7 ms·

Experts warn parts of U.S. on verge of being overwhelmed by Covid-19 resurgence

48 points by awnird 6y ago

bob33212 6y ago
At this point any "expert" should be able to show somewhat accurate predictions that they made in February, March, or April. Otherwise their opinion is just a best guess.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Hospital administration has a pretty good idea on the capacity of their ICUs. And it shouldn't take an expert to look around an ICU with 4 empty beds and suspect they might be overwhelmed if more cases come in.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    SF Bay Area has been flat for months, and everybody knows that. Yet we keep hearing about NYC, as if they represent the globe.
    - cylinder 6y ago
      what? NYC has been dropping significantly, with a positivity rate of under 2%. Texas is at 10%. Nobody's freaking out about NYC right now.
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago
        > Nobody's freaking out about NYC right now. You wouldn't know it looking at the media.
- realtalk_sp 6y ago
  Agreed. The final total number of deaths projected back in April [1] is about half of current deaths. It stands to reason that the problem is significantly worse than what our top epidemiologists expected and should be addressed accordingly. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/830664814/fauci-says-u-s-coronavirus-deaths-may-be-more-like-60-000-antibody-tests-on-way https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/830664814/fauci-says-u-s-coro...
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  What if people took their advice so that their accurate prediction never came to pass?
redis_mlc 6y ago
As I've said for months, the sooner we get to herd immunity, the better. The US literally can't do testing and tracing to save their own lives. Yet people still pretend otherwise, like the tulip or bitcoin manias.
- jpmoral 6y ago
  What evidence do we have that infection confers immunity?
  - guenthert 6y ago
    How do you recover from a virus if not by becoming immune to it? Immune here in the sense of being able to fight it, not in the sense of being unaffected (the letter will clearly not happen, nor does it need to).
    - danaliv 6y ago
      Ok, how long does that immunity last? Is it forever? Is it two months? Can we actually achieve herd immunity or would we be signing up for a reinfection merry-go-round?
      - redis_mlc 6y ago
        1) Every disease in history has conferred immunity except for HIV, which is chronic. 2) What is your alternative? The US lost to mother nature.
        loktarogar 6y ago
        Yes, but the question is how long that immunity lasts for. Not all diseases provide immunity forever.
        klmadfejno 6y ago
        > Every disease in history has conferred immunity except for HIV, which is chronic. This is not true, nor a generally good guideline to think about things. Coronaviruses generally confer short immunity periods. > 2) What is your alternative? The US lost to mother nature. In the very least, being aware that long term herd immunity is not a viable goal.
alexandercrohde 6y ago
As far as I'm concerned, if quarantine is the "answer" then the cure is worse than the disease. In fact, I'd take this as evidence that quarantine might have been a mistake.
- troughway 6y ago
  I don't agree with the "cure is worse than the disease". Have a look at this - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus... Suppose that we quarantine people for longer while a vaccine is found, and suppose this vaccine is fairly effective. Presently there are 120,000 deaths. Who knows what this number will rise to. This number is already with some quarantine measurements in place. If a vaccine is not found, you're bound to have a catastrophe on your hands. So let's hope that one is found so that we can resume things in some "normal" way again. Whether or not you quarantined, the economy would collapse because you would have a massive death toll and paranoia throughout the country. People would stop going out, they would stop spending money and they would hunker down regardless. Economic turmoil is a positive feedback loop. The coronavirus or the quarantine are just the triggers for it to begin. This cannot be overstated. At least with a vaccine, you can get out of this by the skin of your teeth and reduce the over all deaths. So no, I don't think that quarantining to save lives is the "cure is worse than the disease" scenario. The economy would have collapsed regardless.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    > Whether or not you quarantined, the economy would collapse because you would have a massive death toll and paranoia throughout the country. Citation needed. Plenty of economies have dealt with mass death and gotten along fine. This particular threat is also largely centered on the elderly who are, in coldly economic viewpoints, drains on the economy rather than contributors. I don't particularly think the quarantine was a mistake, but you have to acknowledge that it is a gamble. Betting policy on a miracle vaccine is a bad idea. They might not work, or they might be short lived. Turning the economy on and off with lifted and then reinstated lockdowns is a bad idea.
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gentleman11 6y ago
We need to protect high-risk people, while waiting for the rest of us to reach herd immunity. Anyone with even a suspected risk factor should get help to be able to hide out for the next year. Instead, we have the opposite: everyone goes into lockdown, the nursing homes are ravaged, and there is no additional support for high risk people. The many high-risk people I know personally (diabetics, older people, people with lung conditions, heart conditions) will get asked to go back to work in the next couple of weeks, and none had any help isolating or buying groceries, and were barely able to isolate at all during the last few months. I could lose a lot of friends and family over the next year because they have almost zero support, but thank goodness all the healthy people couldn't go to restaurants for 2-3 months. Unpopular opinion, so downvote away. Nevermind that 96% of hospitalizations in new york were with patients with preexisting conditions that put them at higher risk, it goes against the trending opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patients-risk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patien...
- DougWebb 6y ago
  The point of locking down everyone is to slow down the spread of the virus through the entire population, which protects the high-risk people from accidental exposure, until a vaccine can be developed and deployed. That way we get herd immunity without killing the percentage of people who can't survive a full infection, but will be just fine with a vaccination. Having healthy people isolated is not about protecting the healthy people. It's about stopping the healthy people from spreading the disease to the high-risk people.
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    It has done very little to protect the high risk people I know, who are all going back to work soon, and nothing for any high risk people who worked in an essential service. I know of an 60ish year old person who was sent back to work at his meat packing plant less than 14 days after testing positive for covid because his life apparently didn't matter. If any of them had quit, they would have lost eligibility for any government support and ended up homeless

48 points by awnird 6y ago

At this point any "expert" should be able to show somewhat accurate predictions that they made in February, March, or April. Otherwise their opinion is just a best guess.

mywittyname 6y ago
Hospital administration has a pretty good idea on the capacity of their ICUs. And it shouldn't take an expert to look around an ICU with 4 empty beds and suspect they might be overwhelmed if more cases come in.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  SF Bay Area has been flat for months, and everybody knows that. Yet we keep hearing about NYC, as if they represent the globe.
  - cylinder 6y ago
    what? NYC has been dropping significantly, with a positivity rate of under 2%. Texas is at 10%. Nobody's freaking out about NYC right now.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      > Nobody's freaking out about NYC right now. You wouldn't know it looking at the media.
realtalk_sp 6y ago
Agreed. The final total number of deaths projected back in April [1] is about half of current deaths. It stands to reason that the problem is significantly worse than what our top epidemiologists expected and should be addressed accordingly. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/830664814/fauci-says-u-s-coronavirus-deaths-may-be-more-like-60-000-antibody-tests-on-way https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/830664814/fauci-says-u-s-coro...
pinkfoot 6y ago
What if people took their advice so that their accurate prediction never came to pass?

redis_mlc 6y ago

As I've said for months, the sooner we get to herd immunity, the better. The US literally can't do testing and tracing to save their own lives. Yet people still pretend otherwise, like the tulip or bitcoin manias.

jpmoral 6y ago
What evidence do we have that infection confers immunity?
- guenthert 6y ago
  How do you recover from a virus if not by becoming immune to it? Immune here in the sense of being able to fight it, not in the sense of being unaffected (the letter will clearly not happen, nor does it need to).
  - danaliv 6y ago
    Ok, how long does that immunity last? Is it forever? Is it two months? Can we actually achieve herd immunity or would we be signing up for a reinfection merry-go-round?
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      1) Every disease in history has conferred immunity except for HIV, which is chronic. 2) What is your alternative? The US lost to mother nature.
      - loktarogar 6y ago
        Yes, but the question is how long that immunity lasts for. Not all diseases provide immunity forever.
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        > Every disease in history has conferred immunity except for HIV, which is chronic. This is not true, nor a generally good guideline to think about things. Coronaviruses generally confer short immunity periods. > 2) What is your alternative? The US lost to mother nature. In the very least, being aware that long term herd immunity is not a viable goal.

alexandercrohde 6y ago

As far as I'm concerned, if quarantine is the "answer" then the cure is worse than the disease. In fact, I'd take this as evidence that quarantine might have been a mistake.

troughway 6y ago
I don't agree with the "cure is worse than the disease". Have a look at this - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus... Suppose that we quarantine people for longer while a vaccine is found, and suppose this vaccine is fairly effective. Presently there are 120,000 deaths. Who knows what this number will rise to. This number is already with some quarantine measurements in place. If a vaccine is not found, you're bound to have a catastrophe on your hands. So let's hope that one is found so that we can resume things in some "normal" way again. Whether or not you quarantined, the economy would collapse because you would have a massive death toll and paranoia throughout the country. People would stop going out, they would stop spending money and they would hunker down regardless. Economic turmoil is a positive feedback loop. The coronavirus or the quarantine are just the triggers for it to begin. This cannot be overstated. At least with a vaccine, you can get out of this by the skin of your teeth and reduce the over all deaths. So no, I don't think that quarantining to save lives is the "cure is worse than the disease" scenario. The economy would have collapsed regardless.
- klmadfejno 6y ago
  > Whether or not you quarantined, the economy would collapse because you would have a massive death toll and paranoia throughout the country. Citation needed. Plenty of economies have dealt with mass death and gotten along fine. This particular threat is also largely centered on the elderly who are, in coldly economic viewpoints, drains on the economy rather than contributors. I don't particularly think the quarantine was a mistake, but you have to acknowledge that it is a gamble. Betting policy on a miracle vaccine is a bad idea. They might not work, or they might be short lived. Turning the economy on and off with lifted and then reinstated lockdowns is a bad idea.

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gentleman11 6y ago

We need to protect high-risk people, while waiting for the rest of us to reach herd immunity. Anyone with even a suspected risk factor should get help to be able to hide out for the next year. Instead, we have the opposite: everyone goes into lockdown, the nursing homes are ravaged, and there is no additional support for high risk people. The many high-risk people I know personally (diabetics, older people, people with lung conditions, heart conditions) will get asked to go back to work in the next couple of weeks, and none had any help isolating or buying groceries, and were barely able to isolate at all during the last few months. I could lose a lot of friends and family over the next year because they have almost zero support, but thank goodness all the healthy people couldn't go to restaurants for 2-3 months. Unpopular opinion, so downvote away. Nevermind that 96% of hospitalizations in new york were with patients with preexisting conditions that put them at higher risk, it goes against the trending opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patients-risk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patien...

DougWebb 6y ago
The point of locking down everyone is to slow down the spread of the virus through the entire population, which protects the high-risk people from accidental exposure, until a vaccine can be developed and deployed. That way we get herd immunity without killing the percentage of people who can't survive a full infection, but will be just fine with a vaccination. Having healthy people isolated is not about protecting the healthy people. It's about stopping the healthy people from spreading the disease to the high-risk people.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  It has done very little to protect the high risk people I know, who are all going back to work soon, and nothing for any high risk people who worked in an essential service. I know of an 60ish year old person who was sent back to work at his meat packing plant less than 14 days after testing positive for covid because his life apparently didn't matter. If any of them had quit, they would have lost eligibility for any government support and ended up homeless