I meant, 5 waves? 10? 50? Just an order of magnitude question.
I know it won’t be “for some time,” which I take to mean 6-18 months, but eventually, do we know we’re reaching the end because the waves do get smaller?
If the waves were to get smaller, that would only be because there were now fewer vectors, either thru death or immunity, and I don’t think we’re likely to experience that at all, provided the vaccine(s) pan out and are able to be distributed efficiently.
But near as I can tell, this is like experiencing a wave interference pattern in a small, imperfectly round area, except it isn’t just two waves, it’s an ongoing series of waves with the source and the amplitude of each one unique from, altho related to, any others.
Or there’s no decline in amplitude over time so each wave intersection only creates slightly bigger waves. Maybe that’s a better description.
But the more vectors there are, the bigger each wave will be.
We really have no way of knowing that other than perhaps instinctive fatalism. The Spanish flu certainly isn’t still going. The spread of this disease still has plenty of mysteries. Africa seems to be getting off incredibly light. Certain areas of Asia are doing well with a wide variety of mitigation responses. Nordic countries in Europe, aside from Sweden were doing quite well without mask mandates. France is in trouble despite a rather ruthless lockdown last spring. Ditto Panama.
As noted, most states have experienced their highest (seven day averaged) daily new case reports in the time since last weekend started, so the bad news is already out there. But a couple of states have actually gone on to new highs just yesterday, breaking their previous highs from less than a week ago:
Rhode Island
Wyoming
Pennsylvania
Connecticut
Virginia
Nebraska
California
New Mexico
Kansas
Tennessee
My thought is that “waves” is simply the wrong way to think about it. It isn’t waving and hasn’t done so since the beginning.
It’s everywhere now and just like pushing your hand against a spring, whenever you relax, it pushes your hand back. You push harder and it backs off. How many back-and-forths there are or will be is totally determined by how you choose to move your hand. The spring is a constant force, but essentially passive; it only knows how to expand and you control the “how much”.
The problem for “you” = @ThelmaLou is that the “you” pushing back against the COVID spring is everybody on Earth, but most especially those folks in your state and county. Shame about your location my dear.
As and when we start getting thorough mask compliance in your country, state, and county, and sensible behavior on group gatherings, and increasing fractions of the populace being vaccinated, the spring essentially gets weaker and weaker. But it will still be pushing and whenever we back off, it’ll instantly move to fill whatever space for spread that we open for it to take.
At some future date this available space for transmission gets small enough that the difference becomes 1 person dies in TX this month versus zero do. But given the reality of COVID in the rest of the world, that future date might easily be 5 years from now.
Which ties back to the mental health threads’ conclusions that we can’t, any of us, wait until the risk is zero. We won’t live that long.
We all can and all should wait until the risk is lower, and more than that, be doing everything we can to lower that risk today. But you, any you, should be thinking about how safe will be “safe enough” for you to resume each of, and eventually all of, your pre-COVID activities.
This is what I was wondering…
But again, is e.g. 1 death in Texas per year the goal you want to set your sights on? For “you” as the e.g. Texas authorities and for you as @ThelmaLou?
Long before we get the worldwide, national, or state disease levels tamped down that far we’ll still be at darn low levels. Very roughly 12,000 Americans die every single day of something, old age if nothing else.
I’m not here to make light of COVID. The US death toll of ~250K so far is insane. But the right answer isn’t zero either. Because we can’t make it zero from COVID any more than we can make the death toll of cars or bathtubs or flu zero.
I think the right answer is to get the infection rate down low enough that when we do find someone through testing we have enough capacity to trace contacts and test them.
Right now contact tracing is pointless becuase the number of possibles is so large and so widespread that it is just like trying to sweep out the Stygian Stables
California just issued a 10 PM to 5 AM curfew, effective 10 PM Saturday. For a month.
Good! We’ve been in a “slow surge” for a while and yet the number of cars on the road and people in the shops is nearly the same as pre-COVID. LA has had a problem with the club scene simply moving to mansions and large estates, which the cops have difficulty shutting down, and when they do, they just pop up somewhere else (there are a lot of mansions in LA).
What are those ways? Not trying to be facetious, it’s way past time those ways were up and running.
It’s not the whole state, just counties in the “purple tier”–the most stringent of four. But that does include the majority of counties and all of Southern California.
I have been talked to my mother on the phone almost every other day since the beginning of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, we would talk once or twice a month.
My father exchanges texts and video messages with his kids since he’s not a phone person. He’s also on Facebook all the time.
You seriously can’t think of ways to mitigate social isolation in the elderly besides visiting them?
Seriously, I humbly suggest you refrain from sweeping generalizations. I don’t have kids, siblings, or any other family. So even if visiting were permitted, there would be no family to visit me. Some of us elderly were isolated before the pandemic, but now even the few social activities we went out to enjoy have been curtailed.
You seriously think most 90+ folks in nursing homes can hear/see well enough, or are tech savvy enough, or mentally/physically sound enough for phone calls, texts, or video messages to be a practical alternative to human contact? Especially those with dementia who seem to be the most at-risk.
Nice! Gov. Newsom said that he was reading studies on curfews a couple days ago. I can’t find any of those studies by googling, but I’m glad that he had some.
At this moment, as of a couple days ago, counties in the purple tier encompasses over 94% of the population. Almost the whole state went purple in a day, a couple days ago. The parts that aren’t purple aren’t very populated, and there aren’t even many of those areas.
Seriously, I humbly suggest you refrain from sweeping generalizations.
I am going to not-so-humbly suggest you look up the definition of “generalization”.
It is irrefutable that there are multiple ways to mitigate loneliness. Just because they might be imperfect or infeasible for every single human being doesn’t mean we don’t have any alternatives to “let’s bring grandma to Thanksgiving dinner because she’s going to die soon anyway.”
You seriously think most 90+ folks in nursing homes can hear/see well enough, or are tech savvy enough, or mentally/physically sound enough for phone calls, texts, or video messages to be a practical alternative to human contact?
You seriously think you are engaging me in a non-disingenuous manner right now?
You asked me about elderly people–which is a pretty big, diverse demographic. If you want to argue that nursing home residents who can’t see/hear/or think are especially vulnerable to loneliness, you will have no argument for me. But even in this situation, there are options besides bringing these folks to Thanksgiving dinner so they can be breathed on by every grand kid who wants a hug. Like one-on-one visitations.
I call my mother every day and we chat for half an hour or so. One of the things we talk about is how hard the isolation is on her. Oddly enough, she doesn’t seem to find a half an hour phone call to be the same as sitting down for a face to face visit. I’ve been able to here her cognitive abilities lessen day after day and I am positive its because she sits around at home all day long instead of being out and about like she used to.
I’m happy your phone calls to your folks are all they need to not feel isolated and lonely. It doesn’t really seem to hold true for most elderly I know (including me).
Maybe you nor @ThelmaLou don’t know what I mean by “mitigate”? I’m confused why y’all are giving me such a hard time.
To mitigate doesn’t mean to “completely alleviate”. It means to reduce harm to a manageable level.
Yesterday I felt lonely. I am a loner who rarely ever feel lonely. But yesterday some social anxiety crept in after I fumbled a staff meeting, and it triggered feelings of loneliness and hopelessness. I crawled into bed last night and hoped I would wake up dead, that’s how bad I felt.
I decided this morning that my mitigation plan would be to work in the office. I haven’t been in the office in a month. Only a few people were there and I’m not particularly close to them, but I enjoyed the banter and chit-chattiness I had with them. Note that I’m still not feeling not-good. But I feel better than I did yesterday. I feel less “kill me now” and not so hopeless. I successfully mitigated my feelings of loneliness and despair.
My mother is super lonely, which is why I pick up the phone when she calls me now instead of letting it go to voice mail (which is what I used to do pre-pandemic). I know she’s still lonely even after we hang up. But I know talking to her is still helpful to her. And our talks are very helpful to me. But alas, no, they aren’t perfect. Nothing is fucking perfect!
But there are plenty of lonely people right now who have friends and family in their faces 24/7. Loneliness is less about having people in your presence and more about feeling emotional connectedness with others. Loneliness is a bitch.
I don’t know why people seem to think I need a lecture on loneliness, but OK.
Do you think you could show how well a telephone call acts as a mitigating factor against social isolation in the elderly? I figure that, like myself, you are not a mental health expert. I would not be shocked to learn that weekly phone calls are almost useless but I get the impression you would be.