I’m sure RivkaChaya can answer for themselves, but I’d like to chime in here.
I don’t think it’s just Thanksgiving, but alot of events that can give a false sense of security.
As I pointed out the US stands at 27 million confirmed cases. Less than 8% of the population. And that’s a year into the disease. That’s a huge number for a disease and with deaths topping 400,000 the ferocity of this disease should not be underestimated. But at the same time that’s not that many people and so the odds of any one person getting it at any specific time is pretty small. So there are plenty of people who have engaged in risky behaviors and have not gotten sick. There have been plenty of weddings that weren’t super spreader events, and plenty of restaurants that have been open with without killing off all their customers. And plenty of family meals that have been uneventful. And this can lead to a false sense of security. “Nobody got sick at Pam’s bat mitzvah, why should I sacrifice?” “Why can Home Depot be open but my church can’t”
But it’s a backward way of looking at the problem.
It’s like the drunk who drives home from the bar every week with no problems. It’s not that the dangers of drunk driving have been over emphasized, it’s just that Otis has been lucky so far. But the next time is just as dangerous.
This is exactly the kind of statistic that causes so much difficulty in describing medical events.
Exaggerating, we can say that all accidents are caused by drunkenness, and still say that the reason Otis has not had an accident so far is because it’s not very likely to happen.
Well, where is the threshold where all that becomes evidence, or at least an argument in favor of, a legitimate sense of security, rather than a false one? Does anyone really know?
Except that there’s clear evidence that drunk drivers actually experience accidents at 2x the rate of sober drivers and are 7x more likely to be involved in an accident with fatal injuries. So, yeah, Otis may have gotten in an accident whether or not he was drunk, but it’s still a good idea to not let him drive.
Sure we do. It’s the point at where additional mitigations no longer have an effect. Or the reverse: where the easing of mitigations no longer cause a sharp increase in cases. But we don’t have to take it to that extreme. We can use a cost benefit analysis. Clearly, no mitigations with a disease as contagious and deadly as this one is not the right answer. But mitigations come at a cost so where do we stop? Well, we can turn to everyone’s favorite comparator the flu. The flu has an average daily death rate of 95, covid currently has an average daily death rate of 1,232. Until we can get that rate down to a comparable level, I think the phrase " sense of security" is moot.
But you were talking about individuals assessing their own levels of risk, were you not? If you were, then broad averages across entire populations are likely not to be the best measures.
Well, this isn’t really the thread for this discussion, but I will say one more thing and then be done. Risk assessment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The risk of catching covid for any single person may be low, but the overall risk to the community is still significant. I may be willing to accept that level of risk, personally, but that acceptance raises the level of risk not only for myself but for my community as well.
Going back to the drunk driving analogy. I may be willing to accept an elevated level of risk, but my driving drunk elevates the risk to the community and we as a group have decided that that is not acceptable, so its against the law. The risk to the community outweighs the risk to the individual. And that’s where we still are with this disease.
Well, right, that’s a separate issue. We got off on this little tangent as part of a discussion about what the case numbers meant vis a vis the holidays, and whether people might have factored in a seemingly disease-free Thanksgiving as part of their Christmas plans. @RivkaChaya thinks not, but I wouldn’t be so sure. People who decided to ignore public health advice on Thanksgiving may have been acting in their own best interests already – or, as they saw them, at least – and not thinking about the community. If so, I don’t know that many of them would have changed their minds in the month in between.
I don’t know if this is too much of a hijack, but how exactly do you folk assess risk?
Some of you suggest you have considerable knowledge about COVID, infection, and immunity, either reflecting pre-existing interest and knowledge, or from study over the past year. I have found it a challenge finding the sweet spot between the extremes of being willfully ignorant and pursuing a full-time study of virology.
My personal approach has been to assume a level of personal protection that I believed reasonable and sustainable. Some would think me too careful, many would think me not careful enough. My personal practices have not changed much over the past year - as various infection numbers have waxed and waned.
Many folk I encounter IRL place some weight to government statements. Here in the Chicago area, the city/state have been relaxing many restrictions. Which would suggest an easing of the risks. But, I personally don’t miss going out to restaurants or other crowded places, so I continue as I have been doing.
I guess this is a very long way of asking, how can an “average person” assess the true risk/trend WRT COVID?
Getting back to the discussion about theoretical immunity thresholds, here’s a story in the San Francisco Gate about the situation in India that could perhaps shed some light.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/India-s-coronavirus-puzzle-Why-case-numbers-are-15924381.php
Epidemiologists in India say that there is only one likely explanation for the decrease in new cases: The virus is finding it harder to spread because a significant proportion of the population, at least in cities, already has been infected.
The decline is not related to a lack of opportunities for transmission. India has fully reopened its economy, with elementary schools being the only major exception. Restaurants, malls and markets are bustling. Masks are common in some indoor settings and mandatory in Delhi and Mumbai, but in many parts of the country, they’re scarcely seen on the streets.
India’s big cities probably have “reached the threshold of population immunity,” said Giridhar Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India. The virus will continue to spread, he added, but “the quantum of infected cases will not be the same.”
Lots of data mentioned in the article, including serology testing over time. Seems to be some optimism in India that they may be turning a corner. Hope for the USA, perhaps.
Dinsdale I’m one of those you talk about. I’m not a doctor or scientist, but my chosen field (live theater) has been completely shut down this whole time, so I find myself with plenty of study time. And I have a high motivation to understand what’s going on as I am the caretaker of two elderly women, my 80 yo mother (who passed away in Sept from non covid related heart failure) and a 90 yo neighbor.
I understand your confusion, the info can often be very dense in medical and statistical facts, and they can be seemingly contradictory as the knowledge of how this disease works has progressed. I think your best bet is to try to understand how certain decisions that effect your life are made. You mention Chicago, which is where I live, too. The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago use similar metrics for making their decisions: the positivity rate (the percentage of people who test positive for the virus) and new hospital admissions/deaths. As these numbers rise and fall to certain benchmarks it triggers which phase in the recovery program we enter. IL just recently had all 11 regions enter Phase 4 which is the second to last, Phase 5 being all restrictions lifted, but not quite all clear.
The thing to remember with the state and local regulations is that TPTB are trying to balance health and the economy, so when they say that restaurants can be open at 1/4 capacity, they’re not saying it’s safe to go, just safer than it was before.
No matter where you are or what level of mitigations are in place, we all have to remember that we’re still in the thick of this. The virus is still raging. Personal mitigations (masks, distance, staying separate as much as possible) are still our best bet and will be for some time to come.
0.0000000001 * 7 = 0.0000000007
The medical literature is full of discussions about how misleading statistics like “7 times more likely” are when describing events.
So yeah it’s not a good idea to drive while drunk (or tired, which is approximately equivalent), and also, it’s an example of the kind of medical statistic that can be meaningless without context, and worthless with context: even if all accidents are caused by drunkeness, that, in itself, doesn’t mean that you (or Otis) have to be lucky to avoid accidents
This is an example of the use of medical statistics, not a discussion on the wisdom of driving drunk (or tired).
Thx for the answer.
Pretty early on, my wife and I decided upon a course that impressed us as reasonable and that we thought we could sustain. Hasn’t been overly onerous for the past 11 months - we can stick w/ it for however much longer it takes to get over this hump.
The mixed messages just get confusing - not just institutions, but also individuals. With only 1 exception, everyone I personally know who claims to have been completely isolating - hasn’t.
At times I find it curious to think of how much time and attention go towards a single issue - like Covid, or the election. Makes me wonder how much we could accomplish if we directed that elsewhere - like TV! 
Yes I understand the point you (Melbourne) were trying to make. 7x almost zero is still almost zero.
The point I’m trying to make is: just because something looks safe from a particular point of view doesn’t mean it’s safe from every other point of view.
Maybe I’m reading too much into your op, but I took the underlying premise to be that the downward trend in cases could be an indication that the virus is no longer as dangerous as once was and so we can start talking about getting back to normal. I disagree wholeheartedly with that assessment. The apparent slowing of the rate of infection does mean that the medical establishment will start to recover somewhat and so the more draconian mitigations (such as restaurant closures and gatherings bans) can be eased up somewhat. But if we move too fast we’ll end up right back in the shit.
Yep. And this is a good reason for caution in the easing of restrictions. No matter what level we’re in there’s gonna be a significant portion of the community who mostly abides by the regulations, but not completely (myself included) Just like on the highway the people going 5 mph over the limit don’t think they’re speeding.
Still waiting on that Gilligan’s Island reboot myself!
Yes, and No. I live in a different country, have minimal idea what restrictions and compliance actually are in the USA, and aren’t particularly interested*.
Back to the yes: the underlying premise of the OP was to question if the downward trend in cases could be an indication that the virus is no longer as dangerous as once was in the USA.
I recognize that facts about regulation and compliance inform the answer to the substantive question, so I don’t think that area is off-topic for discussion.
*Actually, not even vaguely interested. In my own country, closed boarders, no epidemic, no vaccination program, no recovered immunity, it’s apples and oranges.
I’ll believe it when deaths decline steadily (that is not like attributable to spiking or ebbing and flowing). And maybe not even then.
No, we’re not.
I’m just looking at the new cases. If the deaths don’t follow that new cases, we’ll have something calling for more than just discussion.
We would only ‘end up right back in the shit’, in that scenario, if certain assumptions were true. (Those assumptions would include a still-large pool of susceptible hosts and diminishing infection numbers caused by some artificial methods for isolating that pool of hosts.) But in another scenario the diminishing infection numbers are a result of a diminishing pool of susceptible hosts, in which case we’d only end up ‘back in the shit’ if they became susceptible again.
I’m not sure anyone has reason to be certain here, one way or the other.
and that means what? Should we all know it?