8 ms·

The most plausible one I've heard was to heavily quarantine people at higher risk of dying or having severe complications from COVID-19 while having looser rest

by Exmoor 7y ago

The most plausible one I've heard was to heavily quarantine people at higher risk of dying or having severe complications from COVID-19 while having looser restrictions on people highly unlikely to suffer serious consequences. This would, theoretically, allow the virus to propagate throughout the population and a herd immunity to develop naturally. It's relatively close to what's being done in Sweden, so I guess we'll at least end up with something of a test-case in retrospect.

oldsklgdfth 7y ago
Huh, that sounds reasonable. I'm guessing you would need to wait for immunization to be developed for restrictions on high risk people are loosened?
- SerLava 7y ago
  It's not reasonable. You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die. You can't tell who's going to die from it. You can't have everyone getting sick at once. The death rate will go up tremendously if nobody can get treatment when they have treatable symptoms. This is what "flattening the curve" means. We don't have enough protective equipment, medical supplies, hospital beds, healthcare workers, or even morgue space. The only tool left is staying inside, and so that's what we're doing now. "Herd immunity" uses the word "herd" because we don't normally use it to describe actions taken toward human beings. Sweden absolutely bungled their response and have 10x the number of deaths from this as compared to their neighbors who shut shit down.
  - CryptoPunk 7y ago
    >>You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die Yes you absolutely can. The workers interacting with the quarantined subset of the population could use PPE to avoid transmitting it to them. Packaging on groceries, as well as the grocery bag, can easily be disinfected before being transferred to the quarantined individual.
    - SerLava 7y ago
      1. We can't even get PPE. We won't have PPE for a long time. Not even doctors have enough. 2. We're not going to train minimum wage workers and quarantined vulnerable individuals to follow sanitary procedures to any adequate degree. 3. We don't even have enough trained medical workers to treat dying people, so no they aren't going to make the deliveries. This problem will only get worse if you go all "herd immunity" because a shitload of people will be in the hospital being triaged because they were classified as "non-vulnerable" The only option the US has is quarantine, because it is a failed state.
      - totony 7y ago
        Instead of testing people who already have symptoms, maybe we could use those tests to ensure sick people don't come into contact with their groceries? Of course quarantining part of the population is hard, but I fail to see how it is harder than quarantining the whole population
        SerLava 6y ago
        We can't test people doing deliveries because we don't even have tests. Even if we did have tests, at some point nearly everyone is going to have the virus- especially delivery workers. There will literally not be enough people to make clean deliveries. Quarantining the population is easier for us because the majority of us have dwellings already. We do not have tests or ppe.
        totony 6y ago
        We don't have unlimited testing, but we have enough tests to secure a few distributions channels to at-risk population There are also other ways to sanitize these distributions channels, e.g. we know the virus can only last so long on cardboard etc. I disagree strongly that securing a fraction of our population against a disease is less feasible or practical than what we currently are doing >especially delivery workers. There will literally not be enough people to make clean deliveries. Will have had
      - 6y ago
  - thelean12 7y ago
    For how long? You can't keep society inside for a long period of time. It just won't work. Couple weeks? Sure. 3 months? Barely, it seems. 1 year? No. It just won't work. (I don't think we'll get to that point, but I think that the point stands: quarantine is a short term fix.)
    - SerLava 7y ago
      Without doing a real bailout of normal people, no we can't go more than a few months. If we're going to demand grocery store workers get buried in the ground for the sake of keeping things running, we can afford to radically shift the distribution of wealth toward the people we're literally condeming.
      - thelean12 7y ago
        You're using quite inflammatory language here that's distracting from your points. Calling the US a failed state, saying we're demanding workers be buried in the ground, etc. If you want to discuss actual policy, then do so. I'm not interested in following platitudes.
        SerLava 7y ago
        Inflammatory language is appropriate to describe an ongoing attempt to end the lives of millions of people. It's necessary to point out that we live in a failed state because some of the solutions being presented are assuming some kind of capability which we have not come close to demonstrating. It looks like we're going to have to kill quite a few poor people is fundamentally inflammatory, even when you act like you're discussing the best fruit flavor. These are people being killed, right now, all around you, for no fucking reason. These are people whose lives have marginally MORE value than yours, we're talking about snuffing them out.
        ogre_magi 7y ago
        Wait why are their lives more valuable than others?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID" Just as a random factoid, somewhere I was just reading that someone was doing testing of surfaces in a hospital, and on average they found maybe 80% contaminated with the virus, but the floor of the pharmacy was 100% even though no patients had been in there...
    - SerLava 7y ago
      That's terrifying.
    - Rapzid 7y ago
      Well, CDC doesn't believe surface transfer to be a significant factor soo.. There's that.
    - gorgoiler 7y ago
      Asking in good faith (I believe you!) if you could dig out your source, I would find that interesting to read as well.
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        "as medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients. Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive" Other objects were not as high as I recalled, but computer mice in the ICU were 75%. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article Also see table: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885-t1 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885-t1
FpUser 7y ago
If I am high risk person in a smallish group it should then be my choice to self-isolate or not as it will not affect the rest of the population
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  Should the government be obligated to offer you support for that choice? That would probably mean at minimum money to replace your work income, something like a new category of 'being high risk' a qualification for unemployment. Or should your choice be limited to self isolate and starve, or keep working?
  - FpUser 7y ago
    What support? Said person will just have higher chances to die. Their choice. They're not inflicting death upon the others as accordingly to proposal there are no restrictions on younger carriers without symptoms.
    - totony 7y ago
      I'm unsure if the person you responded to undertstood what you meant. I understood it as "if I am >60+, e.g. at risk, would i be free to not participate in the quarantine if partial quarantine were to happen" I'd argue that no, you should not be. Because if you get it, you will most likely require care and overload hospitals, which is what the whole point of that (partial) quarantine is. Either that or you forfeit your right to healthcare, which has loads of moral issues
      - FpUser 6y ago
        Well you've got no moral rights to lock person up for a year or two with totally unknown outcome. If you are so eager to save public funds you have a lots of places to start shaving. You might be amazed when you look how governments spend money. Also if locked up for extended amount of time said person is likely develop whole bunch of ailments include mental that would "overwhelm"(tm) healthcare as well unless you deny them treatment and let them wonder the streets. Likely loss of income will cause the same thing, them being kicked out from their dwellings.

by Exmoor 7y ago

oldsklgdfth 7y ago

Huh, that sounds reasonable. I'm guessing you would need to wait for immunization to be developed for restrictions on high risk people are loosened?

SerLava 7y ago
It's not reasonable. You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die. You can't tell who's going to die from it. You can't have everyone getting sick at once. The death rate will go up tremendously if nobody can get treatment when they have treatable symptoms. This is what "flattening the curve" means. We don't have enough protective equipment, medical supplies, hospital beds, healthcare workers, or even morgue space. The only tool left is staying inside, and so that's what we're doing now. "Herd immunity" uses the word "herd" because we don't normally use it to describe actions taken toward human beings. Sweden absolutely bungled their response and have 10x the number of deaths from this as compared to their neighbors who shut shit down.
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  >>You can't quarantine vulnerable people completely. If everyone gets it, every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID and an enormous number of quarantined people will die Yes you absolutely can. The workers interacting with the quarantined subset of the population could use PPE to avoid transmitting it to them. Packaging on groceries, as well as the grocery bag, can easily be disinfected before being transferred to the quarantined individual.
  - SerLava 7y ago
    1. We can't even get PPE. We won't have PPE for a long time. Not even doctors have enough. 2. We're not going to train minimum wage workers and quarantined vulnerable individuals to follow sanitary procedures to any adequate degree. 3. We don't even have enough trained medical workers to treat dying people, so no they aren't going to make the deliveries. This problem will only get worse if you go all "herd immunity" because a shitload of people will be in the hospital being triaged because they were classified as "non-vulnerable" The only option the US has is quarantine, because it is a failed state.
    - totony 7y ago
      Instead of testing people who already have symptoms, maybe we could use those tests to ensure sick people don't come into contact with their groceries? Of course quarantining part of the population is hard, but I fail to see how it is harder than quarantining the whole population
      - SerLava 6y ago
        We can't test people doing deliveries because we don't even have tests. Even if we did have tests, at some point nearly everyone is going to have the virus- especially delivery workers. There will literally not be enough people to make clean deliveries. Quarantining the population is easier for us because the majority of us have dwellings already. We do not have tests or ppe.
        totony 6y ago
        We don't have unlimited testing, but we have enough tests to secure a few distributions channels to at-risk population There are also other ways to sanitize these distributions channels, e.g. we know the virus can only last so long on cardboard etc. I disagree strongly that securing a fraction of our population against a disease is less feasible or practical than what we currently are doing >especially delivery workers. There will literally not be enough people to make clean deliveries. Will have had
    - 6y ago
- thelean12 7y ago
  For how long? You can't keep society inside for a long period of time. It just won't work. Couple weeks? Sure. 3 months? Barely, it seems. 1 year? No. It just won't work. (I don't think we'll get to that point, but I think that the point stands: quarantine is a short term fix.)
  - SerLava 7y ago
    Without doing a real bailout of normal people, no we can't go more than a few months. If we're going to demand grocery store workers get buried in the ground for the sake of keeping things running, we can afford to radically shift the distribution of wealth toward the people we're literally condeming.
    - thelean12 7y ago
      You're using quite inflammatory language here that's distracting from your points. Calling the US a failed state, saying we're demanding workers be buried in the ground, etc. If you want to discuss actual policy, then do so. I'm not interested in following platitudes.
      - SerLava 7y ago
        Inflammatory language is appropriate to describe an ongoing attempt to end the lives of millions of people. It's necessary to point out that we live in a failed state because some of the solutions being presented are assuming some kind of capability which we have not come close to demonstrating. It looks like we're going to have to kill quite a few poor people is fundamentally inflammatory, even when you act like you're discussing the best fruit flavor. These are people being killed, right now, all around you, for no fucking reason. These are people whose lives have marginally MORE value than yours, we're talking about snuffing them out.
        ogre_magi 7y ago
        Wait why are their lives more valuable than others?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "every bag of groceries is going to be covered in COVID" Just as a random factoid, somewhere I was just reading that someone was doing testing of surfaces in a hospital, and on average they found maybe 80% contaminated with the virus, but the floor of the pharmacy was 100% even though no patients had been in there...
  - SerLava 7y ago
    That's terrifying.
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    Well, CDC doesn't believe surface transfer to be a significant factor soo.. There's that.
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    Asking in good faith (I believe you!) if you could dig out your source, I would find that interesting to read as well.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      "as medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients. Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive" Other objects were not as high as I recalled, but computer mice in the ICU were 75%. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885_article Also see table: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885-t1 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0885-t1

FpUser 7y ago

If I am high risk person in a smallish group it should then be my choice to self-isolate or not as it will not affect the rest of the population

lazyasciiart 7y ago
Should the government be obligated to offer you support for that choice? That would probably mean at minimum money to replace your work income, something like a new category of 'being high risk' a qualification for unemployment. Or should your choice be limited to self isolate and starve, or keep working?
- FpUser 7y ago
  What support? Said person will just have higher chances to die. Their choice. They're not inflicting death upon the others as accordingly to proposal there are no restrictions on younger carriers without symptoms.
  - totony 7y ago
    I'm unsure if the person you responded to undertstood what you meant. I understood it as "if I am >60+, e.g. at risk, would i be free to not participate in the quarantine if partial quarantine were to happen" I'd argue that no, you should not be. Because if you get it, you will most likely require care and overload hospitals, which is what the whole point of that (partial) quarantine is. Either that or you forfeit your right to healthcare, which has loads of moral issues
    - FpUser 6y ago
      Well you've got no moral rights to lock person up for a year or two with totally unknown outcome. If you are so eager to save public funds you have a lots of places to start shaving. You might be amazed when you look how governments spend money. Also if locked up for extended amount of time said person is likely develop whole bunch of ailments include mental that would "overwhelm"(tm) healthcare as well unless you deny them treatment and let them wonder the streets. Likely loss of income will cause the same thing, them being kicked out from their dwellings.