Yes, there is a way to isolate them. It is what we are trying now and it will fail unless we do something different. If you don’t think so you aren’t thinking in the right extreme. This thing is due to peak in June. That gives us 3 months to start working through this NOW. We expose the least vulnerable now, in stages. By June, the majority of our population has had the disease and are no longer vectors. Instead of all of us sitting around doing nothing now, we would be inoculating ourselves and stop from being more vectors later. It truly is no different than giving the live virus to people like we did 40 years ago. Study after study has shown that healthy, young people are just not high risk for dying from this. We need to get them inoculated and we need do it now. What is the point of having them, along with all the other high risk people, getting sick in mid-June?
I am working from exactly the facts of the informed. The informed tell us that the death rate for healthy people under 59 is under 1%. That likely includes compromised people. The informed tell us that unless we keep our distance for 18 months we are going to run out of hospital beds. If we purposely expose people now, in a controlled way, we will absolutely reduce the vectors available in 3 months. What is not to get about that? Right now there are unused hospital and ICU beds that can be used now instead of later, when demand gets much, much higher. This isn’t rocket science.
There is no speculation that thousands upon thousands of people have already lost their jobs. There is no speculation that the stock market is in free fall. You can hope all you want that the powers that be will somehow control all that and make everything okay, but I know which way I’d bet.
You need to face the reality that many are going to die. There are no good choices. That train is coming and we have to decide what to do with that switch. The absolute best thing we can do is inoculate as many as possible to try to protect those that are at highest risk. This sitting around isn’t going to work. If we leave all these vectors around the most at risk WILL get exposed. The only way to alleviate that is to reduce the vectors. And the only way to do that is to expose people NOW.
To answer the OP: follow the WH recommendations on our national 15 day timeout, and your state and/or local recommendations.
And here’s what I wish to God they’d make clearer:
There’s risk to the individual, based on their own actions, then there’s the risk to society, based on the actions of all the individuals in it. Call these the individual, and the societal risks. A major problem is only considering the personal risk, and ignoring the societal risk. The individual risk may be low, but the societal risk is also important.
Joe Schmo says, “My individual risk is low, so I don’t need to wash my hands,” but he’s ignored the societal risk (in this example, the risk of the virus spreading exponentially). Joe Schmo would be better to say, “My individual risk is low, and I know a majority of people are following the hygeine and social distancing protocols, so I don’t need to wash my hands.” I’d say he’s still being somewhat irresponsible (free riding) in this second case, but he’s technically correct. The first case is suspect because of the omission of the societal risk. To make it more dysfunctional (hey, he’s human), if he thinks no one else is washing their hands, he arguably should be more diligent about it, but probably will exhibit a herd mentality / social referencing behavior, and decide he doesn’t have to either. That’s why we make laws, and issue mandates. As it’s why the WH’s “suggestions” of 3/16 should be made mandatory. We’re wasting time here, because I’ll betcha not enough people are following the protocols (see Thudlow Boink’s truly face-palm-worthy link at #80, or SlackerInc’s #135). The administration needs to show more political backbone here.
This is like asking if getting your head kicked in by a horde of skinheads/mongols/insert-your-own-scary-group-of-people has more of an effect on your life than watching a sad movie. One thing is deadly serious and the other is easily adapted to. Watch a happier movie.
And let’s just be real for a second, with everyone tethered to their phones and internet 24/7 and an unprecedented # of ways to keep instant contact with everyone else in the world remotely, and all of us finally getting the opportunity to use this technology to the extent that it was always intended for, I’m not buying the social isolation angle one bit. That’s just pure American selfishness talking. Me and everyone else in the music business is livestreaming performances like there is no tomorrow right now. It’s crazy. Work, finances and food/supplies, I get that. Do what you have to do. Otherwise, adapt to the situation. There are millions of possibilities open to everyone that have never existed before and if all those fail you, you can always drive around and shout at people from a safe distance
No I do get it, it sucks for the few people left who still had social lives to begin with. I have a simple few questions for yall:
Has everyone you’re hanging out with tested negative for the virus? (obviously answer is no because nobody of less than stellar means is being tested even with symptoms)
Do you actually give a ****? (I guess thats really what it all boils down to)
If you do, you’ll do the right thing. If you don’t, you won’t. And it may or may not matter on a small scale but on a large scale we already know the answer if too many people decide to do the wrong thing.
I never said, “roll the dice and let the gods sort it out.” I explicitly said we shouldn’t do that.
Yes, asymptomatic transmission will happen. That is the point of a controlled exposure. Right now we are trying to limit the expose of everyone, when in fact we should be working on severely limiting the exposure of those most at risk. I mean EXTREME measures to reduce expose to those most at risk. It would last a month, maybe two, and then the vast majority of people are inoculated, just like we do with many diseases now.
Yes, of course there is going to be a huge wave. That is the point. Get the least vulnerable exposed now, instead of exposing them along with the most vulnerable later. In 4 weeks we are no longer vectors. This not only reduces need for beds later, it greatly reduces the exposure rate later.
If China is taking both approaches, EXTREME isolation of those most at risk and controlled exposure to the least vulnerable, it will be very interesting to see how that plays out.
I think we both agree that on our present course it is not a question of if the most vulnerable will be exposed, it is when. They will die. No matter how much social distancing we do, for how long, without a vaccine we will kill those most vulnerable. The only way to change that is to get a mass inoculation in place so the virus runs out of vectors.
I don’t understand how you are going to expose the ‘least vulnerable’, without also exposing the more vulnerable. Young people live with, work with, provide services for older people, and vice versa.
I want to admit that I expected Something to happen by now. I feel my sense of red alert wearing thin. One of my teachers is spraying down his computer with Lord-know-what. He is doing what I told him to do, and he is taking it seriously, but I myself feel the edge is not as sharp. I am sort of thinking that Italy (and Iran and China and Korea) are outliers and that it won’t be that bad here in Saudi or in the US.
This is some strange psychological effect. I am as ready as I am likely to be. There is not a whole lot more I can do to prepare.
Talking heads on American TV said US hospitals would be “slammed” the day after tomorrow, Saturday. We will see, but now certainly seems to be calm before the storm. I am slipping into a feeling of unreality and magical thinking.
I fly out of here on the 30th to retire. I am sure this is impacting my thought process.
I am amused by how my supposedly-rational mind is reacting. When you are about to make a parachute landing you reach a point where the horizon is no longer below you, The ground closes in on you. This is the moment before impact, when you have to already be in the correct position. I feel as if we are at this point now.
Good luck everyone!
Things do seem like a false crisis when they’re happening far away, or to people who aren’t you. But I personally am practicing social isolation and avoiding any misadventures that might land me in hospital for a few days. Staying off of tall ladders for a little while, etc.
I remember feeling like this with H1N1. My physician friends complained about being slammed at work, and advised this was a good time to stay the hell away from the hospital, and to get the vaccine as soon as it was available. I did so, and consequently H1N1 was nothing to me.
This is just one of those things where you have to get comfortable with the embarrassing feeling that you’re overanxious. If we do this right, we’ll feel like we’ve overreacted. No doubt some will life to a ripe age claiming it was all media hype to take down Trump, unaware (as usual) that they owe their well-being to wise choices made by others in society.
For real though! People are acting like we’re in the 1600s, when to be quarantined meant being holed up in a vermin-infested hovel with no electricity, running water, climate control, internet, IM/texting/chat, phone, music, TV, cable, Netflix, SlingTV, and GrubHub. Now, I know not all of us have these things and I appreciate Manda JO for reminding us that there are serious trade-offs with compelling people to be stuck together under one roof. But most of the folks I see whining on the interwebs are not in this situation. They are people who just don’t know how to adapt to life without constant gratification.
The vast majority of us aren’t even being told to quarantine anyway. We’re being told to keep a distance from others. So that means we can still sit out on our front porch, stoop, or balcony and chitchat with people. Or go for a walk or do gardening or watch squirrels play at the park. It will soon be warm, so many people will be able to have picnics with friends and family. Folks will need to maintain their distance, but they will still be able to be together.
I’ve talked to my parents more in the past two weeks than I have in the past three months. Yesterday my father remarked how lucky we are to have each other and as unsentimental as I am, I had to agree with him. All of us who still have jobs, money, friends/family, and most of all our good health are lucky. I will listen to complaining from folks who don’t have any of these things. Otherwise, I just can’t.
Great analogy. Good luck to you as well. What a moment you “chose” to pass through a major life change.
monstro: So well put. Most of us (Dopers) are fortunate, in so many ways; and, collectively, we’re all fortunate to live in this era of (mostly) widespread information and (mostly) adequate medical care.
I know what I’m about to post doesn’t fit with the OP, but I don’t know where else to put it.
I feel terrific. No fever, no nasal congestion, no cough, no sneeze, no aches, no fatigue. Full of vim and vigor. Despite it being seasonal allergy time.
But about five minutes into my morning constitutional, I had to spit out a HUGE loogie. I only have loogies when I’ve got a bad cold. It was very unsettling to have my mouth fill up with mucous out of the blue like that. I deposited it into a rain puddle and kept on with my walk. Ain’t nobody got time to be studying no loogies…
But here I am, studying. I’m posting this for record-keeping purposes, just in case I’m coming to the end of an asymptomatic phase. If this is the case, then damn me for going into the office all of last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week!
No, we are absolutely not in agreement on this point. There are many people–across all age ranges and many in apparent good health–who may contract the disease, have a serious respiratory distress, but can recover with medical support provided that there is not such a glut of cases that there are not enough beds, ventilators, and medical personnel to support all pr at least most impacted patients! It’s like herding kittens; you can shepherd two or three at a time, but if you have a dozen you might as well be juggling flubber.
There are some people who will still die regardless of support and care, but the longer we can push off the mass of infections the more likely we are to have an effective anti-viral treatment that can help even the most desperate cases. Relying on an eventual vaccine and inoculation campaign may never happen; coronaviruses are particularly prone to mutation, and we’ve thus far failed to develop a vaccine for either the SARS-CoV(-1) virus or the MERS-CoV virus. And there will be future pandemics involving if not this then other pathogens for which we quote obviously need to be better prepared to both recognize and take rapid and effective action to limit the spread as well as have more robust medical, public health, and socioeconomic support systems in place to cope with the effects of an uncontained pandemic.
This idea that if we just allow the virus to spread to everyone soonest and excise the weak (or somehow identify all of the vulnerable people and seal them off in isolation bubbles for the indefinite period it takes to develop a vaccine), we can return to normality with no attendant impact is blithe fantasy; there will be an impact no matter what we do at this point, and we need to collectively make good decisions on how to deal with that to minimize the inevitable economic fallout which will fall disproportionately on small service-oriented business and “gig economy” workers without job security.
Please. Everybody seems to want to express their opinion on the topic of “Corona virus” in the last few days; virtually none of these people knew what a coronavirus is, and I’ll wager that most of them still have no information about coronaviruses beyond the infographic level, and even less about epidemic management. We have major agencies staffed with people who have dedicated their careers to the study of pathogenic viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasitic microorganisms, and trying to outguess their knowledge based upon emotion and intuition is like telling a physicist that you know more than they do about time travel based on your experience from having watched all three Back To The Future movies a dozen times.
This is a time to listen to the actual experts who, by the way, have been warning the heedless public about this type of threat for decades. This is not the time (if there is ever one) to get your information from scammy alt-science Internet sites or your buddy Joe who says if you freebase baking soda and vinegar it will protect you from “The Korona”. It certainly isn’t the time to wholesale write off a segment of the population because some stock market speculators are in panic or because you can’t celebrate St. Paddy’s Day by ending up face down on the lavatory floor of your corner pub. Just take a breath, be thankful for what you have, have a thought for those not so lucky, and do what you can to help prevent the spread of not only the virus but the needless viral panic.
Beyond that, we also want to keep the number of hospitalized people as low as we can, so that the medical system can treat all the OTHER problems people might come up with. I mean, people don’t quit getting kidney stones, gallbladder problems, heart attacks, bacterial infections, the flu, orthopedic injuries, cuts, sprains, strains, etc… just because there are a whole LOT of coronavirus patients clogging up the hospitals.
The whole point of this is to reduce the load on the medical system, not prevent infections in an overall sense. Nobody’s actually said it as such, but on the “flatten the curve” charts and animations, I have the sense that the area under the curve (the total number infected is the same, except that we’re spreading it out over a longer time.
If I remember my physics right (it’s been 30 years), it’s similar to what a seat belt does- it spreads out the forces involved over a longer time period, therefore having less actual force at any one moment, versus hitting the dashboard where all that force hits at once.
So the idea here is that we’re “cushioning” the blow of the pandemic to the health system by spreading it over a longer period, not necessarily trying to prevent people from getting it. That will happen as a consequence of the method, but it’s not the point.
Paraphrasing a comment from an epidemiologist on the TV:
“If, in 4 - 8 weeks, people look back and say, ‘Why did we do all of this? Why the panic? Nothing major happened,’ then we will know that the efforts were successful.”
”Yea, it’s like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit.”
[RIGHT]–Stanley Motss, Wag The Dog[/RIGHT]
Others, myself, and you are all saying the same thing. We need to lessen the burden on the medical system in the coming months. What I don’t think others have learned, and what you seem to be ignoring, is that even with all this social distancing we are doing now, we will NOT get that curve so the peak is below the capacity of our medical system. Your cite from earlier states that rather clearly.
On this present course we will be doing this multiple times. Again, I’m referencing your own cite for that.
Do you honestly believe there is going to be a single person left who will not, at some point given our current course, not get exposed to this?
I’m going to assume every.single.person will be exposed. At that point, 1 of 3 things will happen.
They will recover without medical support
They will recover if and only if medical support is provided
They will die, even if the most advanced, heroic medical support is provided
Flattening the curve is intended to allow more people in group 2 to live. It is what we should be doing.
There can’t be a single point in any of the above you disagree with.
The next step is what do we do about this inevitability. This is where we disagree. You seem to think Trump and this administration will somehow be able to keep our economy from sinking into a recession or, worse, a depression. You said the people of this country should elect the right leaders to handle the economy and do the work and set policies necessary to keep the worst of the economic disasters from happening. And the you said I’m wildly speculating when I say a deep recession, possibly a lot worse, is a distinct possibility. You forget that the same people that voted Trump and team in the last time will be voting the next time.
At some point a hard look at the economics of this needs to be considered. It isn’t something anyone wants to do, but having pipe dreams that this won’t completely disrupt our economy is ridiculous. At what point do we realize the number of people we are saving in group 2 above will be dwindled by the number of people who will be severely affected by destroying the economy.
Based on everything I’ve seen, I wonder if in 4 to 8 weeks we’ll look back and say, “After doing all that we still have huge numbers of people that have died. Why did we bother?” And what people won’t realize is that we cut the number of deaths in half.
When would we expect to start to see this? I assume around March 21? (roughly 11 days after the relaxation of the quarantine around March 11?). And then, I suppose, it builds from there?
This is part of the analysis out of Imperial College London. The number of fatalities they are simulating are not just the deaths directly attributable to this particular disease but also increased numbers of deaths from all sources due to a strained/overwhelmed medical system.
