7 ms·

Data Shows Shelter-in-Place Is Ending, Whether Governments Want It to or Not

31 points by nostromo 7y ago

jakeogh 7y ago
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/coronavirus-hype-biggest-political-hoax-in-history/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/coronavirus...
- JacksonGariety 7y ago
  This is 50% fake news.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
    - samcday 7y ago
      Honestly I don’t really understand the end game of disinformation campaigns like this. It’s one thing to spread propaganda in order to influence elections and get a crooked bureaucrat into power that can enrich some corporate buddies. But it’s another to deceive people about a global health crisis. If you’re successful, people go outside and trigger a second wave of infections - lots of people die and we’re back to square 1. Economy will still be fucked. What am I missing here?
      - orisho 7y ago
        Don't hurry to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity
      - mindslight 7y ago
        If 1-2% of people die quickly, the economy will not be fucked. That's a politicized untruth put out to counter other politicized untruths. The people protesting and doing other stupid things are actually helping those of us that are isolating. The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. This obviously depends on whether an individual can get reinfected, but I haven't seen anything conclusive one way or another and it feels like this has also been misleadingly politicized. Obviously a deluge of cases is absolutely terrible for the healthcare workers, as well as other essential employees that are exposed to the mob-herd (eg grocery store workers) and likely won't receive adequate healthcare. So I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing.
        etrabroline 7y ago
        Why do you care more about "the economy" than the lives of 2% ~= 6 million people? The Fed could take back it's massive Wall Street bailout and give it to workers. Rich people would hoot and holler but no one would starve, and the public would be much less anxious to lift the quarantine. >herd immunity There is no natural herd immunity for the flu or common cold. It's totally possible that after a few months people who survive become reinfected, which would massively increase the death rate if you already have lung damage when you get it again.
        mindslight 7y ago
        Try reading my whole comment instead of jumping at phrases that match your political attack target.
        etrabroline 7y ago
        >The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. If we are going to allow most people to become infected anyway, such that we encourage people to go to large gatherings without even wearing masks, then surely there is no reason to have any quarantine at all, so we wouldn't be waiting to lift it. But you seem to think we would still be waiting, just for a shorter amount of time, so you are clearly very confused about this whole situation. >I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing. So am I.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        If you think it is a Russian campaign, as people have previously asserted, you might get some perspective by looking at what seems to be happening in Russia right now. There is a Wikipedia page on covid in Russia. The Russian statistics look fishy to me, but not in the same way as the Chinese ones. They have surging numbers of new cases, but a outlier very low claimed death rate. Of course, the latter might just be lagging. And there are supposedly similar protests in Russia as in the US - what does that mean? Are they real? Is it, say, the CIA? Or some internal conflict, or genuinely grassroots?
- fred_is_fred 7y ago
  The Washington Times is not a reliable news source. It's a nutty right-wing paper run by a cult leader who's main job is pushing anti-science view points.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I think it was offered as evidence for a line of propaganda/nonsense being pushed, not as promoting the claims.
- mindslight 7y ago
  1. Have a politicized society that is so dysfunctional that it is incapable of coherently focusing on a shared problem. 2. Downplay common sense individual actions like wearing masks, because it would demonstrate lack of preparation 3. Bail out large businesses quickly, throw individuals and small businesses some scraps as a distraction. 4. After gross shutdowns are effected, don't spend the effort to refine them - eg reopening various small businesses that could operate hygienically. 5. Reject fine-grained policy that would repudiate business-uber-alles, like forcing new safety guidelines on essential industries. 6. Get fatigued from the above, and write off everything that was attempted as unnecessary waste doomed from the start. (thread article) 7. Rationalize that nothing could be done, things just happen. The idea we could do anything about it was a hoax. (your article) 8. Repeat for next disaster. We've basically given up, end of story. I keep trying to grasp the idea that this is the societal death spiral taking hold, but I can't yet wrap my head around it.
  - samcday 7y ago
    As an Aussie I grew up on a healthy diet of US exceptionalism propaganda. At some point I came to the realization that the US is an empire in decline. Now, I’m starting to think the US is already a failed state. I’m pretty frightened to be living in this timeline. It’s like the collapse of Rome, but with wifi, vape pens, memes and nuclear arsenals.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      The seeds of the civil war were sown during the writing of the Declaration of Independence. The cracks were always there. I see the same left/right arguments from friends in the UK and Brazil.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      This has been the party line since at least the 1970s if not earlier. Like a lot of similar predictions, it's sure to be true eventually. However, the propaganda makes it impossible to judge if it's happening now. There may be a resurgence in covid cases in the US shortly, but it's interesting that there are some countries not named America, Italy, or Spain, that are seeing daily growth of 5-10% and we're not talking about them.
JacksonGariety 7y ago
No matter how seriously you value your life, no matter how seriously you take the quarantine, you simply cannot overlook the fact that all of this looks exactly like every other recent TV sensation: it comes out of nowhere; the media capitalizes on it; and now we're slowly getting bored, waiting for something substantial to happen in our lives.
- jamroom 7y ago
  I’m not sure I would call 65,000+ dead from coronavirus “waiting for something to happen”.
  - tomatotomato37 7y ago
    To be fair that's just over US the flu death rate last year, and outside of our most dense city everything has been rather manageable. It's gonna have to bump up another exponent to hit Spanish Flu levels, and even that didn't really affect the US very adversely if the Roaring 20s are anything to go by
    - tt 7y ago
      Comparing COVID-19 deaths to flu deaths is like comparing apples to oranges. The former are actual numbers; the latter are inflated statistical estimates. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-...
  - DeonPenny 7y ago
    The problem is even if that doubles in 2018 flu had like 90k. Lets say by November it doesn't reach 90k how angry would people be. All the business owners and workers that were laid off.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      If you deploy a contingency plan you can't then later say "see it wasn't so bad" using the measured numbers. You have to use a model of what it would have been without the containment measures.
JoeMayoBot 7y ago
Driving through Las Vegas, you would hardly know there was still a mandatory quarantine. Stores and restaurants have big signs saying "Open", the roads have normal traffic, and there's normal sidewalk activity too. Yet, the Governor is regularly on TV talking about how the state is still in quarantine and the plan to gradually reopen. What is true is that casinos are shut down and large public activities, like concerts and sporting events, aren't happening. I won't speak to the morality because people have wildly different opinions, but the reality is that a lot of people refuse to quarantine any more.
- taeric 7y ago
  Did Vegas see a large outbreak? It is actually one of the places that convinced me before that we have a bad understanding of this virus. No model of community spread made any sense as to how it was not in Vegas.
  - JoeMayoBot 7y ago
    It's really hard to tell because it doesn't sound like there's reliable testing to verify. A recent official count was around 5000 or so. My gut feeling is that a lot of people have had it and didn't know for sure. Given the amount of international visitors and the fact that we have a sizable Chinese business community, it seems like the numbers are potentially higher than what is officially announced.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I happened to see a map of covid over the whole US, and my first reaction was to remember the xkcd about how a lot of maps are just relabeled population maps. However, there was a slight difference between it and a generic population map - it is very skewed towards the eastern US and coast. Overall, it seems (and this was suggested in other things I've read) that covid in the US has been spread primarily from Europe and not Asia. If it had come from Asia more, surely it would have hit California and the west coast harder.
      - 7y ago

31 points by nostromo 7y ago

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/coronavirus-hype-biggest-political-hoax-in-history/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/coronavirus...

JacksonGariety 7y ago
This is 50% fake news.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
  - samcday 7y ago
    Honestly I don’t really understand the end game of disinformation campaigns like this. It’s one thing to spread propaganda in order to influence elections and get a crooked bureaucrat into power that can enrich some corporate buddies. But it’s another to deceive people about a global health crisis. If you’re successful, people go outside and trigger a second wave of infections - lots of people die and we’re back to square 1. Economy will still be fucked. What am I missing here?
    - orisho 7y ago
      Don't hurry to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity
    - mindslight 7y ago
      If 1-2% of people die quickly, the economy will not be fucked. That's a politicized untruth put out to counter other politicized untruths. The people protesting and doing other stupid things are actually helping those of us that are isolating. The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. This obviously depends on whether an individual can get reinfected, but I haven't seen anything conclusive one way or another and it feels like this has also been misleadingly politicized. Obviously a deluge of cases is absolutely terrible for the healthcare workers, as well as other essential employees that are exposed to the mob-herd (eg grocery store workers) and likely won't receive adequate healthcare. So I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing.
      - etrabroline 7y ago
        Why do you care more about "the economy" than the lives of 2% ~= 6 million people? The Fed could take back it's massive Wall Street bailout and give it to workers. Rich people would hoot and holler but no one would starve, and the public would be much less anxious to lift the quarantine. >herd immunity There is no natural herd immunity for the flu or common cold. It's totally possible that after a few months people who survive become reinfected, which would massively increase the death rate if you already have lung damage when you get it again.
        mindslight 7y ago
        Try reading my whole comment instead of jumping at phrases that match your political attack target.
        etrabroline 7y ago
        >The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. If we are going to allow most people to become infected anyway, such that we encourage people to go to large gatherings without even wearing masks, then surely there is no reason to have any quarantine at all, so we wouldn't be waiting to lift it. But you seem to think we would still be waiting, just for a shorter amount of time, so you are clearly very confused about this whole situation. >I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing. So am I.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      If you think it is a Russian campaign, as people have previously asserted, you might get some perspective by looking at what seems to be happening in Russia right now. There is a Wikipedia page on covid in Russia. The Russian statistics look fishy to me, but not in the same way as the Chinese ones. They have surging numbers of new cases, but a outlier very low claimed death rate. Of course, the latter might just be lagging. And there are supposedly similar protests in Russia as in the US - what does that mean? Are they real? Is it, say, the CIA? Or some internal conflict, or genuinely grassroots?
fred_is_fred 7y ago
The Washington Times is not a reliable news source. It's a nutty right-wing paper run by a cult leader who's main job is pushing anti-science view points.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I think it was offered as evidence for a line of propaganda/nonsense being pushed, not as promoting the claims.
mindslight 7y ago
1. Have a politicized society that is so dysfunctional that it is incapable of coherently focusing on a shared problem. 2. Downplay common sense individual actions like wearing masks, because it would demonstrate lack of preparation 3. Bail out large businesses quickly, throw individuals and small businesses some scraps as a distraction. 4. After gross shutdowns are effected, don't spend the effort to refine them - eg reopening various small businesses that could operate hygienically. 5. Reject fine-grained policy that would repudiate business-uber-alles, like forcing new safety guidelines on essential industries. 6. Get fatigued from the above, and write off everything that was attempted as unnecessary waste doomed from the start. (thread article) 7. Rationalize that nothing could be done, things just happen. The idea we could do anything about it was a hoax. (your article) 8. Repeat for next disaster. We've basically given up, end of story. I keep trying to grasp the idea that this is the societal death spiral taking hold, but I can't yet wrap my head around it.
- samcday 7y ago
  As an Aussie I grew up on a healthy diet of US exceptionalism propaganda. At some point I came to the realization that the US is an empire in decline. Now, I’m starting to think the US is already a failed state. I’m pretty frightened to be living in this timeline. It’s like the collapse of Rome, but with wifi, vape pens, memes and nuclear arsenals.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    The seeds of the civil war were sown during the writing of the Declaration of Independence. The cracks were always there. I see the same left/right arguments from friends in the UK and Brazil.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    This has been the party line since at least the 1970s if not earlier. Like a lot of similar predictions, it's sure to be true eventually. However, the propaganda makes it impossible to judge if it's happening now. There may be a resurgence in covid cases in the US shortly, but it's interesting that there are some countries not named America, Italy, or Spain, that are seeing daily growth of 5-10% and we're not talking about them.

JacksonGariety 7y ago

No matter how seriously you value your life, no matter how seriously you take the quarantine, you simply cannot overlook the fact that all of this looks exactly like every other recent TV sensation: it comes out of nowhere; the media capitalizes on it; and now we're slowly getting bored, waiting for something substantial to happen in our lives.

jamroom 7y ago
I’m not sure I would call 65,000+ dead from coronavirus “waiting for something to happen”.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  To be fair that's just over US the flu death rate last year, and outside of our most dense city everything has been rather manageable. It's gonna have to bump up another exponent to hit Spanish Flu levels, and even that didn't really affect the US very adversely if the Roaring 20s are anything to go by
  - tt 7y ago
    Comparing COVID-19 deaths to flu deaths is like comparing apples to oranges. The former are actual numbers; the latter are inflated statistical estimates. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-...
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  The problem is even if that doubles in 2018 flu had like 90k. Lets say by November it doesn't reach 90k how angry would people be. All the business owners and workers that were laid off.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    If you deploy a contingency plan you can't then later say "see it wasn't so bad" using the measured numbers. You have to use a model of what it would have been without the containment measures.

JoeMayoBot 7y ago

Driving through Las Vegas, you would hardly know there was still a mandatory quarantine. Stores and restaurants have big signs saying "Open", the roads have normal traffic, and there's normal sidewalk activity too. Yet, the Governor is regularly on TV talking about how the state is still in quarantine and the plan to gradually reopen. What is true is that casinos are shut down and large public activities, like concerts and sporting events, aren't happening. I won't speak to the morality because people have wildly different opinions, but the reality is that a lot of people refuse to quarantine any more.

taeric 7y ago
Did Vegas see a large outbreak? It is actually one of the places that convinced me before that we have a bad understanding of this virus. No model of community spread made any sense as to how it was not in Vegas.
- JoeMayoBot 7y ago
  It's really hard to tell because it doesn't sound like there's reliable testing to verify. A recent official count was around 5000 or so. My gut feeling is that a lot of people have had it and didn't know for sure. Given the amount of international visitors and the fact that we have a sizable Chinese business community, it seems like the numbers are potentially higher than what is officially announced.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I happened to see a map of covid over the whole US, and my first reaction was to remember the xkcd about how a lot of maps are just relabeled population maps. However, there was a slight difference between it and a generic population map - it is very skewed towards the eastern US and coast. Overall, it seems (and this was suggested in other things I've read) that covid in the US has been spread primarily from Europe and not Asia. If it had come from Asia more, surely it would have hit California and the west coast harder.
    - 7y ago