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No one in the CDC or state health departments seem to be taking this into account. They're only optimizing for one variable: number of infected and number of co

No one in the CDC or state health departments seem to be taking this into account. They're only optimizing for one variable: number of infected and number of covid19 deaths.

mehrdadn 6y ago
You say that as if we've known this since January or something... and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging?
- deathgrips 6y ago
  >You say that as if we've known this since January or something Yes, who could have possibly known about covid19 in January? [0] >and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that forcing people to stay at home, to socially distance themselves from their social support network, and to quit earning a living would have a significant impact on their mental health and a dangerous impact on the mental health of those with mood disorders. Every doctor has been educated on mental illnesses. The CDC had chances to make the right choices in January. It had chances to make the right choices in February. It had chances to make the right choices in March. How long until you think we can judge the CDC? [0] (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...)
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    Come on dude. "Known this" in my sentence was not referring to "the existence of COVID-19" but rather "the fact that we would start seeing more suicides than disease deaths today". The right choice was shutting things down. The only question was how long it needs to keep going, which people were still trying to figure out. Now this event might give them more information that might help them figure it out. If you're reasonable you'll give them a chance to see if they'll take it into account. You know full well much of the rest of the executive didn't show remotely as much competence as the CDC about the disease itself for months despite being repeatedly warned even after the outbreak had already occurred, and now you're lashing out at the CDC for not having predicted when the first side effects would start to occur in some cities within 1 day of when you heard the news? Sheesh.
    - deathgrips 6y ago
      >The right choice was shutting things down . . . You know full well much of the rest of the executive didn't show remotely as much competence as the CDC about the disease itself for months despite being repeatedly warned even after the outbreak had already occurred This is some "we have always been at war with Eastasia" doublethink. The CDC told people for a long, long time that masks were harmful and using them was stupid. The CDC shut down private and university covid19 testing in Washington. > and now you're lashing out at the CDC for not having predicted when the first side effects would start to occur in some cities within 1 day of when you heard the news? Ask your doctor if job loss and isolation from friends and family is a risk factor for suicide. I talked to a doctor back in early March who predicted that more people would die from suicides than from covid19.
    - makomk 6y ago
      We don't know that was the right choice at all. This is a new, untested pandemic response that hasn't been used before, essentially a planet-scale experiment with everyone's futures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... It had some definite opposition from experts when it was developed, and seems to have won out for political reasons.
      - mehrdadn 6y ago
        To clarify: I meant "the right choice" given the information, ideas, and means they had available at the time. Not "the right choice if everything was possible and known".
        deathgrips 6y ago
        The CDC wasn't circulating the same facts that South Korea and Singapore were dealing with. Do you remember what Asia was doing in February? The CDC basically created this disaster. We could have shut down air traffic, told the public to use masks in February, and allowed universities and private labs to conduct testing. Instead the CDC lied.
      - 6y ago
  - addHocker 6y ago
    The social distancing guidelines are a century old- basically adapted to large households.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Nobody said shutting down will not have its own casualties. There was never a bloodless option on the table. It's like a choice whether to evacuate a city that's threatened by an active volcano. The volcano may or may not erupt. It either kills everyone, or nothing happens. But announcing the evacuation is sentencing some people to death: think of all the people in emergency rooms, on life support, etc., many of whom will not survive being moved. And then you'll have "death by economics" among the evacuated, as they fail to adjust to their new reality in emergency housing, with no jobs, living among strangers not too happy about the sudden population increase in their area. It's a tough choice, but it's a game of numbers. To a first approximation, even if lockdown is going to kill 0.01% of people one way or another, if it prevents 0.1% of people from dying, it's worth it and it's the right choice. In reality, there's uncertainty around these estimates that need to be taken into account, but the idea is the same. (Tangent: I hate point estimates with a passion; I wish there was an easy and standardized way to express distributions in plain text.)
- ponker 6y ago
  No, 3+ weeks ago it was obvious that we did “flatten the curve,” healthcare systems would not collapse, NYC would not need 30,000 ventilators, and that is when the stay at home orders should have been lifted. We’re not going to burrow underground until we have a vaccine, so the time is long overdue to start restoring our mental health and economic well being. Those at high risk can isolate further, but the general population has delivered what was asked of it.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > No, 3+ weeks ago it was obvious that we did “flatten the curve,” healthcare systems would not collapse, NYC would not need 30,000 ventilators, and that is when the stay at home orders should have been lifted. That doesn't make any sense. You're basically advocating for stopping treatment as soon as progress is seen, not when the treatment is successful. It'd be like an oncologist saying: > Good news! Your tumor is starting to respond to the chemo, and we've seen a reduction in its rate of growth, so we're going discontinue treatment. The stay at home orders shouldn't be lifted when the curve is flattened, but when the capability is known to exist to keep it flat without the orders.
    - ponker 6y ago
      That assumes we go to pre-lockdown behaviors when the order is lifted. Data show that this is not true, that social distancing and work from home started before the orders and will continue after they are lifted. Lifting them allows people to make their own choices.
DanBC 6y ago
No, the CDC will be working hard to understand the rise in rates of death by suicide. Counting death is hard, and counting suicide death in the US is particularly hard because of the regional variations in use of medical examiners and coroners and the cultural drive in some areas to say that a death by suicide was accidental. Here's a link to a CDC page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm > Finally, the estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions. Future analyses of cause-specific excess mortality may provide additional information about these patterns.

No one in the CDC or state health departments seem to be taking this into account. They're only optimizing for one variable: number of infected and number of covid19 deaths.

mehrdadn 6y ago

You say that as if we've known this since January or something... and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging?

deathgrips 6y ago
>You say that as if we've known this since January or something Yes, who could have possibly known about covid19 in January? [0] >and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that forcing people to stay at home, to socially distance themselves from their social support network, and to quit earning a living would have a significant impact on their mental health and a dangerous impact on the mental health of those with mood disorders. Every doctor has been educated on mental illnesses. The CDC had chances to make the right choices in January. It had chances to make the right choices in February. It had chances to make the right choices in March. How long until you think we can judge the CDC? [0] (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...)
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  Come on dude. "Known this" in my sentence was not referring to "the existence of COVID-19" but rather "the fact that we would start seeing more suicides than disease deaths today". The right choice was shutting things down. The only question was how long it needs to keep going, which people were still trying to figure out. Now this event might give them more information that might help them figure it out. If you're reasonable you'll give them a chance to see if they'll take it into account. You know full well much of the rest of the executive didn't show remotely as much competence as the CDC about the disease itself for months despite being repeatedly warned even after the outbreak had already occurred, and now you're lashing out at the CDC for not having predicted when the first side effects would start to occur in some cities within 1 day of when you heard the news? Sheesh.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    >The right choice was shutting things down . . . You know full well much of the rest of the executive didn't show remotely as much competence as the CDC about the disease itself for months despite being repeatedly warned even after the outbreak had already occurred This is some "we have always been at war with Eastasia" doublethink. The CDC told people for a long, long time that masks were harmful and using them was stupid. The CDC shut down private and university covid19 testing in Washington. > and now you're lashing out at the CDC for not having predicted when the first side effects would start to occur in some cities within 1 day of when you heard the news? Ask your doctor if job loss and isolation from friends and family is a risk factor for suicide. I talked to a doctor back in early March who predicted that more people would die from suicides than from covid19.
  - makomk 6y ago
    We don't know that was the right choice at all. This is a new, untested pandemic response that hasn't been used before, essentially a planet-scale experiment with everyone's futures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distancing-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... It had some definite opposition from experts when it was developed, and seems to have won out for political reasons.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      To clarify: I meant "the right choice" given the information, ideas, and means they had available at the time. Not "the right choice if everything was possible and known".
      - deathgrips 6y ago
        The CDC wasn't circulating the same facts that South Korea and Singapore were dealing with. Do you remember what Asia was doing in February? The CDC basically created this disaster. We could have shut down air traffic, told the public to use masks in February, and allowed universities and private labs to conduct testing. Instead the CDC lied.
    - 6y ago
- addHocker 6y ago
  The social distancing guidelines are a century old- basically adapted to large households.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Nobody said shutting down will not have its own casualties. There was never a bloodless option on the table. It's like a choice whether to evacuate a city that's threatened by an active volcano. The volcano may or may not erupt. It either kills everyone, or nothing happens. But announcing the evacuation is sentencing some people to death: think of all the people in emergency rooms, on life support, etc., many of whom will not survive being moved. And then you'll have "death by economics" among the evacuated, as they fail to adjust to their new reality in emergency housing, with no jobs, living among strangers not too happy about the sudden population increase in their area. It's a tough choice, but it's a game of numbers. To a first approximation, even if lockdown is going to kill 0.01% of people one way or another, if it prevents 0.1% of people from dying, it's worth it and it's the right choice. In reality, there's uncertainty around these estimates that need to be taken into account, but the idea is the same. (Tangent: I hate point estimates with a passion; I wish there was an easy and standardized way to express distributions in plain text.)
ponker 6y ago
No, 3+ weeks ago it was obvious that we did “flatten the curve,” healthcare systems would not collapse, NYC would not need 30,000 ventilators, and that is when the stay at home orders should have been lifted. We’re not going to burrow underground until we have a vaccine, so the time is long overdue to start restoring our mental health and economic well being. Those at high risk can isolate further, but the general population has delivered what was asked of it.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > No, 3+ weeks ago it was obvious that we did “flatten the curve,” healthcare systems would not collapse, NYC would not need 30,000 ventilators, and that is when the stay at home orders should have been lifted. That doesn't make any sense. You're basically advocating for stopping treatment as soon as progress is seen, not when the treatment is successful. It'd be like an oncologist saying: > Good news! Your tumor is starting to respond to the chemo, and we've seen a reduction in its rate of growth, so we're going discontinue treatment. The stay at home orders shouldn't be lifted when the curve is flattened, but when the capability is known to exist to keep it flat without the orders.
  - ponker 6y ago
    That assumes we go to pre-lockdown behaviors when the order is lifted. Data show that this is not true, that social distancing and work from home started before the orders and will continue after they are lifted. Lifting them allows people to make their own choices.

DanBC 6y ago

No, the CDC will be working hard to understand the rise in rates of death by suicide. Counting death is hard, and counting suicide death in the US is particularly hard because of the regional variations in use of medical examiners and coroners and the cultural drive in some areas to say that a death by suicide was accidental. Here's a link to a CDC page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm > Finally, the estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions. Future analyses of cause-specific excess mortality may provide additional information about these patterns.