Coronavirus

[TrickstaPriest]

Just now, Old Man said:

"We're falling really slowly, so it's safe to take off the parachute.  The harness is really chafing my nads."

 

That's a somewhat disengenuous meme, because there are probably areas that can.  But there's certainly businesses that probably can't open, and still need to be on some sort of support system.

[death tribble]

Italy now has over 30,000 dead.

We have had the PM on TV saying the lockdown will be lifted gradually.

[TrickstaPriest]

8 minutes ago, death tribble said:

Italy now has over 30,000 dead.

We have had the PM on TV saying the lockdown will be lifted gradually.

 

That's... not a great time to be saying that, unless the death rate has dropped substantially...

 

The basic of it is, any location that's had a high rate of deaths probably has had a high rate of infection regardless of testing.  If it had a high rate at any time, it's certainly going to explode after lockdown is relaxed, far faster than the local government can react.

[death tribble]

Italy has had a bad time with the virus but surprisingly is the second European nation to hit 30,000. Britain was first.

Spain and Italy have slowed down the casualty rate and are starting to ease lockdown.

 

America however will surely hit 100,000 dead due to the larger number of cases it has and the fact that it started anti-virus measures later.

[ScottishFox]

43 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

I guess the point I'm (and others) are making is you are equivocating the wrong things.  You are arguing that the virus isn't deadly because it hasn't infected a lot of people, so we should relax the extreme measures we are taking to prevent it from infecting people.  That's a reasonable argument for certain areas.

 

But you are arguing it with a statistic that comes only from those extreme measures.  So it's a nonsensical reason you are proposing for your argument.

 

Let me be clear.  I do believe this plague is much worse than seasonal flu.  It appears to be doing real, lasting damage to people that we do not get from the flu.  It's also super contagious.

 

However, even in places that did not shutdown AT ALL, the death rate is VERY low.

 

Let's look at South Dakota which shutdown exactly nothing.  They are clocking in at 3.76 deaths per 100,000.

 

The homicide rate in relatively safe, affluent, north Dallas is about 6 per 100,000.  Death by car accident and other accidents is about 10x higher than Coronavirus (so far, I know it will get worse).

 

Did we shut down the country for homicide or the risk of accidents?  No.

 

The global shutdown *might*, per the UN, starve 100 MILLION people to death.  I do believe we have extended the shutdown too long and we're doing more damage than good at this point.

 

[TrickstaPriest]

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

However, even in places that did not shutdown AT ALL, the death rate is VERY low.

 

Yes.  And in some places that did shut down, the death rate per day is still higher than any event in the last century.

 

edit:  I don't disagree with the purpose of the point, that there are a lot of rural places that probably will stay very low.

 

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Let's look at South Dakota which shutdown exactly nothing.  They are clocking in at 3.76 deaths per 100,000.

 

"The population density in South Dakota is 11.3 people per square mile (52nd out of 56)."
 

"Texas has just 105.2 people per square mile and those figures are merely the 26th highest in the US."

 

Because of exponential growth rate, the difference in infected is going to result in cases much higher than merely x10 the existing rate in South Dakota.  There is a tipping point in terms of population density, but I can't speak to what that is.

 

That's an argument for opening Texas, especially the rural parts of it.  But don't use bad data to argue for it (2.7 death rate out of 100,000).  That's disengenuous, and I'm calling it out for your sake.  I don't want you or others spreading bad reasoning, even if it's quippy and quotable.

 

The same goes for the tired parachute analogy.  It's the assumption that there's a single totalular approach, when the workability of that was long behind us.

 

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Did we shut down the country for homicide or the risk of accidents?  No.

 

Homicide and accidents don't increase exponentially with availability/effect.  Please, stop using that as part of your argument as well.  Disease is one of the only problems that does.  We can argue that civilization breakdown/displacement could be another.

 

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

The global shutdown *might*, per the UN, starve 100 MILLION people to death.  I do believe we have extended the shutdown too long and we're doing more damage than good at this point.

 

I'm interested in how this 100 million starving will relate to the US.  There are specific locations that are probably in danger of starving, and this is a good argument for reorganizing and making sure areas responsible for food production stay open.

 

 

I'm literally arguing with you for the sake of you spreading good arguments for what you want. 

 

I literally despise the memes being used in this argument, comparing disease to accidents and giving wholly bad numbers for your argument.  (edit2: to be clear, to my perspective these memes are simply being spread to you and then beyond you)

 

edit:  And I wanted to apologize for starting this as an argument to begin with.  I tried to be more polite and general in my response.

[Cygnia]

Warning for NSFW language

 

 

[TrickstaPriest]

Thanks for the heart.

 

The parachute analogy is effective when arguing with people who are just using emotional (and misguided) arguments of a similar nature - but to me it's a similarly problematic meme: it's an oversimplification of what needs to happen for a reopening.

 

We know we can't stay closed, for the sake of maintaining food preparation and distribution if nothing else (setting aside economic arguments, which gets into layers of complexity and society I won't deal with).

 

But human mentality works with connected arguments, so to connect 'staying closed for safety' to 'an oversimplified perspective of re-opening' is a huge problem to me.  A more correct argument would involve another oversimplified argument, and then either breaking open (edit- huh, never finished this thought:) why the arguments are oversimplified, or using the parachute argument as a means to drive the conversation/argument in a productive direction.

 

Memetic arguments have become a big thing online, and it's interesting to me for two reasons:

 

1)  Years back (while Obama was in office) I started to consider the problem of memes as being tracable/responsible to no one and being spread with little cost and effort.  It's when I started getting involved in infosec more.

2)  Recently I've been watching more videos on religious cults, and the "thought terminating cliche" is interesting to me.  Not as a tool for convincing people, but as a 'reinforcer' to existing behavior.

 

I also could argue that certain memetic arguments are useful for 'drawing lines in the sand', which is a powerful tool for voting control.

 

So as I think of issues in memetic arguments I try and challenge them.  This isn't the political thread, so I'm trying to keep that here to pointing out data that I know is bad.

 

 

I do sometimes wonder if training people to use arguments like these is useful for fostering anti-arguments to act as a self-reinforcer and isolator, but I expect anyone actually good at doing that makes more money than the government can sign on a paycheck... >_>

 

In Summary:

 

In terms of SF's numeric death rate - context matters hugely.  Both in terms of where that death rate is being argued from, and where the argument is intended to address.  It's a great argument for rural areas, so I wholly support that direction.  I'm sure it means you'll get more 'in the weeds' arguments that will be harder to address from using more context-heavy arguments, and convincing some people less.  The tactics I'm fighting are effective after all.  Sometimes they'll happen by habit, or need.

 

But someone arguing with better tools will get a lot more bilaterial support and hopefully can get more action based on those arguments.  At least, that's my hope (and intention).

[Iuz the Evil]

Food access is a serious problem in the United States right now. We are as of this week pushing out food assistance to about 10k youth (from 2700 normally) daily through student meals with closed schools. Just to pick one source. It's all connected, parental unemployment is massively increasing the need. For the general population the food bank had to ask for the National Guard to expand their mission for support because of the amount of folks needing assistance. CalFresh applications alone went up 78% in April. 

 

We will not be able to maintain that with existing resources. There's a desire to do it obviously, but we're going to hit some hard limitations pretty quick. 

 

Don't think that people having no food access is off the table in the United States. It is a matter of resources and timeline, with enough funding and major policy changes maybe... it's hard to say if this could be achieved beyond a month or two. The secondary impacts are starting to stack up in a pretty unnerving way. Rental issues are the next big one. Currently eviction is suspended, but it will drop back into place sometime, maybe the next phase, maybe later. 

 

Then we will have huge problems with housing. That stuff is coming in several waves as we move along. 

[TrickstaPriest]

2 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

Don't think that people having no food access is off the table in the United States. It is a matter of resources and timeline, with enough funding and major policy changes maybe... it's hard to say if this could be achieved beyond a month or two. The secondary impacts are starting to stack up in a pretty unnerving way. Rental issues are the next big one. Currently eviction is suspended, but it will drop back into place sometime, maybe the next phase, maybe later. 

 

Yeah, and I do appreciate you reminding folks that our creature comforts can disappear fast.  The breakdown of infrastructure is probably the other problem that becomes "exponentially bad" very quick.

 

Rental issues are a huge issue, and suspending eviction is currently just kicking a problem to 'future us', and its a problem that compounds over time.  (unlike coronavirus, in which it, in some ways, very slowly 'uncompounds' over time... heh)

[unclevlad]

South Dakota has few cases...that was also true with Nebraska until about a month ago.  Or worse, the data from Russia.  Way back when, we were wondering if they were withholding data?  Well they now have the 5th most reported cases, and they're on pace to blow past both Italy and the UK some time Tuesday.  11,000 new cases yesterday AND today...210K total.  The death count's lower, but just wait. 

 

Don't just look at where things are.  The central plains states (N/S Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas) are broadly similar in that they're fairly heavily rural.  Look at the patterns for Nebraska and Kansas, tho.  Yeah, Wyoming and Montana are fairly clear right now.  But take a deeper dive into the Montana data:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/montana-coronavirus-cases.html

 

Flareups.  Nasty, local ones.  That's how I read it.  Something comes in, and boom.  LOTS of cases.  I think this really illustrates that, yes, we can restart a lot of things...but *carefully*.  Because as the Kansas, Nebraska, and Russia data show...you might dodge the bullet for a while, but once it gets its toehold, you're gonna have a very hard time evicting it.

 

 

[Old Man]

How to achieve quick herd immunity in the U.S.

[Badger]

7 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

"We're falling really slowly, so it's safe to take off the parachute.  The harness is really chafing my nads."

 

It is either or.

 

On the economic side:

 

More weight.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

 

 

If Texas' first coronavirus death occurred on 3/17, then as of today it has killed 1133 Texans in eight weeks.  That's an annual rate of 7364, enough to put it at #7 on the list with the lockdown.  But Hero gamers are by definition good at math, so it's not hard to see it easily reaching #3 with a little help from undercounting, exponential growth, and mask-fearing manbabies.

[Badger]

well, I am not mask-fearing.  I just require oxygen.  😁

 

I've kind of gotten used to the cloth mask, for stretches of time.  Though, if I were to have the need for  any real physical exertion of any type, the thing might be too thick.

[ScottishFox]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

If Texas' first coronavirus death occurred on 3/17, then as of today it has killed 1133 Texans in eight weeks.  That's an annual rate of 7364, enough to put it at #7 on the list with the lockdown.  But Hero gamers are by definition good at math, so it's not hard to see it easily reaching #3 with a little help from undercounting, exponential growth, and mask-fearing manbabies.

 

John Hopkins has us at 1,094 at the moment.  We'll really need to see another couple of weeks to see how bad the re-opening is going to impact the case load.

 

I expect it to get worse.  I'm open to the idea it might get MUCH worse.

 

However, we're not seeing anything like exponential growth (yet) and several areas outside of Texas have shown a substantial drop-off in cases so an annual rate seems extremely unlikely.

 

The current Texas Two Week Trend analyzed on the Scottish Fox Hyper Net:

 

Louisiana has dropped off a lot:

 

New York is dropping off a lot:

 

Granted Texas seems to be going upward and will probably see double or triple the current numbers before it's over (maybe more).

 

Additionally, I bought the entire family a set of Arctic Cool gaiters (ninja masks basically) so we can look stylish as we walk into stores while I think to myself, "If I wore this shit in here 3 months ago, in Texas, they'd be shooting at me already.".

 

 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

I think the danger is that the numbers have not dropped to close to zero.  You see how quickly it went from one death to LOTS.  if the virus is still in circulation then the infection rate could spike VERY quickly once distancing measures have gone into abeyance.

 

We really do need some kind of prophylactic measures and treatments before we can go back to normal...

 

Doc

[Old Man]

Late entrants Russia and Brazil are making up for lost time.  The former's case trajectory is already ahead of all countries except Span and the U.S.  Brazil is about a week behind Russia but its trajectory looks to be about as steep.  Still, they have a long way to go to catch up to the current world champion of coronavirus, which alone accounts for 1/3 of all coronavirus cases in the universe.

[Starlord]

[Starlord]

[Starlord]

Ohio restaurant installs shower curtains to protect from Coronavirus 

 

Amsterdam restaurant installs tiny greenhouses to enjoy social distancing

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Hugh Neilson]

Well, I was going to comment on all the statistics for deaths per annum being compared to Cornavirus stats to date, but Old Man beat me to it.  How about getting the stats for other causes of death on a weekly basis, and comparing it to last weeks' deaths from Coronavirus as a more reasonable litmust test.

 

Of course, that's not the only impact.  What's the economic impact of, say, 5% of the population being "active cases" out of the workforce for several weeks, even if they can tough it out at home with no medical coverage?

 

The other challenge is that low-population density regions are the "safest" to reopen, based on stats.  But that holds true on average, not when a small urban centre starts with one case that explodes into the population - how many people in an urban center of 10,000, or 25,000, can be treated with local resources?