6 ms·

The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM! GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has alr

by jerf 6y ago

The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM! GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at zero. Remember "flatten the curve"? It's not "eliminate the curve". We're pretty much all going to be exposed to it at some point. Lots of people testing positive without ever having had to go to the hospital or even having been aware they had it is a good thing, not a reason to go shutting everything down again. It means the crisis is nearly over, not the worst it's ever been. After all, consider what that would imply; for all infectious diseases, the level of crisis starts low, then monotonically goes up and never goes back down? Clearly that does not describe the real world we see, which is not still in crisis over the Spanish Flu, Black Death, and every other plague ever. The level of crisis can't be solely a function of the number of people testing as positive. Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not number of positives.

dragonwriter 6y ago
>>The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM! GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at zero. That's literally the worst case endgame, where everyone vulnerable has received the full brunt of the disease lessened only by medical care. The ideal outcome is that the spread is minimized by a mix of general and targeted social distancing and containment measures until a vaccine, effective treatment, or both are deployed widely enough to eradicate the disease.
anoncake 6y ago
Quite a lot of people do want to eliminate the curve until we've produced and deployed billions of doses of the vaccine we don't have.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  The majority don’t, though. The country did not sign up for a quarantine until vaccine was released, if ever. People are free to quarantine until vaccines are out, but please don’t force this oppression on everyone else.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    Do you have numbers to back up the claim that the majority of people don’t approve of the quarantine? Because the numbers I have shows 74% of Americans approve of the quarantine: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/489535-poll-majority-of-voters-support-national https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      That is not what the poster said at all.
      - freehunter 6y ago
        Can you or they explain to me what was meant then, because I’ve read the two comments over and over and the only conclusion I can reach is exactly what I replied with.
        s1artibartfast 6y ago
        >The country did not sign up for a quarantine until vaccine was released Approval of quarantine until vaccine was released =/= approval of social distancing in any form. The poster claimed that most people are not in support of quarantine until vaccine, not that they oppose any quarantine. The poll you linked did not ask about quarantining until the vaccine was available. In fact, 50% of the poll respondents expected social distancing to last no longer than 2 months. Note the poll was taken in March.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    How many more people would additive if they received the kind of financial aid that companies are receiving? For example, even a freeze on rents would probably significantly reduce the number of people who are desperate for work at the moment.
ericb 6y ago
> Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not number of positives. Sort of, but the fact that "deaths are lower" is likely a cohort problem. Let's say I am looking at the bread in my cupboard and trying to figure out what percent goes moldy. I've got one moldy loaf, and I buy 9 fresh new ones. Boom, current moldy-rate is 10% what a relief, looks like mold is less of a problem than I thought--only 10% of bread goes moldy! Looks like the previous estimates of mold-rate were misleading. If a vaccine is forthcoming, it is not at all inevitable that we will all be exposed to it.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  I don’t understand what “deaths are lower is a cohort problem.” What cohort? We’ve known for months that - corona is not dangerous for people under 85 except with pre-existing conditions - corona is widespread, 10-20x higher than reported cases - infection-fatality-rate ~0.5% It’s harder to fudge death numbers compared to case numbers.
  - ericb 6y ago
    That's not the cohort I'm talking about--I'm not talking about age based cohorts. The cohort I'm talking about is the number of days since a positive test result. When you have many new cases (loaves of fresh bread) and you use simple math, bread/moldy you get the wrong idea about death rate. Click-baity articles, and those with motivated reasoning for "it's just a flu" get breathlessly excited about this as if it were some sort of useful data. See ops assertion that the level of crisis "is independent of the number of people who test positive" for an example of what I mean. People testing positive is a leading indicator for the size of the crisis.
    - eanzenberg 6y ago
      The beginning of the increase in positive cases happened 4 weeks ago. We should have already seen leading indicators of deaths.
      - 6y ago
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Many Asian countries as well as Europe have managed to get cases down to levels where it's entirely within reach to completely eliminate the virus. And they did so with less disruption and costs than the US. Except for high-risk activities such as nightclubs, life has mostly returned to normal. In the US, however, retail sales (as just one indicator) are stagnant at 50% of previous levels. Economic activity will be far from normal until people feel safe again. As to hospitalisations and deaths: hospitals in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and Texas are quickly filling up and/or full already.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  Hospitals are filling up because hospitals are opening and allowing work / surgeries to be scheduled and done again.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    COVID hospitalizations in Texas Medical Center are at 350 per day and rising sharply. https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-19-hospitalizations/ https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-...
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    The cause and effect may not go the way you think. I was just reading, about Houston I think, that hospitals were continuing to have elective surgeries to avoid sending a message that people should panic. And to make money, because they may not be able to keep the lights on with only COVID-19 patients.
  - paul_f 6y ago
    25% of COVID hospitalizations are pregnant women who test positive when they go in to deliver. We're just counting people who go into the hospital for other reasons who happen to test positive. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...
- jerf 6y ago
tsimionescu 6y ago
And what will happen when these people get infected a second or a third time? Will they still be symptom less, or are they likely to start gassing problems? Unfortunately, we don't know yet. That's why we need to err on the side of caution. Please remember that we still know little about this virus, about long term effects, about how long immunity lasts, about the risk of auto-immune responses etc. It's never, ever a good idea to let a new disease spread along the population of you can help it at all.
- jerf 6y ago
  To you, and some other repliers, I suggest reading this carefully again: "but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at zero." If the long term effects put a lot of people in the hospital, than that would not be the ideal outcome. You can't just drop clauses out of my definition of "ideal" then turn around and tell me about how that's not ideal. I agree, actually! Something other than the ideal I described would in fact be less than ideal! The point remains; on its own merits, the ideal would be that it turns out everybody's already had it, because that would prove that the currently-known negative impact is also the total final negative impact. Since the total known negative impact is basically a given and can't go down and is thus a minimum, finding out that's also a maximum would be good news. On the whole, more people having been exposed without hospitalization or even awareness is good news. Maybe earlier in the cycle that wouldn't be the case, but with where we are now, it is. At least, for this pandemic, for a disease that happens to affect a small set of people badly but, to all evidence, most people not at all. In terms of weathering a pandemic in which it was actually bad news for a majority of people, this has been a rather disheartening experience. That's a problem for another day, though. (Which is not a synonym for "not a problem at all". But it's a problem for another day. Trying to solve COVID-19 with measures appropriate for EvenMoreBubonic-2022 is not a win.)

by jerf 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

>>The media isn't inclined to pitch it this way ("DOOM! GLOOM! FIRE IN THE SKY! News at 11!"), but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at zero. That's literally the worst case endgame, where everyone vulnerable has received the full brunt of the disease lessened only by medical care. The ideal outcome is that the spread is minimized by a mix of general and targeted social distancing and containment measures until a vaccine, effective treatment, or both are deployed widely enough to eradicate the disease.

anoncake 6y ago

Quite a lot of people do want to eliminate the curve until we've produced and deployed billions of doses of the vaccine we don't have.

eanzenberg 6y ago
The majority don’t, though. The country did not sign up for a quarantine until vaccine was released, if ever. People are free to quarantine until vaccines are out, but please don’t force this oppression on everyone else.
- freehunter 6y ago
  Do you have numbers to back up the claim that the majority of people don’t approve of the quarantine? Because the numbers I have shows 74% of Americans approve of the quarantine: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/489535-poll-majority-of-voters-support-national https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    That is not what the poster said at all.
    - freehunter 6y ago
      Can you or they explain to me what was meant then, because I’ve read the two comments over and over and the only conclusion I can reach is exactly what I replied with.
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        >The country did not sign up for a quarantine until vaccine was released Approval of quarantine until vaccine was released =/= approval of social distancing in any form. The poster claimed that most people are not in support of quarantine until vaccine, not that they oppose any quarantine. The poll you linked did not ask about quarantining until the vaccine was available. In fact, 50% of the poll respondents expected social distancing to last no longer than 2 months. Note the poll was taken in March.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  How many more people would additive if they received the kind of financial aid that companies are receiving? For example, even a freeze on rents would probably significantly reduce the number of people who are desperate for work at the moment.

ericb 6y ago

> Hospitalizations and deaths are the bad numbers, not number of positives. Sort of, but the fact that "deaths are lower" is likely a cohort problem. Let's say I am looking at the bread in my cupboard and trying to figure out what percent goes moldy. I've got one moldy loaf, and I buy 9 fresh new ones. Boom, current moldy-rate is 10% what a relief, looks like mold is less of a problem than I thought--only 10% of bread goes moldy! Looks like the previous estimates of mold-rate were misleading. If a vaccine is forthcoming, it is not at all inevitable that we will all be exposed to it.

eanzenberg 6y ago
I don’t understand what “deaths are lower is a cohort problem.” What cohort? We’ve known for months that - corona is not dangerous for people under 85 except with pre-existing conditions - corona is widespread, 10-20x higher than reported cases - infection-fatality-rate ~0.5% It’s harder to fudge death numbers compared to case numbers.
- ericb 6y ago
  That's not the cohort I'm talking about--I'm not talking about age based cohorts. The cohort I'm talking about is the number of days since a positive test result. When you have many new cases (loaves of fresh bread) and you use simple math, bread/moldy you get the wrong idea about death rate. Click-baity articles, and those with motivated reasoning for "it's just a flu" get breathlessly excited about this as if it were some sort of useful data. See ops assertion that the level of crisis "is independent of the number of people who test positive" for an example of what I mean. People testing positive is a leading indicator for the size of the crisis.
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    The beginning of the increase in positive cases happened 4 weeks ago. We should have already seen leading indicators of deaths.
    - 6y ago

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

Many Asian countries as well as Europe have managed to get cases down to levels where it's entirely within reach to completely eliminate the virus. And they did so with less disruption and costs than the US. Except for high-risk activities such as nightclubs, life has mostly returned to normal. In the US, however, retail sales (as just one indicator) are stagnant at 50% of previous levels. Economic activity will be far from normal until people feel safe again. As to hospitalisations and deaths: hospitals in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and Texas are quickly filling up and/or full already.

eanzenberg 6y ago
Hospitals are filling up because hospitals are opening and allowing work / surgeries to be scheduled and done again.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  COVID hospitalizations in Texas Medical Center are at 350 per day and rising sharply. https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-19-hospitalizations/ https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  The cause and effect may not go the way you think. I was just reading, about Houston I think, that hospitals were continuing to have elective surgeries to avoid sending a message that people should panic. And to make money, because they may not be able to keep the lights on with only COVID-19 patients.
- paul_f 6y ago
  25% of COVID hospitalizations are pregnant women who test positive when they go in to deliver. We're just counting people who go into the hospital for other reasons who happen to test positive. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...
jerf 6y ago

tsimionescu 6y ago

And what will happen when these people get infected a second or a third time? Will they still be symptom less, or are they likely to start gassing problems? Unfortunately, we don't know yet. That's why we need to err on the side of caution. Please remember that we still know little about this virus, about long term effects, about how long immunity lasts, about the risk of auto-immune responses etc. It's never, ever a good idea to let a new disease spread along the population of you can help it at all.

jerf 6y ago
To you, and some other repliers, I suggest reading this carefully again: "but technically, the ideal outcome is essentially everybody has already had it and deaths (and serious hospitalizations) are at zero." If the long term effects put a lot of people in the hospital, than that would not be the ideal outcome. You can't just drop clauses out of my definition of "ideal" then turn around and tell me about how that's not ideal. I agree, actually! Something other than the ideal I described would in fact be less than ideal! The point remains; on its own merits, the ideal would be that it turns out everybody's already had it, because that would prove that the currently-known negative impact is also the total final negative impact. Since the total known negative impact is basically a given and can't go down and is thus a minimum, finding out that's also a maximum would be good news. On the whole, more people having been exposed without hospitalization or even awareness is good news. Maybe earlier in the cycle that wouldn't be the case, but with where we are now, it is. At least, for this pandemic, for a disease that happens to affect a small set of people badly but, to all evidence, most people not at all. In terms of weathering a pandemic in which it was actually bad news for a majority of people, this has been a rather disheartening experience. That's a problem for another day, though. (Which is not a synonym for "not a problem at all". But it's a problem for another day. Trying to solve COVID-19 with measures appropriate for EvenMoreBubonic-2022 is not a win.)