10 ms·

America's window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing

ForHackernews 6y ago
There is no opportunity. The Trump administration has already decided to surrender to this pandemic. They're just betting that enough voters in key swing states are on board with their alternative reality that they won't notice or care about their grandparents and elderly neighbours dying.
- Loughla 6y ago
  I'm not sure if this is meant to be snarky, but it's 100% true. >They're just betting that enough voters in key swing states are on board with their alternative reality that they won't notice The propaganda that is digested by Trump supporters solidly claims that: (a) covid isn't that bad, it's just the flu, (b) people who are scared of it are not really Americans, and (c) any noise about it being dangerous is just the liberal left trying to undercut Trump. This is the world we live in. Put on Fox or any AM right wing station - those are the talking points. It's all so disheartening and just, I don't know, depressing maybe is the word?
  - TheGrim-888 6y ago
    I know this issue is all political at this point, but if you want an honest answer, I personally believe most of the points you laid out. Here's my rationale for the points you mentioned: 1) All of the actual data and figures I've seen indicate that yes, it's worse than the flu, but that the reaction to it has still been insanely out of proportion. I'm basing that viewpoint on the data I've seen. I'm not basing my viewpoint on an emotional basis. I'm not basing my viewpoint on just whatever people on reddit/twitter/facebook scream at me. If I'm presented with different data (actual factual data, not opinion pieces) I'd be willing to change my viewpoint. But so far I have yet to see anything that would change my position. 2) This is a pretty large strawman/exaggeration and obviously I don't believe in that. 3) It's demonstrably, factual, obvious that the economy was one of Trump's selling points, and if the economy tanks, that removes one of his selling points and hurts him politically. That's undeniable. It's fact that the more chaos and perceived problems there are, the more it hurts him politically. That's undeniable. Where the argument could be is whether the left is intentionally trying to press those buttons or if they're acting in good faith. When I take how I've seen them act over the past few years (one such example being the partisan impeachment fiasco), combined with the fact that their reaction is entirely out of line with the actual data/facts (point 1), it leads me to believe that they are indeed intentionally overplaying it for political gain. Their political party benefits if they overplay it. They have means, motive, and opportunity. I don't watch Fox news. I don't watch CNN. I don't make my viewpoints match what the hive mind screams at me is true. I base my viewpoints on the data I've seen. I'm entirely open to changing my viewpoint if better data comes in.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- isoprophlex 6y ago
  Covid has been the ultimate confirmation: we're in the post-truth age. Lets hope we'll be able to look back on this period in history, and evolve to be better than this.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    The dark side of this is that evolution works by culling the unfit to survive. Might want to choose another term (or maybe that's exactly what you intended)
    - Droobfest 6y ago
      Or the unlucky.
    - technothrasher 6y ago
      evolution works by culling the unfit to survive No it doesn't. Evolution occurs due to change in allele frequency in a population over time. Relative death rate of certain organisms in a given environment is certainly a mechanism for this change in frequency, but it is not necessary for evolution to occur.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Either (a) death of the unfit or (b) inability of the unfit to reproduce are the core drivers of evolution. They're the negative feedback. [edit] Rather, not the core drivers but the core direction-setters.
  - chadlavi 6y ago
    At this point I just hope we're able to look back on this period in history at all.
- meragrin_ 6y ago
  The Trump administration was/is in a no win situation. The democrats are intent on getting Trump out of office one way or another. Had he tried more on the national level, they would have fought him tooth and nail until the data indicated they had no choice and we would still be in this situation. When Trump issued the travel ban, the narrative was Trump was using the virus to invoke fear and distract from his impeachment. Well, it looks like they were wrong.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    In fact, when Trump said he was going to take steps nationally, people screamed (correctly) that that was not authority given to the national government, and that Trump was trying to rule as an autocrat. The result was that we got 50 different responses, not coordinated with each other. And to some degree that was appropriate - New York City needs a very different response than Loving County, Texas. That would be better handled at a state level than a national one. The problem is that the state responses were too political and not enough medical. That might lead you back to thinking of a national response. But a national response would likely also be political rather than medical (for which Trump does deserve the blame). Even more, it would be perceived as political rather than medical (for which Trump also deserves some blame).
D13Fd 6y ago
I'm not sure sure this is right. First, the "outdoor activities" seem to be a big part of the problem right now. People hanging out at the beach, the playgrounds, the parks, eating in groups in outdoor seating at restaurants, protesting, etc. all accelerate the spread. It may well turn out that people doing fewer of those things means that we don't have a heavy second wave in the fall. I hope that's the case. Second, the window isn't "closing," it's pretty much slammed shut. The genie is out of the bottle for the U.S. and likely the planet. We're in the ballpark of 50k diagnosed cases per day, plus between twice and ten times that number of undiagnosed cases, if not more. Contact tracing 50k cases a day would be a massive undertaking, and we'd still be doing nothing about the 50k+ undiagnosed cases out there, most of which represent people who are still spreading the virus. The political will for additional lockdowns and preventative measures is all but spent. I hate to say it, but absent a very effective vaccine, COVID-19 is most likely here to stay.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  I don't know why people keep talking about this "second wave" in America. Countries that have a second wave have one because they ended the first wave and are on the look out for more. America has not ended the first wave, at all. There can't be a second if the first is still here.
  - dtwest 6y ago
    There was a big acceleration of cases in March (largely in NYC), and a second, even bigger acceleration (mostly in the Southern and Western regions) in June. Your point is valid, but there were two large increases in new cases that some people are calling waves, what would you prefer they be called?
    - mikem170 6y ago
      I would assume a "second wave" means that it has crested in the same place twice. as opposed to calling Wuhan the first wave, Iran the second, Italy the third, Spain the fourth, NYC the fifth, and so on. If NYC is bad again I'd call that a second wave. Florida is 1500 miles away and is experiencing their first wave, some time after NYC had theirs. The optimist in me has noticed that no locality experiencing a bad first wave has had a second wave yet. Perhaps that is a sign of herd immunity (helped by T-cells, if so). Time will tell...
draw_down 6y ago
But at least in some places, officials are pushing to reopen schools amid all this. A couple schools have already opened, with the result you’d expect. So for me, the yelling about people having parties rings hollow.
arcticbull 6y ago
What I find so crazy about America's response is that it's been totally all over the place with half-measures. America shut down 50% of the economy instead of 90% like European countries -- enough to devastate the economy, but leave COVID unscathed. Then, many people started to go outside anyways, giving COVID more gas, which then triggered them to go back into the 50% lockdown state that wasn't doing anything anyways. This meant the end result was a devastated economy AND full-on COVID, worse than anywhere on Earth other than Brazil. You can make a case for a full-on economic shutdown, like the Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders and even to a lesser extent Canadians. It seemed to work out there. You can make a case for leaving the economy open like Sweden did, knowing they'd potentially have to pay a penalty in lives greater than countries that got a vaccine before everyone caught it -- and they are down to zero deaths now too. Sweden didn't shut down and COVID is done for them now. A total of 6,000 deaths for a population of 10,000,000. But what you can't make a case for is HALF shutting down the economy -- not enough to let people make money, and not enough to stop the virus, and not really paying people enough to stay home, but somehow more than they were making anyways. That's literally the worst of all worlds. Devastated economy. Many dead people. It's a global embarrassment.
- danans 6y ago
  > Sweden didn't shut down and COVID is done for them now, too. Whoa, I don't think it's safe to say that it's done anywhere. Just look at Melbourne, for an example of an outbreak in a country that supposedly had COVID19 under control. Otherwise though, yes, the half measures in the US - and the limited compliance with even those half measures in many states/regions, has set up the US for a worst of all worlds scenario.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > Whoa, I don't think it's safe to say that it's done anywhere. Just look at Melbourne, for an example of an outbreak in a country that supposedly had COVID19 under control. In Melbourne, they shut down in an attempt to stamp out COVID, keeping people from catching it, leaving a large population still prone to infection. In Sweden, they did not. Their goal was not to stop people from catching COVID in Sweden, it was to let it happen at a rate they could manage, and treat people who caught it to the best of their abilities. That's why they aren't at risk of a second wave, but countries that shut down are at risk of one until a vaccine can be deployed to a herd-immunity level of the population. Sweden is there already. Sweden is likely the only place on Earth it is safe to say it's done.
NoOneNew 6y ago
Look, 1 death is 1 too many. But let's step back for a moment from this "The world is ending" dialogue. Global deaths as of 08/10 according to the John Hopkins' tracker is at 732k. It hasn't been a year yet, but lets say the world will be at 1.4mil by New Years Eve. Double the current at a 9ish month rate to a 12 month rate. Just for worst case scenario giggles. That puts it roughly even with worldwide road injuries and under diabetes. A bit more than the amount of people dying from diarrhea. I said it in another post, 9+ million people die from heart disease due mostly from really poor diets and lifestyles (the fat, lazy kind more than the malnourished kind). And no one cared about any of those. If you're going to cry about the world is going to end, don't you think those would red flag for that sentiment first? https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-... https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/causes-of-death/GHO/causes-of-death https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/causes-of-de... Modern medicine is fucking awesome. This could have been a death sentence for a hell of a lot more people. More people died in others pandemics and the world kept spinning. Let's keep that in mind. Hell, the sheer fact we have germ theory has fucking saved more lives than we can ever imagine. Yea, things are bad, but they're no where near as bad as they could be. If folks in history could see how we're emotionally reacting to our situation right now, they'd laugh. Yes, don't be stupid, cough into your elbow, wash your damn hands (it scares me how many people did not wash their hands on a regular basis and admitted to that before all of this) but stop crying and pretending the world is going to end. That mentality doesn't help at all and you're equally the problem if you toot around "The end is near" like a hobo on the side of the road with a cardboard sign.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- greedo 6y ago
  Simple math. Herd immunity requiring 50%. World population 7.6B. So 3.8B infections. Hospitalization rate is roughly 10%, so 380M hospitalizations. IFR is roughly 1%, so 38M fatalities. So again, 3.8B infections, 380M hospitalizations, and 38M fatalities. Even assuming a magnitude of error, we're still looking at 38M hospitalizations and 3.8M deaths. Michael Osterholm had a really good analogy into COVID. We're wrong to thing of it in waves; it's more like wildfire. Where it finds fuel, it will burn until the fuel is gone.
jb775 6y ago
According to the WHO, the virus shows no signs of seasonal patterns[1]. This means that the spread and transmission of the virus doesn't change depending on the time of year. So which organization is wrong? Also, I've seen many posts claiming something like: "Study shows recent protests with 300,000 ppl hanging off each other didn't cause spread of coronavirus". If you believe this (and I actually do btw), why do you think it will spread so easily in public, where basically everyone is wearing a mask and bathing themselves in hand sanitizer? Not trying to incite an argument, I'm asking real questions that I feel people aren't asking themselves because it intersects with other aspects of their beliefs. [1] - https://m.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-covid-19-shows-no-seasonal-pattern-warns-who/a-54506443 https://m.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-covid-19-shows-no-sea...
- mynegation 6y ago
  In the first few line of TFA they mention not the seasonal pattern but the fact that it is going to be more difficult to find COVID cases in the background of flu and common cold that do have a seasonal pattern.
  - jb775 6y ago
    So why is this article framed as a doom & gloom coronavirus article if the only thing they're trying to communicate is "it's gonna be hard to pick out the corona patients"?
- vondur 6y ago
  I don't know about the riots not causing a spike in Covid cases. Here in LA County the spike started on June 15 and hit its highest points in July. That would seem to coincide nicely with the incubation periods of the initial riots and then spreading it to others.
- greedo 6y ago
  In many areas, mask use isn't mandated, nor enforced. Same with social distancing; a megachurch in California ignored all the social distancing recommendations and even had the chutzpah to inform the authorities. They didn't cite a single violator. And outdoor exposure is largely immaterial. It's exposure indoors where the research is starting to indicate aerosols as a significant vector (compared to droplets).
nradov 6y ago
Realistically the window of opportunity already closed back in March. At this point community transmission is so widespread that to actually "beat back Covid-19" would take a long, strict lockdown (very few "essential" workers), extensive testing and contract tracing, and closing the borders. Even if those steps might leave us better off in the long run, they are simply no longer politically feasible. Wishes won't change that reality.

There is no opportunity. The Trump administration has already decided to surrender to this pandemic. They're just betting that enough voters in key swing states are on board with their alternative reality that they won't notice or care about their grandparents and elderly neighbours dying.

Loughla 6y ago
I'm not sure if this is meant to be snarky, but it's 100% true. >They're just betting that enough voters in key swing states are on board with their alternative reality that they won't notice The propaganda that is digested by Trump supporters solidly claims that: (a) covid isn't that bad, it's just the flu, (b) people who are scared of it are not really Americans, and (c) any noise about it being dangerous is just the liberal left trying to undercut Trump. This is the world we live in. Put on Fox or any AM right wing station - those are the talking points. It's all so disheartening and just, I don't know, depressing maybe is the word?
- TheGrim-888 6y ago
  I know this issue is all political at this point, but if you want an honest answer, I personally believe most of the points you laid out. Here's my rationale for the points you mentioned: 1) All of the actual data and figures I've seen indicate that yes, it's worse than the flu, but that the reaction to it has still been insanely out of proportion. I'm basing that viewpoint on the data I've seen. I'm not basing my viewpoint on an emotional basis. I'm not basing my viewpoint on just whatever people on reddit/twitter/facebook scream at me. If I'm presented with different data (actual factual data, not opinion pieces) I'd be willing to change my viewpoint. But so far I have yet to see anything that would change my position. 2) This is a pretty large strawman/exaggeration and obviously I don't believe in that. 3) It's demonstrably, factual, obvious that the economy was one of Trump's selling points, and if the economy tanks, that removes one of his selling points and hurts him politically. That's undeniable. It's fact that the more chaos and perceived problems there are, the more it hurts him politically. That's undeniable. Where the argument could be is whether the left is intentionally trying to press those buttons or if they're acting in good faith. When I take how I've seen them act over the past few years (one such example being the partisan impeachment fiasco), combined with the fact that their reaction is entirely out of line with the actual data/facts (point 1), it leads me to believe that they are indeed intentionally overplaying it for political gain. Their political party benefits if they overplay it. They have means, motive, and opportunity. I don't watch Fox news. I don't watch CNN. I don't make my viewpoints match what the hive mind screams at me is true. I base my viewpoints on the data I've seen. I'm entirely open to changing my viewpoint if better data comes in.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
isoprophlex 6y ago
Covid has been the ultimate confirmation: we're in the post-truth age. Lets hope we'll be able to look back on this period in history, and evolve to be better than this.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  The dark side of this is that evolution works by culling the unfit to survive. Might want to choose another term (or maybe that's exactly what you intended)
  - Droobfest 6y ago
    Or the unlucky.
  - technothrasher 6y ago
    evolution works by culling the unfit to survive No it doesn't. Evolution occurs due to change in allele frequency in a population over time. Relative death rate of certain organisms in a given environment is certainly a mechanism for this change in frequency, but it is not necessary for evolution to occur.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Either (a) death of the unfit or (b) inability of the unfit to reproduce are the core drivers of evolution. They're the negative feedback. [edit] Rather, not the core drivers but the core direction-setters.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  At this point I just hope we're able to look back on this period in history at all.
meragrin_ 6y ago
The Trump administration was/is in a no win situation. The democrats are intent on getting Trump out of office one way or another. Had he tried more on the national level, they would have fought him tooth and nail until the data indicated they had no choice and we would still be in this situation. When Trump issued the travel ban, the narrative was Trump was using the virus to invoke fear and distract from his impeachment. Well, it looks like they were wrong.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  In fact, when Trump said he was going to take steps nationally, people screamed (correctly) that that was not authority given to the national government, and that Trump was trying to rule as an autocrat. The result was that we got 50 different responses, not coordinated with each other. And to some degree that was appropriate - New York City needs a very different response than Loving County, Texas. That would be better handled at a state level than a national one. The problem is that the state responses were too political and not enough medical. That might lead you back to thinking of a national response. But a national response would likely also be political rather than medical (for which Trump does deserve the blame). Even more, it would be perceived as political rather than medical (for which Trump also deserves some blame).

D13Fd 6y ago

I'm not sure sure this is right. First, the "outdoor activities" seem to be a big part of the problem right now. People hanging out at the beach, the playgrounds, the parks, eating in groups in outdoor seating at restaurants, protesting, etc. all accelerate the spread. It may well turn out that people doing fewer of those things means that we don't have a heavy second wave in the fall. I hope that's the case. Second, the window isn't "closing," it's pretty much slammed shut. The genie is out of the bottle for the U.S. and likely the planet. We're in the ballpark of 50k diagnosed cases per day, plus between twice and ten times that number of undiagnosed cases, if not more. Contact tracing 50k cases a day would be a massive undertaking, and we'd still be doing nothing about the 50k+ undiagnosed cases out there, most of which represent people who are still spreading the virus. The political will for additional lockdowns and preventative measures is all but spent. I hate to say it, but absent a very effective vaccine, COVID-19 is most likely here to stay.

arcticbull 6y ago
I don't know why people keep talking about this "second wave" in America. Countries that have a second wave have one because they ended the first wave and are on the look out for more. America has not ended the first wave, at all. There can't be a second if the first is still here.
- dtwest 6y ago
  There was a big acceleration of cases in March (largely in NYC), and a second, even bigger acceleration (mostly in the Southern and Western regions) in June. Your point is valid, but there were two large increases in new cases that some people are calling waves, what would you prefer they be called?
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I would assume a "second wave" means that it has crested in the same place twice. as opposed to calling Wuhan the first wave, Iran the second, Italy the third, Spain the fourth, NYC the fifth, and so on. If NYC is bad again I'd call that a second wave. Florida is 1500 miles away and is experiencing their first wave, some time after NYC had theirs. The optimist in me has noticed that no locality experiencing a bad first wave has had a second wave yet. Perhaps that is a sign of herd immunity (helped by T-cells, if so). Time will tell...

draw_down 6y ago

But at least in some places, officials are pushing to reopen schools amid all this. A couple schools have already opened, with the result you’d expect. So for me, the yelling about people having parties rings hollow.

arcticbull 6y ago

What I find so crazy about America's response is that it's been totally all over the place with half-measures. America shut down 50% of the economy instead of 90% like European countries -- enough to devastate the economy, but leave COVID unscathed. Then, many people started to go outside anyways, giving COVID more gas, which then triggered them to go back into the 50% lockdown state that wasn't doing anything anyways. This meant the end result was a devastated economy AND full-on COVID, worse than anywhere on Earth other than Brazil. You can make a case for a full-on economic shutdown, like the Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders and even to a lesser extent Canadians. It seemed to work out there. You can make a case for leaving the economy open like Sweden did, knowing they'd potentially have to pay a penalty in lives greater than countries that got a vaccine before everyone caught it -- and they are down to zero deaths now too. Sweden didn't shut down and COVID is done for them now. A total of 6,000 deaths for a population of 10,000,000. But what you can't make a case for is HALF shutting down the economy -- not enough to let people make money, and not enough to stop the virus, and not really paying people enough to stay home, but somehow more than they were making anyways. That's literally the worst of all worlds. Devastated economy. Many dead people. It's a global embarrassment.

danans 6y ago
> Sweden didn't shut down and COVID is done for them now, too. Whoa, I don't think it's safe to say that it's done anywhere. Just look at Melbourne, for an example of an outbreak in a country that supposedly had COVID19 under control. Otherwise though, yes, the half measures in the US - and the limited compliance with even those half measures in many states/regions, has set up the US for a worst of all worlds scenario.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > Whoa, I don't think it's safe to say that it's done anywhere. Just look at Melbourne, for an example of an outbreak in a country that supposedly had COVID19 under control. In Melbourne, they shut down in an attempt to stamp out COVID, keeping people from catching it, leaving a large population still prone to infection. In Sweden, they did not. Their goal was not to stop people from catching COVID in Sweden, it was to let it happen at a rate they could manage, and treat people who caught it to the best of their abilities. That's why they aren't at risk of a second wave, but countries that shut down are at risk of one until a vaccine can be deployed to a herd-immunity level of the population. Sweden is there already. Sweden is likely the only place on Earth it is safe to say it's done.

NoOneNew 6y ago

Look, 1 death is 1 too many. But let's step back for a moment from this "The world is ending" dialogue. Global deaths as of 08/10 according to the John Hopkins' tracker is at 732k. It hasn't been a year yet, but lets say the world will be at 1.4mil by New Years Eve. Double the current at a 9ish month rate to a 12 month rate. Just for worst case scenario giggles. That puts it roughly even with worldwide road injuries and under diabetes. A bit more than the amount of people dying from diarrhea. I said it in another post, 9+ million people die from heart disease due mostly from really poor diets and lifestyles (the fat, lazy kind more than the malnourished kind). And no one cared about any of those. If you're going to cry about the world is going to end, don't you think those would red flag for that sentiment first? https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-... https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/causes-of-death/GHO/causes-of-death https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/causes-of-de... Modern medicine is fucking awesome. This could have been a death sentence for a hell of a lot more people. More people died in others pandemics and the world kept spinning. Let's keep that in mind. Hell, the sheer fact we have germ theory has fucking saved more lives than we can ever imagine. Yea, things are bad, but they're no where near as bad as they could be. If folks in history could see how we're emotionally reacting to our situation right now, they'd laugh. Yes, don't be stupid, cough into your elbow, wash your damn hands (it scares me how many people did not wash their hands on a regular basis and admitted to that before all of this) but stop crying and pretending the world is going to end. That mentality doesn't help at all and you're equally the problem if you toot around "The end is near" like a hobo on the side of the road with a cardboard sign.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
greedo 6y ago
Simple math. Herd immunity requiring 50%. World population 7.6B. So 3.8B infections. Hospitalization rate is roughly 10%, so 380M hospitalizations. IFR is roughly 1%, so 38M fatalities. So again, 3.8B infections, 380M hospitalizations, and 38M fatalities. Even assuming a magnitude of error, we're still looking at 38M hospitalizations and 3.8M deaths. Michael Osterholm had a really good analogy into COVID. We're wrong to thing of it in waves; it's more like wildfire. Where it finds fuel, it will burn until the fuel is gone.

jb775 6y ago

According to the WHO, the virus shows no signs of seasonal patterns[1]. This means that the spread and transmission of the virus doesn't change depending on the time of year. So which organization is wrong? Also, I've seen many posts claiming something like: "Study shows recent protests with 300,000 ppl hanging off each other didn't cause spread of coronavirus". If you believe this (and I actually do btw), why do you think it will spread so easily in public, where basically everyone is wearing a mask and bathing themselves in hand sanitizer? Not trying to incite an argument, I'm asking real questions that I feel people aren't asking themselves because it intersects with other aspects of their beliefs. [1] - https://m.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-covid-19-shows-no-seasonal-pattern-warns-who/a-54506443 https://m.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-covid-19-shows-no-sea...

mynegation 6y ago
In the first few line of TFA they mention not the seasonal pattern but the fact that it is going to be more difficult to find COVID cases in the background of flu and common cold that do have a seasonal pattern.
- jb775 6y ago
  So why is this article framed as a doom & gloom coronavirus article if the only thing they're trying to communicate is "it's gonna be hard to pick out the corona patients"?
vondur 6y ago
I don't know about the riots not causing a spike in Covid cases. Here in LA County the spike started on June 15 and hit its highest points in July. That would seem to coincide nicely with the incubation periods of the initial riots and then spreading it to others.
greedo 6y ago
In many areas, mask use isn't mandated, nor enforced. Same with social distancing; a megachurch in California ignored all the social distancing recommendations and even had the chutzpah to inform the authorities. They didn't cite a single violator. And outdoor exposure is largely immaterial. It's exposure indoors where the research is starting to indicate aerosols as a significant vector (compared to droplets).

nradov 6y ago

Realistically the window of opportunity already closed back in March. At this point community transmission is so widespread that to actually "beat back Covid-19" would take a long, strict lockdown (very few "essential" workers), extensive testing and contract tracing, and closing the borders. Even if those steps might leave us better off in the long run, they are simply no longer politically feasible. Wishes won't change that reality.