TrickstaPriest

Yes, and that's why I constructed my arguments/information that way specifically. It doesn't construe that rural areas cannot open up - just that people are underestimating how much damage could have been prevented, and how much damage could happen. My main concern is the general US approach of re-opening everything and going out everywhere, because that didn't go very well historically. But the history of the Spanish Flu is more complicated than just "second wave was much worse" - there are complicating factors that made it so, and it's not like it was tenfold worse (the way some have said). edit: It's mostly because the science and numbers are difficult for laymen to interpret that I go on such explanations - one size does not fit all as far as re-opening goes. I just want people to clearly understand what the numbers actually say. Pretty much.

I should add/edit - I want to remind people herd immunity is not lifetime as far as we know. Also that this hit us later in the flu season than normal, and only was spreading/doubling hard for a month (I think?), and was largely restricted by lockdown. Lastly, the numbers will probably go up when more deaths are reported and more testing is available. Unfortunately, the biggest failure in our response to this is the lack of testing that was available in other countries. If I had a second failure, it would be the public messaging that has been used towards society. We can't/won't stay closed, but because of the quirk of the rate of doubling, and the two week lag in between sickness and reported deaths, New York could have reduced the death of 18k people to closer to 4k by closing a single week earlier. Inaction for a single week in a single city has probably cost almost a quarter of the deaths the US has faced so far, for the country with the highest death rate in the world (and possibly highest per capita soon).

I don't think any major city like New York has had to deal with the piles and piles of dead bodies and ~chronically sick~ (correction: chronically hospitalized) people during a bad flu season before. 3.5 million is more dead per capita in the US than the Spanish Flu. Though I don't know that it would be as high as 1% of the total population. But 3.5 million would be an unprecedented disaster in the history of the United States, and more than every war, disaster, plague, and terrorist attack put together in raw numbers. Only the loss of Native American life would be worse. So 1% of total population probably an overestimate. But given the fatality rate hovers at around 5% and people are suggesting it's lower (1%?), accounting for hospital shutdowns, and even if it's only going to reach 70% of the population (given how virulent it spreads), 0.7% of total population is still equivalent to the Spanish Flu and still almost more than every other event in our history put together. But this is thumbnail math. Perhaps total infection spread will be much less than 70%, or the fatality rate (even with absolutely crushed hospitals) will be less than 1%. Maybe. (edit: my main course of doubt is spread-size, as I think 1% with closed hospitals is a plenty low estimate - it's likely to be higher) I do want to remind people herd immunity is not lifetime, and you did an effective proposal of that here.

Politics, the great enemy of getting anything done. It's unfortunate how much science and scientific analysis is affected by this. It's why keeping the actual scientific method and review process reliable is so important. Consider the damage that may have been avoided if the 1960s study inspecting heart problems hadn't been bribed to avoid sugar and to blame fat instead? How many have died or had terrible health because of decisions made based on that?

I'm sure anyone on the pol thread has heard my rants on that topic before. Yeah, talk radio is outright malicious now. (edit: I don't have to mention a political body and I don't want this to be a point of discussion - I am saying I don't treat the bodies' as equal or equivalent, but I treat each radio host on a case by case basis of 'bad score') I wholly expect there are a lot more covid deaths in cities where people died in their home and were uncounted than there were 'miscounted' covid deaths. New York was the primary example, where the amount of counted deaths shot up almost 30% so far once they incorporated the home-deaths. Compared to that, I expect most 'accidental' counts are pittance. Philosophically, if someone dies in a car accident because their hospital was packed due to COVID, does that count as a COVID death? There is an actual answer. Mostly, 'yes'. If you are counting covid deaths for the purposes of determining the loss of life due to covid being controlled (or uncontrolled), the shutdown of essential services like hospitals can be assumed to be part of the cost. You can argue it does not affect the lethality-rate, but the aftereffects of covid and the cost to society are worth considering when you are having these conversations of "is it worth it". In short. The 'killing rate' in a vacuum doesn't let you make informed decisions. But if the argument is should they be included/discluded from the reported lethality rate, the argument is liable to be academic. The only high rate of deaths that could move the needle on the covid fatality rate are sudden events from heart disease or car accidents.

Just shy of 60k deaths right now. It's really not great.

Thank you for highlighting that specifically. Devil is in the details... and people forget that easily.

I do hope the shutdown release works out. Arizona and Texas are very lucky in that they are very spread out and they are very warm. Under most circumstances I'd be highly concerned, but for the location. I still think it's not great for the cities. We are near the end of the normal flu season, but I think corona's been wandering in the US for only a part of that time. February is the peak flu time for the US, and it only was just starting to spread then.

Literally was doing all of this and making myself get out three times a week...

Modern medicine is definitely a factor, as are people voluntarily keeping apart and washing hands. But like the Spanish Flu, those numbers are going to surge upwards again as soon as this is too difficult to maintain and supplies run out. But hopefully not as catastrophically. I am said you can't work full time. That's been the hardest part of this for a lot of people. Many are furloughed and many small businesses are disappearing. That's the sort of thing I thought the fed should be stimulating, but...

Politics isn't about ideals, but narrative. That is to say, who is controlling the narrative, controls the ideals.

I'm not disagreeing. I think I actually sat down with the numbers and even 2.5 million dead is more than most historical American events (wars, plagues, and terrorist attacks) put together... not per capita, but. My thought is that other historical pandemics might have had something like a 5% mortality rate instead of the high numbers we give them, if they had the possibility of asymptomatic carriers as well.

Sorry, must have misread an earlier post. Was digging into that, I was curious about per capita comparisons. It's hard to estimate that, true. Maybe more work has been applied towards figuring the infection rates than I thought, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were numerous 'uncounted' infected with those - not that it makes them any less, but that it shows how a infectious pandemic can cause massive disruption if not stopped... then again, maybe I'm just guessing wildly...

Yeah, that's more or less what I expect. A big feature of PHX is that it's dry and spread out. There isn't a reliance on public transportation (unfortunately). That's probably kept us from knowing how spread it is, but you are right in that it also changes how dangerous it might be. The China data being off is pretty sensible. I have wondered today about something else - historical data on plagues and their fatality rate is probably heavily biased towards lethality as well. This is because they had no means of identifying viruses/bacteria unless they showed serious symptoms... It's a topic I don't know much about.

Also, the hundreds of thousands of child deaths are in reference to a UN report. I think they are referring to children not exclusively in the US. The main reason I bring this up is that it means it's not saying we are saving a hundred thousand adult lives by trading them for a hundred thousand children - it's saying that if we don't plan for this economic burden, a lot of US and other children could starve around the world. By that, I mean it's not a report exclusively about US response, but the individual responses of economically vulnerable countries as a whole.

I'm glad for the memes to cool the conversation down. Insofar as economy and death goes. I seem to recall a tidbit of information I had once upon a time that said the Fed has the calculation of an American life being 'worth' 6-8 million dollars. That is to say, that's the estimate they use when they decide if the cost of intervention into the loss of American lives is high enough to spend effort on. Keep in mind that the number may be a decade old... I suppose that's just an interesting FYI tidbit, but I would love to know how accurate/inaccurate that assessment is. I've noticed AZ has had almost no increase. But AZ has almost no testing, and apparently never has. I heard that they had a 'hit rate' of 33% of the tests they used, but that was just from one location. So in short, who knows what the American numbers are?

I think, one of the things that struck me about descriptions of the 'great leap forward' was that there was an unquestionable authority figure that everyone in the hierarchy was doing everything in their power to please. He held so much power that no one could argue, complain, or disagree, and that desperation to compete to please him led the 'middle management' to essentially, compete to work their serfs to death. Though it's been a loooong time since any of this has been described. It's these mechanisms, not the overall political theory, that tend to attract my attention. But of course, overall political theory shapes those mechanisms...

And thus the story of the last year and a half in my life is well-understood. XD

It is good to hear from you. Talking with my brother now to see if we can 3d print ear guards. And more importantly if they will accept them.

Yes. Mostly, I wanted to remind people and myself that having an 'independent standard' of what you should be concerned by is very important, and that I was actively rewriting my standard and my interpretation of events until I sat down and compared it against that standard.

While I don't know if a mutation would make the virus more dangerous, it will make it harder to get vaccines or treatment in place. That's the real problem (in my irrelevant opinion?) with looking at the situation as one that is going to be resolved with vaccines. I think it's going to be resolved by helping hospitals adapt to it, and what I can only hope will be some herd immunity to slow its progress after that point. I mean that for the proposed 'cures' that are being thrown around too. If 'rumors' of lack of herd immunity are real, then we have a real big problem.

Man. So when things started to look bad, I had a set of 'low bars' I felt would be good indicators of when 'it's time to leave'. This was sparked by how people talked about 9/11. 1. The government stops acting like civilians/populations are something to be protected (edit: or that their lives are something of value). 2. The government acts to spy and/or arrest arbitrarily. 3. Ownership of required materials (houses, cars) becomes financially infeasible for nearly everyone. But I've apparently learned a lot about governing bodies since the early 2000s. Since then I've had to add a slew of new details. I changed #3 to be 'of required materials or services'. I've had to add new categories: #4. Major public/government figures acting and advocating for violence/arrest of political enemies. #5. Major public/government figures being repeatedly fired/removed for minor disagreements with highest government figures. #6. Major, almost unilateral, restricted ability to purchase or sell materials or services based on minor or major political disagreements. Keep in mind 'political disagreements' are disagreements on topics or solutions, but I do not count the least-powerful party acting in 'violation of basic human rights' to be a 'political disagreement'. Perhaps this creates a loophole for anti discrimination laws, but I treat that on a case by case basis. If the laws are applied appropriately... well, I don't know if you know what it's like to live in an area where almost no one will sell to you, but... see #6. So, I thought I had to consider it a violation of #1 when Maria devastated Puerto Rico and our government turned any aid into a farce. Then I caught myself more than once reconsidering if it was a violation of #1. Then I thought the government threatening to refuse aid to California because of 'fire policy mismanagement' a violation of #1. The point of this. Today I caught myself considering whether the idea of an 'overreaction response to coronavirus' means #1 may not be violated. Even though the behavior of the government had nothing to do with some kind of initial knowledge of the situation, but it is a violation because there was a lack of interest in acting in readiness at all. Please consider this thought when you wonder if your morals or considerations of safety are being violated. It's been very easy and tempting to tell myself 'maybe it's not so bad' until I actually sit down with the priorities and thoughts I put together almost 20 years ago. Also for those who feel our current situation is an overreaction... maybe. But it's a lot cheaper to be prepared against a pandemic properly than to go into extensive quarantine because your federal government barely tried. That's the real failure here (to me) that is barely talked about.

welp hit refresh and lost my post. agh. Taking it personally is human when your core beliefs or identity is under attack. That's not wrong. The fear and bruises you are experiencing aren't because of a minor fear in itself - like I said, I don't think there has been a single time in my lifetime that I've seen a situation that so believably can collapse the entire country. And everything that's happened since has only encouraged that. It's the combination of having a government that is more-and-more pushing a system towards collapse, radio and news and youtube channels encouraging this outcome, and a small but eager population willing to push the entire thing. This isn't just going to tow the line, it's stressing a system to its breaking point, and playing chicken with who or what will break it first. The fact that it's small numbers (in all of this) isn't very helpful if no one else is opposing them. Then those small numbers are the only numbers that really matter. So you are getting a lot of heat because people are genuinely scared, because no one with the power to do so is even trying to push against this momentum. It's a world without heroes. A world without All Might. Heh.

I can appreciate that. I try and steer people away from 'conservatives this' and 'conservatives that'. You have your reasons. My point I'm trying to get across, then, is that... I don't know, maybe I'm younger than all of you, I've never in my life had the expectation that the US was going to boil over in violence, at the behest and encouragement of a President, before now. edit: changed 'aid' to 'encouragement'