Oh yeah, it seems like a bad idea. But maybe not a disastrously bad idea.
Oh well.
In the middle of pandemic, unnecessarily adding an additional 250,000 disease vectors whose movement is not constrained in any way is not a good idea. It is, in fact, a disastrously bad idea.
They’ll just leave their helmets on instead.
I see what you are pointing out, however the pattern of decline is not credible - a step drop of 50% from a peak, and if we allow for spikes then it amounts to 25% step drop - and the peak does not decline in this way - it does go down slightly but in exactly the way that it has done this in other states and nations - then only starts a meaningful and credible decline on 1st August.
In every single state or nation the rise has been the predictable exponential one, followed by a steady and fairly even decline, whereas Florida has risen as you might expect from such precedent but also is declining rapidly almost as fast at the uptick.
My view is that if the decline fatalities is not believable, therefore I have little faith in the decline in infections either
A good number of those people will be infected and asymptomatic. Super spreader events will be happening in the bars and restaurants unchecked by masks or social distancing. Unfortunately, we won’t know how bad it got since people will take their infections back to their homes all over the country. But South Dakota will probably see an uptick due to the residents they infect.
Yeah, I’m thinking we may not even be able to tell if this is a super spreader event because it will all be people who do a lot of traveling infecting each other.
I think we’ll see a very small uptick in SD due to Sturgis. My brother-in-law’s girlfriend was a traveling bartender there last year (bike week in Daytona too) and most of the bartenders and servers are all from out of town. Aside from the handful of residents who want to go check out bikes and do events I would bet most of the people don’t pop positive until they get home.
5.1 days from infection until onset of symptoms, on average, so yeah: most people prolly won’t be in Sturgis any more when they realize they are sick.
In the past they have used cell phone location data to track where people go after they leave. I suppose they can do the same after Sturgis to see if infections increase in the places they return to.
The thing is they are from, and will return to every part of the country. An outbreak is maybe going to occur in Sturgis. But maybe not. How may people did they see, and how many on the road trip? How many gas stations, restaurants, bars and hotels? An outbreak in Sturgis, brought from somewhere else and carried off, IMHO, would be impossible to track. Not that it really matters. A few people may get a finger shaken at them.
Hopefully not the continent. These folks will not be allowed into Canada.
True. When I wrote that, I forgot about the restriction in travel across the international border. In normal years, about 10% or so of attendees at Sturgis would be from Canada. This year, probably very few. But I understand attendance is down about 50% anyway because of the epidemic.
The Economist thinks we need to be spending much more on vaccines. If we end up learning a lot about viruses over the next ten years it will not have been a complete waste. It is remarkable how little we do know.
Paywall.
But devil’s advocate anyway -
Much of what is being spent is not advancing the basic science about this virus or of vaccine technology. It is funding the build of production infrastructure much of which may never get used. It is also money that to no small degree is being diverted from other disease research, prevention, and treatment programs. Progress on malaria, AIDS, TB, multiple vaccine preventable diseases, cancers … many are at best on hold. To go with the part of the analogy they made before the paywall cuts it short - you’ve already ordered lots of pizzas from from lots of different pizzerias out of the fear that if you don’t get one in an hour you’ll die of hunger, expecting that most will go to waste. Is ordering more pizzas from more pizzerias really the best thing to do with the limited funds you have? Maybe consider that your fear that says the only way to avoid dying of hunger is a pizza within an hour is incorrect, that maybe there will be no pizza from anywhere anytime soon, and also consider how to proceed without dying of hunger in that case?
I’ve been wondering if this infusion of money into mRNA vaccines might pay dividends similar to the space race. It seems like a technique that potentially has promise not only against future viruses, but also against cancer.
Sorry, I subscribe.
A summary:
- 700,000 deaths from coronavirus worldwide
- currently increasing by 40,000 per week
- actual numbers likely higher
- has cost 8% of global GDP in 2020
- sharpest contraction since Great Depression
- world has spent a mere $10B on vaccines
- murky estimate - 4B doses available, possibly in a year or two
- in theory could vaccinate 50% of people
- in practice much less because: many won’t get regulatory approval, pass clinical trials, provide full protection, protect special populations (eg: the elderly), require only one dose or may protect person but not stop them transmitting disease to another
- the US has bought 2 doses per citizen
- but this may not be enough
- world should view vaccines as insurance
- should spend much more to ensure at least one avenue of research is effective and can be scaled up
- spending $100-200B to guarantee tens of billions of an effective vaccine far less than $7 trillion in funding promised by world govt’s to preserve incomes and jobs
- would minimize problem of rich countries outspending poor countries with no access to vaccine (“vaccine nationalism”)
- about 80 countries interested in pooling resources
- gov’ts take dim view of overproducing when large percentage of research may turn out to be useless
- want to avoid criticism of being wasteful
- govt’s need to view vaccine like insurance, before you know what may happen
- especially so if future pandemics likely
I think this is a good perspective.
19,805,292 total cases
729,591 dead
12,721,850 recovered
In the US:
5,149,723 total cases
165,070 dead
2,638,470 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Hawaii has entered triple-digit territory every day now. It was 100+ a day for a few days, then 201 yesterday and 231 today. 31 deaths to date, five of them this week alone, with a sixth possible being investigated as to whether it’s a Covid death or the victim died of something else. If it’s determined to be a Covid death, that will make a total of 32. Total case count is 3346.
Hawaii just reimplemented interisland quarantines and shut dowb parks, beaches and a bunch of other stuff starting today. Bars had already been closed.
A useful chart for assessing risk:
