14 ms·

> there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and are

> there are so few cases in California because of the measures that have been taken This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Our options aren't binary. It's not as if the only choice is "Nuke everything" or "Surrender". The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. We probably could do something like this: - Dense city? Quarantine. - Moderately dense? High risk individuals quarantine, everyone else social distances, but works. - etc Across the board, if your business is the sort that can WFH (such as software companies), then you do work from home. If not, then you're open, but with precautions. Restaurants are open, but pickup only, etc. The point is, we've used a nuke, and it's not at all clear to me that that was the right decision.

CydeWeys 7y ago
> This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Which countries might that be? If you're referring to South Korea, they're ahead of the game enough on testing for this to be workable (unlike us). If you're referring to anyone else, they're simply not at that point yet in the curve, but will arrive there.
- christophilus 7y ago
  Various European countries. Sweden comes to mind.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Sweden has more deaths per capita from coronavirus than the US, has an exponentially increasing death rate (i.e. they haven't turned the corner yet), and a very high case fatality rate of 9.4% indicating that they're severely under-testing. This is not what a successful disease prevention strategy looks like.
    - malandrew 7y ago
      Sweden's deaths per capita is neck and neck with the United States and following approximately the same trajectory with no lockdown. It's neither appreciably better nor appreciably worse. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
      - dkobran 7y ago
        The US, like the UK, did a terrible job early on when containment was most critical. Several states are in lockdown now but arguably, the reason for our awful current new cases/death rate is due to the resistance to taking action in February when it first hit. There are also many places in the US that are not in lockdown. From another comment: “Approximately 44 of 50 states have lower per capita death rates than Sweden.“ The US cannot be compared directly to Sweden because it doesn’t have a single policy like Sweden. It’s also worth noting that Sweden has taken some lockdown measures ie your comment about “no lockdown” isn’t accurate. Finally, it’s early days and time will tell. The UK changed their policy because there is no credible evidence that herd immunity is effective. I believe Sweden will as well once the disease spirals out of control. And hopefully less people will die as a result. Unfortunately, there will also be the insufferable few that claim we could have survived without being cautious because you can’t prove that those measures were responsible for saving lives. Don’t be that person.
        malandrew 7y ago
        > the reason for our awful current new cases/death rate is due to the resistance to taking action in February when it first hit. The reason is actually NYC, specifically Cuomo and DiBlasio passing the buck back and forth and doing nothing. If you remove just NYC, the rest of the country is for the most part doing a lot better than Europe.
        CydeWeys 7y ago
        It's even worse than that, de Blasio was basically in denial and wasn't doing anything, even through mid-March when cases were exponentially skyrocketing here. It took all the heads of his public health department threatening to resign for him to actually start doing things, and the idiot even went to his gym on the last day that gyms were even open. Both he and Cuomo took way too late to act, and now we're all suffering for it. Cuomo has since at least gotten better, but de Blasio has been terrible throughout.
  - dkobran 7y ago
    Sweden has by far the highest number of cases/deaths with respect to neighboring countries. Finland has 1/10th of the number of deaths per capita [0]. They are also faring much worse than Denmark and Norway (in terms of both cases and deaths) where much stricter measures are enforced. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22-scientists-say-coronavirus-strategy-has-failed-as-deaths-top-1000/#20de42337b6c https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22...
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      Why limited to neighboring countries though? The fact is Sweden has no full quarantine and they have less infection rates and less fatalities per capita than many countries with full quarantine. It's clear that full quarantine may not be effective.
      - _ph_ 7y ago
        You have to compare states with comparable population density, cultural norms and roughly comparable initial cases. Climate plays a huge role in how much people engage in potential infection prone activities. E.g. like being outside in parks, beaches.
        nickthemagicman 7y ago
        Uk is on full quarantine. There are no cultural norms because there's no culture there at the moment. It should have less than Sweden if quarantine is effective.
        _ph_ 7y ago
        The question is: how many infections happened before the quarantine was established? In UK the quarantine was started way to late. That the UK has in common with Italy, Spain and France. But in all these countries, a massive infection rate has been drastically reduced by the quarantine. In Sweden, there seem to have been only very few initial cases and the virus seems to be slow to spread there - it probably helps that Sweden is over 80% larger than the UK and has only 1/6 of the population. Also, at this time of the year it is much colder than the UK, less reason to be outside in big groups. If you check the infection graphs, in the UK the quarantine finally seems to have an impact on the infection numbers, which stopped growing a while ago. Sweden still seems to have growing infection numbers.
- lovemenot 7y ago
  Japan fits. Some cities are more restricted, but even here personal freedom remains. The emphasis is for people to choose to do the right thing.
jacobolus 7y ago
> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet. You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the virus but are asymptomatic have been advised to continue working. He asked to remain anonymous because “it is frowned upon to speak of the epidemic or to go against the official vision” but said he felt a need to speak out from an “ethical and medical point of view.”
- davidgay 7y ago
  And a good contrast is Bulgaria, which shutdown early, on March 13th or so (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bulgaria-emergency/bulgaria-closes-schools-restricts-travel-over-coronavirus-idUSKBN21015D https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bulgar...), and which has a death rate on par with South Korea's. The neighbouring countries (Romania, Serbia, Greece) are also low but at least 2x that rate.
  - PunchTornado 7y ago
    it all depends on circumstances. Romania had 400k workers returning from Italy in the past month. It is harder to contain.
- malandrew 7y ago
  On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown. It's about middle of the pack. Personal responsibility lets us have our cake and eat it too. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    By “personal responsibility” I guess you mean something like «each individual person makes their own decisions without official guidance about how their behavior might affect their neighbors – during a severe crisis when nobody has access to complete or accurate information – and we just all hold our breaths and hope none of them make bad choices». Personally I would call this “government irresponsibility”, but I guess we’ll find how it turns out within a few more weeks. I’m not sure “have our cake and eat it to” is a good way to describe a crisis that is killing a whole lot of people and smashing the economy (in Sweden and many other places).
joegahona 7y ago
> - Dense city? Quarantine. - Moderately dense? High risk individuals quarantine, everyone else social distances, but works. - etc. Across the board, if your business is the sort that can WFH (such as software companies), then you do work from home. If not, then you're open, but with precautions. Restaurants are open, but pickup only, etc. How is this _that_ much different from what's being done now?
- volak 7y ago
  Michigan has banned selling seeds. Governors are forcing businesses closed or no seating allowed. Those guidelines are good ones to maintain for perpetuity. Would decrease the thousands of flu deaths we see each year too but today's situation is closer to a nationwide lockdown than a PSA about washing hands
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  Well for example there's lots of non-essential business that can operate while enforcing social distancing. Closing bars and restaurants makes sense. But closing stores were you walk in and walk out does not make sense. Banning fishing doesn't make sense. Very broad strokes have been used to lock stuff down.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    And at least in Michigan, they're not taking the time to open up low risk businesses now - instead they're filling in even more of the gaps that allowed life to continue. No golf courses, even without any staff contact. No landscaping. No landscaping supplies. No motorboats or jet skis. No travel between two residences you own. But at least you can still buy lottery tickets!
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Some of these can be explained at least. Landscaping is very non-essential, and it's hard to maintain social distancing while doing it because the way the crews operate is it's a bunch of guys riding together in one truck between each job sites (it's not a caravan of different vehicles, one per vehicle). Additionally, my mom has been complaining about the landscapers where she lives and is angry that they're still allowed, because they flagrantly violate social distancing and get near her when she's trying to go on walks around her neighborhood. Things are getting so bad in Detroit that bodies are piling up in unrefrigerated rooms in hospitals. Now's not really the time to be questioning if they're being too strict with the social distancing; at this point they really just do need everyone staying home, period, and not coming into contact with anyone. Motorboats and jet skis sure as hell aren't essential, and might tempt people into congregating with people they shouldn't be congregating with (boating is typically a social endeavor for example).
robocat 7y ago
> density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing Pick two random people Jo and Chris. If Jo wants to pass a letter from hand to hand via intermediary carriers so it gets to Chris, what’s the shortest time for it to get to Chris? Ways to slow down the letter passing are to prevent long distance connections (close airports), slow down connections (only go to supermarket once a week), remove connections (close pubs). To avoid any carriers passing a letter to you, you want to avoid: highly connected social people; gatherings of connected people; reduce number of meetings. Density is one aspect, but perhaps not the most important.
thaumaturgy 7y ago
Hmm. One of the traits of this virus that makes it so different from past potential epidemics is that it's able to spread rapidly through a population for up to two weeks before it starts becoming "visible" (symptoms start to arrive in large enough numbers to become alarming). At the tail end of those two weeks, the infection may have spread enough to become very difficult to control. So, if we took some kind of middle road, and then two weeks later the virus exploded, would that change how you felt about the approach? I'm still treating this question honestly, btw. I completely agree that it would be nice if such severe measures were unnecessary and the damage to people's livelihoods could start getting addressed. But, the problem that policy-makers are dealing with is that this isn't an infection that responds well to a "wait and see" approach; by the time you start to "see" and react, you could be in deep trouble.
- mercer 7y ago
  It's also an open question for me. I'm wondering though if, even with the limited data we have now, there are examples of countries that took a similar approach and had their two-weeks-later 'explosion' (or possibly three, is what I've heard).
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    People want to make things complicated and not take anything at face value, but if you look at global cases on a log scale, you see how they started exponential, flattened out, and then once there was a foothold outside china, went exponential again, and now is flattening again. Wouldn't it be logical to assume this will repeat as soon as people decide it's under control again? How can you go back to normal, before everyone has caught it, and expect the rate not to go back to exponential?
- chasd00 7y ago
  Another complication and I'm sure the task force is wrestling with this. If you undo the restrictions you're never going to be able to put them back in place and have the adherence you did the first time. I just don't believe the people will accept being on lock-down for weeks, then getting a taste of getting back to work and then being asked to go back on lock-down. I also didn't believe people in the US would follow the lock-down rules anywhere near to the degree they have so :shrug: who knows?
clouddrover 7y ago
> The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. The US has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any nation. The US is seeing about 2,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths a day at the moment: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Contrast the US results with Australia's or South Korea's results. Australia and South Korea are doing much better.
- adventured 7y ago
  > The US has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any nation. Your statement isn't very useful. It's the per capita death rate that matters the most of any metric. It's non-sense to compare the US to countries with 5% or 20% of the population using absolute numbers. In terms of density, it's the NYC region that overwhelmingly accounts for the problem in the US. NY + NJ = majority of US deaths. The NYC region is the most dense on population in the US, which dramatically magnified its outbreak. Approximately 44 of 50 states have lower per capita death rates than Sweden. Most US states are doing extraordinarily well in fact. Half of US states are seeing no serious outbreak at all. Arizona has 7.3 million people and only 131 deaths. Belgium has 11.4 million people and 4,000 deaths. Sweden is considered a relatively good outcome in Europe so far, they have 10 million people and 1,000 deaths. Texas has three times the population of Sweden with 1/3 the deaths. Some more examples: Utah 19. Oregon 55. Arkansas 30. Washington DC 67. Delaware 41. Hawaii 9. Idaho 33. Iowa 49. Kansas 69. Maine 20. Minnesota 79. Nebraska 18. New Hampshire 23. New Mexico 31. North Dakota 9. South Dakota 6. Montana 7. Vermont 29. West Virginia 9. Wyoming 1. Puerto Rico 45. Lower population density helps a lot in most cases. However San Francisco is also one of the most dense cities in the US and only has ~15 deaths or so. That's thanks largely to climate, which impedes transmission heavily. The same reason the entire San Diego County only has 53 deaths.
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    > It's the per capita death rate that matters the most of any metric. The US has the 15th highest per capita death rate. It's on track to go up in that ranking: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
nickthemagicman 7y ago
Thank you I've been saying this for a while but have been being crucified by the flat curver movement who takes no accountability in proving that their method is working with hard data.
virvar 7y ago
Sweden is one of the few countries that didn’t lock down. I’m Danish, and we locked down hard and are now on the process of reopening where as Sweden has 4-5 times the amount of deaths we do per capita, despite being a much, much larger geographical area and they’re closing down more and more as we are opening. The political fallout the Swedish government will face over having so much more dead than Denmark and Norway is likely going to destroy their current government and lead to a further increase of their right-wing populist party. So yeah, there are countries that didn’t close down hard, but they look royally fucked because of it. I think the only country where the government failed where the current administration is gaining popularity is the US. For some reason.
mercer 7y ago
> The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. You might be right, and I hope you are. But at least 'intuitively' my experience is that the more insular a community is, the more exposed those /within/ that community are because of frequent interaction. So, basically, a big city is not very insular, but people spread the virus via public transit and whatnot. A small, rural town is insular, but the locals interact much more than the city-folk. All it would take is one infected out-of-towner to trigger rapid spread locally. I wouldn't be surprised if the problem that, for now, seems to be contained to liberal metropolises, will find their way into all sorts of rural communities because just one person passed it on. I hope I'm wrong.
- jsight 7y ago
  I think you are correct. Georgia's heat map approach to graphically displaying infections based upon per capita case rates really highlights this, IMO: https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
chasd00 7y ago
it seems to me it's not only density but mobility too. The US is a very mobile place, people can move around very easily. I think you have to consider that along with density when looking at how fast a virus can spread. I hope a side effect of the virus spread is proving wfh feasible to many skeptics. Working from home goes a long way to reducing pollution and increasing productivity and morale. It's definitely not one size fits all and doesn't work for all personalities and jobs but it should be used where it can work. At a min, it keeps people off the roads/tracks.

CydeWeys 7y ago

> This is probably true, but other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread. Which countries might that be? If you're referring to South Korea, they're ahead of the game enough on testing for this to be workable (unlike us). If you're referring to anyone else, they're simply not at that point yet in the curve, but will arrive there.

christophilus 7y ago
Various European countries. Sweden comes to mind.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Sweden has more deaths per capita from coronavirus than the US, has an exponentially increasing death rate (i.e. they haven't turned the corner yet), and a very high case fatality rate of 9.4% indicating that they're severely under-testing. This is not what a successful disease prevention strategy looks like.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    Sweden's deaths per capita is neck and neck with the United States and following approximately the same trajectory with no lockdown. It's neither appreciably better nor appreciably worse. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
    - dkobran 7y ago
      The US, like the UK, did a terrible job early on when containment was most critical. Several states are in lockdown now but arguably, the reason for our awful current new cases/death rate is due to the resistance to taking action in February when it first hit. There are also many places in the US that are not in lockdown. From another comment: “Approximately 44 of 50 states have lower per capita death rates than Sweden.“ The US cannot be compared directly to Sweden because it doesn’t have a single policy like Sweden. It’s also worth noting that Sweden has taken some lockdown measures ie your comment about “no lockdown” isn’t accurate. Finally, it’s early days and time will tell. The UK changed their policy because there is no credible evidence that herd immunity is effective. I believe Sweden will as well once the disease spirals out of control. And hopefully less people will die as a result. Unfortunately, there will also be the insufferable few that claim we could have survived without being cautious because you can’t prove that those measures were responsible for saving lives. Don’t be that person.
      - malandrew 7y ago
        > the reason for our awful current new cases/death rate is due to the resistance to taking action in February when it first hit. The reason is actually NYC, specifically Cuomo and DiBlasio passing the buck back and forth and doing nothing. If you remove just NYC, the rest of the country is for the most part doing a lot better than Europe.
        CydeWeys 7y ago
        It's even worse than that, de Blasio was basically in denial and wasn't doing anything, even through mid-March when cases were exponentially skyrocketing here. It took all the heads of his public health department threatening to resign for him to actually start doing things, and the idiot even went to his gym on the last day that gyms were even open. Both he and Cuomo took way too late to act, and now we're all suffering for it. Cuomo has since at least gotten better, but de Blasio has been terrible throughout.
- dkobran 7y ago
  Sweden has by far the highest number of cases/deaths with respect to neighboring countries. Finland has 1/10th of the number of deaths per capita [0]. They are also faring much worse than Denmark and Norway (in terms of both cases and deaths) where much stricter measures are enforced. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22-scientists-say-coronavirus-strategy-has-failed-as-deaths-top-1000/#20de42337b6c https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/14/sweden-22...
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Why limited to neighboring countries though? The fact is Sweden has no full quarantine and they have less infection rates and less fatalities per capita than many countries with full quarantine. It's clear that full quarantine may not be effective.
    - _ph_ 7y ago
      You have to compare states with comparable population density, cultural norms and roughly comparable initial cases. Climate plays a huge role in how much people engage in potential infection prone activities. E.g. like being outside in parks, beaches.
      - nickthemagicman 7y ago
        Uk is on full quarantine. There are no cultural norms because there's no culture there at the moment. It should have less than Sweden if quarantine is effective.
        _ph_ 7y ago
        The question is: how many infections happened before the quarantine was established? In UK the quarantine was started way to late. That the UK has in common with Italy, Spain and France. But in all these countries, a massive infection rate has been drastically reduced by the quarantine. In Sweden, there seem to have been only very few initial cases and the virus seems to be slow to spread there - it probably helps that Sweden is over 80% larger than the UK and has only 1/6 of the population. Also, at this time of the year it is much colder than the UK, less reason to be outside in big groups. If you check the infection graphs, in the UK the quarantine finally seems to have an impact on the infection numbers, which stopped growing a while ago. Sweden still seems to have growing infection numbers.
lovemenot 7y ago
Japan fits. Some cities are more restricted, but even here personal freedom remains. The emphasis is for people to choose to do the right thing.

jacobolus 7y ago

> other countries haven't locked down hard and aren't seeing a big spread Let’s be precise. Some other countries haven’t locked down hard and aren’t seeing a big spread yet. You mentioned Sweden. Here was Time a few days ago: > A head doctor at a major hospital in Sweden says the current approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.” He says healthcare workers at his hospital who have tested positive for the virus but are asymptomatic have been advised to continue working. He asked to remain anonymous because “it is frowned upon to speak of the epidemic or to go against the official vision” but said he felt a need to speak out from an “ethical and medical point of view.”

davidgay 7y ago
And a good contrast is Bulgaria, which shutdown early, on March 13th or so (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bulgaria-emergency/bulgaria-closes-schools-restricts-travel-over-coronavirus-idUSKBN21015D https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bulgar...), and which has a death rate on par with South Korea's. The neighbouring countries (Romania, Serbia, Greece) are also low but at least 2x that rate.
- PunchTornado 7y ago
  it all depends on circumstances. Romania had 400k workers returning from Italy in the past month. It is harder to contain.
malandrew 7y ago
On a per capita basis sweden isn't really more worse off than many other countries that have shutdown. It's about middle of the pack. Personal responsibility lets us have our cake and eat it too. http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
- jacobolus 7y ago
  By “personal responsibility” I guess you mean something like «each individual person makes their own decisions without official guidance about how their behavior might affect their neighbors – during a severe crisis when nobody has access to complete or accurate information – and we just all hold our breaths and hope none of them make bad choices». Personally I would call this “government irresponsibility”, but I guess we’ll find how it turns out within a few more weeks. I’m not sure “have our cake and eat it to” is a good way to describe a crisis that is killing a whole lot of people and smashing the economy (in Sweden and many other places).

joegahona 7y ago

> - Dense city? Quarantine. - Moderately dense? High risk individuals quarantine, everyone else social distances, but works. - etc. Across the board, if your business is the sort that can WFH (such as software companies), then you do work from home. If not, then you're open, but with precautions. Restaurants are open, but pickup only, etc. How is this _that_ much different from what's being done now?

volak 7y ago
Michigan has banned selling seeds. Governors are forcing businesses closed or no seating allowed. Those guidelines are good ones to maintain for perpetuity. Would decrease the thousands of flu deaths we see each year too but today's situation is closer to a nationwide lockdown than a PSA about washing hands
therealdrag0 7y ago
Well for example there's lots of non-essential business that can operate while enforcing social distancing. Closing bars and restaurants makes sense. But closing stores were you walk in and walk out does not make sense. Banning fishing doesn't make sense. Very broad strokes have been used to lock stuff down.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  And at least in Michigan, they're not taking the time to open up low risk businesses now - instead they're filling in even more of the gaps that allowed life to continue. No golf courses, even without any staff contact. No landscaping. No landscaping supplies. No motorboats or jet skis. No travel between two residences you own. But at least you can still buy lottery tickets!
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Some of these can be explained at least. Landscaping is very non-essential, and it's hard to maintain social distancing while doing it because the way the crews operate is it's a bunch of guys riding together in one truck between each job sites (it's not a caravan of different vehicles, one per vehicle). Additionally, my mom has been complaining about the landscapers where she lives and is angry that they're still allowed, because they flagrantly violate social distancing and get near her when she's trying to go on walks around her neighborhood. Things are getting so bad in Detroit that bodies are piling up in unrefrigerated rooms in hospitals. Now's not really the time to be questioning if they're being too strict with the social distancing; at this point they really just do need everyone staying home, period, and not coming into contact with anyone. Motorboats and jet skis sure as hell aren't essential, and might tempt people into congregating with people they shouldn't be congregating with (boating is typically a social endeavor for example).

robocat 7y ago

> density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing Pick two random people Jo and Chris. If Jo wants to pass a letter from hand to hand via intermediary carriers so it gets to Chris, what’s the shortest time for it to get to Chris? Ways to slow down the letter passing are to prevent long distance connections (close airports), slow down connections (only go to supermarket once a week), remove connections (close pubs). To avoid any carriers passing a letter to you, you want to avoid: highly connected social people; gatherings of connected people; reduce number of meetings. Density is one aspect, but perhaps not the most important.

thaumaturgy 7y ago

Hmm. One of the traits of this virus that makes it so different from past potential epidemics is that it's able to spread rapidly through a population for up to two weeks before it starts becoming "visible" (symptoms start to arrive in large enough numbers to become alarming). At the tail end of those two weeks, the infection may have spread enough to become very difficult to control. So, if we took some kind of middle road, and then two weeks later the virus exploded, would that change how you felt about the approach? I'm still treating this question honestly, btw. I completely agree that it would be nice if such severe measures were unnecessary and the damage to people's livelihoods could start getting addressed. But, the problem that policy-makers are dealing with is that this isn't an infection that responds well to a "wait and see" approach; by the time you start to "see" and react, you could be in deep trouble.

mercer 7y ago
It's also an open question for me. I'm wondering though if, even with the limited data we have now, there are examples of countries that took a similar approach and had their two-weeks-later 'explosion' (or possibly three, is what I've heard).
- perl4ever 7y ago
  People want to make things complicated and not take anything at face value, but if you look at global cases on a log scale, you see how they started exponential, flattened out, and then once there was a foothold outside china, went exponential again, and now is flattening again. Wouldn't it be logical to assume this will repeat as soon as people decide it's under control again? How can you go back to normal, before everyone has caught it, and expect the rate not to go back to exponential?
chasd00 7y ago
Another complication and I'm sure the task force is wrestling with this. If you undo the restrictions you're never going to be able to put them back in place and have the adherence you did the first time. I just don't believe the people will accept being on lock-down for weeks, then getting a taste of getting back to work and then being asked to go back on lock-down. I also didn't believe people in the US would follow the lock-down rules anywhere near to the degree they have so :shrug: who knows?

clouddrover 7y ago

> The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. The US has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any nation. The US is seeing about 2,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths a day at the moment: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Contrast the US results with Australia's or South Korea's results. Australia and South Korea are doing much better.

adventured 7y ago
> The US has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any nation. Your statement isn't very useful. It's the per capita death rate that matters the most of any metric. It's non-sense to compare the US to countries with 5% or 20% of the population using absolute numbers. In terms of density, it's the NYC region that overwhelmingly accounts for the problem in the US. NY + NJ = majority of US deaths. The NYC region is the most dense on population in the US, which dramatically magnified its outbreak. Approximately 44 of 50 states have lower per capita death rates than Sweden. Most US states are doing extraordinarily well in fact. Half of US states are seeing no serious outbreak at all. Arizona has 7.3 million people and only 131 deaths. Belgium has 11.4 million people and 4,000 deaths. Sweden is considered a relatively good outcome in Europe so far, they have 10 million people and 1,000 deaths. Texas has three times the population of Sweden with 1/3 the deaths. Some more examples: Utah 19. Oregon 55. Arkansas 30. Washington DC 67. Delaware 41. Hawaii 9. Idaho 33. Iowa 49. Kansas 69. Maine 20. Minnesota 79. Nebraska 18. New Hampshire 23. New Mexico 31. North Dakota 9. South Dakota 6. Montana 7. Vermont 29. West Virginia 9. Wyoming 1. Puerto Rico 45. Lower population density helps a lot in most cases. However San Francisco is also one of the most dense cities in the US and only has ~15 deaths or so. That's thanks largely to climate, which impedes transmission heavily. The same reason the entire San Diego County only has 53 deaths.
- clouddrover 7y ago
  > It's the per capita death rate that matters the most of any metric. The US has the 15th highest per capita death rate. It's on track to go up in that ranking: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

nickthemagicman 7y ago

Thank you I've been saying this for a while but have been being crucified by the flat curver movement who takes no accountability in proving that their method is working with hard data.

virvar 7y ago

Sweden is one of the few countries that didn’t lock down. I’m Danish, and we locked down hard and are now on the process of reopening where as Sweden has 4-5 times the amount of deaths we do per capita, despite being a much, much larger geographical area and they’re closing down more and more as we are opening. The political fallout the Swedish government will face over having so much more dead than Denmark and Norway is likely going to destroy their current government and lead to a further increase of their right-wing populist party. So yeah, there are countries that didn’t close down hard, but they look royally fucked because of it. I think the only country where the government failed where the current administration is gaining popularity is the US. For some reason.

mercer 7y ago

> The US is not a very densely populated country, and density seems to have the biggest impact on the spread of this thing. You might be right, and I hope you are. But at least 'intuitively' my experience is that the more insular a community is, the more exposed those /within/ that community are because of frequent interaction. So, basically, a big city is not very insular, but people spread the virus via public transit and whatnot. A small, rural town is insular, but the locals interact much more than the city-folk. All it would take is one infected out-of-towner to trigger rapid spread locally. I wouldn't be surprised if the problem that, for now, seems to be contained to liberal metropolises, will find their way into all sorts of rural communities because just one person passed it on. I hope I'm wrong.

jsight 7y ago
I think you are correct. Georgia's heat map approach to graphically displaying infections based upon per capita case rates really highlights this, IMO: https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

chasd00 7y ago

it seems to me it's not only density but mobility too. The US is a very mobile place, people can move around very easily. I think you have to consider that along with density when looking at how fast a virus can spread. I hope a side effect of the virus spread is proving wfh feasible to many skeptics. Working from home goes a long way to reducing pollution and increasing productivity and morale. It's definitely not one size fits all and doesn't work for all personalities and jobs but it should be used where it can work. At a min, it keeps people off the roads/tracks.