At least that’s the conclusion Ezra Klein comes to in Vox after studying all of them. What do you guys think?
I’m not sure what there is to discuss. He summed up what I think most see as our options and all of them have rather severe consequences or, at this point, seem drastically beyond our capabilities.
In the next month or two perhaps new options will become available. The ones we have now are all terrible. I’m really hoping we can start to isolate true transmission methods.
In the meantime, new treatment methods are being vetted and new information is being gathered. Perhaps we can find a way to keep this from being lethal in such a large part of the population.
I haven’t seen controlled exposure talked about anywhere, but perhaps that just means it is completely unworkable.
The only way we can open up the economy is to have both: a) widespread, accurate, and quick-results testing, and b) a way to get COVID-19 patients treated quickly and inexpensively. Moreover, all Americans have to have faith that they can do this.
I don’t see this happening, particularly when Americans by the tens of millions risk losing employer-based health insurance. Government can give them all the reassurances in the world but people won’t necessarily believe them.
The reason we’re forced to hunker down is because lack the above. Too many people lack access to testing and treatment. If we start back too soon, we’ll just have another spike in cases, and then whatever credibility the government has left will be shredded. It would be a total disaster.
But even if they all seem terrible, we’re going to have to decide which is the “least worst”, the lesser evil. Clearly continuing to go as we are now can’t last, and just going back to business as usual would be a total disaster. So we have to decide what we could actually achieve that people would recoil from the least. That’s what we need to discuss.
I get beat up on here for expressing my opinion but the under 50 group is in the .2 risk factor. This is not counting those who called in and were told to shelter in place or those who were not sick enough to even recognize being sick. Chances are that number will go down by a factor of at least 10 when random testing is done. The ones left in that group would most likely have risk factors that could be identified and cut the losses there even more. This age group from 50 to children are the most active and out and about. They could easily help to establish herd immunity without overloading the hospitals. The 70 to 50 age group will also likely drop considerably once the risk factors are identified and more testing is done. Opening businesses back up and still practicing social distancing should be all we need to do.
Ezra Klein is a certified dumbass. The whole Us free and individualistic Americans will never accept xyz trope was heavily pushed back in January when the Chinese lockdowns started, apparently unlike those suppressed automaton Orientals, freedom loving Americans would never accept such lockdowns.
Come March and oppsie.:rolleyes:
Everything he examined, is going to happen. It won’t be one plan that is implemented. It will be a mixture of all of them.
My prediction, based on nothing but wild speculation.
A good deal of the population has already been exposed. We don’t realize it because we don’t have the testing to verify it and so many people get it without even realizing it. given that, this will die out fairly soon and quickly. I think we are seeing that in Wuhan now, and will in other places.
So many doomsday predictions. So many predictions of reoccurrence and such.
So clearly you learned nothing from the many logical, fact-based replies to your proposal.
I have yet to see one. Time will tell
Well, your opinion already passed the expiration date.
One study using tests in Germany has good and bad news.
Good news. CFR down to 0.37%.
Bad news. Only 14% of the population show antibodies. So right now there is little hope that there is a big hidden herd immunity already waiting to help. It is this 14% that have driven the CFR down. These 14% are not necessarily asymptomatic infections. They are just people who didn’t get tested when they were sick, and we assume therefore not sick enough to seek out medical attention. Nor does the presence of antibodies automatically mean they are immune. We hope so.
These studies are only just starting to come out, this is just one of the first. One data point from one area where one profile of the infection running against one set of local measures and one health system. So still quite a few parameters. But the knowledge is always useful. Germany never overran its health system’s capacity. Indeed it has been accepting critically ill patients from other countries. So their CFR does not show the possible effects of a badly stressed health system. Nor does the country have a poor underclass who have had poor to no healthcare all their lives.
On that score 0.37% is probably a best case.
What is important here is that these studies are providing the guidance needed to plan the next phase.
What is useless at the moment is wishful thinking about what might turn up in the statistics. Imagining that the stats will, a-priori, turn up reductions in mortality in younger age groups is hardly science. Indications are that, if anything, the opposite will happen. There is a good chance we will eventually be able to understand who in the younger age groups is at risk - the number of deaths with no-known co-morbidities is hardly zero, and the likelihood of understanding the mechanisms by which these deaths occur soon is low. Probably in a year or so’s time some better understanding will evolve of these baffling issues. It is likely that there isn’t one specific cause.
The thing is the economy is “open”. Many businesses are still open and business is being conducted online. It’s just slowed down and with trillions of dollars of stimulus being injected, odds are better than if no action taken it can bounce back, admittedly slowly.
Don’t allow Conservative supposed “pro-Life” heartless and immoral assholes convince you we need to “open up” the economy at the risk of over a million lives. There is no guarantee that will work, and more likely than not losing such a large percentage of our population and the sickness that will burden our medical system and economy will make things much much worse.
Fuck these people.
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It’s as if all the people currently working “essential jobs” don’t exist.
It’s not a light switch issue.
Not only CAN we go back to work there is no other long-term option. We adopt the standards currently used for “essential jobs” to jobs that allow separation. As medical technology improves to prevent and treat the virus we open up jobs that don’t allow for separation.
It is appearing more and more that even the experts in this field are incapable of being objective and incapable of approaching this virus in a non political fashion. This virus is made to order for a lot of the experts and they are dropping the ball because of their hatred for the right wing. The entire workforce age group is at low risk. There are plenty of identifiable risk factors that could be removed greatly lowering the death rates. They refuse to look at these things and want nothing but a complete collapse of the economy. More and more I can see that education has nothing to do with intelligence.
I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had here, but the Ezra Klein column is terrible. It’s just a word jumble.
It is appearing more and more [sup][according to whom?][/sup] that even the experts in this field [sup][who?][/sup] are incapable of being objective and incapable of approaching this virus in a non political fashion.[sup][unbalanced opinion?][/sup] This virus is made to order [sup][clarification needed][/sup] for a lot of the experts [sup][who?][/sup] and they are dropping the ball because of their hatred for the right wing.[sup][neutrality is disputed][/sup] The entire workforce age group is at low risk.[sup][dubious - discuss][/sup] There are plenty of identifiable risk factors that could be removed greatly lowering the death rates.[sup][vague][/sup] They [sup][who?][/sup] refuse to look at these things and want nothing but a complete collapse of the economy.[sup][citation needed][/sup] More and more I can see that education has nothing to do with intelligence.[sup][original research?][/sup]
Word games! Gas lighting. Starting to wonder if the medical community isn’t left wing biased and holding off on answers until after the election so they can look like heroes.
Yes, that describes the secret medical/research agenda perfectly.
That article is mostly opinion and many parts of it are wrong or worthless.
"Scientists don’t know if you can contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19 more than once. "
That gets bandied about her A LOT. If that is true of this virus then science has a lot of splainin’ to do. There are literally no verified cases of reinfection. None. A couple of dubious ones, but none verified. Also, if reinfection is possible with this virus after just a few months, it would be counter to pretty much every other virus humans survive.
But let’s say we somehow figure out herd immunity isn’t going to be an answer. No what? Please elaborate what the next 12 months look like to you. Do we stay shut in? How long? How do you start letting people back out? What criteria are you going to use? What if we never get a vaccine?
Great, yet another conspiracy theorist bashing knowledgable people doing actual work and in many cases putting their well-being on the line to favor his own personal belief on how things should be rather than what actual data and empirical experience indicates it to be. For the record, asking for citations on who these experts are and what basis they have is not “word games”, and “gaslighting” refers to the post hoc denial of memories and shared experiences. If you are going to throw around accusations of manipulating the language, at least use the correct terminology.
As for plans to “reopen the economy”, any such plan needs to factor in that there are going to be some dramatic changes to how we interact even if we could snap our gem-encrusted gauntlet and make the SARS-CoV-2 virus disappear today. And the fact that the virus is likely to become endemic after it achieves peak mortality in the US and all other developed nations not taking effective measures to control it (and probably even higher mortality in developing nations where co-morbidities are already at epidemic levels and public health services are non-existent) means that we need to start thinking about what that economy is going to look like and how it has to be structured to live with a persistent endemic contagion without vaccination to control it like we do influenza. That starts with public health and hygiene, which means fewer mass public gatherings (and surveillance at those to look for signs like elevated body temperature), personal protective equipment for public workers and those in the service sector, some form of universally available health care and sick/care leave so that employees who are ill or who have sick dependents seek medical services rather than “power through” an illness that leads to mass contagion, as well as all of the economic measures to shore up vulnerable but essential businesses and workers while retasking and retraining for workers in industries that are going to be permanently impacted. It probably means rethinking education; do we really need large lecture halls with hundreds of people when technology allows us to put lectures online? It means less unnecessary air travel. It means a more robust and flexible surveillance system for outbreaks besides influenza.
And it certainly means more than passing a couple of “stimulus packages” to prevent recession and humanitarian crises stemming from mass unemployment. I know how much conservatives and moderates are going to hate this, but it means talking about universal basic income; not as ‘welfare’ stipend to replace work income but as a supplement so that the people working important but low-paying jobs or in the gig economy aren’t one paycheck away from insolvency and being on the street, and can make the right decision to stay at home when ill or seek medical treatment before it becomes an emergency without having to fear bankruptcy. We need some form of universally available basic health care; not just because it is morally the right thing to do, but because it is actually the smart thing to do for the stability of our economy and society. We need to encourage people to engage in innovation and investment, but not at the risk of ending up living in their parent’s basement or on the street, but by providing just enough of a safety net that people can take acceptable risks. And oh, by the way, we need to figure out a way to allow immigrant labor in the country to work in the agricultural sector and protect them because otherwise the critical chain of supply of a basic human necessity is at risk. In fact, we need to look at making our entire food and essential supply production and logistical supply chain more robust and better protected against epidemic outbreak, because this is not the last global pandemic we are going to face.
Stranger