The necessity of lockdowns during the pandemic

[basil67]

Re the herd immunity thing, we also don't know if getting the virus will make us immune anyway.  🤔    Besides, look at how well the herd immunity approach worked for the UK.  

[basil67]

On 5/2/2020 at 6:33 AM, sothereiwas said:

Maybe we did maybe not. In New York, Seattle, and a few places like that yeah, we probably needed to shut down, most of the rest of the country is fine and never got close to hospital overload so probably we shot ourselves in the foot in most of the USA by overreacting. It's been a long time since we had to react to a thing like this and we're out of practice, unlike places that have had SARS, MERS, etc recently. Hopefully next season we can have a more appropriate response in both schedule and scale. 

You may see the response as shooting yourselves in the foot, but there would be many people who are happy to be alive because relatively safe areas were kept safe.   Some people value each other's lives more highly than the economy.

[sothereiwas]

As one data point, literally no one has died here. There is no proof that would be any different if we'd simply gone to wearing PPE and social distancing like Sweden in areas like this and full lockdown in places where that was actually required. When this comes back I suspect and hope our response will be both more prompt and more measured. 

[basil67]

Has the virus been in your area?   If so, it's more accurately described as 'literally no one has died here yet'.   If the small number of cases you have are allowed to spread, people will die.   Our tracking of outbreaks show that just one person can be responsible for a whole hot spot happening.  

[sothereiwas]

51 minutes ago, basil67 said:

Has the virus been in your area?

Of course. Our hospital capacity was able to handle them and 3/4 of them are officially recovered with the rest expected to recover. This doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing, like many people seem to want to imply. It's fully possible to require use of PPE, reduce occupancy limits and a few other things to reduce the speed of spreading this bug without completely shutting things down. Locally we've reopened parks and a few other things today and I expect to see a few more cases in the coming weeks.

People still need to take this seriously but for people without comorbidities this seems to be a reasonably low risk bug.  

It's probably coming back once or more times, with places like Sweden having almost paid the tab already. We just put it on our credit card, but the bill is coming. 

[Timshel]

I understand collateral damage.  I also understand that every single person who dies, not only from Coronavirus, yet in general has someone who misses their presence .  They are not a tab and Covid is not a 'bug.'

What makes sense is humanity, after all, has no authority over nature...try as we may. 

Those who talk about the imposition of stay at home are more than welcome to do otherwise.  It reminds me of Free To Be You and Me and me first...and so she was.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Timshel

[basil67]

Sweden's people are choosing to self isolate - they don't need rules to tell them to do so.  Their virus spread can't be compared to the countries who have people who want to live normally. 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

50 minutes ago, basil67 said:

 can't be compared to the countries who have people who want to live normally. 

 

What does this even mean??

 

 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

On 5/1/2020 at 1:33 PM, sothereiwas said:

Maybe we did maybe not. In New York, Seattle, and a few places like that yeah, we probably needed to shut down, most of the rest of the country is fine and never got close to hospital overload so probably we shot ourselves in the foot in most of the USA by overreacting.

That doesn't make any sense.

 

You have only half that data needed to make the comparison you're trying to make.

 

 

[elaine567]

7 hours ago, basil67 said:

  Their virus spread can't be compared to the countries who have people who want to live normally. 

5 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

What does this even mean??

Sweden is  a low  pop. density rich rural country with more than half of the population living alone. Natural "social distancing".
Working from home is common and they have a high degree of confidence in their Govt.
They are pretty good at following the rules. Though police have had to sort out a few bars and clubs in Stockholm who were breaking the social distancing rules. 
It is not a free for all.

The disease in Sweden is reported as  being mainly in care homes and in the migrant population who mostly live in the poorer high density areas in the city.
Sweden is also home to one of the biggest ventilator manufacturers in the world...

One cannot cite Sweden as being an "average" country and that what may (or may not) work in Sweden would be the right way to do it..  

Seems to me some people are quite happy to play Russian roulette with sections of the community, they personally do not belong to...

 

[thefooloftheyear]

10 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

One cannot cite Sweden as being an "average" country and that what may (or may not) work in Sweden would be the right way to do it..  
 

 

Well.....the irony is that when they want to make the point about Socialism,. they often say..."hey, its working great over there in Sweden" so why can't we do the same!?"

TFY

[amaysngrace]

People aren’t appearing to be taking this so seriously anymore.  Campgrounds opened this weekend near where I live in New Jersey, one of the worst hit states.  People were showing up from all over.

In the grocery store people were talking through their face masks, many didn’t were gloves, it was a lot different than it had been prior.  

We aren’t sick.  There’s no reason to be acting like we are.

It was refreshing honestly.

[chillii]

Swedens still got a shyt load of cases though and they've lost 10 or 12 % of those , that's a lot of lives , compared to others only a few % , and it's a long way from over for them that's for sure. With 23,000 odd cases now but slowing l'll bet it's only slowing bc people are laying a lot lower now than they were , not bc of immunity .

Edited May 3, 2020 by chillii

[Philosopher]

1 hour ago, amaysngrace said:

People aren’t appearing to be taking this so seriously anymore.  Campgrounds opened this weekend near where I live in New Jersey, one of the worst hit states.  People were showing up from all over.

In the grocery store people were talking through their face masks, many didn’t were gloves, it was a lot different than it had been prior.  

We aren’t sick.  There’s no reason to be acting like we are.

It was refreshing honestly.

Compliance in the UK does seem to be waning too. Last weekend when I went for a run there were quite a few groups having picnics in parks which they definitely are not allowed to do. The media are frequently commenting that people are making non essential trips to DIY stores, which were allowed to be kept open. In the UK government press briefings they frequently show a graph of transport use and over the graphs do show an steady increase in car use with every passing week.

[sothereiwas]

11 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

You have only half that data needed to make the comparison you're trying to make.

Several states never really locked down, and they are doing fine. S. Dakota was one of them. It all depends on the needs of the individual area. 

[SincereOnlineGuy]

3 hours ago, sothereiwas said:

Several states never really locked down, and they are doing fine. S. Dakota was one of them. It all depends on the needs of the individual area. 

 

I suspect Nunavut is doing fine as well, but that factor remains completely irrelevant to the equation.

 

 

[sothereiwas]

1 minute ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

completely irrelevant to the equation.

I don't see how, the point that I raised is simply that a uniform lockdown isn't one-size-fits-all and we can do just fine with targeted and responsive responses, as shown by places like Utah and the Dakotas (for instance) who basically asked their residents to not be idiots. A place like New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and other big urban centers probably can't use that approach. But it seems to have worked where it was appropriate, and I believe it would have been appropriate in a lot of the USA. To see where, look at a map. If it's not red and we issued a shelter at home, we probably overreacted by applying the fix for the red areas to the not red areas. 

[chillii]

Swedens also having a very low recovery rate only 1500 out of nearly 23k so far , something going very very wrong there those numbers should be vise verse.  Out of our nearly 4 k here, only a few hundred are still recovering the rest are fully recovered.

Edited May 3, 2020 by chillii

[elaine567]

It may be about viral load
Loads of circulating virus around leads to more severe infections.
It is why key workers get very ill or die, the amount of virus they get at the start is huge.
They are now finding people admitted to hospital with Covid 19 are developing renal failure and strokes and other complications of the infection, so they may still be in hospital being treated

Or these are care home people, showing up positive but not showing up in further records as dying or lingering in the care home.
Hospital admissions on the other hand are usually recorded as dead or discharged.

Or they are not recording "recovered" patients adequately.
Or something else

[preraph]

My understanding, they're inside there most of the time anyway.  

 

Dallas' case numbers have tripled in the last 10 days reaching new highs every day this week.  The deaths remain about the same.  The hospital bed/ventilator capacity remains roughly the same, but the cases are way up due to more testing I guess.  It's scary seeing those numbers though.  And now the dam has broken here and young people are just doing whatever they want.  I'm begging the mayor and police chief to NOT send police to any of those protests where all those careless protesters are gathering in crowds, most not wearing masks or anything.  I think they ought to cordone the areas off where they have been for some period afterwards too.  

[BaileyB]

17 minutes ago, preraph said:

Dallas' case numbers have tripled in the last 10 days reaching new highs every day this week.  

It will be interesting to see the stats out of many states, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Michigan, Ohio... many have totally disregarded the advice of public health officials and seem to be gathering en mass... going to the beach, the mall, protesting...  It’s going to be brutal, I fear. 

Edited May 4, 2020 by BaileyB

[beatcuff]

i noticed over the last weeks EVERYONE forgot why the 'settle in place' ADVISORY was issued.  today nearly everyone i talk to say (variations of) 'to stop the spread'. 

WRONG, it was so hospitals would not get overrun (daily Cuomo: where are the ventilators).

Well they are not, in fact many are laying off, and the ones that are there: well how many 'dances' have you seen or patient leaving to cheers: shouldn't they be treating someone???

So we have been in 'shut down' ok more like please don't for six weeks and now some states are ramping up the restrictions (you MUST wear....), setting up rat lines (too funny on St. Louis County) and arresting some (while letting out persons with real crimes).

Well ---- it was 80 today in New England, about the first really nice day all year.  i checked the traffic, nothing nowhere not even in Boston EXCEPT for Salisbury and Hampton beaches (lots of yellow and red), even thou those beaches were closed.  no doubt a couple more days like this and the governors (like CA) will have to concede.

 

[BaileyB]

That’s exactly why some public health officials are easing restrictions - not because the risk is reduced, but because the ICUs have capacity. 

That’s not the case in some states though that are easing restrictions, the number of new diagnosis/active cases continues to rise and the hospitals will be overrun with patients. 

[preraph]

1 hour ago, BaileyB said:

It will be interesting to see the stats out of many states, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Michigan, Ohio... many have totally disregarded the advice of public health officials and seem to be gathering en mass... going to the beach, the mall, protesting...  It’s going to be brutal, I fear. 

What happened is it got politicized. I have no problem with people carefully going back to work and being smart about it. But protesting in herds is just ignorant and careless and I am just begging our mayor not to let the police get involved in all that because I don't want them dying.

Edited May 4, 2020 by preraph

[thefooloftheyear]

31 minutes ago, preraph said:

. But protesting in herds is just ignorant and careless and I am just begging our mayor not to let the police get involved in all that because I don't want them dying.

Maybe we should let them be a "test group"....Maybe  they'll even volunteer!!...

Follow those folks and see if they get infected or there is any way to see if by way of contact tracing( I still don't understand what the concept and execution of that is), it can be determined that mass gatherings of people result in a proliferation of the virus....This could be a great opportunity do a real world evaluation of what they are warning us all about...

TFY