@Banquet_Bear, I don’t find the approach you’re taking here conducive to any sort of productive discussion at all, so I’m going to back out of this exchange now.
…this made me literally laugh out loud.
There is annual variance, yes, fluctuations in the numbers that average out to what we use as statistics on how the year is going. 2020 is NOT simple variance. CoVID-19 is NOT a minor fluctuation in the numbers. As of Jan 5, 2021, the United States has seen 356,000 deaths from this one cause.
Traffic fatalities for 2019 were 36,096, with a downward trend the last couple of years. 2020 was projected to be lower still from data of the first two quarters. That’s roughly 10 times more deaths from covid than from traffic accidents.
The dreaded Spanish Flu of 1918 is estimated to have killed 675,000 people in the US over three years (1918 to 1920). We’ve had over half that in 1 year. We are on track to match or beat that number, even with the vaccines rolling out right now. We have not seen the impact of Christmas and New Year’s yet, and hospitals are already overflowing.
This is not a normal fluctuation. This is a BIG DEAL.
What denominator are you talking about? Are you back to your weirdly defined way to look at the numbers that for some reason looks at the daily deaths divided by the number of days?
Deaths per day is the appropriate way to see the impact of time on the disease progression.
Yes, deaths per day on average seems a good measure to me. As the thing seems to ebb and flow, some days seem worse than others. As the days progress, so will the disease, unless we can figure out a way to get rid of it or stop it killing people.
Like some mass vaccination program or something. Golly, I hope something like that happens.
Or maybe, given how bad this is, we could come up with an interim solution until the vaccination program is complete. Say, not congregate when at all avoidable. We could avoid bars, restaurants, family gatherings. Maybe if we do it well we could open up again in a few weeks.
I have all the confidence in the world that anyone who shelters in place for the next few months will come out of it alive.
Edit: Well, maybe I shouldn’t say ‘anyone’. But yes, I think staying away from people would be a more than reasonable interim solution. And if you can even manage that inside your own house, all the better. (I know not everyone can.)
Is indoor dining safe? 4 of 5 experts say no. The 5th person only said yes for herself because she already had Covid so feels she’s immune for the moment. She didn’t feel it would be safe for someone who hadn’t had Covid yet.
Assuming survival, for 10% of those infected there may be questions about if it was worth it
10% is just a random number grabbed from the air.
Is the substantive part of the article correct? If so does my question stand?
The substantive part of the article is mostly about the effects of anosmia, not how many people will think surviving covid was “worth it”. So no, your “question” is sensationalized BS.
If what was worth it? I mean what, exactly? What exactly are you trying to say?
Anyone seriously concerned about long covid might do well to shelter in place, too. Otherwise, I’m not sure what else they can do.
If you look at the data, there is a distinct weekly cycle. I think this is a reporting issue, not a real measure of variance. The 7 day average is a bit better for understanding the trend, but the peak numbers also have value in showing the roughness of the disease.
Over 4000 dead in one day is not anything to sneeze at.
But I don’t accept that the fact that time continues, the daily deaths has to increase. That is firmly in the realm of controlling social interactions. Even in the scrambled mess that is the US, you see a spike at the beginning, a slump as the first shutdowns were enacted, then a gradual slide upward with reopenings, followed by a sharper rise at the end of the year as more people grew more lax and did more social activities like Halloween parties and Thanksgiving get togethers. We haven’t seen the impacts from Christmas yet, much less New Year’s.
The CDC announced today that 60% of cases come from asymptomatic spread. Study
You still haven’t answered my question:
And what is the policy you think we should have implemented, since you think the one we did is a failure?
What is that supposed to mean, in concrete terms? What is “getting out of our own way”, and how does that translate into fighting the virus?
You say you don’t have a policy in mind, but even doing nothing is a policy.
Well, yeah, since we can’t count on everyone doing things to mitigate the situation for everyone, we’re left with “every many for himself”. Seems kinda sucky as a national policy.
You and I are never going to see this the same way. You lay out an explanation with a fair amount of moving parts, and one that is riddled with internal inconsistency. (Not every municipality experienced the same scenario despite similar approaches, and some municipalities with markedly different approaches did experience similar scenarios.) The alternative explanation is simpler, having to do with well established and long-observed epidemiological principles, and is thus much more firmly rooted in what before 2020 was known as science.
Yes, I saw that. What do we do now, since we have multiple studies with conflicting conclusions?
I think that once we realized (or, have we realized?) that our mitigation efforts were not proving successful in stamping out the virus, we should have tried something different. The fact that we are close to a year into this thing, with case and death counts skyrocketing in a number of jurisdictions yet with seemingly no motivation at all to try a new approach is mind-boggling to me. Like, how long do we plan to keep trying the same old things? What evidence could possibly be presented to us that they are not working, if the case and death counts we’re now seeing are not convincing?
Getting out of our own way means ceasing the kind of damage we’re seeing by schools being closed for a year or more, industries being shuttered, livelihoods being lost in countless numbers (you will note there is no daily dashboard for those), all by our own sword. Those things don’t seem to have anything to do with fighting the virus, evidently, so I don’t accept that the latter part of your question even has any relevance.
I’m sorry, I was under the impression we were just making things up, as you’ve shown no evidence or cite for your 1/10 “belief”. Do you have any links to these studies that show grocery stores to be linked to more infections than bars and nightclubs?
Here’s a Stanford modeling study that we’ve been discussing in this thread. It considers all venues (where people breathe, presumably) to have the same base rate of infectiousness, which is then moderated by density (people per area of measure) and duration (time spent in the venue). Not by measures of inhibition, demographics of those who frequent them, whether or not it’s after curfew, and the like. Density and duration, that’s it. Density and duration.
I myself don’t have any ‘belief’ that either venue is more infectious than the other, because I would have nothing besides speculation on which to base that belief. I try to base my beliefs in empirically observable scientific principles. It’s been working for us humans for a good long while, and I don’t see why it should stop now.
“We find that on average across metro areas, reopening full-service restaurants, gyms, hotels, and cafes produces the largest predicted increase in infections. This is because 1) there are many POIs in these categories (especially restaurants), and 2) when fully reopened, these places tend to be relatively crowded with people spending long times there.”
Oops.
Yes, they model crowds (density) and time (duration) as contributing factors to spread. And they multiply those factors by the number of people who go there and add the number of such venues by category, which of course are factors every bit as important as the measures of density and duration, if not much more so.
As I mentioned upthread, the dentist office could be the most infectious place in town, but it might not matter much if nobody goes there. We could maybe give everyone in town a sleeping pod that 100% keeps anyone else from breathing in the virus you breathe out, and it still might not matter to overall spread if you spend time in the community doing things besides sleeping in the pod.
These things should really be patently obvious. No legitimate attempt at comparing the net effects of infectiousness between categories of venues would ignore how many people are frequenting those venues, relative to each other, or what other activities the people who frequent those venues would also undertake. At least, not if they want any useful solutions.
Any chance you could point out where your 1/10 belief came from?