8 ms·

>Lets stay home instead. For a couple of weeks, fine. However on the other end of this spectrum is "Millions starve". At some point we need to ask is that fai

by _red 7y ago

>Lets stay home instead. For a couple of weeks, fine. However on the other end of this spectrum is "Millions starve". At some point we need to ask is that fair to the youth? (note: I'm an old fart)

wolco 7y ago
The recovering youth are getting breathing problems that aren't going away as well. It would be in their interest not to get it. It's also resetting our global warming clock. Something youth were keen about getting the world to do. If they can't handle staying at home for an extended time then global warming might not be that important after all.
- gpm 7y ago
  This isn't resetting the global warming clock. Atmospheric CO2 is still going up not down. It's a temporary and small reduction in CO2 output coupled with a much more severe and much longer term reduction in scientific output that might actually solve global warming, and a much longer term and much more severe economic recession that limits our options to (further) hurt the economy to switch to greener means of energy production.
  - DataWorker 7y ago
    Agree. This will ultimately be horrible for the environment. Environmental regulations will fall by the wayside and look at the price of oil.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Not sure you can have it both ways. Either shutting down all Chinese factories for a period of time reduced CO2. Or they made no difference and we can run those factories without fear. Wouldn't a global recession/depression reduce production? Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either.
    - gpm 7y ago
      If we set the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 to 0, a far greater reduction than actually occurred, we would be pausing the clock on global warming, which is a very far cry from resetting the clock. Yes, the emissions reduction helped, but not a fraction as much as you claimed. > Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either. The science I'm most interested in isn't climate models. It's better solar panels, or better wind turbines, or better batteries, or better fission reactors, or (useful) fusion reactors, or space based solar shades, or ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and so on. People buying and using enough less unfortunately does not seem to be a realistic solution to the problem. People buying less might be able to delay us hitting disastrous amounts of warming by a few years, but that only buys us time for the above kinds of research.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  Aren't virologists predicting that 60-70% are going to get it, no matter what? What is the "extended time" that you are talking about? Close to half of COVID infections result not even in a cough. Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%. Flatten the curve? Sure, but we can't be locking down the entire country indefinitely. The youth already begrudge the elderly, locking them down for months will make them wish they were dead. Remember how a year felt like an eternity when you were 16? Also, most youth don't care about global warming either. They're just virtue signaling. It really isn't that important, if they understood what they would have to give up on to stop it, they would embrace it and look forward to spring break in North Dakota.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    > Close to half of COVID infections result not even in a cough. Possibly? > Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%. If we're all sick at once can we all get proper treatment? We're all making assumptions and treating our ideas like they have to be true. We still don't actually know, we will only know in retrospective, and that's important to keep in mind. We can't know what's going to happen, and I think we need to be more cautious than optimistic. Where's the line between that an insanity? I don't know, but we can't act like we know the math, especially when we're getting equal and opposite information every day.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      We actually will not know even in retrospective, because the alternative scenarios will not play out. I am not saying everyone should get sick at once, a certain period of isolation is acceptable - for now. In the long term, it is not reasonable to isolate everyone. Covid-19 will stay with us for years.
gnulinux 7y ago
Youth also doesn't want to deal with this disease. I'm 23 y.o., healthy as far as I know, but I still don't want to catch this disease. Why spend 2 weeks on the bed dealing with the worst flu, risk getting hospitalized? After all, even young patients can be hospitalized, even though fatality rate is lower. I vote everyone stay home for the time being.
- m0zg 7y ago
  >> Why spend 2 weeks To acquire immunity while there are still hospital beds available in some places, in the unlikely event that you need one. That won't be the case a month from now.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    How utterly and inconceivably selfish. How would that work out if everyone thought like that?
    - schrodinger 7y ago
      Is it really? I've heard there's some logic to this… If instead, we all stay home and quarantine, the second we start reducing the quarantine the virus flares back up again. If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it. I'm certainly not an epidemiologist though; anyone smarter than me that can way in on that thinking?
      - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        > If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it. A fair portion of low-risk people will require intervention. Given that a lot more people are low than high risk, you're still overwhelming the health system, and all those low-risk people are still going to interact with others while they are asymptomatic but transmissible.
cryptonector 7y ago
At some point it's not even fair to those most at risk for covid-19.
paulmd 7y ago
We're not even on the "couple of weeks" scale here. Unless we have a drug that can effectively treat coronavirus, we will have to shelter in place until a vaccine is available. 12-18 months.
- 01100011 7y ago
  When did we switch from 'flattening the curve' to 'trying to keep anyone from getting sick'? I thought we were mostly all going to get it this year, but we didn't want everyone getting it in a 1 month period?
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Well, never, but we have 20 ventilators per 100k people, "flattening the curve" so strongly that we can treat everybody was always a bit of a pipe dream. You need to flatten the curve almost to zero to get to a "sustainable" level of disease. They are nearly the same goal. Any non-trivial level of disease that is not controlled will rapidly push you past the "flatten the curve" threshold. And we will certainly be here for longer than 2-3 weeks. It is a little white lie that is important to tell the public to help build compliance, the lower you can push it the fewer people will die, but hospitals simply are going to be overloaded regardless. The choice we can make is one between "very overwhelmed" and "overwhelmed to the point of non-functionality". "shelter for 12-18 months" is a little bit of an exaggeration but not much. Simulations suggest that after an initial harsh quarantine period (up to several months) to get transmission under control, we will need to shelter for about 2/3rds of the time (2 months on, 1 month off) for 12-18 months, and other measures for 100% of the time. The vaccine will be what finally terminates the situation. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... Even then that may be optimistic (especially if the population is not fully compliant). Italy is not just working from home and social distancing, they are straight up quarantining everyone, and they still have overloaded hospitals and bodies piling up faster than they can cremate them. Presumably the quarantine will slow things down on the order of weeks to months, but right now things are brutal. https://vimeo.com/398334975 https://vimeo.com/398334975 https://mobile.twitter.com/foxmulder22791/status/1240454056419696641 https://mobile.twitter.com/foxmulder22791/status/12404540564... The Chinese strategy of requiring everyone to get a phone app, to track them via GPS, doing widespread testing and then quarantining the people who have been in contact appears to be a much more effective strategy than blind quarantine or social distancing. No app, no uber, no groceries, no public transit, etc. The US citizenry absolutely will not stand for the mark of the beast though. The Korean thing about masks and gloves probably helps too. Too bad the hospitals are down to about 11 days of masks let alone for the citizenry. I'm not trying to be a downer but if chloroquine works that's a really fucking big deal, because that would give us a fairly straightforward alternative to treat cases or even prophylactically treat vulnerable populations. Unless you have a tool in your toolbox we are mostly just moving the deck chairs here and choosing between "really bad" and "oh shit".

by _red 7y ago

>Lets stay home instead. For a couple of weeks, fine. However on the other end of this spectrum is "Millions starve". At some point we need to ask is that fair to the youth? (note: I'm an old fart)

wolco 7y ago

The recovering youth are getting breathing problems that aren't going away as well. It would be in their interest not to get it. It's also resetting our global warming clock. Something youth were keen about getting the world to do. If they can't handle staying at home for an extended time then global warming might not be that important after all.

gpm 7y ago
This isn't resetting the global warming clock. Atmospheric CO2 is still going up not down. It's a temporary and small reduction in CO2 output coupled with a much more severe and much longer term reduction in scientific output that might actually solve global warming, and a much longer term and much more severe economic recession that limits our options to (further) hurt the economy to switch to greener means of energy production.
- DataWorker 7y ago
  Agree. This will ultimately be horrible for the environment. Environmental regulations will fall by the wayside and look at the price of oil.
- wolco 7y ago
  Not sure you can have it both ways. Either shutting down all Chinese factories for a period of time reduced CO2. Or they made no difference and we can run those factories without fear. Wouldn't a global recession/depression reduce production? Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either.
  - gpm 7y ago
    If we set the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 to 0, a far greater reduction than actually occurred, we would be pausing the clock on global warming, which is a very far cry from resetting the clock. Yes, the emissions reduction helped, but not a fraction as much as you claimed. > Increased funding for scientific output or more climate models isn't going to make a difference. People have to buy and use less. You can't have it both ways here either. The science I'm most interested in isn't climate models. It's better solar panels, or better wind turbines, or better batteries, or better fission reactors, or (useful) fusion reactors, or space based solar shades, or ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and so on. People buying and using enough less unfortunately does not seem to be a realistic solution to the problem. People buying less might be able to delay us hitting disastrous amounts of warming by a few years, but that only buys us time for the above kinds of research.
gridlockd 7y ago
Aren't virologists predicting that 60-70% are going to get it, no matter what? What is the "extended time" that you are talking about? Close to half of COVID infections result not even in a cough. Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%. Flatten the curve? Sure, but we can't be locking down the entire country indefinitely. The youth already begrudge the elderly, locking them down for months will make them wish they were dead. Remember how a year felt like an eternity when you were 16? Also, most youth don't care about global warming either. They're just virtue signaling. It really isn't that important, if they understood what they would have to give up on to stop it, they would embrace it and look forward to spring break in North Dakota.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > Close to half of COVID infections result not even in a cough. Possibly? > Going by the mostly elderly population on the Diamond Princess, mortality with proper treatment is going to be significantly lower than 1%. If we're all sick at once can we all get proper treatment? We're all making assumptions and treating our ideas like they have to be true. We still don't actually know, we will only know in retrospective, and that's important to keep in mind. We can't know what's going to happen, and I think we need to be more cautious than optimistic. Where's the line between that an insanity? I don't know, but we can't act like we know the math, especially when we're getting equal and opposite information every day.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    We actually will not know even in retrospective, because the alternative scenarios will not play out. I am not saying everyone should get sick at once, a certain period of isolation is acceptable - for now. In the long term, it is not reasonable to isolate everyone. Covid-19 will stay with us for years.

gnulinux 7y ago

Youth also doesn't want to deal with this disease. I'm 23 y.o., healthy as far as I know, but I still don't want to catch this disease. Why spend 2 weeks on the bed dealing with the worst flu, risk getting hospitalized? After all, even young patients can be hospitalized, even though fatality rate is lower. I vote everyone stay home for the time being.

m0zg 7y ago
>> Why spend 2 weeks To acquire immunity while there are still hospital beds available in some places, in the unlikely event that you need one. That won't be the case a month from now.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  How utterly and inconceivably selfish. How would that work out if everyone thought like that?
  - schrodinger 7y ago
    Is it really? I've heard there's some logic to this… If instead, we all stay home and quarantine, the second we start reducing the quarantine the virus flares back up again. If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it. I'm certainly not an epidemiologist though; anyone smarter than me that can way in on that thinking?
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      > If instead, we start acquiring immunity in low-risk populations, at a rate that the hospitals can sustain, we'll have a degree of herd immunity and a portion of the population that can no longer spread it. A fair portion of low-risk people will require intervention. Given that a lot more people are low than high risk, you're still overwhelming the health system, and all those low-risk people are still going to interact with others while they are asymptomatic but transmissible.

cryptonector 7y ago

At some point it's not even fair to those most at risk for covid-19.

paulmd 7y ago

We're not even on the "couple of weeks" scale here. Unless we have a drug that can effectively treat coronavirus, we will have to shelter in place until a vaccine is available. 12-18 months.

01100011 7y ago
When did we switch from 'flattening the curve' to 'trying to keep anyone from getting sick'? I thought we were mostly all going to get it this year, but we didn't want everyone getting it in a 1 month period?
- paulmd 7y ago
  Well, never, but we have 20 ventilators per 100k people, "flattening the curve" so strongly that we can treat everybody was always a bit of a pipe dream. You need to flatten the curve almost to zero to get to a "sustainable" level of disease. They are nearly the same goal. Any non-trivial level of disease that is not controlled will rapidly push you past the "flatten the curve" threshold. And we will certainly be here for longer than 2-3 weeks. It is a little white lie that is important to tell the public to help build compliance, the lower you can push it the fewer people will die, but hospitals simply are going to be overloaded regardless. The choice we can make is one between "very overwhelmed" and "overwhelmed to the point of non-functionality". "shelter for 12-18 months" is a little bit of an exaggeration but not much. Simulations suggest that after an initial harsh quarantine period (up to several months) to get transmission under control, we will need to shelter for about 2/3rds of the time (2 months on, 1 month off) for 12-18 months, and other measures for 100% of the time. The vaccine will be what finally terminates the situation. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s... Even then that may be optimistic (especially if the population is not fully compliant). Italy is not just working from home and social distancing, they are straight up quarantining everyone, and they still have overloaded hospitals and bodies piling up faster than they can cremate them. Presumably the quarantine will slow things down on the order of weeks to months, but right now things are brutal. https://vimeo.com/398334975 https://vimeo.com/398334975 https://mobile.twitter.com/foxmulder22791/status/1240454056419696641 https://mobile.twitter.com/foxmulder22791/status/12404540564... The Chinese strategy of requiring everyone to get a phone app, to track them via GPS, doing widespread testing and then quarantining the people who have been in contact appears to be a much more effective strategy than blind quarantine or social distancing. No app, no uber, no groceries, no public transit, etc. The US citizenry absolutely will not stand for the mark of the beast though. The Korean thing about masks and gloves probably helps too. Too bad the hospitals are down to about 11 days of masks let alone for the citizenry. I'm not trying to be a downer but if chloroquine works that's a really fucking big deal, because that would give us a fairly straightforward alternative to treat cases or even prophylactically treat vulnerable populations. Unless you have a tool in your toolbox we are mostly just moving the deck chairs here and choosing between "really bad" and "oh shit".