7 ms·

It confuses me why r < 1 isn't the goal everywhere. It seems like such an obvious thing to aim for. Any ideas?

by mehrdadn 6y ago

austhrow743 6y ago
If you don't set achievable goals then you just waste a lot of resources trying to achieve them.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  Why is this not achievable? New York pulled it off...
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    Seems to be politicised. You have a significant portion of the country treating not wearing masks or social distancing as a political statement. I'm not saying it's not achievable. Just that you need to evaluate if it is achievable before you focus on it and it certainly doesn't seem like its "obvious" that it is to me.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    New York pulled what off? The highest cases per capita of anywhere in the US, bad policy allowing it to ravage their nursing homes. Not surprising after COVID burned through their population (quarantine or not) the case numbers have subsided. If anything NYC demonstrates that quarantine was entirely ineffective, and that the biggest mistake was not focusing on protecting the people actually at risk. The most interesting takeaway from COVID is that “both sides” were right. It is much more deadly than an average flu (for the elderly) and also much less deadly than the average flu (for those under 50).
    - dataflow 6y ago
      > Not surprising after COVID burned through their population (quarantine or not) the case numbers have subsided. If anything NYC demonstrates that quarantine was entirely ineffective, and that the biggest mistake was not focusing on protecting the people actually at risk. Are you serious? How do you even come up with misinformation like this and not even bother to back anything up with any sources? How do you seriously look at the case charts and pretend like going from 10k cases/day to 500 cases/day was an inevitable outcome resulting from burning through nursing homes? It would be funny if it weren't completely insulting to their herculean efforts in containing everything when so much of the rest of the country is going in the opposite direction. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronav...
      - zaroth 6y ago
        Unfortunately you seem to have misread what I wrote. 1) NY has the highest cases per capita and death rate per capita in the country. [1] [2] This is what I mean by burned through their population. Serology estimates about 20% of NYC population was infected. [3] 2) NY’s policy blunder in shipping COVID positive patients into nursing homes is well documented. [4] #2 did not lead to #1, nor did I claim it did. Their “herculean efforts” to contain COVID notwithstanding, NY is in the process of phased reopening, just like pretty much everyone else. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rate-us-americans-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi... [2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rate-us-americans-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi... [3] - https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-results-completed-antibody-testing https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pande... [4] - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-count-4300-virus-patients-ny-nursing-homes-70825470 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-count-4300-virus-...
  - deelowe 6y ago
    You can't shut the entire country down for months on end. People will starve. No other solution has proven effective enough to get below 1.
colechristensen 6y ago
Some places have made total eradication possible (e.g. New Zealand) Most places just aren't being transparent. Wearing a mask has turned into a political or moral statement without being driven by a goal. Leaders aren't really selling any goals, though CDC / various health departments probably have goals, the technical details are not being communicated. Instead all you see is vague information and seemingly arbitrary action from leaders and virtue signaling from the population. In Trump-led America, I think the goal is pretty obviously positive political outcomes for Trump. CDC and others might have goals but I haven't seen them. Part of the problem is people are generally so stupid about failure that any goal setting sets you up to be a target for people angry about not meeting your goal or not setting an aggressive enough goal so being vague is seen as the best strategy, even though I think it leads to the sort of "fake news" vs "moral crusade" problem.
- toast0 6y ago
  > Some places have made total eradication possible (e.g. New Zealand) Eradication seems possible when there's a small number of cases, and effective border control (being an island nation helps a lot). In the US it's going to be difficult to eradicate, because people can move about the country easily and the case load is high. I haven't looked at other states, but Washington state has fairly clear metrics for opening restrictions at a county level. We'll see how well that works, I guess. Other states will be doing their own thing, as well as other countries, and maybe we can figure out which methods are more or less effective and either switch or know for next time.
kaitai 6y ago
It requires coordinated societal action, which is definitely the same as the death of Freedom and Liberty and thus is to be avoided.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
You can't measure R; you can only model it, and your model is going to involve lots of hard to validate assumptions. So most places are using something easier to measure, such as "metrics are declining before advancing to the next reopening stage".

It confuses me why r < 1 isn't the goal everywhere. It seems like such an obvious thing to aim for. Any ideas?

austhrow743 6y ago

If you don't set achievable goals then you just waste a lot of resources trying to achieve them.

mehrdadn 6y ago
Why is this not achievable? New York pulled it off...
- austhrow743 6y ago
  Seems to be politicised. You have a significant portion of the country treating not wearing masks or social distancing as a political statement. I'm not saying it's not achievable. Just that you need to evaluate if it is achievable before you focus on it and it certainly doesn't seem like its "obvious" that it is to me.
- zaroth 6y ago
  New York pulled what off? The highest cases per capita of anywhere in the US, bad policy allowing it to ravage their nursing homes. Not surprising after COVID burned through their population (quarantine or not) the case numbers have subsided. If anything NYC demonstrates that quarantine was entirely ineffective, and that the biggest mistake was not focusing on protecting the people actually at risk. The most interesting takeaway from COVID is that “both sides” were right. It is much more deadly than an average flu (for the elderly) and also much less deadly than the average flu (for those under 50).
  - dataflow 6y ago
    > Not surprising after COVID burned through their population (quarantine or not) the case numbers have subsided. If anything NYC demonstrates that quarantine was entirely ineffective, and that the biggest mistake was not focusing on protecting the people actually at risk. Are you serious? How do you even come up with misinformation like this and not even bother to back anything up with any sources? How do you seriously look at the case charts and pretend like going from 10k cases/day to 500 cases/day was an inevitable outcome resulting from burning through nursing homes? It would be funny if it weren't completely insulting to their herculean efforts in containing everything when so much of the rest of the country is going in the opposite direction. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronav...
    - zaroth 6y ago
      Unfortunately you seem to have misread what I wrote. 1) NY has the highest cases per capita and death rate per capita in the country. [1] [2] This is what I mean by burned through their population. Serology estimates about 20% of NYC population was infected. [3] 2) NY’s policy blunder in shipping COVID positive patients into nursing homes is well documented. [4] #2 did not lead to #1, nor did I claim it did. Their “herculean efforts” to contain COVID notwithstanding, NY is in the process of phased reopening, just like pretty much everyone else. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rate-us-americans-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi... [2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rate-us-americans-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi... [3] - https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-results-completed-antibody-testing https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pande... [4] - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-count-4300-virus-patients-ny-nursing-homes-70825470 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-count-4300-virus-...
- deelowe 6y ago
  You can't shut the entire country down for months on end. People will starve. No other solution has proven effective enough to get below 1.

colechristensen 6y ago

Some places have made total eradication possible (e.g. New Zealand) Most places just aren't being transparent. Wearing a mask has turned into a political or moral statement without being driven by a goal. Leaders aren't really selling any goals, though CDC / various health departments probably have goals, the technical details are not being communicated. Instead all you see is vague information and seemingly arbitrary action from leaders and virtue signaling from the population. In Trump-led America, I think the goal is pretty obviously positive political outcomes for Trump. CDC and others might have goals but I haven't seen them. Part of the problem is people are generally so stupid about failure that any goal setting sets you up to be a target for people angry about not meeting your goal or not setting an aggressive enough goal so being vague is seen as the best strategy, even though I think it leads to the sort of "fake news" vs "moral crusade" problem.

toast0 6y ago
> Some places have made total eradication possible (e.g. New Zealand) Eradication seems possible when there's a small number of cases, and effective border control (being an island nation helps a lot). In the US it's going to be difficult to eradicate, because people can move about the country easily and the case load is high. I haven't looked at other states, but Washington state has fairly clear metrics for opening restrictions at a county level. We'll see how well that works, I guess. Other states will be doing their own thing, as well as other countries, and maybe we can figure out which methods are more or less effective and either switch or know for next time.

kaitai 6y ago

It requires coordinated societal action, which is definitely the same as the death of Freedom and Liberty and thus is to be avoided.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

You can't measure R; you can only model it, and your model is going to involve lots of hard to validate assumptions. So most places are using something easier to measure, such as "metrics are declining before advancing to the next reopening stage".