5 ms·

Yeah. It's really a shame that there were all these efforts to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed. Oh well. It looks like enough people would

Yeah. It's really a shame that there were all these efforts to prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed. Oh well. It looks like enough people would like to run this particular experiment that we just might get to see what it looks like after all. Yay?

abfan1127 6y ago
I don't understand your comment. We made decisions based on information. The results of our original experiment turned out to be different than our expectations. Further, others were hurt substantially due to these decisions. Those hurt are requesting (or demanding) to change course so as to not be hurt further. Seems reasonable to change course, with each US State (or country) changing course differently based on their circumstances.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I don't know why you think we came out so far different from expectations - New York hospitals were overwhelmed, they hadn't shut down in time to prevent a large wave of cases - other locales that have gotten lucky or shut down have avoided feeling that wave so far... Changing course doesn't seem advisable as growth rates haven't subsided into the negative except in small locales.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    New York hospitals weren't happy by any means, but their peak load was an order of magnitude less than what local leaders said they were preparing for.
  - abfan1127 6y ago
    New York was the exception to the rule. Most hospitals were not overwhelmed. In fact, many hospitals flirted with financial disaster when governors prevented elective procedures. I can speak specifically to AZ which outside of some very small Indian Reservation medical centers, is well below capacity[1] Seattle's Army hospital closed without a single patient[2]. Growth rates, especially in AZ, were never large to begin with. [1] - https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/covidpresentation42220finalweb.pdf https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/covidpresentation... [2] - https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys-seattle-field-hospital-closes-after-3-days-without-treating-single-patient.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys-seattle...
    - TylerE 6y ago
      I would be cautious about using the past tense. New case rates have not come down much from peak - and I expect them to spike in the next few weeks as people let their guard down and things reopen. Deaths lag infections by several weeks. Over 2200 people died yesterday.
      - abfan1127 6y ago
        I agree that with re-opening, we will see a bump in infections, and therefore deaths. However, there is only one path out of this and that is herd immunity. We can accelerate herd immunity via vaccine, but either way its herd immunity. That means that we want as many people sick as our hospital system can handle, but not more. That means playing a game of optimization. Further, different states (New York vs. Arizona) should have different plans because their situations are vastly different (population density, current herd infection status, etc). Further, we can't just optimize for Covid19 deaths, we have to look at the whole situation, which includes suicides due to shelter-in-place orders, child abuse and other domestic violence, malnutrition due to hunger from unemployment, negative impacts of poverty. this will certainly be a case study for future generations.
        TylerE 6y ago
        Strongly disagree. We are learning how to help patients survive. If I must catch it, I want to catch it as far in the future as posslbe.
        abfan1127 6y ago
        that's a decision in isolation. How many years of poverty are you willing to endure? Once you put it terms of trade-offs, then decisions make sense.
        TylerE 6y ago
        Well, for me it’s pretty easy. I haVe several underlying conditions that mean it would likely be quite bad for me.
  - randallsquared 6y ago
    Some hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed, but that was limited to Queens and Brooklyn: the NPR piece notes that Javits Center, which was turned into a hospital in Manhattan, treated about 1100 people total, after being built to handle 1900 at a time. The three other NY field hospitals on that list, all close to NYC, treated zero patients. One of those is in the same county just north of NYC that had the initial outbreak here. I think there's no question that COVID-19 has been a disaster here, but it's going to be heavily debated whether the lockdown saved us or just made things worse on net.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      How are you connecting the occupancy rate of field hospitals to the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the lockdown?
      - randallsquared 6y ago
        The low occupancy rate of field hospitals is evidence that either the lockdown worked, or that it was unnecessary. It excludes the case in which the lockdown was obviously necessary and just barely worked, since that's the case in which those field hospitals would themselves have been overwhelmed or nearly so, as well as the existing ICUs. Without regard to the actual effectiveness, the fact that the field hospitals went mostly empty will fuel acrimonious debate about said effectiveness.
    - mgleason_3 6y ago
      Yup, makes me wonder why Cuomo didn't shut down the subway system (or at least limit use based on some sort of need)? The media's given him props for leadership in his briefings, but ignored this massive sources of infections. Meanwhile, various narratives swirl about why NYC is being hit so much harder than elsewhere, like it's some sort of mystery.
      - randallsquared 6y ago
        I'm not sure that the data bear that out. Manhattan is the best-served borough, but the least infected. Just this week, Cuomo mentioned some surprising findings: essential workers and homeless, who make up most people on the subway, do not make up a significant number of infected showing up at hospitals, but those do who had been sheltering at home (self-reported, I imagine).
- thaumaturgy 6y ago
  "I don't want to be hurt" was an option that was swept off the table the moment we went into this disaster with a dysfunctional federal government. Our choices since then have been "economic hardship and misery" or "economic hardship and misery with a spicy side dish of death and suffering". Covid19 has been the leading cause of death in America for a month now [1]. Some time tomorrow, it will have killed a confirmed 80,000 Americans [2] and America has consistently had 1/3rd of the world's critically-ill cases for weeks [ibid]. There is no way we are going to get out of this with less than 100,000 dead. Amazingly, the same country that had endless investigations into the deaths of two people in Benghazi and went to war over the deaths of 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 -- subsequently spending $6.4 trillion in war operations [3] -- is finding 100,000 dead to be "pretty good", and the economic cost of mitigating further death to be just a little bit too expensive. As usual, some of this is explained by political misinformation campaigns that too many people are falling for [4][5][6][7], but still, the same talking points get repeated into forums like this one, even though most Americans would prefer economic pain over a higher death toll for now [8][9][10]. I'm just gobsmacked that the disinformation is taking root so easily, because arguing that can really trivially be reduced to, "I don't think enough people are dying to justify the measures meant to prevent people from dying." Hopefully states like California that are following more conservative, evidence-based approaches to relaxing restrictions, will relieve some of the tension. [1]: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/492053-coronavirus-now-leading-cause-of-death-in-us https://thehill.com/homenews/news/492053-coronavirus-now-lea... [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on... [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservative-networks-backing-anti-quarantine-protests/2020/04/22/da75c81e-83fe-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservat... [5]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun-activists-using-facebook-groups-push-anti-quarantine-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun... [6]: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21225195/stay-at-home-protests-trump-tea-party-reelection https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21225195/stay-at-home-protests... [7]: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/22/iowa-family-behind-reopen-covid-19-protests-popping-up-across-country/3005696001/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/0... [8]: https://www.newsweek.com/americans-coronavirus-restrictions-lifted-too-quickly-poll-1502743 https://www.newsweek.com/americans-coronavirus-restrictions-... [9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/coronavirus-reopening-polls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/coronavirus-r... [10]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-americans-think-its-too-soon-to-return-to-what-life-was-like-pre-pandemic/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-americans-think-it...
- greedo 6y ago
  The majority of Americans across the board support the lock down, and continue to support going slowly with relaxing restrictions. Only a small, yet well-funded minority want things relaxed ASAP.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Further, others were hurt substantially due to these decisions. If anything the US government failed to act to attenuate the expected economic impact that emergency anti-epidemic policies would naturally have on the most vulnerable elements of society. It's also very ironic, if not hipocritical, to abuse the most vulnerable and victimized elements of society, who have been systematically ignored and sacrificed , to argue against undoing policies aimed at defending society's best interests.

abfan1127 6y ago

I don't understand your comment. We made decisions based on information. The results of our original experiment turned out to be different than our expectations. Further, others were hurt substantially due to these decisions. Those hurt are requesting (or demanding) to change course so as to not be hurt further. Seems reasonable to change course, with each US State (or country) changing course differently based on their circumstances.

munk-a 6y ago
I don't know why you think we came out so far different from expectations - New York hospitals were overwhelmed, they hadn't shut down in time to prevent a large wave of cases - other locales that have gotten lucky or shut down have avoided feeling that wave so far... Changing course doesn't seem advisable as growth rates haven't subsided into the negative except in small locales.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  New York hospitals weren't happy by any means, but their peak load was an order of magnitude less than what local leaders said they were preparing for.
- abfan1127 6y ago
  New York was the exception to the rule. Most hospitals were not overwhelmed. In fact, many hospitals flirted with financial disaster when governors prevented elective procedures. I can speak specifically to AZ which outside of some very small Indian Reservation medical centers, is well below capacity[1] Seattle's Army hospital closed without a single patient[2]. Growth rates, especially in AZ, were never large to begin with. [1] - https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/covidpresentation42220finalweb.pdf https://azgovernor.gov/sites/default/files/covidpresentation... [2] - https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys-seattle-field-hospital-closes-after-3-days-without-treating-single-patient.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys-seattle...
  - TylerE 6y ago
    I would be cautious about using the past tense. New case rates have not come down much from peak - and I expect them to spike in the next few weeks as people let their guard down and things reopen. Deaths lag infections by several weeks. Over 2200 people died yesterday.
    - abfan1127 6y ago
      I agree that with re-opening, we will see a bump in infections, and therefore deaths. However, there is only one path out of this and that is herd immunity. We can accelerate herd immunity via vaccine, but either way its herd immunity. That means that we want as many people sick as our hospital system can handle, but not more. That means playing a game of optimization. Further, different states (New York vs. Arizona) should have different plans because their situations are vastly different (population density, current herd infection status, etc). Further, we can't just optimize for Covid19 deaths, we have to look at the whole situation, which includes suicides due to shelter-in-place orders, child abuse and other domestic violence, malnutrition due to hunger from unemployment, negative impacts of poverty. this will certainly be a case study for future generations.
      - TylerE 6y ago
        Strongly disagree. We are learning how to help patients survive. If I must catch it, I want to catch it as far in the future as posslbe.
        abfan1127 6y ago
        that's a decision in isolation. How many years of poverty are you willing to endure? Once you put it terms of trade-offs, then decisions make sense.
        TylerE 6y ago
        Well, for me it’s pretty easy. I haVe several underlying conditions that mean it would likely be quite bad for me.
- randallsquared 6y ago
  Some hospitals in NYC were overwhelmed, but that was limited to Queens and Brooklyn: the NPR piece notes that Javits Center, which was turned into a hospital in Manhattan, treated about 1100 people total, after being built to handle 1900 at a time. The three other NY field hospitals on that list, all close to NYC, treated zero patients. One of those is in the same county just north of NYC that had the initial outbreak here. I think there's no question that COVID-19 has been a disaster here, but it's going to be heavily debated whether the lockdown saved us or just made things worse on net.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    How are you connecting the occupancy rate of field hospitals to the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the lockdown?
    - randallsquared 6y ago
      The low occupancy rate of field hospitals is evidence that either the lockdown worked, or that it was unnecessary. It excludes the case in which the lockdown was obviously necessary and just barely worked, since that's the case in which those field hospitals would themselves have been overwhelmed or nearly so, as well as the existing ICUs. Without regard to the actual effectiveness, the fact that the field hospitals went mostly empty will fuel acrimonious debate about said effectiveness.
  - mgleason_3 6y ago
    Yup, makes me wonder why Cuomo didn't shut down the subway system (or at least limit use based on some sort of need)? The media's given him props for leadership in his briefings, but ignored this massive sources of infections. Meanwhile, various narratives swirl about why NYC is being hit so much harder than elsewhere, like it's some sort of mystery.
    - randallsquared 6y ago
      I'm not sure that the data bear that out. Manhattan is the best-served borough, but the least infected. Just this week, Cuomo mentioned some surprising findings: essential workers and homeless, who make up most people on the subway, do not make up a significant number of infected showing up at hospitals, but those do who had been sheltering at home (self-reported, I imagine).
thaumaturgy 6y ago
"I don't want to be hurt" was an option that was swept off the table the moment we went into this disaster with a dysfunctional federal government. Our choices since then have been "economic hardship and misery" or "economic hardship and misery with a spicy side dish of death and suffering". Covid19 has been the leading cause of death in America for a month now [1]. Some time tomorrow, it will have killed a confirmed 80,000 Americans [2] and America has consistently had 1/3rd of the world's critically-ill cases for weeks [ibid]. There is no way we are going to get out of this with less than 100,000 dead. Amazingly, the same country that had endless investigations into the deaths of two people in Benghazi and went to war over the deaths of 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 -- subsequently spending $6.4 trillion in war operations [3] -- is finding 100,000 dead to be "pretty good", and the economic cost of mitigating further death to be just a little bit too expensive. As usual, some of this is explained by political misinformation campaigns that too many people are falling for [4][5][6][7], but still, the same talking points get repeated into forums like this one, even though most Americans would prefer economic pain over a higher death toll for now [8][9][10]. I'm just gobsmacked that the disinformation is taking root so easily, because arguing that can really trivially be reduced to, "I don't think enough people are dying to justify the measures meant to prevent people from dying." Hopefully states like California that are following more conservative, evidence-based approaches to relaxing restrictions, will relieve some of the tension. [1]: https://thehill.com/homenews/news/492053-coronavirus-now-leading-cause-of-death-in-us https://thehill.com/homenews/news/492053-coronavirus-now-lea... [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ [3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on-middle-east-wars-since-2001-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/us-spent-6point4-trillion-on... [4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservative-networks-backing-anti-quarantine-protests/2020/04/22/da75c81e-83fe-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservat... [5]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun-activists-using-facebook-groups-push-anti-quarantine-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun... [6]: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21225195/stay-at-home-protests-trump-tea-party-reelection https://www.vox.com/2020/4/19/21225195/stay-at-home-protests... [7]: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/22/iowa-family-behind-reopen-covid-19-protests-popping-up-across-country/3005696001/ https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/0... [8]: https://www.newsweek.com/americans-coronavirus-restrictions-lifted-too-quickly-poll-1502743 https://www.newsweek.com/americans-coronavirus-restrictions-... [9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/coronavirus-reopening-polls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/coronavirus-r... [10]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-americans-think-its-too-soon-to-return-to-what-life-was-like-pre-pandemic/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-americans-think-it...
greedo 6y ago
The majority of Americans across the board support the lock down, and continue to support going slowly with relaxing restrictions. Only a small, yet well-funded minority want things relaxed ASAP.
rumanator 6y ago
> Further, others were hurt substantially due to these decisions. If anything the US government failed to act to attenuate the expected economic impact that emergency anti-epidemic policies would naturally have on the most vulnerable elements of society. It's also very ironic, if not hipocritical, to abuse the most vulnerable and victimized elements of society, who have been systematically ignored and sacrificed , to argue against undoing policies aimed at defending society's best interests.