You have got to be kidding. We’ve had more people die from COVID since March than were killed in combat in the Civil War, and we’re losing them at almost twice the rate on average as we lost military personnel in any previous war. (Civil War = 420/day, WWII = 416/day, COVID-19 = 918 per day)
It’s pretty cut and dried- a LOT of people are dying from this in absolute numbers. Certainly not the same percentage of the population as in those wars, but larger absolute numbers nonetheless, and in the deaths per day, the almost 2x difference is about in line with the slightly more than 2x greater population since WWII too. So maybe not quite as deadly as WWII, but not far off.
So yeah, we can suck it up and deal with it. Historically others have done much worse for much longer, and not bitched, moaned and whined about it like we are. Nobody’s rationing your food, nobody’s bombing our cities, nobody’s leading a chevauchee through our countryside either. All we’re being asked to do is stay home, not eat in restaurants, drink in bars, or have gatherings, and people can’t even manage that. We really should be embarrassed, not arguing that it’s unreasonable.
Just read this piece today, about how maybe the only thing the Greatest Generation had over us was better leadership. They had plenty of people not on board with making sacrifices then, but more people at the top pushing the cause.
That’s not at all what I was talking about. Not some tally of deaths. I meant that lives lost in that war, or any other one, can be seen as sacrifices made in the pursuit of some national, international, or humanistic goal. You could say that we chose to put those lives at risk. Where is the analogy to lives lost from lack of health? If anything, the analogy should go the other way! As in, we sacrificed all those lives in wars in pursuit of gaining or maintaining some way of life, yet we cannot stomach loss of life from a virus to do the same.
I’d say we should poll those members of the Greatest Generation to see how they feel, about being abandoned in isolation or about seeing their grandchildren’s hopes taken away. Let’s see how tough they think we are. Not that many of them left, though.
Wow, I should have guessed this would be the direction you would take it. Let’s recap how we got here.
Banquet_Bear said:
To which you replied,
What is the connection? Were you trying to somehow insinuate that the “politicians on both coasts” equates to Democratic governors? Were you trying to say that because back in February there was a counter-response to people avoiding Asian American (Not just Chinese American, but Korean, Hmong, Filipino, et al) businesses that those politicians would have been against a later effort at a coordinated national shutdown?
So I tried to point out that the businesses being hit were not Chinese government owned, but Chinese American and other Asian American owned businesses.
But instead of acknowledging the obvious, that Asian businesses were being hit 40% prior to any local or national shutdown efforts, you responded
First, I never said reactionaries actually killed anyone. Second, I did not try to equate the actions of reactionaries to the deaths of covid. YOU did that. But here’s the thing - as far as we can tell, nobody died from politicians inviting people to parades and restaurants. Which I cited sources. Then you said
Regardless of the balance of any harms done by reactionaries or by politicians, you are directly rejecting the stated motives of the politicians in question. So I provided cites
So, do you accept that the politicians in question were acting for the reasons they stated, or are you trying to propose they had an alternative motive?
So I asked you about the economic harm to Asian American businesses that was happening prior to any government shutdown efforts.
To which you replied
So, we’ve had shutdowns for 8 months (since March), which has caused a lot of economic damage. No argument. But there were three months of economic damage to Asian American businesses prior to the shutdowns that you seem to be ignoring, or even justifying as the rational response. That is the backdrop for why I stated
Because you keep ignoring the Asian American businesses. I’m not trying to separate the world into two groups, I’m trying to get you to see that you have already done so. Of course all races and ethnic groups in New York and across the country have been hit by the pandemic, and hit by severe economic damage. But you were the one who said that avoiding Chinese restaurants was the rational thing to do. I remind you,
Then you said:
Great, blame CHINA for it’s handling of the pandemic, for it’s sloppy markets that are perfect pandemic breeding grounds, for it’s hiding the severity from the world, for it’s failure to stop international travel out while locking down people inside. All of the above, and anything else CHINA did wrong.
But you were the one saying that avoiding Chinese American businesses was rational. That is punishing Chinese Americans for what China did wrong.
That’s funny, because Trump seemed to think he had the power to do anything he wanted - to close if he wanted, or force states to open if he wanted. But regardless, why did you latch on to that comment, as if I tried to assert the Federal Government did have the authority to force governors to comply? I never said that.
You ignored the part where I said
I bolded the critical parts that you pretended not to see.
You are blindly citing these events without any context as if they were fully implemented and engaged by the President eagerly and urgently. That is just not the case.
The President did appoint a Task Force, and did gather a lot of infectious disease and national medical resource experts to address the topic. He put Pence in charge. But he then ignored or derided the very guidelines his Task Force came up with. He mocked wearing masks. He argued for a fast reopening, skipping the progressive milestones the Task Force recommended. He berated Democratic Governors who tried to follow those guidelines and praised Republican Governors who avoided lockdowns in the first place or opened immediately. He promoted and held huge crowded gatherings without masks, where he mocked anyone who did wear a mask. He publicly derided Dr. Fauci multiple times, Dr. Redfield and the CDC, and anyone who tried to correct his numerous outright lies about the virus. That’s the context.
He did engage some element of the War Powers Act to get companies making ventilators and PPE. But he was slow to do so, and only reluctantly did so. He wasted a lot of time when he could have been coordinating a national distribution of PPE for health care workers, but instead he wanted to leave it up to the states to negotiate for it on the open market. He put off for weeks using the War Powers Act to get ventilators produced. Instead, he spent his time blaming Obama for using the federal stockpile during H1N1. That the stockpile was not replenished had more to do with Republican Congress budgets than with Presidential budget recommendations. But he likes to blame Obama.
The vaccine fast track is truly a remarkable thing, and he does get credit for making it possible. However, the vaccine seems to be his only response to the pandemic, and he refuses to anything to mitigate the spread until the vaccines are ready. It is also concerning that he has pushed the process for approving the vaccines to such a point that is hard to trust they are getting the proper review for effectivity and safety. And we have glaring examples just this year of his administration blundering on medical rollouts precisely because of the rush to get something out there. I.e. the whole testing debacle with the tests we had to make here in the U.S., only to find they gave false positives for a lot of other coronaviruses, not just covid19. So to watch him push phases of the trials in parallel that normally are done sequentially is eyebrow raising. To see him pressure the CDC and FDA to ignore testing protocols and skip steps to meet his arbitrary deadline (the election) is maddening.
And don’t forget, these vaccines that we are getting use new technology that hasn’t been used before. Not only that, but we have some indication that the virus itself does not grant lasting immunity, with people being reinfected in as little as 3 months. That does not bode well for any vaccine having lasting protective abilities.
Just to be clear, you are rejecting wearing masks, closing bars and limiting restaurants, preventing sports with their close physical activity and crowded spectators, and limiting large gatherings - because you claim the evidence does not support those as being effective?
Yes, and what that tells us is that universal mask wearing and limiting gatherings to prevent exposure are the two greatest tools to prevent the biology from doing it’s thing. At least until we get widespread effective vaccination. And those are the mitigation efforts I stressed.
10 pm curfews are part of the effort to limit people from congregating, especially in venues where they can’t wear masks and don’t socially distance. As nighttime rolls on, crowds go from quiet to somewhat noisy conversations to partying, drinking in excess, dancing and singing, and other non-socially distant behaviors. Bars are inherently not compatible with preventing the spread of an airborne respiratory disease precisely because of those behaviors I mentioned. Restaurants are a little better in that you can separate tables and limit capacities and people will tend to stay in their groups, but as the night rolls on, the behavior patterns shift to be essentially bars.
Closing public venues and limiting private gatherings is supposed to go hand in hand. Naturally, it is easier to enforce the former over the latter. Of course people are being asked to utilize good judgment. Unfortunately, that seems to be in short supply. If you plan to socialize with those outside your household, keep the group size small, keep distance, outside or well ventilated environment, and wear masks. No hugging, kissing, etc.
I don’t see how you can sit there and say there is no sense to these practices. It doesn’t take rocket science online aromatherapy to understand. This isn’t something that requires massive data collection or linear regression analysis or computer modeling. It’s a direct correlation to the mechanics of the virus propagation and the behavior patterns of people.
We do have data to draw upon. Looking at the world, whenever masking is common and accepted, rates are lower than places where mask use is down. Whenever tight restrictions are in place to limit socialization, rates go down. Whenever restrictions are loosened, rates go up. The places that isolated and restricted hard for sufficient time have got their numbers way down, into the single digits. The places that rushed to reopen or didn’t really close down in the first place are seeing dramatic increases in numbers.
That’s not just the U.S., that is Europe, Asia, and Australia for sure. Also seems to be the case in Central and South America. I’m not sure what the data from Africa says, I don’t hear about it much. Oh, and Antarctica is doing pretty good with the pandemic.
You keep saying that the reputation of science has taken a hit because of the scientists, but I dispute that. First off, science has already been maligned and assaulted by political and financial interests for decades. Starting with big tobacco, then evolution deniers, then Pro-Lifers, then the oil industry and climate change deniers, and don’t forget the alt-medicine crowd and woo fanatics. This pandemic is just the latest phase of a long-term war against science.
The forces destroying the reputation of real and true science are the political hacks and anti-government paranoids wildly spewing nonsense for their own agendas. You’ve got foreign agents seeding dumbitude on social media to foster chaos and political turmoil to disrupt our country’s political and economic power. You’ve got anti-government paranoids who disbelieve in the Moon Landings and think everything is a plot by the Liberals to take away their guns, property, freedom, religion, and free thought. You’ve got the President of the United States actively declaring the scientists dummies while spewing stupid ideas like injecting disinfectants into the body.
Science is taking the hit because the political and ideological agendas of the freaks are aligned to accomplish disparate goals, and they have the tools to reach more people than ever - whether it is internet sites like Breitbart, social media, or traditional talk radio like Alex Jones.
Yeah, I’ve come to the conclusion that analogies suck. Analogies don’t convince people. Nobody ever takes an analogy for the reason chosen. Instead, they hack apart the parts that don’t apply or the underlying assumptions.
That’s not the point. The point is that hardships have been endured and sacrifices made for extended durations in the past, and considered patriotic. But today the “patriots” refuse to wear masks in public and socially distance, because “freedom”. They can’t put up with a few months of hardship for something that is killing more people than wars that went on years. “Sacrifice for others” seems to be a dwindling value. “You can’t make me” is taking it’s place.
No, this isn’t the best we can do. We have plenty of statistical methods to tease out the effects of individual variables in multivariable situations. I hope to see some research along these lines so that we can have some data showing the effectiveness of policies on a society-wide level.
This isn’t science. It’s a mixture of hindsight bias and confirmation bias. It would be trivially easy to find some graphs showing spikes after a mask mandate was implemented. However, it wouldn’t be proper to then conclude that mask mandates don’t have an effect on transmission.
The only way to figure out what policies are working and what are not is through objective, statistical analysis.
… nonsense. It is well established science that by limiting the chains of transmission you limit the spread of the virus. bump uses anecdotes to describe it, but what they described actually fits the established science.
…so you’ve pivoted from “this isn’t science” to “well actually this actually is science, 5th grade elementary science”, and when you said it’s " a mixture of hindsight bias and confirmation bias" what you actually meant was it wasn’t a mixture of those things at all.
Not intending to call you out, but I have to wonder how you or anyone can have faith in your own opinions about the efficacy of anything when you know this is what your reasoning looks like:
Experts recommended barriers.
I didn’t believe the experts that it would be useful.
We implemented barriers, and it actually looks like they were useful.
Experts recommend shorter hours.
I don’t believe the experts when they say it will be useful.
Profit?
I mean, not everything the experts recommend is guaranteed to be totally effective. This is all a murky intersection of epidemiology, social science and public policy, and nothing is guaranteed (particularly as success of any given strategy is likely dependent on the degree to which it’s adopted). But it’s precisely because it’s so complicated that none of us should assume that our personal takes after reading a few articles are worth a hill of beans compared to the recommendations that are the outcomes of collaborations of experts.
Of course, we shouldn’t put blind faith in anyone, but at this point “I don’t believe the experts when they give us strategies for mitigation” is not a reasonable/rational position.
This is 5th grade biology: “by limiting the chains of transmission you limit the spread of the virus.” This is obvious. This is not up for debate. It’s a given.
The question is this: How have the policies that have been enacted in pursuit of limiting the chains of transmission fared in the real world?
I maintain that looking at the date a policy was enacted and then eyeballing a line graph is not the correct way to answer the question above.
…and the answer to that question is “really fucking well actually.”. In the real world where the chains of transmission have been broken those places are doing really really well. NZ only had 25 deaths. Currently no community transmission. Economy opened up. We are doing just fine.
But you would agree that you can see general trends yes? And that those trends also fit the data? If the science says controlling the chains of transmission help control the spread of the virus then what is it you are actually disputing? This is a message board, not a scientific dissertation. It’s okay to draw in big strokes.
… you really believe that the policies enacted to fight transmission around the world have worked “really fucking well?” Countries around the world have tried to emulate New Zealand. I don’t think it has worked well at all. Places like Peru and Argentina have been ravaged by the virus despite some of the most draconian countermeasures. It seems to me that policies that should have worked in theory haven’t in practice.
There’s too much data and too many variables for me to make a judgement on which policies are having what effects. Even if I thought I knew, the human brain loves to see patterns in data. This is why we have to look at this statistically - scientifically.
…that wasn’t the question I answered. Please don’t be disengenuous.
Except they haven’t. The only place that really did try to emulate what we did was Victoria Australia and that resulted in a drop from hundreds of cases a day to practically zero.
New Zealand didn’t implement draconian countermeasures. The cornerstone of the elimination plan was “kindness .” It started with the premise we are going to look after each other, follow the science and get through this together.
Or perhaps you don’t actually know much at all about the countries you’ve just mentioned and you are drawing the same broad strokes you are complaining about.
There might be too much data for you. Fortunately in the real world that doesn’t really matter.
The data and patterns fit the science. Break the chains, test trace and isolation, public education, keep it simple. There is almost zero effective public messaging in America. Even Dr Fauci needlessly complicates the messaging. I’m not surprised that people struggle with this.
TLDR: I used to think some things, than I learned I was wrong and now I think other things.
But you glossed over the most important part. I ignored my own opinions and did what they experts told me to do. I put up plexiglass, we implemented mask requirements very early on, we got in the habit of sanitizing everything and sanitizing often.
At the beginning, the plexiglass thing didn’t seem like it would work because I couldn’t wrap my head around WHY it would work. Same for masks, at the beginning, it didn’t make sense. We’re all still breathing the same air, right? But I worked on the assumption that the experts know more about this than I do. As time went on and there was more information available, I understood why they worked.
I’ve seen a lot of stores shortening hours, but I haven’t seen that as an actual recommendation. Not being open exceedingly early or late, the shortened hours thing hasn’t come into play for me, so if it’s been an official recommendation or if there’s been solid reasons why it helps, I just haven’t heard them yet. The only reason I’ve seen stores give for voluntarily reducing their hours is so that their crew can use the extra time to do a really good job cleaning without customers in the building.
So:
Correct.
Correct, that’s how I felt 8 months ago.
Correct again. I ignored my opinions and used official recommendations.
I haven’t seen that, but I’m not saying it hasn’t happened.
I didn’t say that. The closest statement I made to that was when I questioned the reasoning behind the shorter hours.
Just to be utterly clear about this. I never said that. I said I didn’t understand the suggestions, but I implemented them regardless of my feelings about them.
Also, it’s important to note, this was over half a year ago. I put up plexiglass back in March, IIRC.
The statements you’re making are much more applicable to the people that are actively denying that any of these protective measures are useful.
Similarly, if you were to dig up posts of mine from way back in March or April, you’ll likely be able to find me saying ‘it’s no worse than the flu’, but I quickly stopped saying that and transitioned to explaining to others who say it why they’re wrong.
My point was that in pretty much any reckoning, this is a BIG deal. Huge. As in, on the same scale of deaths as WWII, a war that we’ve had dozens, if not hundreds of movies and TV shows made about it, similar numbers of war memorials, and whose aftereffects are still resonating to this day.
The point I’m trying to make is that a whole lot, maybe even a majority of those deaths could have been preventable, if we had effective, science-based leadership from the top, and a much lesser degree of selfishness and stupidity in our society.
I personally disagree that economic well being is worth any number of lives. Would you volunteer to die so that the economy would be strong? Would you sacrifice your kids? Your grandparents? Your parents? In effect that’s exactly what all the selfish people and science deniers are doing- they’re in effect saying “It may take a lot of you to die in order for us to have our comfortable way of life, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
To me, that’s unconscionable. Maybe I’d feel different if I was less well off- I don’t know. But from where I’m sitting, the whole argument seems to boil down to what’s an acceptable casualty rate in order to keep the economy going. And I can say this… 250,000 people can’t be acceptable. We’re talking about mere economic well being, not defeating fascism and stopping genocide here.
… this is false. I’ve quote the exchange for you below:
This is literally the question I asked and you answered. I’m the one being disingenuous?
Other countries have been trying to break the chain of transmission. Peru and Argentina have tried to do the best they can under their circumstances.
What do you believe Peru and Argentina have been trying to achieve by locking down if not stopping transmission of the virus?
Do you disagree with my assertion that the policies implemented in Peru and Argentina don’t seem to have worked well?
Also, I’m not complaining about broad strokes (where did this come from?). Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Then please share it. I’d love to see some data - real, statistical analysis of the effects of policies implemented around the world.
Who struggles with this concept?
Again, I repeat the question is this: How have the policies that have been enacted in pursuit of limiting the chains of transmission fared in the real world?
Not, “How are viruses transmitted? What should work in theory? What worked in New Zealand?” We know things have worked well in New Zealand. A+.
How have various policies - masks, lockdowns, travel restrictions, etc - actually affected virus transmission in practice around the world on a broader scale? What are the hard numbers and data as we currently understand it?
Method
Information on COVID-19 policies and health outcomes were extracted from websites and country specific sources. Data collection included the government’s action, level of national preparedness, and country specific socioeconomic factors. Data was collected from the top 50 countries ranked by number of cases. Multivariable negative binomial regression was used to identify factors associated with COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes.
Findings
Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity (adjusted rate ratio [RR]=1.06; 95%CI: 1.01–1.11), median population age (RR=1.10; 95%CI: 1.05–1.15) and longer time to border closures from the first reported case (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (RR=1.12; 95%CI: 1.06–1.19) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (RR=1.03; 95%CI: 1.00–1.06). Reduced income dispersion reduced mortality (RR=0.88; 95%CI: 0.83–0.93) and the number of critical cases (RR=0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.97). Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people. However, full lockdowns (RR=2.47: 95%CI: 1.08–5.64) and reduced country vulnerability to biological threats (i.e. high scores on the global health security scale for risk environment) (RR=1.55; 95%CI: 1.13–2.12) were significantly associated with increased patient recovery rates.
We studied sources of variation between countries in per-capita mortality from COVID-19 (caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus). Potential predictors of per-capita coronavirus-related mortality in 200 countries by May 9, 2020 were examined, including age, gender, obesity prevalence, temperature, urbanization, smoking, duration of the outbreak, lockdowns, viral testing, contact-tracing policies, and public mask-wearing norms and policies. Multivariable linear regression analysis was performed. In univariate analysis, the prevalence of smoking, per-capita gross domestic product, urbanization, and colder average country temperature was positively associated with coronavirus-related mortality. In a multivariable analysis of 196 countries, the duration of the outbreak in the country, and the proportion of the population aged 60 years or older were positively associated with per-capita mortality, whereas duration of mask-wearing by the public was negatively associated with mortality (all P < 0.001). Obesity and less stringent international travel restrictions were independently associated with mortality in a model which controlled for testing policy. Viral testing policies and levels were not associated with mortality. Internal lockdown was associated with a nonsignificant 2.4% reduction in mortality each week (P = 0.83). The association of contact-tracing policy with mortality was not statistically significant (P = 0.06). In countries with cultural norms or government policies supporting public mask-wearing, per-capita coronavirus mortality increased on average by just 16.2% each week, as compared with 61.9% each week in remaining countries. Societal norms and government policies supporting the wearing of masks by the public, as well as international travel controls, are independently associated with lower per-capita mortality from COVID-19.
…I explained to you how policies enacted in the “real world” to limit the chains of transmission really actually worked. Your response flipped that. I wasn’t talking about every policy enacted around the world. My answer was very specific. And you ignored that. I answered the question as asked. I’m not interested in answering this brand new disingenuous question you’ve asked me.
Other countries haven’t implemented policies that would be effective in breaking the chains of transmission. Those other countries haven’t tried to emulate New Zealand.
And your point is? I’ve just looked at the stats. The curve in Peru is heading in the right direction. The curve in Argentina is trending down after a peak in October. What is it, exactly, are you trying to say?
Again I’m not seeing your point. Lockdowns in themselves won’t break the chain of transmission. Not without government financial support for people to stay home, not without building a comprehensive test, trace and isolation regime, not without control of the borders, not without increasing ICU capacity and making PPE widely available for medical teams.
Do you agree with my assertion that Peru and Argentina haven’t tried to emulate what we did in New Zealand?
bump’s post made broad strokes. But they weren’t incorrect. You complained about those broad strokes. We can see what you did.
I’m not your fucking monkey. I’ve shown you policies that worked. That fit the science. I’m under no obligation to provide data for you for all of the policies implemented all around the world. I gave you a real world answer. But it looks like you don’t want to actually know anything about the real world.
You do for starters.
Again I repeat my answer to this. They have worked really fucking well.
So New Zealand isn’t part of the real world.
Gotcha.
We know how virus’s work. We know pretty well how this particular coronavirus works. This isn’t a theoretical discussion. We can see what worked. Why do you want to casually dismiss what worked?
Why would you want to know this on a broader scale?
No seriously. How broad do you want to get? Why broad and not specific?
Thanks for the discussion, but I feel like we’ve crowded up the thread enough. It’s led me to what I was looking for (at least a start). I’m glad to see there are scientists/statisticians are looking at this stuff quantitatively on a broad scale and getting published. Data from these kinds of studies are needed to inform future policy decisions.