Expecting some people to either never go anywhere at all, or to get possibly-permanent serious physical damage or die, so that other people can go to bars, strikes me as asking for too much.
It’s not the bars you need to worry about. I have no idea why so many people have chosen to die on that hill. Well, let me restate that. Of course I know why they have. But I have no idea why they think it’s a good idea.
I was answering a specific post that referenced bars.
Here’s the thing- at what point does satisfying the “need” to socialize cross over into selfish endangerment of others? That’s really what’s at issue here.
We continue to have this conversation of impending doom yet the death toll never materializes. Florida was suppose to explode and the exact opposite was supposed to happen.
Since the schools reopened the numbers have not risen appreciably even though logic dictates such a rise would occur… We were told to expect a second wave in the fall and it hasn’t materialized yet.
It’s fine to be vigilant but we’re far from crisis mode even after opening things back up.
When there’s little return for the damage it does to people who’ve lost their job, are suicidal, need diagnostic medical attention, food and education for children…
Everybody seems fine with the idea of “essential” workers but people who have their financial lives destroyed probably think of their job as just as essential.
Most people contact the virus with very little effect. Those in nursing homes who are most likely to die from it are in a demographic group with a life expectancy of 14 months. Covid or not, they’re GOING to die in a year.
As usual you are avoiding looking at what is happening now.
BTW, I did not mention the number of deaths, you did, but to comment on that, thanks to better care we are bound to see what we saw in the past peak after the huge one at the beginning of the crisis. [looking at the death graph and looking at the numbers then and now] it is likely that in a fortnight we will see about 1000 dead a day after the usual 500 or so of now. Unlike in the early days where with little planning we were getting around 2000 deaths a day.
But keep in mind that if we ignored all this and went about our lives like normal, the numbers would be considerably higher. The numbers being what they are, whether you want to consider them good or bad or argue that they’re going up or down, are where they are not in spite of the precautions we’ve taken, but because of the precautions we’ve taken.
Also, I just had a random thought. I think people should make a mental note of everyone they hear saying “This’ll all be over on November 4th”. Now, most people aren’t going to recant that if (when) they’re proven wrong, and I’m not concerned about that. I’m interested to see how many people change from 'this’ll all be over on November 4th" to “Biden is destroying this country, the virus is killing thousands of people every day and he hasn’t done anything about it”. I’m guessing, assuming Biden wins, in a few weeks a lot of those people will make a pit stop at “this’ll all be over on January 20th”.
You do realize that the medical community has become dramatically better at treating sever COVID, right? So the death rate drops. But that doesn’t speak at all to the actual hospital overloading, or the fact that if enough people get it in a short period, the death rate might go right back up because there’s not enough capacity for everyone.
The current death rate is a result of better treatment in a system with capacity to treat everyone that way. Know what keeps the system from being overloaded? Reducing the overall number infected, that’s what. And how do we do that? We wear masks, we social distance, and we don’t do stuff that the public health authorities deem to be risky, whether or not moron politicians have decided that they’re not, such as drinking in bars, eating inside restaurants, and doing other stuff that involves being in confined spaces and not wearing masks.
And even if the death rate is low, it’s still high enough to be very large absolute numbers. 200,000 people is no joke. I mean, people get severely bent out of shape over the number of dead from gun violence. And that number is annually about 1/5 of the current COVID-19 death toll in the US this year. But we have people arguing that their “need” to eat in a restaurant supersedes that statistic.
That theory cannot be proven.
Moron politicians can decided all they want that they are, but until they can come up with some evidentiary proof, those moronic claims should be given every bit of the credence they deserve.
I’m not understanding- are you saying that we should give credence to the politicians in the absence of evidence? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Of course we shouldn’t. That’s exactly what I said.
…what leads you to assert this?
I’ve been tracking the numbers nationally since march and by state since late June.
I’ve also had this same conversation over and over again. I’ve asked for predictions and everybody including myself has guessed high.
We’ve had 5 days of (7 day) rolling averages below 550 and that was late June/early July. right now we’re averaging in the low 800’s so 1000 would fit with the predicted 2nd wave.
I don’t think seat belt use hurt anyone’s livelihood (except an undertaker here and there) but tobacco restrictions sure have. Not just the growers, but TV networks lost a lot of ad revenue when cigarette ads were banned. As a whole the impact was positive, but that didn’t help everyone.
Why would people not be saving money before? Restaurants did all the things you mention, though catering isn’t too good an option without big parties. Doordash did great, the 99% takeut Chinese place near me didn’t get hurt much if at all. As I said, the decline in restaurant attendance predated the restrictions in many places. And continues after cities and states open. And the local paper quoted some restaurant owners saying they can’t open because they can’t break even at 25% capacity.
If restaurant patrons only put themselves at risk, there could be an argument that they should be allowed to take that chance. But they put others at risk.
As for the government not interfering and letting the economic system work it out, the government saying restaurant attendance without restriction being ok is a powerful signal that people can ignore safety measures. That certainly happened in the South this summer. So that doesn’t work. People do pay attention to safety measures where I live and while cases are rising, we are nowhere near a crisis. As I said, our leaders follow the science.
I’ve gone to lots of Broadway shows, and shows in other places. Age skews old. You think they could break even if 2/3 of their attendees are rightly scared of being crammed together in a theater? Movie theaters opened and then closed again because of lack of product and lack of customers. I have a season subscription to a monologue series which will be good whenever we reopen. I’m 68 and I’m young for that crowd.
I think there is a lot of agreement that the only way of really bringing dangerous industries back is to beat the virus. No one is making choices about which industries to support - the science is.
Things are bad enough when people do follow the rules. North Dakota is about out of hospital beds - that shows what happens when people don’t.
If the daily average is a constant 800 deaths per day, that means the total US deaths will reach 277,000 by Christmas and 282,000 by New Year’s Day.
My prediction is we will hit 300,000 by Christmas.
Yes, I’ve said repeatedly that going forward we should account for better treatment and that’s what we’ve been doing. As for Hospital overloading we aren’t even on the radar of overloading our hospitals on anything beyond a handful of local hospitals. We’ve had that conversation before too. We have multiple levels of air transport available to move patients. My own city has at least 4 medical transport helicopters and their website talks about multi-state coverage as a matter of practice. We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of hospital coverage availability on a regional level and I don’t ever see a time where it would be greater than that. If that happens we have a substantial military airlift available.
But all this goes out the window when one nursing home has an outbreak in my area. The governor talks about going to defcon 5 or the color purple or some other bit of strategery. fine. We’re shutting bars down at 11 for liquor consumption but if you stay and eat the virus won’t spread. I’m not sure if that holds any scientific water but that’s where we’re at in Ohio.
Realistically if there’s an outbreak then the problem is localized to the outbreak and not surrounding counties. Throwing the citizens under bus doesn’t change the reality that an enclosed space of old people hacking up 75 years worth of phlegm is the problem. If you’ve ever been to a nursing home they’re usually divided between people who are having trouble taking care of themselves and people who have 9 toes in the grave. I’m not saying this to be flippant. There’s often nothing but a door separating 2 different groups of people and you will have no trouble knowing which side of the door you’re on. THIS is what is killing people in nursing homes. They are enclosed spaces filled with people coughing continuously.
If you want to protect them then retrofit these facilities for infectious disease instead of throttling the financial lives (and tax base) needed to protect them. No amount of masks or bullshit distancing is going to stop the spread of this disease. Once it hits an enclosed space of medically compromised people it is going to kill them.
We have taken this about as far as we can go. We’re wearing masks in box stores and isolating workers as is practical. In places it’s not practical like a restaurant then patrons have a choice of staying home or socializing. that’s a reasoned/measured response to the virus. the numbers are down and we are going forward based on faster testing and better medical treatment which translates into fewer deaths.
I think the experiment done in the Trump lab is good evidence for the assertion.