorrect information as a refutation. What's ridiculous is counting people who have not even recovered from a first infection as evidence that there is no need to even suggest (as I did) that reinfections contradict the story some maintain or hope for that herd immunity is on its way to save us. 


HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3665 on: August 24, 2020, 11:52:45 AM »
I asked a question (or are you not familiar with "? to stimulate conversation

Sorry, I took this as rhetorical by the way it was worded:

So much for flattening the curve? Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.


If you intended it as a genuine question then I apologize.  I think the answer to your question is, no we shouldn't draw that conclusion based on one confirmed reinfection.
« Last Edit: August 24, 2020, 11:55:42 AM by HBFIRE »

deborah

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3666 on: August 24, 2020, 11:58:59 AM »
Reinfection is quite unusual, but not unknown. When I was a child, there wasn’t vaccine for several of the childhood infections, and I knew the occasional other child who’d had one of them more than once. They still talked about herd immunity.

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3667 on: August 24, 2020, 12:02:41 PM »
I asked a question (or are you not familiar with "? to stimulate conversation

Sorry, I took this as rhetorical by the way it was worded:

So much for flattening the curve? Not to mention hopes for herd immunity.


If you meant it as a genuine question then I apologize.  I think the answer to your question is, no we shouldn't draw that conclusion based on one confirmed reinfection.

Thanks.  I think the obvious plain reaction is "too soon to say" or "we shall see" as more people recover, but I am also interested and hopeful that others here might have thoughts on what we might look for or see next or any available info (anecdotal or otherwise) of people suspecting they have been reinfected. Also, interested if we might ever see how or if this intersects with the "long term" cases that we've been hearing of and what that looks like, if so.

Shane

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3668 on: August 24, 2020, 12:12:26 PM »
Again, according to the article, although the patient technically got "reinfected" with covid, he experienced no symptoms, i.e. he didn't get sick, at all, not even a little bit. If a person catches a cold and she doesn't know it, did she really have a cold?

HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3669 on: August 24, 2020, 12:19:22 PM »
Again, according to the article, although the patient technically got "reinfected" with covid, he experienced no symptoms, i.e. he didn't get sick, at all, not even a little bit. If a person catches a cold and she doesn't know it, did she really have a cold?

Yes great point, which could even mean he still had a great T cell response which is what we are starting to think with this virus.

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3670 on: August 24, 2020, 12:40:31 PM »
Again, according to the article, although the patient technically got "reinfected" with covid, he experienced no symptoms, i.e. he didn't get sick, at all, not even a little bit. If a person catches a cold and she doesn't know it, did she really have a cold?

Yes great point, which could even mean he still had a great T cell response which is what we are starting to think with this virus.

I wasn't so surprised by this. Aren't we learning that plenty of people are asymptomatic on their first round? So could happen in the second round too. But I believe we also know asymptomatic people are contagious, which is the concern. Worse than symptomatic people being contagious...

GuitarStv

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3671 on: August 24, 2020, 12:42:53 PM »
[redacted]
Please don't use a term relating to a woman's anatomy to describe a despicable man.

Thanks.

I’ll defend Kyle on this one, in that the Australian context for that term is so different. “The C word” is incredibly vulgar and rude in the US (and probably Canada.?) but Australians use it basically as “jerk” or “asshole.”

Definitely a rude word in Canada.

If the b and c words are misogynistic, what are the p and d words?  Or is the difference that men do and women don't use the c and b words (especially the c word), but everyone uses the p and d words?

Language on an international forum is fraught.  Rude language is even more dangerous.

Can't we all just agree to call everyone assholes if their behavior merits it? I believe most everyone has an asshole.


Due to an unfortunate accident with a sewing machine in my youth, I do not have an asshole and thus am triggered by people referring to others as "assholes".  Yes, it probably could have been repaired . . . but as a particularly anal retentive person I just went with it.  So much rectal privileged going on here.  For shame.


:P

HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3672 on: August 24, 2020, 12:46:47 PM »


I wasn't so surprised by this. Aren't we learning that plenty of people are asymptomatic on their first round? So could happen in the second round too. But I believe we also know asymptomatic people are contagious, which is the concern. Worse than symptomatic people being contagious...

I think its definitely noteworthy if his infection the first time was serious enough to get tested back in March, but this time its totally asymptomatic.  That could illustrate a built up T cell defense. 

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3673 on: August 24, 2020, 02:00:06 PM »


I wasn't so surprised by this. Aren't we learning that plenty of people are asymptomatic on their first round? So could happen in the second round too. But I believe we also know asymptomatic people are contagious, which is the concern. Worse than symptomatic people being contagious...

I think its definitely noteworthy if his infection the first time was serious enough to get tested back in March, but this time its totally asymptomatic.  That could illustrate a built up T cell defense.

This would surprise me if that turns out to be super common, if only because other coronaviruses don't work that way?  And one reinfection, as you have reminded, is too little to come to conclusions on. 

But, it would obviously be great if so.  There'd be no herd immunity, but it wouldn't matter because no one felt any ill effects of reinfection? It would be pretty weird.  In fact, following my point above, these asymptomatic people would presumably be infecting people at much higher rates than ever, not knowing they were contagious, but others wouldn't be bothered because they'd be asymptomatic, too?  And what happens to a virus in a situation like that?  Does it burn itself out, or just start mutating faster and faster and...?

Abe

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3674 on: August 24, 2020, 02:09:26 PM »
The other coronaviruses are like that scenario, and have become endemic with low-level (often asymptomatic) infections in the population. It's possible that COVID-19 will become like the others over time, or become like influenza and kill a couple thousand people per year on a regular basis. How long that will take is not knowable, since the 4 endemic coronaviruses have been around much longer than modern epidemiology.

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3675 on: August 24, 2020, 02:16:09 PM »
I’m discovering what a bubble I’m living in. It was an eye opener to travel across the US and see the noncompliance with the very basic social distancing and mask usage. If you go into a store or restaurant here locally, well over 90% of folks seem to be wearIng masks. And frequently it’s 100%.

Once you cross the state line though, it seems to drop. It was pretty sad in some places. With some surprises. Rural Tennessee: a pretty good percent of folks were wearing masks. Well over 80%. In the Midwest it was far worse. In the places I saw in Missouri it was less than half.

Based on my admittedly nonscientific sample it looks to me like COVID is going to be with us for awhile.

JGS1980

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3676 on: August 24, 2020, 02:18:56 PM »
The other coronaviruses are like that scenario, and have become endemic with low-level (often asymptomatic) infections in the population. It's possible that COVID-19 will become like the others over time, or become like influenza and kill a couple thousand people per year on a regular basis. How long that will take is not knowable, since the 4 endemic coronaviruses have been around much longer than modern epidemiology.

Influenza kills 20K to 60K people in the USA every year.
Worldwide, it kills 300K to 800K people per year.

Source: CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

sui generis

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3677 on: August 24, 2020, 02:22:38 PM »
The other coronaviruses are like that scenario, and have become endemic with low-level (often asymptomatic) infections in the population.

Really? I had no idea.  It's strange to think (applying this to myself) that I've probably had colds much more frequently than I suspected, when I usually have 1-3 per year and the course of them are so reliable, like a checklist.  To think I've regularly had others that I don't know about sort of blows me away.  Also, my husband (who I've known now for about 7.5 years) has only once had a cold since I've known him. However, he frequently says "My throat hurts, I think I might be catching something!" and then the next day is totally fine.  Perhaps he actually has more colds than me, and he really has been "sick" all those times.

Longwaytogo

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3678 on: August 24, 2020, 04:43:46 PM »
I’m discovering what a bubble I’m living in. It was an eye opener to travel across the US and see the noncompliance with the very basic social distancing and mask usage. If you go into a store or restaurant here locally, well over 90% of folks seem to be wearIng masks. And frequently it’s 100%.

Once you cross the state line though, it seems to drop. It was pretty sad in some places. With some surprises. Rural Tennessee: a pretty good percent of folks were wearing masks. Well over 80%. In the Midwest it was far worse. In the places I saw in Missouri it was less than half.

Based on my admittedly nonscientific sample it looks to me like COVID is going to be with us for awhile.

Yeah it definitely varies. I'm in MD and mask compliance is really high. NC,PA, and VA...not so much. I went into a gas station in VA and out of 5 people I was the only one wearing a mask...even the cashier had no mask!

I've been assuming it would be with us forever?  Eventually we'll potentially have some combination of vaccine/treatment/herd immunity but I assume it'll become endemic like many other coronaviruses.


Abe

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3679 on: August 24, 2020, 08:07:02 PM »
The other coronaviruses are like that scenario, and have become endemic with low-level (often asymptomatic) infections in the population. It's possible that COVID-19 will become like the others over time, or become like influenza and kill a couple thousand people per year on a regular basis. How long that will take is not knowable, since the 4 endemic coronaviruses have been around much longer than modern epidemiology.

Influenza kills 20K to 60K people in the USA every year.
Worldwide, it kills 300K to 800K people per year.

Source: CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Yeah. And that’s with vaccinations. I expect covid will be like that, if we’re lucky.


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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3681 on: August 24, 2020, 11:34:33 PM »
It's getting a bit DDR here.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/coronavirus-perth-woman-who-hid-in-truck-to-get-into-wa-handed-sixmonth-jail-term/news-story/2bd606ac3b099ccdbd44327c1cb133c7

Eh, the jail term is way too harsh (you can run over a child and get a lesser jail sentence as long as you weren't speeding/drunk), but I'm glad they're finally cracking down on breach of quarantine rules. It's quarantine mishaps that have caused the entire second wave.

Hope they throw the book also at those two teenage women who travelled from Queensland to Victoria, had a house party, went back to Queensland while symptomatic, lied about their whereabouts (to escape quarantine) and continued to socialise while evading a covid test (till they had to go to hospital)...would be nice to see them getting locked up too.

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3682 on: August 24, 2020, 11:52:38 PM »
No.

Nobody should be imprisoned for travelling within their own country.

And all covid-related fines should be refunded. Every one of them.

The government at no point tried persuasion and education, but went straight for coercion.

No.

NorthernBlitz

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3683 on: August 25, 2020, 05:28:19 AM »
Again, according to the article, although the patient technically got "reinfected" with covid, he experienced no symptoms, i.e. he didn't get sick, at all, not even a little bit. If a person catches a cold and she doesn't know it, did she really have a cold?

Yes great point, which could even mean he still had a great T cell response which is what we are starting to think with this virus.

Have been keeping fingers crossed on this since that Nature paper.

jrhampt

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3684 on: August 25, 2020, 08:04:20 AM »
No.

Nobody should be imprisoned for travelling within their own country.

And all covid-related fines should be refunded. Every one of them.

The government at no point tried persuasion and education, but went straight for coercion.

No.

hahaha!!!  Persuasion and education don't work all that well.

Signed,

Someone in the U.S.

RetiredAt63

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3685 on: August 25, 2020, 08:26:17 AM »
No.

Nobody should be imprisoned for travelling within their own country.

And all covid-related fines should be refunded. Every one of them.

The government at no point tried persuasion and education, but went straight for coercion.

No.

hahaha!!!  Persuasion and education don't work all that well.

Signed,

Someone in the U.S.

People in the US got mixed messages, after all, it's just like the flu and masks are so unimportant that POTUS didn't wear them touring hospitals and factories.  So the education and persuasion to not take it seriously worked quite well, eh?

HBFIRE

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3686 on: August 25, 2020, 09:51:50 AM »
I found this an interesting contrarian viewpoint from Harvard (caution: may need a subscription to read):

New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly




jrhampt

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3687 on: August 25, 2020, 10:19:56 AM »
No.

Nobody should be imprisoned for travelling within their own country.

And all covid-related fines should be refunded. Every one of them.

The government at no point tried persuasion and education, but went straight for coercion.

No.

hahaha!!!  Persuasion and education don't work all that well.

Signed,

Someone in the U.S.

People in the US got mixed messages, after all, it's just like the flu and masks are so unimportant that POTUS didn't wear them touring hospitals and factories.  So the education and persuasion to not take it seriously worked quite well, eh?

That's a fair point.  Yes, we have had very inconsistent messaging.

scottish

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3688 on: August 25, 2020, 03:22:30 PM »
I found this an interesting contrarian viewpoint from Harvard (caution: may need a subscription to read):

New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly

I think this is the same article on Fox Business:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/new-thinking-on-covid-lockdowns-theyre-overly-blunt-and-costly

The initial shutdown made a lot of sense - it gave us time to learn about the virus and how to mitigate it.     I'm not so sure that having more shutdowns is a good thing at this point.    We should be able to manage the virus without Draconian measures.    If there are specific problems areas, then they can be addressed more aggressively, otherwise people need to get on with their lives.

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3689 on: August 25, 2020, 05:48:36 PM »

That's a fair point.  Yes, we have had very inconsistent messaging.

If my son's teacher told him that 1+1=2 and his principal walked in and said, "no, it's 3," there would, I think, be some confusion in the classroom.

But with my entire state shut down, it's nice to know that at least Diversity & Intersectionality Change Managers will still exist. While people are fined for going for doughnuts and young women are choked in the street by police for going about with their faces uncovered (is this Iran?), important work is still being done.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/lets-face-it-these-are-nonsense-jobs/news-story/79b4f374b296890439c9b0ee853202ad


Quote
As if the coronavirus hasn’t foisted enough change on us, NSW and Victoria are about to unleash more. Last week alone, during the ­biggest economic downturn in a ­century, the two states were advertising 20 high-paid jobs variously requiring skills in “change, culture, transformation and strategy”, with total salaries above $3.5m.Pick of the bunch was the $249,000 director of intersectionality and inclusion role at the Victoria Department of Justice, who must, naturally, “provide authoritative, strategic and innovative advice in relation to inclusion and intersectionality”.
Also appealing was the $327,000 director of people and culture role at the NSW Department of Education, who should “provide expert strategic advice across a range of strategic priorities”. Familiarity with Sun Tzu’s Art of War is presumably a given.
But it was vocational training giant TAFE NSW that’s at the vanguard of a change revolution, advertising separately for a “change lead”, “change manager”, “change analyst”, “change co-ordinator”, “change specialist” and, the lowest-paid of the group, an “organisational change officer”, making do on $88,000.
The change lead ($194,000), manager ($173,000) and co-ordinator ($119,000) will at least have lots of time for blue-sky thinking with only a change analyst, specialist and officer to oversee.
The NSW Ombudsman, which handles complaints about government, isn’t immune to the change revolution either, seeking (albeit more frugally) its own “change lead” on $164,000 to “develop and embed a strategic approach to change across the Ombudsman”. Perhaps, like obscenity, you know a strategic approach to change when you see it. “The Change Lead will own the single view of change,” the advertisement explained. Talk about ­pressure.
Change is afoot south of the border, too. Victoria’s Environmental Protection Agency and State Revenue Office were luring change experts with $161,000 and $141,000 salaries, respectively. The former would need to “achieve organisation-wide support, enthusiasm, and participation in the changes … including delivery of change solutions (such as) change facilitation, change champions and change leadership”.
One feels for the successful applicant in a #WFH world, having to psyche up colleagues on Zoom call and nurture change champ­ions who may well have the camera option turned off.
Perhaps the SRO change role should be greater paid given the challenge at hand: state taxes have barely changed in 20 years.
Our two biggest state governments would appear to have provided an answer to anthropologist David Graeber’s 2019 book Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It. Answer: not much.
“Economics around the world have become vast engines for producing nonsense,” Graeber writes in a book that delineates five classes of bullshit jobs, of which change roles fit best into “flunkie” and “box ticker” categories. The former “exist to make someone else feel or look important”, the latter “allow organisations to claim they are doing something that in fact it is not doing”.
You might think the tier of government most directly responsible for destroying livelihoods on an unprecedented scale in this country might have the modesty to rein in such profligacy. This is the biggest economic contraction since the national accounts were developed more than 50 years ago. Private sector wages are shrinking for the first time in a generation.
Jobs that are necessary, which arise from real demand from households and businesses, such as accommodation, retail, many professional services, have been wiped out, while those existing purely by fiat, for which no one would pay a cent, flourish.
It’s government arrogance and amorality that justifies such “jobs” — and the extraordinary salaries — in a major recession. It’s not the job creation we need.
Naturally, these advertised roles are just the latest recruits to the massively unproductive standing change, diversity and inclusion army entrenched in the public sector across the country.
In May the NSW Department of Planning hired a “manager, diversity & inclusion strategy” on a salary of $148,134, who would “lead a small, diverse team which is responsible for developing and implementing strategic plans to embed diversity and inclusion” across the department.
Perhaps this crack team is musing over whether brownfield developments are racist.
Meanwhile, as government sucks intelligent workers into the pointless work Graeber identifies, it hobbles the private sector’s scope to generate jobs.
For example, four years after it started negotiations, the Fair Work Commission knocked back an enterprise agreement sought by Swissport for its thousands of ground support staff.
That leaves intact the Airline Operations — Ground Staff Award 2020, which specifies, among other absurdities, that workers be paid $3.19 a week more for every coffin they handle and $5.18 a week if they handle money between $200 and $1000. You might think an industry facing an existential crisis required more flexibility.
Then there’s the Building and Construction On-Site Award, whose mind-blowing complexity makes it a wonder much is built at all. The construction sector is facing the loss of 150,000 jobs by early next year, yet it specifies loadings for working at different heights, in different types of weather.
And, a personal favourite, employees “who are regularly required to compute or estimate quantities of materials in respect of the work performed by other employees must be paid an additional 23.3 per cent of the hourly standard rate per day or part thereof”.
At least they are being paid more for something that need to be done, unlike the “change” army.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2020, 05:52:28 PM by Kyle Schuant »

Buffaloski Boris

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3690 on: August 25, 2020, 06:01:11 PM »
I’m discovering what a bubble I’m living in. It was an eye opener to travel across the US and see the noncompliance with the very basic social distancing and mask usage. If you go into a store or restaurant here locally, well over 90% of folks seem to be wearIng masks. And frequently it’s 100%.

Once you cross the state line though, it seems to drop. It was pretty sad in some places. With some surprises. Rural Tennessee: a pretty good percent of folks were wearing masks. Well over 80%. In the Midwest it was far worse. In the places I saw in Missouri it was less than half.

Based on my admittedly nonscientific sample it looks to me like COVID is going to be with us for awhile.

Yeah it definitely varies. I'm in MD and mask compliance is really high. NC,PA, and VA...not so much. I went into a gas station in VA and out of 5 people I was the only one wearing a mask...even the cashier had no mask!

I've been assuming it would be with us forever?  Eventually we'll potentially have some combination of vaccine/treatment/herd immunity but I assume it'll become endemic like many other coronaviruses.

What part of VA? I’m in SE VA and it’s pretty much 100% here.

Longwaytogo

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3691 on: August 25, 2020, 06:39:17 PM »
I’m discovering what a bubble I’m living in. It was an eye opener to travel across the US and see the noncompliance with the very basic social distancing and mask usage. If you go into a store or restaurant here locally, well over 90% of folks seem to be wearIng masks. And frequently it’s 100%.

Once you cross the state line though, it seems to drop. It was pretty sad in some places. With some surprises. Rural Tennessee: a pretty good percent of folks were wearing masks. Well over 80%. In the Midwest it was far worse. In the places I saw in Missouri it was less than half.

Based on my admittedly nonscientific sample it looks to me like COVID is going to be with us for awhile.

Yeah it definitely varies. I'm in MD and mask compliance is really high. NC,PA, and VA...not so much. I went into a gas station in VA and out of 5 people I was the only one wearing a mask...even the cashier had no mask!

I've been assuming it would be with us forever?  Eventually we'll potentially have some combination of vaccine/treatment/herd immunity but I assume it'll become endemic like many other coronaviruses.

What part of VA? I’m in SE VA and it’s pretty much 100% here.

Near Fredericksburg but off the beaten path in King George county a bit was the specific gas station.

Outside of that I spent the weekend at my Uncle's house so I didnt go any other public places; so small sample size.

Longwaytogo

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3692 on: August 25, 2020, 08:00:51 PM »
Again, according to the article, although the patient technically got "reinfected" with covid, he experienced no symptoms, i.e. he didn't get sick, at all, not even a little bit. If a person catches a cold and she doesn't know it, did she really have a cold?

Yes great point, which could even mean he still had a great T cell response which is what we are starting to think with this virus.

Have been keeping fingers crossed on this since that Nature paper.

This one?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3693 on: August 25, 2020, 08:50:12 PM »
What I don't understand is why here in Victoria we are fining people for breaking curfew, criminally investigating fairly trivial things of that nature, but we are not investigating the 5 security guards who we know (through genomic sequencing) passed on the entire second wave to Victorians?

I'm not saying they necessarily committed a crime - no one seems to be willing to report the specifics due to "confidentiality" - but what we do know, from evidence given at the inquiry, is that the second wave of transmission started in late May. This is when our stage 3 restrictions were still in place; extended family gatherings were not permitted. We also know from evidence given at the enquiry that one of the security guards admitted to working as a courier and delivering food while symptomatic and awaiting the results of his covid test (this is a huge no-no).

Why is that not leading to fines? Or at least a police investigation?

Do the security guards and their families get a free pass for some reason?

Plina

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3694 on: August 25, 2020, 10:59:41 PM »

That's a fair point.  Yes, we have had very inconsistent messaging.

If my son's teacher told him that 1+1=2 and his principal walked in and said, "no, it's 3," there would, I think, be some confusion in the classroom.

But with my entire state shut down, it's nice to know that at least Diversity & Intersectionality Change Managers will still exist. While people are fined for going for doughnuts and young women are choked in the street by police for going about with their faces uncovered (is this Iran?), important work is still being done.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/lets-face-it-these-are-nonsense-jobs/news-story/79b4f374b296890439c9b0ee853202ad


Quote
As if the coronavirus hasn’t foisted enough change on us, NSW and Victoria are about to unleash more. Last week alone, during the ­biggest economic downturn in a ­century, the two states were advertising 20 high-paid jobs variously requiring skills in “change, culture, transformation and strategy”, with total salaries above $3.5m.Pick of the bunch was the $249,000 director of intersectionality and inclusion role at the Victoria Department of Justice, who must, naturally, “provide authoritative, strategic and innovative advice in relation to inclusion and intersectionality”.
Also appealing was the $327,000 director of people and culture role at the NSW Department of Education, who should “provide expert strategic advice across a range of strategic priorities”. Familiarity with Sun Tzu’s Art of War is presumably a given.
But it was vocational training giant TAFE NSW that’s at the vanguard of a change revolution, advertising separately for a “change lead”, “change manager”, “change analyst”, “change co-ordinator”, “change specialist” and, the lowest-paid of the group, an “organisational change officer”, making do on $88,000.
The change lead ($194,000), manager ($173,000) and co-ordinator ($119,000) will at least have lots of time for blue-sky thinking with only a change analyst, specialist and officer to oversee.
The NSW Ombudsman, which handles complaints about government, isn’t immune to the change revolution either, seeking (albeit more frugally) its own “change lead” on $164,000 to “develop and embed a strategic approach to change across the Ombudsman”. Perhaps, like obscenity, you know a strategic approach to change when you see it. “The Change Lead will own the single view of change,” the advertisement explained. Talk about ­pressure.
Change is afoot south of the border, too. Victoria’s Environmental Protection Agency and State Revenue Office were luring change experts with $161,000 and $141,000 salaries, respectively. The former would need to “achieve organisation-wide support, enthusiasm, and participation in the changes … including delivery of change solutions (such as) change facilitation, change champions and change leadership”.
One feels for the successful applicant in a #WFH world, having to psyche up colleagues on Zoom call and nurture change champ­ions who may well have the camera option turned off.
Perhaps the SRO change role should be greater paid given the challenge at hand: state taxes have barely changed in 20 years.
Our two biggest state governments would appear to have provided an answer to anthropologist David Graeber’s 2019 book Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It. Answer: not much.
“Economics around the world have become vast engines for producing nonsense,” Graeber writes in a book that delineates five classes of bullshit jobs, of which change roles fit best into “flunkie” and “box ticker” categories. The former “exist to make someone else feel or look important”, the latter “allow organisations to claim they are doing something that in fact it is not doing”.
You might think the tier of government most directly responsible for destroying livelihoods on an unprecedented scale in this country might have the modesty to rein in such profligacy. This is the biggest economic contraction since the national accounts were developed more than 50 years ago. Private sector wages are shrinking for the first time in a generation.
Jobs that are necessary, which arise from real demand from households and businesses, such as accommodation, retail, many professional services, have been wiped out, while those existing purely by fiat, for which no one would pay a cent, flourish.
It’s government arrogance and amorality that justifies such “jobs” — and the extraordinary salaries — in a major recession. It’s not the job creation we need.
Naturally, these advertised roles are just the latest recruits to the massively unproductive standing change, diversity and inclusion army entrenched in the public sector across the country.
In May the NSW Department of Planning hired a “manager, diversity & inclusion strategy” on a salary of $148,134, who would “lead a small, diverse team which is responsible for developing and implementing strategic plans to embed diversity and inclusion” across the department.
Perhaps this crack team is musing over whether brownfield developments are racist.
Meanwhile, as government sucks intelligent workers into the pointless work Graeber identifies, it hobbles the private sector’s scope to generate jobs.
For example, four years after it started negotiations, the Fair Work Commission knocked back an enterprise agreement sought by Swissport for its thousands of ground support staff.
That leaves intact the Airline Operations — Ground Staff Award 2020, which specifies, among other absurdities, that workers be paid $3.19 a week more for every coffin they handle and $5.18 a week if they handle money between $200 and $1000. You might think an industry facing an existential crisis required more flexibility.
Then there’s the Building and Construction On-Site Award, whose mind-blowing complexity makes it a wonder much is built at all. The construction sector is facing the loss of 150,000 jobs by early next year, yet it specifies loadings for working at different heights, in different types of weather.
And, a personal favourite, employees “who are regularly required to compute or estimate quantities of materials in respect of the work performed by other employees must be paid an additional 23.3 per cent of the hourly standard rate per day or part thereof”.
At least they are being paid more for something that need to be done, unlike the “change” army.

“Pick of the bunch was the $249,000 director of intersectionality and inclusion role at the Victoria Department of Justice, who must, naturally, “provide authoritative, strategic and innovative advice in relation to inclusion and intersectionality”.”

I think it is funny that the director of inclusion and intersectionality is supposed to provide authoritative advice.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3695 on: August 25, 2020, 11:14:37 PM »
As an update, just this afternoon the police have announced an inquiry into the security guard situation, very vaguely worded (again for privacy reasons apparently) but it seems like they will be focussing on licensing arrangements by the employer (the private company employing the guards) rather than the personal responsibility of the guards themselves to obey the laws about when to self-quarantine.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3696 on: August 26, 2020, 07:55:11 PM »
I think the political tide is turning, Kyle. The voices of people like you and me who query the necessity for the strict lockdown and the QALY/cost-benefit savings are starting to now become acceptable political discourse (particularly with the plunging numbers).

The question really has to be asked, given that this thing is basically only affecting hospital and aged care environments, shouldn't we be allowing low-risk Victorians the ability to return to their jobs, and return to a semblance of normality? Does it make sense for a stockbroker living in Brighton to not be able to go for her daily drive or swim or surf, when she has nothing to do with covid transmission?

Sooner or later the political will must change. I'm seeing it now as the mental toll of these onerous burdens increases. You can't impose a curfew on a population forever, particularly when daily case numbers drop below 100. The vast majority of deaths have come from an aged care environment which has nothing to do with community transmission. It is its own bubble and it needs its own rules.

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3697 on: August 26, 2020, 10:21:44 PM »
It's tricky to know the general mood of the population, a few voices can shout very loudly. Roy Morgan poll shows Victorians overwhelmingly in favour of the restrictions - but then who are the thousands of people who've contacted the crossbench MPs? Who knows, really.


I think the upper house cross-benchers will give Andrews his extension of the state of emergency, whether it's for a month or 12 months doesn't matter because once they've granted him one extension, they've now joined him in the sunk cost fallacy that we just have to keep doing the same thing until we get different results.


The real pressure, I think, will come when the federal money runs short. September 28th JobKeeper and JobSeeker are dropping, so people will go into the pre-Christmas period already feeling grumpy. Most likely he'll have to open up in December to let people do Christmas shopping. How about family gatherings? Well, either he allows them and (combined with the shopping centre mingling) we get a surge of cases in January, or he doesn't allow them in which case they go ahead and do them anyway, and we are treated to scenes of armed uniformed police officers issuing fines to grandma at Christmas lunch, or dragging the half-drunk dad in his stubbies off the barbeque.


Then just before New Year we get news that cases are rising again, and people start wondering if we'll go back to heavy restrictions. The Premier says he can't rule anything out and must follow the data. Then on January 4th, the dole drops again.


Then in March JobKeeper ends, and (it's not been specified) presumably the dole drops yet again.


I can't see how this is viable, politically. I don't think he and his advisors have thought this through.


There needs to be a path out of this which does not have states of emergency and endless lockdowns and people fined for going to skate parks.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3698 on: August 26, 2020, 10:27:48 PM »
The best thing that could happen is that the federal UBI dries up and people start feeling the financial pain.

That will then give us impetus to open up.

Kyle Schuant

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Re: How long can we wait while flattening the curve?
« Reply #3699 on: August 26, 2020, 11:27:36 PM »
I agree.

When we had the brief reopening I'd lost half my clients, on a second reopening I'd expect to lose half of the remaining. I don't expect a flood of people later since we're in a recession. Thus I'm in receipt of JobKeeper and it's my entire income.

I wrote to the federal Treasurer telling him this, noting that I was conscious of what a difference the money made to people, and asking that if he could not rescind JobKeeper entirely, that he should at least resist any pressure to not taper it off.

It'll be better for us in the end. But I'm not optimistic.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!