Well, for instance, I would really like the local library not to quarantine the books for a week after they’re returned. Not necessarily TV PSAs, but some sort of guidance by… the local/state government?.. that could be like, “Hey, library! Really you won’t get covid-19 if you shelve the books after a day instead of a week, and you can tell your clientele that too!”
Here’s an article that touches on some of those same ideas. It also, to me, continues to paint a picture of a situation – in LA County, at least, but I suspect many other places are not too different – where the public health experts are, again, just flailing. Throwing one thing after another at it, and nothing seems to be working. The article explores some of the possible reasons why.
Some parents in LA are unhappy with they see as uneven application of science.
Ferrer said that before issuing the latest regulations, health officials “went back and forth for many days” about how to handle reports from local parks departments about crowding, children playing without masks and the difficulty of sanitizing playground equipment.
Tara Kirk Sell, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who has focused on risk communication and misinformation during the pandemic, said health officials must “be prepared for a good answer for why each of these measures should be put in place” and the science behind it.
“When there are too many restrictions and the public can’t understand and see the reason, it can make them stop listening altogether,” Sell said. “Trust — once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Public health is really going to have to communicate well the next few months as we roll out vaccines.”
As for closing playgrounds, she said, officials have to remember that parents and children “need some sort of outlet.”
Fair point. This could outline, for example, steps for retail businesses by telling them one-way traffic is not important, whether cleaning surfaces frequently is beneficial, about spraying carts and does it help, or just irritate and dry out people’s hands and make them more susceptible to viral pickup through open sores.
That is an interesting article. The idea of harm-reduction has merit. The ideas seem like common sense extrapolations of the principles of avoiding spread, but we all know “common sense isn’t common,” and many people aren’t good at extrapolating. Besides, putting it down as policy makes them look more reasonable, and gives people a sense of comfort.
However, the article does say this.
If people won’t comply with the most basic advice being stressed by every public health official in the country - wear a mask and socially distance - it’s hard to stress more nuanced messaging.
Also, the inconsistency of telling people to stay home, but then having businesses open and running ads to encourage customers like Black Friday deals and happy hours and big sales events is troubling. I’ve noted it myself.
However, that is largely the result of a lack of a comprehensive federal plan bought into by state leaders and executed with consistency across the country. A plan that includes not only guidance on how to get numbers down and how to control spread, but also includes robust financial assistance to workers and companies of all sizes, as well as state and local jurisdictions.
This plan might include a better guide for how to determine the safety level of and therefore control measures necessary at a particular locality versus state-wide levels set by the least affected areas. And guidance to metropolitan areas that have many suburbs that create one large interlocking urban zone on coordinating policies so you don’t have, for instance, Dallas County under tight lockdown, but neighboring Collin County allowing bars and restaurants to open unchecked. A financial plan that keeps people from losing their jobs and businesses and homes. This plan would be fully supported and reinforced by a sane President, constructed and funded by a functional Congress, and driven by the understanding that a strong comprehensive financial approach may look incredibly expensive, but the long term consequences of not doing it would actually be more expensive, and more deadly to boot.
Good luck with that.
The Bay Area - with the exception of one county at the moment, is now locking down together, even though some of our numbers are not bad enough to meet the state mandates. When this does not happen it gets a lot of attention, for the very reasons you mention.
Besides the stuff you mention, the police reaction has been at best education, not enforcement. Where I live at least there is a lot of social pressure to mask and social distance, but someone choosing not to is not going to get penalized in any significant way.
So Alberta is now locked down. Again. Jesus H. Christ, we went through this back in the spring.
And the officials can offer nothing except, “It will help to contain the spread.”
Well, here’s a hint for you Alberta officials: STOP PEOPLE GOING TO CHURCH!
It’s not people going to bars, it’s not people going to the mall, it’s not people going to the supermarket. IT’S PEOPLE GOING TO CHURCH! Superspreader events every Sunday, because some dumbass people will not stop going to church. Fercryingoutloud, will you churchgoers please listen: mass gatherings are deadly, and God will not save you.
You assholes have now ruined it for the rest of us. The little bit of joy we have had at attending restaurants for a draft beer and a meal we did not have to cook, is now gone. Meeting a friend for a friendly conversation over coffee is now gone. So much is now gone, thanks to you and your insistence on attending church.
Fuck you, churchgoers. I hope you can live with yourselves. I hope you remember how your insistence on attendance at a building has inconvenienced those of us who do not. I hope you recall how much you spread the virus at church, how much you damaged the rest of us because you had, absolutely had, to go to church.
STOP GOING TO CHURCH! And we might get back to something normal. Keep going to church, and we’ll continue to see lockdowns and closures that you hate. Obey the rules and regulations, and you can freely worship again, in the future. The choice is yours.
And that more or less is the part I’m having so much trouble understanding.
It’s the whole notion that people can’t temporarily (i.e. a year or so) do without stuff like church, shopping in person, restaurants, bars, birthday parties, and all the other trappings and accoutrements of a normal reasonably social life.
This is big-boy pants time. It’s not normal life during the pandemic; it’s a time when we need to buckle down and do what we’re supposed to, even when it may not be comfortable, it may not be what we’d like to be doing, but it’s what we need to do in order to get this under control and out of the way.
It’s selfishness, pure and simple. These people are in effect saying “My desire to eat out with my friends is more important than trying to stop the spread of COVID and potentially endangering at-risk or normal people who could die or suffer life-long negative effects.”. There’s no way to spin it that doesn’t come down to personal selfishness, except possibly extreme stupidity. And that’s what’s so frustrating.
I’d suggest that 75% are what you’re [bump] saying and 25% are rebelling for the sake of rebelling.
Look, I understood the rebelling thing at the beginning when we didn’t understand enough about this and the public didn’t understand how masks work for source control. But c’mon, we’re pushing a year now. Anyone who makes ignorant comments about masks, as far as I’m concerned isn’t ignorant, they know exactly what they’re saying.
For example we have people come into our store and throw a fit about having to wear a mask and will sometimes comment that they shouldn’t have to wear one since we have plexiglass up.
With all those people, my attitude towards them has drastically changed. I used to attempt to explain the reasoning behind the various safeguards. Now, literally the only thing I’ll say to them is ‘you need a mask to be in here’. “Well, I just need to grab one thing” “That’s fine, just put a mask on”. “How much are those widgets?” “Ma’am, you need to have a mask on”.
If they’re mind hasn’t been changed in 9 months, I’m not going to try to explain it to them in 30 seconds. Put on a mask or leave. This isn’t a discussion, this isn’t difficult, I really don’t care about your thoughts on the situation. Mask up or leave.
I live in semi-rural Western PA. We are rapidly approaching another lockdown, and honestly it probably should have been done at least a week ago.
And my facebook feed is full, chock full, of angry people saying they will NOT abide by lockdown, they will NOT be wearing masks, and that the government has not RIGHT to TAKE AWAY THEIR RIGHTS!!!
I weep for the future.
My oldest son works at a local grocery store, and he is regularly berated when it is his turn to ask someone to put on a mask. It has given him some pretty severe depression, getting shit on all day will do that to the strongest of person eventually.
Please folks. Wear a mask. Distance. Stay home.
I’m not sure where this goes, but I think it belongs here.
Governments are attempting to control the COVID-19 pandemic with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). However, the effectiveness of different NPIs at reducing transmission is poorly understood. We gathered chronological data on the implementation of NPIs for several European, and other, countries between January and the end of May 2020. We estimate the effectiveness of NPIs, ranging from limiting gathering sizes, business closures, and closure of educational institutions to stay-at-home orders. To do so, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model that links NPI implementation dates to national case and death counts and supported the results with extensive empirical validation. Closing all educational institutions, limiting gatherings to 10 people or less, and closing face-to-face businesses each reduced transmission considerably. The additional effect of stay-at-home orders was comparatively small.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/12/15/science.abd9338?utm_campaign=SciMag&utm_source=JHubbard&utm_medium=Facebook
Here’s an article about some of the effects in San Francisco.
Thomas personally laid off 52 employees at her two Cow Hollow establishments, Rose’s Cafe and Terzo, and she said other restaurants in the city let go of tens of thousands of workers. She wishes the city had chosen to follow the state’s lead and this would have given restaurants at least two additional weeks to operate, resulting in at least an extra $1,300 in the pockets of minimum wage workers.
“It was unfortunate that it had to happen before the state,” said Thomas on Tuesday. “I understand that we’re all in this together. But as of today, there’s 36% capacity in San Francisco. I understand the importance of public health, but I’m not a fan of all of our workers, tens of thousands of them in the bar, the cleaning companies, the linen companies, losing their jobs. What we did is we just grounded the whole S.F. economy to a halt, probably two weeks earlier than we had to.”
I hope when the dust settles a bit, local governments will figure out a way to assess the impacts of their measures and find a way to help those who bore the brunt of them.
Or hopefully Congress will pass the new stimulus bill soon with the additional PPP that’s in the bill.
I’m sure that would help too. But at the same time, Congress isn’t the one telling those businesses they must close.
I’m reading there might be some legal backlash in California, with a court determining the state has not sufficiently demonstrated the benefits in closing those businesses. Will be interesting to follow.
I’m sure. There’s backlash over everything. A Kansas city mayor just resigned because she was getting death threats over a mask mandate.
And as we’ve seen lately, there are lawsuits about everything.
I agree that these businesses should be supported with funding, and some of the rules have been unequally applied. But in general, the health and safety of the community should take priority.
For you, I’m sure.
You have no interest in a societal assessment of all this – some might call it a post mortem, I suppose – once things settle down?
The last ten days have not been kind to this point of view.
In Los Angeles and elsewhere in the Golden State, a sense of anger with seemingly contradictory lockdown orders is growing along with virus cases, which are reaching new records across the state. It’s a major reversal of fate for the first U.S. state to impose a lockdown in March, a move hailed as a success that kept the state from experiencing a surge of infections and death like what happened in New York. Following the spring shutdown, California reopened in June — only to enforce new restrictions in July. The state recorded a staggering 53,111 new cases Wednesday and it is practically out of ICU beds. The worsening crisis has led Governor Gavin Newsom to impose a stay-at-home order. While other states have similarly seen infighting, often at the hands of mask skeptics, the latest round of orders from state and local governments are driving a lot of Californians who might otherwise not have strong views on public health politics to question whether their leaders are making good – and fair – decisions. Protests against lockdowns have erupted outside public health officials’ homes and an effort to oust Newsom is strengthening, with half of the 1.5 million petition signatures to put a recall on the ballot already gathered.
Nor, I’d say, to the notion that curfews are proven effective by The Science.
I would love to see a post-event assessment of various strategies. I’m particularly interested in an economic assessment of the difference in approaches of the New Zealand vs the U.S. approaches. The health and safety approach differences are already abundantly clear.
I was wondering (though didn’t post here) back in August how fast we would hit 200,000 deaths, and I said before Halloween. Well, we hit 200,000 by September 22. Remember when Magiver predicted deaths in Texas?
The current 7-day moving average is at 190. The trend is upward.
I can’t find where I first predicted it, but on November 6 I said:
We hit 300,000 deaths on Dec. 14, ahead of my prediction. Worldometers has us at 315,000 deaths today. At 2,900 daily deaths for 8 days gives 23,200 more deaths by Christmas Day, or 338,200 total deaths. By New Year’s Day, that hits 43,500 more deaths, or 358,500 dead. This rate hits 400,000 by January 16, well ahead of my prediction of Feb. 1.
And that assumes a constant death rate of the 7-day average. But that value is trending up. So we could hit 400,000 dead by, oh just to put a date, how about Jan 7?
See, I’m putting down my guesses. You still haven’t.
You’re looking at total numbers and not deaths per capita. If you look at Texas it’s in the middle of the pack at #30 (1 being the worst) and doing better than New Jersey and Connecticut
0.8975 Connecticut
0.7189 New Jersey
0.6681 Texas
.
Florida is 38 on the list.
The trends by state are all over the map.