Meanwhile, the kids of the fast food employees, and GrubHub delivery people, and supermarket shelf stockers, are fending for themselves with no one knows what effect.
It’s really important, so we better do something no matter how unknown the net social distancing effect. That seems to be the idea.
But, hey, I can work from home if I want (true in real life). So I could put almost all the risk on near-minimum wage workers, if I so choose.
I liked your post.
People are scared. They want action. And I strongly believe democracy is the worst system except for all the others. So the voice of the people must be heard.
But in a different world, they should be doing:
Contact tracing.
Quarantine.
The research, into COVID-19, and many other diseases, which is being disrupted by university closures:
And that difference is size. The amount of people. The distance from the rest of the world. The difference between order and chaos.
In New Zealand we’ve had a team of scientists advising the government from the beginning, and they’ve acted on those recommendations as and when they’ve been made. We’ve got a competent functioning government and a reliable and working active safety net. Every case that has been identified has been contact traced. Order.
In America you have chaos. Its a great big giant fucking shit show. The people in charge don’t have a fucking clue what is going on. Jared Kushner asked for advice on Facebook.
Over the last few years the Trump administration has systematically sought to dismantle the US Federal government. They are utterly incapable now of avoiding a disaster. They are incapable of “thinking ahead” and have no strategy nor understanding of logistics. They have utterly failed here.
So it falls back to the individual States and in turn it falls back to individual governorships and mayoralties and individuals to try and sort things out. Its the hallmark of what allegedly “makes America Great”: the rejection of “socialism” and “the Federal government” and the embracing of the cult of the individual. But there is no way that a Mayor of a small town can organise contact tracing when they can’t even get anyone tested.
So they are implementing solutions that they are able to implement. Because there literally isn’t anything else they can do and the Federal Government isn’t going to come to their rescue. The solutions you suggest would have been great a couple of months ago if America had a functioning Federal Government that wasn’t completely staffed by incompetent morons. But that isn’t the case.
You aren’t suggesting a solution. There aren’t enough tests. Everything is going to be disrupted. Its just something everyone is going to have to deal with.
That’s what we should have done a month ago. With adequate tests, so all those contacts could be tested and monitored. But we didn’t. Today, in the mess we are in today, what should we do? Do you think we should send all the kids back to school on Monday? Tell people to quit wrecking the economy and go back to the mall?
Do you think we could still get away with just contact tracing? It’s over 3000 cases, now, that we know of–and lots of those, we don’t know where they got it.
It’s a novel virus; you don’t have immunity until your bodies develop antibodies to it. Some people have immune system that can immediately suppress the infection and develop antibodies, but there’s no herd immunity, and there’s no vaccine. When the infection attacks someone’s immune system, it’s going to be the first time their immune system has dealt with anything like it, which is why I say there’s no immunity to it -at least not initially.
The response so far seems to be to put money into the banks; it would be more reassuring to me if there were ways to put the money into the hands of households. I suspect that this recession will lead to more income and wealth inequality. Some people will never recover financially from the coming recession.
Emphasis on “that we know of”. For every person who has it, two more people will get it. What you’re seeing now is the number of people who were exposed to it starting from several days ago. The time from exposure to resolution - either recovery or death - typically lasts about 17 days, but it can be longer. Realistically, the number of cases is already probably in the tens of thousands.
In terms of closing the schools, there’s one option that no one seems to be proposing that makes senses to me: tell people to “school from home” in the same way we are currently telling people to work from home: do it if at all possible, but if it isn’t, go to work. I could pull my son, no problem–my husband is already home, and we don’t depend on the school for meals. I bet a lot of people, especially right now, would be happy to pull their kids. This would help both the kids who stay home and the kids who still need to go to school. Right now, the CDC recommends not closing schools but putting “social distancing” measures into effect. Every teacher I know thinks that’s hysterical. You can’t social distance in a school. There is virtually no workplace where people are held anywhere near as densely as in a typical classroom, and many classrooms are much more crowded than usual. In secondary education, with the changing classes schedule, we remix them every hour or so; in elementary school, they pick each other’s noses. It’s also not practical to close the cafeteria and keep the kids off the playground–if for no other reason than that would put extraordinary burdens on teachers to supervise their classes 8 hours straight, alone–and the littles are nightmares if they don’t get to run around.
If schools were open but attending was strongly discouraged, we could practice social distancing. With half as many kids, I could put a desk in between each one. With half as many kids in an elementary school, teachers could supervise the remaining students more carefully and make sure they aren’t sharing suckers. With half as many kids, there’s an exponential whatsit things decrease in the number of interactions happening each day, in total. I think half as many kids would have way more than half as much of an effect.
But no one has suggested this. I wonder if it’s because if you have school, average daily attendence comes into play, and no one is sure that won’t impact funding. But I could deliver distance lessons to the ones who could stay home–and it’d be easier for schools to makes sure half as many kids had technology.
Manda JO, I’m guessing no one has suggested it because for many schools, it would be business as usual. “School at place” would work well for students who have computer access and parents able to supervise them. It doesn’t work well for students without those things. I gotta think if an outbreak were to spring up in a school district where the majority of students were still attending classes and it was traced back to a teacher or a student (or cafeteria worker or janitor, etc.), then everyone would be screaming bloody murder.
Close everything down and everyone bitches. Keep everything open and everyone bitches. Try to strike a middle ground and everyone bitches when bad things happen. I think your idea makes perfect sense, but I can see how it would be political untenable.
I get what you’re saying, but cancelling school ALSO doesn’t work for kids without technology or parents to make them. Even in very low income areas, I bet a quarter to half of kids would be pulled from elementary schools, and half the kids in secondary schools.
And if school were semi open, parents could come get packets and lunch. Not ideal, but not nothing
I hear what you are saying too, but officials aren’t just shutting down schools for the benefit of the students. They are doing it to protect the community.
Right, but we are trying to also minimize the number of students who will go hungry, be left unsupervised at far too young an age, be physically and sexually abused (because lots of kids go to school to avoid that) and who will keep medical workers from being able to go to work. These are real consequences we need to face.
I wish I knew if keeping half the kids home would have 85% of the benefit, in terms of preventing spread, as keeping 100% home, or if it would have 25% of the benefit. I lean toward the 85%, because of the increased capacity to separate the children that remain. But it may be 25%, because if half are mixing, someone will be positive, and that’s enough. I really truly don’t know. But it’s weird to me that this option isn’t even discussed. Education is apparently to be compulsory or prohibited.
Where we are closing schools, we need to also have public guidance about what that means. I have half my son’s parents clamoring to start the play date rotation. The other half find that a shocking lapse in social responsibility. I have no idea if that’s acceptable mixing, or if having small scale playdates (one kid comes over here) is enough that we might as well have school. We’ve heard NOTHING from anyone about anything. Zero official guidance, tons of internet speculation. If mom is a nurse, is the community better off if she calls in to work because she has to stay home to watch her kids, or is it better if she sends them across the hall to the neighbor in her apartment complex, who has 2 of her own? What if the alternative is a lady she knows who is watching 5-10 kids from all over the city?
I don’t know… I tend to think that in this case, if you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, you may as well go ahead and do, as fast as you can.
I’m in the “shocking lapse of social responsibility” camp, FWIW. Now’s the time you hunker down and minimize as much voluntary contact as you can. I mean, everyone is still going to need to occasionally go to the grocery store for something (I doubt anyone thought of EVERYTHING), and you may still have to go to work, but there’s no point whatsoever in deliberately GOING to visit people when there’s a community-spread pandemic virus within your community.
What I’m seeing in my neighborhood (or on Nextdoor, anyway), is a bunch of stay-at-home-moms trying to organize some kind of “help the elderly” thing. I haven’t, but may soon start screaming at them online that it’s probably a TERRIBLE idea to have any contact with them if you don’t absolutely have to, and the concern here isn’t that they won’t be able to get supplies, etc… because of the self-quarantine, but that contact is potentially deadly, and the old folks are probably better off without their misguided do-gooding.
We are hunkering down, too, but I think there probably are things that are negligible risk. It’s all about numbers. I think its probably okay to get take out, but terrible to sit in a restaurant and potentially spread virus everywhere. I think it would probably be okay if me and a neighbor went on a walk together, but not sit in a car together or have our kids play. But I wouldn’t even go on a walk with my mom, who is over 70.
We need guidance. Isolate yourself as much as possible is so broad.
While schools are closed throughout Pennsylvania, there is one county, Philadelphia, where day cares are specifically exempted. I hope that in coming days more sensible adjustments will be made.
What is “as much as possible”? Do I need to start rationing food so that I can put off going to the grocery store for a month? Is it okay to stand in my yard and talk to my neighbor in his? My dad had an important but non life-threatening doctors appointment today. Was he wrong to go? Is it okay to get food from a drive through? Is it okay to sit in a friend’s living room at have a drink, if I wash real good before and after, and she wipes down the door knobs and the chair I was sitting in after I leave? Can I go for a walk in the park, if no one is near me?
There’s a huge range between literal shelter in place and avoid groups larger than ten.
When should we go to the hospital? Do we only go when we have shortness of breath? Does wheezing count? Do we go if we are coughing up blood? What temperature threshold over what duration should compel an ER visit? And do we need to call the hospital first? Is urgent care an option for some stuff or should we only go to hospitals?
A brutal reality that some COVID patients are going to encounter is that it’s not simply a matter of saying “I’m not feeling well, test me for COVID”; it’s about what the system can process you. In many cases, you will ** only be seen ** if you are exhibiting signs of respiratory distress. You may not even be tested, even if you present with some symptoms. We are way, way behind on this, and the response is far from uniform. In part, the system’s ‘triage’ is having to prioritize patients so that only the most extremely ill patients with known contact of other infected patients will be seen and evaluated. They will be sent home, pass others in the hospital or clinic on the way out, take mass transit on the way home, and the next time they visit the hospital, they’ll be fighting for their lives. And he won’t be the only one. The multiplier affect will crush the medical system. Just like in Wuhan, just like in Italy, doctors in NY or Boston or SF or LA will be forced to choose whether to take the incoming COVID patients who require special attention, special gear, special equipment, or whether to take the heart attack or automobile accident victims.
I’m still not sure why this is confusing. Will you die if you do not do X? If no, then do not do X.
Yes; that seems prudent.
Will either of you die of you do not have that conversation? If not, don’t have that conversation.
Prolly.
Will you die if you do not get food from a drive0thru? If not, then don’t get food from the drive thru.
Will you die if you do not sit in your friend’s living room and have a drink? If not, then don’t sit in your friends living room and have a drink.
This is the one thing you asked that is prolly safe to do, but again: will you die if you do not walk in the park? If not, then don’t walk in the park.
IMO it’s actually a fairly simple directive with easily figured answers to your questions.
