32,413,887 total cases
987,742 dead
23,928,589 recovered
In the US:
7,185,471 total cases
207,538 dead
4,437,575 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife have both tested positive.
“The order would also prohibit local governments from restricting business operations unless they can justify the economic cost of such actions.”
Hey, what’s the worst that can happen, am I right?
32,765,201 total cases
993,463 dead
24,178,344 recovered
In the US:
7,244,184 total cases
208,440 dead
4,480,719 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
We’ll start the new week going over 1,000,000 deaths worldwide.
I watched the session he had with experts the other day. He made the case that two relatively heavily infected counties, I believe Broward and Miami-Dade, had taken different approaches with regard to reopening restaurants, with one opening widely and the other not, with no discernible effect. So, I guess the answer to your question would be that the worst thing that can happen already had a chance to happen yet did not, they believe. I mean, if you’re gonna follow the data and science, you have to go all the way, don’t you?
I found his approach to ‘rights’ to be really refreshing in this sad day and age. He said that the citizens of his state have a ‘right to work’ and a ‘right to operate their businesses’, He talked about a ‘bill of rights’ for students. These are normally things that all Americans would applaud, I would have thought.
He also pointed out that Disney World has been installing capacity limits of their own accord, not by dictate, and that they are of course more than welcome to do so. I think some people would take away from this story that the government there is telling people they have to go back to work. The way I read it, they are telling people they can, and it’s up to them whether they do or not. Those are two very different things.
In a different time, anything but such an approach would just not have been possible in America. Just not possible.
It’s also ironic that such controlling measures like masking are at a time when Trump rules America. Think about that.
Two articles offering theories, not mutually exclusive, on why some get so sick while some groups hardly get ill.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/hidden-immune-weakness-found-14-gravely-ill-covid-19-patients
Up to them, or up to the people hiring them?
I get your point, but I’m not sure that matters, or at least not unless there is some outside agency that is willing and able to keep paying wages to people for staying home.
It seems to me that there has always been a kind of twisted logical leap by those who insist on lockdown policies for the community at large, in that each individual already more or less always has the right to his or her own individual policies. I get that not everyone of that ilk can afford to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak. But what I think they don’t get is that not everyone else can afford the policies they insist on. It seems terribly self-centered, while at the same time not claiming much self responsibility.
I’ll put it this way: I’d be a whole lot more impressed by the policy makers (or their fans) if they would give their own salaries straight to charity for the entire duration of any lockdown policies they put in place.
That ought to be the government, in this sort of emergency; and even the USA has done some of it, despite much of our government being unwilling and all of it already being deep in deficit due to having cut taxes when things were booming.
If things are closed down, in many cases even as it is there’s at least some unemployment. If the employer decides to have people come in to work, they’re no longer eligible for unemployment if they decide to stay home instead.
And I think it’s a mistake to assume that it’s only or primarily those who have enough money to give large chunks of it away who want nonessential businesses to stay shut, and only or primarily those without who want them opened. Some of the people wanting things to stay shut down are the people without money. They tend to be doing the jobs at highest risk. Some of those wanting everything opened up are able to work from home, or in low-risk situations; or don’t themselves need to work at all, but want others to do so in order to allow them to go out and amuse themselves.
Plus which, of course, there’s the fact that nearly everybody needs to go out occasionally, and may not want to be put in increased risk at the doctor’s office or grocery store by people who wanted to exercise their choice to go out to bars. Individual choice is all very well, but in the case of infectious diseases people aren’t choosing only for themselves. Officials who keep things shut down are choosing for others – but so are individuals who choose to behave in risky fashions. It’s just less clear exactly who else they’re choosing for.
Boy, that really is what this has come down to, isn’t it? The drunken revellers versus the suburban castle dwellers, stamping out that last little bit of risk on their way to Whole Foods.
God help us. Nobody is going to win.
I see it much more as the old folks needing to be able to go to essential appts such as the doctors, PT or the dentist vs. those with cabin fever or inhibited capacity for delayed gratification.
Still is yours vs. mine.
I’ve given up doctors, PT and the dentist. What have you given up?
Plus which, @SayTwo appears to have responded to this
by assuming that the only people who want things to stay closed are suburbanites who shop at Whole Foods.
33,058,423 total cases
998,745 dead
24,409,745 recovered
In the US:
7,287,561 total cases
209,177 dead
4,524,108 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Exactly. Your post couldn’t have been more even-handed, yet SayTwo’s response was stunningly obtuse.
Neither one of us has a great idea of exactly how many in each sort of bracket are for one policy or the other, but I imagine it’s fair to assume that those whose lives or livelihoods are most impacted by restrictions are also the most likely to resent them. To me that doesn’t seem much worth debating, especially because it’s really beside the point anyway.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s self-centered behavior to say, essentially, ‘I need you to keep me out of harm’s way when I do the things I need or want to do, so I’m gonna need you to not go to work, school, or certainly not the bar - and for that matter, anything else that you could just as well live without’.
5 times less likely to get COVID if you wear glasses:
In this cohort of 276 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Suizhou, China, the proportion of daily wearers of eyeglasses was lower than that of the local population (5.8% vs 31.5%).
Hospital staff I know are required to wear face shield/glasses at work. You may wish to add sunglasses to your COVID fashion wear.
I was mildly surprised (above) to hear that smokers were no more likely to get COVID than non-smokers: cilia in the trachea normally provide some protection against respiratory illness, and smoking destroys cilia. Then there’s this:
The results were consistent; we found the highest expression of ACE2 in nasal secretory cells (equivalent to the two goblet cell clusters in the previous dataset) and ciliated cells
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0868-6
Those of you who have taking an interest in the ‘war on smoking’ may remember that Doctors used to prescribe smoking for respiratory disease. I’ve always assumed that was equivalent to Trump’s ideas on the internal use of antiseptics, but who knows: perhaps there was an observed effect.