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Super-spreading wedding demonstrates Covid-19 risk posed by holiday gatherings
- corona-research 6y agoEpidemiologists from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard demand to immediately stop the devastating measures. http://gbdeclaration.org/ http://gbdeclaration.org/
- TylerE 6y agoThat's faker than a 3 dollar bill. Many, many, of the "signatures" have been proven to be people that don't even exist. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-herd-immunity-great-barrington-declaration-scientists-signatures-fake-names-b912778.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-... https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/27/facebook-posts/great-barrington-herd-immunity-document-widely-dis/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/27/facebook-p...
- corona-research 6y agoAre you trying to say the authors don’t exist because some troll entered a fake name on their website? Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
- raesene9 6y agoThe great barrington declaration is undoubtedly not fake, in that the core people who put their names to it have not said they didn't. The volume of support is of course dubious as the only requirement for saying that a "medical professional" was signing it, was a check box on a web form. the challenge I see with the declaration's approach is that (AFAIK) it skips over the hard part of how "Focused Protection." is actually implemented. It's super easy to write a web page saying that we should use "focused protection" to avoid heavy loss of life to Covid, and much much harder to design and implement a workable strategy. This article actually demonstrates that problem. A worker at a care facility spread it to a set of vulnerable people. How would "focused protection" have stopped that? There may be an answer, but I don't see that information from the Great Barrington declaration.
- orangecat 6y agoit skips over the hard part of how "Focused Protection." is actually implemented That's a reasonable criticism, but I would point out that the "responsible" strategy of trying to force entire populations into quarantine has not survived contact with reality either. A worker at a care facility spread it to a set of vulnerable people The worker should have been living on site, or if that's not possible seeing literally nobody outside of their job. And we should be paying them huge amounts of money to compensate for that disruption.
- f38zf5vdt 6y agoAre you trying to say the authors don’t exist because some troll entered a fake name on their website? Huber, Gary. Chief of Respiratory Diseases at Boston City Hospital’s Harvard Medical Unit Kilpatrick, James. Biostatistics. Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, VA Wexler, Lawrence M. Epidemiology @ New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY Wu, Joseph M. Biochemistry, molecular biology @ New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY Ecobichon, Donald. Toxicology @ McGill University, Quebec, QC These are all people who wrote in favour of tobacco not causing cancer in individuals for the tobacco lobby. There were many other equally credentialed individuals who also said so. If you put enough money in front of an unscrupulous individual, no matter their background, they'll tell you whatever you want to hear.
- jlmorton 6y agoI don't know anything more about this than the two links you just posted, but the article in the Independent and the Politifact Fact Check certainly do not come to the conclusion that this "declaration" is fake. The Independent piece is talking about some of the 150,000+ names signed by the public. Of course people on the Internet are going to add fake names to the list. That doesn't make the declaration fake. The Politifact piece explicitly notes that the official signatories are real. It then goes into an explanation of why their heterodox opinion is wrong, which maybe it is. But that doesn't make it fake.
- rubatuga 6y agoThe only source I trust for my critical and unbiased coronavirus information is the "corona-research" user on Hacker News.
- totalZero 6y agoThe username is cartoonishly transparent...I guess they offer internships at the Internet Research Agency. User's comment history lines up with my expectations.
- corona-research 6y agoDon’t trust me. Consider listening to these people: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
- ceejayoz 6y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/herd-immunity-letter-signed-fake-experts-dr-johnny-bananas-covid https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/herd-immunity-... > An open letter that made headlines calling for a herd immunity approach to Covid-19 lists a number of apparently fake names among its expert signatories, including “Dr Johnny Bananas” and “Professor Cominic Dummings”. > Others listed include a resident at the “university of your mum” and another supposed specialist whose name was the first verse of the Macarena. > Sky News discovered 18 self-declared homeopaths in the list of expert names and more than 100 therapists whose expertise included massage, hypnotherapy and Mongolian khoomii singing.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoSeeing the fallout from Sturgis, I think the holiday seasons back-to-back are going to make things far worse. It doesn't help that we will already be in the middle of flu/common-cold season.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt also demonstrates why the "personal choice" stuff is BS here. I see a lot of folks going "why are you worried if you're following the rules yourself?", and yet... > None of the victims who lost their lives had attended the party.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoHonestly, I would be okay with someone being tried for murder over this shit. Isn't the death penalty supposed to be a deterrence?
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt's very clearly not murder; that'd set really bad precedents. You might be able to pull off something like involuntary manslaughter, but I tend to doubt it.
- sp332 6y agoWith the extreme indifference to human life, and the knowledge that they could be causing "bodily harm" even if they think the odds of death are remote, we could try for second-degree murder.
- jhayward 6y agoIt would fall under behavior matching something like likely to cause serious injury or death with reckless disregard or depraved indifference to the safety of others, which in most states would be straight manslaughter or low-degree murder.
- presentation 6y agoAlso empirically speaking isn’t the death penalty not actually shown to be a great deterrent? [1] [1] first google result I found. https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/the-death-penalty-and-deterrence/ https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalt...
- 6y ago
- post_break 6y agoThanksgiving is going to be one massive super spreading event, and I shudder to think about christmas.
- roody15 6y ago"Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed." http://gbdeclaration.org/ http://gbdeclaration.org/
- f38zf5vdt 6y agoI really lament that HackerNews has become just another outlet for political propaganda and manipulation. It didn't used to be this bad, but now there's large scale brigading of the top comment sections just like at reddit. I don't know what the solution is, but the reddit/HackerNews model of discussion definitely has its downsides in the face of malicious actors.
- roody15 6y agoSadly it looks the US has really moved rapidly to copy the China style internet monitoring and control. Astroturfing everywhere has really ramped up. So much noise...
- robhunter 6y agoThis reads as the equivalent of an ad hominem argument - why not address your concerns with the merits of what was said, rather than just dismiss it as propaganda?
- f38zf5vdt 6y agoThe same link has been posted several times in this thread by several accounts, all in a similar manner. Several days ago there was another COVID19 posting with "FREE MICHIGAN" and similar bizarre, anti-intellectual ramblings. Unfortunately HackerNews/YCombinator is the one controlling the identities on this website, so without access to more information I'm unable to discern much about the authorship of these comments.
- newfeatureok 6y agoBy sheer coincidence I’ve been reading World War Z and it’s amazing how in the real world we’re making the same mistakes that countries in the book made against the zombies. Of course the situation is entirely different, but it’s interesting. Why doesn’t the government actually just enforce rules? So many lockdowns, mandates and laws but so little enforcement, or the penalty is not commensurate with the risk. What’s the point?
- mumblemumble 6y ago> Why doesn’t the government actually just enforce rules? Because there is no government to enforce the rules. Only a loose aggregation of individuals, each with their own personal interests. Those interests often include things like, "I don't want to do anything that might anger people and lose me the next election," or, "If I cite someone for this, I am going to have even more paperwork to do when I get back to the station." This way of thinking about how civic institutions behave becomes particularly important in a country like the USA whose cultural values tend to place individual freedom above many other things, including civic duty.
- gagege 6y agoUnless you open the Pandora's Box of Martial Law under a dictatorship.
- beaconstudios 6y agoand other incentives too - enforcement is going to be hard on the scale of "everyone on the planet", but I wonder why people who got the cough went back to work. Would it have hurt their employment prospects to take the time off? Did they have responsibilities that were not able to be covered by coworkers? Understanding why people don't follow the rules by themselves is important - tweaking the incentives in the system could help to lower the R rate, where I think having the police monitor the social lives of everyone on the planet is not a viable solution.
- Ericson2314 6y agoEveryone talks about all the bad things police do. Not enough people talk about the good things the police don't do because they are too busy doing the the bad things.
- just-juan-post 6y agoWhen will the daily Covid fear stories on Hacker News end? What is there to discuss here? Is there anything to discuss? What good will come of this submission? Why does Hacker News continue to have Covid fear stories on the front page every day?
- Pfhreak 6y agoIf one event is cancelled because they saw this posting, then lives were potentially saved. If this is a good reminder for us to talk to our loved ones to cancel their events, then it almost certainly saved lives. It's a low cost way to remind people that we definitely shouldn't be having Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other holiday gatherings.
- tengbretson 6y agoI wonder if we could implement some sort of cap and trade system to make everyone happy? Everyone could be rationed a certain number of gatherings per month and then each person would be free to choose how to use them. They could use one to see family during the holidays, they could go to a protest, go to a wedding, celebrate in the street, go to a movie, etc. We could even track them as discrete tokens, or "social credits" using blockchain technology. This would allow contact tracing software to be able to determine the "cost" of an event based on how many people were exposed and then withdraw the appropriate number of credits from the participants. In a system like this, people who don't go anywhere or see anyone would be able to redeem their excess social credits for things XBoxes or VR headsets.
- OJFord 6y agoHow does that help? Stay at home for as many events as you want, going to one 'super-spreading wedding' is still no bueno.
- tengbretson 6y agoBut if you had to spend all of your social credits in order to go to the wedding now you will be unable to go anywhere else to further spread it.
- OJFord 6y agoStill doesn't work unless people are below some critical level of behaving the same way and knowing the same people that I bet they're not.
- vharuck 6y agoIt's true that minimizing all gatherings is the best choice. But we also have to recognize that social distancing fatigue happens. And when it does, people might stop socially distancing. Giving them a "social budget" could help them recognize risks and keep it up for longer. Of course, don't give them enough budget for an indoor wedding.
- 6y ago
- ecommerceguy 6y agoWe operate in the wedding niche and we have seen a drastic decline in not only the number of weddings but also the size of weddings. The impact has been significant.
- MichaelApproved 6y agoI should hope so, during a pandemic.
- fairity 6y agoI just want to say thank you. COVID shutdowns basically trade the well-being of business owners, employees of said businesses, and healthy people with the well-being of the unhealthy and elderly. This is a worthy trade, but I don't think we show enough appreciation for those whose livelihoods are being taken away.
- flavor8 6y agoIt's a little hugged to death at the moment, but https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/ https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/ is a useful tool to show relatives who are thinking about social gatherings for the holidays.
- Pfhreak 6y agoJust a reminder, that tool likely underestimates the risk of covid. Seroprevalence data shows undercounting of up to 24 times (rather than the 5 or 10 this tool shows.) Also, this tool assumes you are only seeing people from your county. And humans are terrible at assessing compound risk. If the tool shows a 5% risk from a gathering, people will likely attend multiple events. ("Oh, it's only 5% to go to Thanksgiving. And 5% to go to Friendsgiving. etc.") When you consider multiple events, risk doesn't stay constant. So while that tool is interesting, don't look at it as a mechanism to say, "Yeah, it's probably ok to have a gathering."
- aroch 6y agoLead dev here. While you're not wrong that we might be under-estimating risk, I'll note that we do take into consideration seroprevalence in our calculations (so called, ascertainment bias). We provide estimates for two cases; 5x and 10x under-counting bias. And you are right, that risk is additive (to a degree) if you go do multiple parties. And people are terrible at doing this sort of calculation. Our messaging, in our manuscript/press/social media has always been to limit gatherings of any size, and mask and gather outside as much as possible
- xur17 6y agoIt's also worth noting that this tool shows the risk of at least one other person in attendance having covid before going, not the risk of contracting covid at the event.
- 3JPLW 6y agoThis is a good resource for thinking around limiting transmission risks: https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-a...
- atty 6y agoWhat are HNers planning to do for the holidays? We’re seriously considering not seeing anyone, not even parents, even though my SO has had COVID already (she works at a hospital and contracted it from COVID patients). Stories like this are the main reason. Even if no one at the party gets very ill, the chance of further spreading it to others seriously scares me.
- king_magic 6y ago100% abstaining from any family gatherings. It's the only morally right choice right now.
- jjulius 6y agoNormally we'd fly out of town for Thanksgiving/Christmas to our respective families, but my wife and I are staying put this year. My parents are coming to us for Thanksgiving, but we are making them get tested the weekend prior, quarantine at home for a few more days, then they are driving to us only stopping for gas (so, wipe down the pump with a Clorox wipe and then use hand sanitizer after touching it). That process alleviates enough of the fear for us. Edit: Why the downvote? This answers OP's question, and if I'm being downvoted due to concerns around spreading a virus then by all means, please feel free to start a discussion around why this option might be unsafe. Nobody in my family has traveled yet this holiday season and I'm not trying to be cavalier about this, so any additional input is welcome.
- snakeboy 6y agoWouldn't your parents presumably be at much higher risk than you? It seems like the roles should be reversed, no?
- jjulius 6y agoGreat question! Looking at it strictly from an age perspective you're correct, but there are a lot of other factors that flip that around for us. My wife has a pre-existing condition and we've been taking sheltering-in-place pretty seriously since the Bay Area shut down in mid-March. We've both been working from home and have only ventured out for walks, to sit in corners of parks away from everyone, or to go to a doctor. Groceries/food get delivered (I haven't even been into a grocery store since March, which feels weird) and we haven't hung out with friends in person or anything like that. On the flip side, both of my parents are going into work and my mother works at a nursing home (which - so far - has not had a single case of the virus), so they come into contact with far more people during the day than we do. In addition, we have an eight month old which makes us doing a day-long road trip without stopping at a hotel next to impossible. So since our contact with others remains next to 0, and my parents are totally cool with using the extra PTO to quarantine, get tested, then quarantine a bit more before driving down, we feel comfortable with it. Obviously I'm not going to view it through rose-colored glasses and act as though there's no risk, but there's a much, much smaller risk through this route than if they were to hop on a plane and come straight over sans negative test.
- andred14 6y agoElderly people die of flu symptoms all the time. It is normal but we are being lied to and told it is not. My own father passed of pneumonia and although sad it also was normal.
- throw1122334 6y agoFor comparison with the 55 person gathering in August, here's a 10,000 person gathering in June, which was apparently perfectly OK from a coronavirus standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U0J40Gn574 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U0J40Gn574 Double standards like these are why most people don't trust the mainstream media anymore.
- mrtksn 6y agoAccording to the article, the result was 177 infections and 7 deaths. That's almost %4 death rate, way over the official US death rate. Any idea why would that be?
- ceejayoz 6y agoThe article indicates the spread reached a long-term care facility, and that almost all the deaths were there.
- ryanworl 6y ago"Two-thirds of the facility’s residents were at least 75 years old, and 88% of them had at least one preexisting medical condition that could have made them more vulnerable to the virus. Six of the residents ultimately died of COVID-19. All of them were at least 60 years old and had at least one preexisting medical condition." 6/7 deaths were from elderly people with pre-existing conditions in a long-term care facility.
- ec109685 6y agoThe list of conditions that increase death rate are pretty wide: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/evidence-table.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut... E.g. severe obese is one of them as well.
- Sodman 6y agoThe article says that the mother of somebody who attended the wedding worked at a long term care facility, which houses a more at-risk population.
- exabrial 6y agoCase count != actual risk of death or permanent injury. You have to be in a high risk group. I wish we'd evaluate actual risk rather than perceived.
- smeyer 6y ago>Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 other people. Seven of them died. Seven people died. This isn't some hypothetical where people are acting like there's risk where there isn't; it's a story of seven real, living, breathing humans passing away.
- war1025 6y agoPeople die. I'm becoming more and more callus about the whole thing and beginning to think we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that people die. I was told recently that my town is in terrible shape and the hospitals are nearly overwhelmed. Listening further, I learned that "nearly overwhelmed" meant we had capacity for two or three people to be really sick with Coronavirus. If we need to decimate our economy because only two or three people can be really sick at once, then that is the wrong trade-off in my opinion.
- sequoia 6y ago'fighting the virus harms the economy' Would you believe it if I told you that not fighting the virus has an even bigger toll on the economy? Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, how much less economic impact would have resulted. But then, as now, we wanted to "protect the economy" and avoid restrictions as long as possible. But this time the strategy will work? I have trouble believing that.
- war1025 6y ago> Imagine if we'd aggressively addressed this problem back in March, Europe had about the strictest lockdown you can imagine and their economy isn't exactly peaches and cream right now. And they have spiking case counts just like the US right now.
- vemv 6y agoWould transmission have been the same if the wedding happened in a 100% outdoor setting? (the article explicitly mentions this was at least in part in an indoor setting) We have enough evidence to teach people that the very least they can do is paying attention to air flow. Somehow we aren't.
- ceejayoz 6y agoOutdoors would likely have been substantially safer, yes. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-summer-of-covid-19-taught-scientists-about-indoor-vs-outdoor-transmission/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-summer-of-covid-... > And if there is one thing we can definitively state, it’s that this virus is much, much less likely to spread outdoors than in. For example, in a study of 7,324 Chinese case reports, only two — part of the same transmission event — could be linked to outdoor settings. A database of more than 20,000 cases (including the 7,324 Chinese cases) found 461 that were associated with transmission in completely outdoor environments — predominantly crowded events like markets and rallies. Overall, only 6 percent of all the cases in that database were linked to events that were either totally or partially outdoors. The rest were tied to indoor events.
- NotTheDr01ds 6y agoIsn't the long-term care facility link a little implausible? 4 days seems like a bit short for the child to be infected, incubate to the point of being contagious, pass it to the parent, then incubate again to the parent being symptomatic. Regardless, the wedding and reception behavior was entirely irresponsible. But the link between it and the long-term care cases seems tenuous, at best.
- sp332 6y ago*tenuous
- NotTheDr01ds 6y agoThat's the one I was looking for - Thanks :-) Edited
- raesene9 6y agoIt would depend on how the tracing was done I'd expect. I believe it is often possible to sequence the data from the infections to provide a link between them, that may have been done in this case. (https://twitter.com/nextstrain https://twitter.com/nextstrain - is an example)
- triangleman 6y agoCheck the study: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a5.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6945a5.htm It looks like just contact tracing here, not genome sequencing. The patient in question is A2 and the study does not say whether they ever tested positive or had symptoms.
- ericbarrett 6y agoDoesn’t seem so; the numbers I’ve heard since the beginning of the pandemic are 24-48 hours until you are infectious, and 2-14 days (a lot of variance) for symptoms, if you are going to show them. If somebody has newer numbers please do share.
- goalieca 6y agoThere are “high-risk” people in care homes who want to visit their relatives for the holidays. To call these people selfish is way off the mark. Human beings are more than a simple statistic to optimize for political benefit. Perhaps it’s the politicians and others who are being selfish by imposing their will and desires. Viewpoints on liberty and consent aside, there doesn’t seem to be much of a strategy or timeline yet and it’s time we do a cost/benefit analysis that considers all costs and complications beyond covid.
- __al__ 6y agoCouldn't agree more. You're asking 330 million Americans to give up some of their freedoms without any real plan or timeline; of course there is going to opposition.
- abraae 6y ago> without any real plan or timeline There's a very real plan, which is to develop a vaccine. And that plan seems to be going pretty well. The timeline will be dictated by the success of the plan, but it seems that most experts are reasonably confident that vaccines will be available next year.
- NationalPark 6y agoThat's not true at all, most states have very specific lockdown guidelines that call for degrees of restrictions based on measurements of infection and medical capacity. And of course the real plan is just to buy time until a vaccine is produced. So yeah, there are uncertainties and it's scary and frustrating, but that's no excuse to give up.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoThanks for expressing this, I think most people are scared into silence by the self-righteous scolds among us. But clearly - even globally - more than enough people are aware that some people will absolutely destroy any semblance of normal life, and irreparably damage the fabric of society in a frenzy of fear and panic, waving the banner of science, without acknowledging any of the complex decisions around risks, costs, etc.
- modzu 6y agotop of hn? what happened?
- throw1122334 6y agoUpvote/downvote sites are very easy to manipulate: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvotes-downvotes-and-the-science-of-the-reddit-hivemind-15784871/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvote...
- totalZero 6y agoThe pandemic makes ongoing science/technology news, and has substantial impact upon the work culture, sector demand, and societal role of the tech sphere. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have perished from this disease and it didn't have to be this way. There is a major thrust of anti-intellectualism in the US, Brazil, and other countries. As "hackers," we try to understand what the intellectuals believe. Then, we figure out what's happening in the real world, and finally, we break the intellectuals' rules in pragmatic (but not expedient) ways. The guy who just won the US presidential election claimed that we are entering a "dark winter," and it's a pretty relevant topic to HN in my view. COVID-19 sits at the unlikely confluence of medical science, tethics (shout out to Gavin Belson), statistics, system dynamics, and public policy.
- modzu 6y agoyour comment is fair, but the LA times article is about super-spreaders.. remember super-predators? the fearmongering pumped out of mainstream media, which well predates covid, isnt why any of us read hn. if a covid topic is to remain on hn until the pandemic is resolved, there could be better sources.
- totalZero 6y agoThe term "super-spreader" was used to describe certain individuals in past disease outbreaks, including SARS. It means that there are some people who produce and share far more viral material than average (right-tail individuals, so to speak). There is no more a connection between "super-spreaders" and "super-predators," as there is between either of those two terms and "superman." https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/15/1003576/whats-a-coronavirus-superspreader/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/15/1003576/whats-a-...
- relieferator 6y agoWhy do people go to work when they're sick? I don't understand for the life of me, how someone thinks it's ok? If you don't feel well, your company (or money) is not worth your life or the lives of others. Stay home ffs.
- slg 6y agoSome people aren't paid if they aren't working and can't afford not to work. US employees have no federally guaranteed paid sick days and that results in a culture that prioritizes showing up to work no matter what.
- BurningFrog 6y agoFortunately, in this WFH era we can do both!
- lm28469 6y ago> Currently, there are no federal legal requirements for paid sick leave. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/sickleave https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/sickleave
- satysin 6y agoSometimes because they don't get sick pay (or it is reduced putting them in a [more] difficult financial position) or because for some disgusting reason people think they are "strong" and "hard working" for going into work when they are sick. I've worked with people who were proud of coming into work with a hacking cough and temperature. They would take their temperature at their desk and announce it as if they were doing something amazing. Even worse is when I've worked for managers who during your review compare you to those people saying things like you should make more effort to reduce your time off sick (even if under the average yearly sick days) or make more effort to come in when you're just feeling a "bit under the weather". It is a terrible attitude but it is extremely common the world over sadly.
- cmurf 6y agoOne reason is short staffed nursing homes and hospitals. In North Dakota the governor just signed an executive order allowing Covid-positive healthcare workers to stay on job. Including nursing homes. Another reason: don't work, no income. U.S. has no federal sick leave law. Most states don't either.
- nostromo 6y agoIt’s interesting that the reporter here is shaming a wedding reception and not the long-term care facility where the deaths actually occurred. And not shaming for people for going to work with obvious Covid-19 symptoms, both to a prison and a long-term care facility. It’s clear the editors needed a story about family gatherings and not yet another story about old folks homes being high risk.
- otterley 6y agoWhy does the care facility deserve more blame?
- throw1122334 6y agoBecause it's literally their job to protect their patients from infection? It's not like we've just recently found out that the elderly are especially vulnerable to Covid-19. If a website left their admin portal open, didn't set a password and then got hacked, would you put the blame for that on the script kiddie who did it, or on the website's security team?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throw1122334 6y agoYour original statement was "Why does the care facility deserve more blame?". Do you see the word "more" there? Good luck and god bless.
- pjc50 6y agoThe only way they could have done this was .. preventing their staff from going to the wedding. Or maybe even preventing them from leaving the site.
- musingsole 6y ago
- krupan 6y agoReading the article, it sounds like maybe if the people experiencing symptoms had stayed home from work, most especially the care facility and jail workers, the spread and deaths would have been drastically reduced
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI am getting more and more frustrated with the FDA. The vaccine has been around since February. The severity pandemic can be boiled down to a function of drug testing. If we had a pandemic drug testing protocol we could have had a vaccine months ago. The FDA is just sitting on their hands right now waiting for people in the stage 3 trials to get sick to see if the vaccines are effective. If we would have used challenge trials where people are deliberately infected we would know this answer months sooner and save possibly 100,000's of lives.
- alok99 6y agoWhat? We had a vaccine in February 2020? What is your source on that?
- fasteddie31003 6y agohttps://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19 https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-ag...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- YooLi 6y ago"Despite having obvious signs of illness, the Maplecrest employee went to work that day, and the next." "The York County Jail employee showed up for an eight-hour shift despite having COVID-19 symptoms. It was the first of five consecutive days of work for the employee..." I see the main problem not as the wedding, because an infection can frankly happen anywhere, but as a failure to accommodate people who feel they can't miss work even though they are ill (need the money, fear repercussions, policy that limits sick days, etc.). I don't believe the individuals intentionally exposed others, but felt they had no other choice.
- dwild 6y agoThere's many symptoms that are hard to spot, and as far as I know, there's asymptomatic spreaders too. The only person I know that got Covid, his only symptoms was that he was sleepy, he slept for a whole week 14 hours a day. It's quite bad, but I could see many still going with it, sleeping 8 hours and still going to works sleepy. I got plenty of days I felt sleepy in the past and still went to work. Headache is another symptom, again, never got any yourself? Pop an Advil and go with it? Would you miss work for that reason?... I may miss too many day if I had to consider that one. I don't know what symptoms he had, but it could be pretty minor... yet we simply can't get a day of for every minor thing. I agree completely with you for major symptoms, but sadly, there's many case where people are asymptomatic or doesn't even know they are symptomatic because of how commons or hard to spot theses symptoms can be. You know what we can do though easily though, postpone a wedding or have a wedding differently. They were 55 there, were they all required? Why do it inside? Why not refusing people without mask? Why not enforcing more strongly the few basic rules of social distancing?
- greggman3 6y agoFirst off let me make it clear (1) I've mostly stayed entirely isolate since March. (2) I plan to stay isolated. So don't shoot the messenger please. Anyway, I live in Tokyo. Tokyo Metro area has basically all of California (SF, SD, etc..) squeezed into an area the size of Los Angeles. 34 million people. Tokyo has been mostly unlocked since June. Theaters and other venues are open (every other seat), clubs are open (WTFBBQ!), restaurants are open and many are full, everyone has masks off while eating and drinking though outside it's 99% masked. Number shot up in the last 2 days, we'll see where it goes, but though September and October they stayed flat. About 100 to 200 a day (vs California, same population, 10k day or 100x) Here are some videos from 3 different weekends in October Tokyo Metro Area https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UP9v5zOh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UP9v5zOh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQQl6z45QxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQQl6z45QxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13WRmg1NX8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13WRmg1NX8g No idea why the number are 100x less than California similar population. Especially given Tokyo is far more densely populated than California and trains are still packed during rush hour. Schools are open though they swap half the students each day. Lots of people have ideas, none of them proven. * Japanese don't wear shoes indoors so don't track it into their houses :P * Japanese are better at wearing masks? (ok, but walking by restaurants full of unmasked people doesn't seem to fit) * Japan isn't testing as much. I think that's not true enough to get a 100x difference but even if it was hospitalizations and deaths would be up? They are not AFAIK * Japan has a different version of the virus? Ok, so when the real one arrives were screwed. * Japanese are healthier? (like obesity is 3.6% here vs 30% in USA) * Japanese are not vitamin D deficient? They have put lots of measures in though I assume that similar elsewhere. Every cashier is surrounded by various forms of transparent partitions. Fast food joints sometimes have partitions between every 2 seats. That said a cafe I used to hang out at as one large 20 person table and 8 or so bar seats near a window. I've walked by since it's near the grocery store I go to and it's full, people eating with masks off, no partitions. I have plenty of pictures of full restaurants as I walk by. Anyway, would certainly love to know why the numbers are so low relative to the USA and Europe. Maybe it's just luck? Seems unlikely
- triangleman 6y agoMaybe it's all the fish. I guess I'm off to take my vitamin D, thanks for the reminder.
- sequoia 6y agoIn this thread someone asks "What are HNers planning to do for the holidays?" This is a fabulous question for online social media: when you go out it can seem like everyone is flouting the rules, no one is being careful, and you're the only one. This is largely because you don't see the people who are being careful because they are staying in so there's a massive bias towards careless, selfish jerks when you go out. If you want to promote Covid safety, ask this question about holiday plans on Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, or whatever social network you use. Or a more general question: "How are you/your family staying safe from Covid?" This question brings everyone who is staying safe out of the shadows and into view, and all the sudden rather than feeling like you're "the only one" being careful, you realize you're in very good company. It's great to show other people as well. So if you want to "do something," start discussions on social media about what people are doing to stay safe!
- theplague42 6y agoHackerNews loves talking about network effects and marketing virality but doesn't seem to understand actual real-world networks and viruses.
- flubert 6y agoIs anyone in the U.S. using thermal cameras to spot individuals with a fever? I live in a smaller city, not really close to a big metropolitan area, but I haven't seen a thermal camera in use yet. I see they are available on Amazon, so it doesn't seem like it is an issue of availability. Are these being used by businesses in other areas of the U.S.? Seems like it would be a no-brainer to use these to non-invasivly screen patrons.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoHave we learned nothing from the AIDS crisis? It's clear to most people, in that instance, that an ugly side of human thinking emerges around viral outbreaks and it presents itself in how we consider other human beings. People so readily stigmatize and it's very clearly on display in this thread. No human being without ill-intent can be blamed for a virus. Tragedy befalls humanity from time to time, this is certain; instead of pointing fingers, we should be more empathetic, not less.
- wins32767 6y agoTragedy does befall humanity from time to time, but you're arguing for comforting those who make selfish choices that make things worse for everyone. This is not like the AIDS crisis; the medical system was not at risk of collapsing. What of empathy for those who have and will needlessly die alone in tents and hospital hallways and their grieving families who don't get to say goodbye? What of empathy for the medical staff who are working 12, 24, or 36 hour shifts with no end in sight? What of empathy for those who stock our shelves who are constantly put at risk? What empathy for an entire generation of children who will have worse educational attainment because they're forced to do a year or more of remote school? But sure, let's empathize with someone who keeps eating out and refuses to wear a mask. It's not like they could have done anything to mitigate the tragedy that's going on, right?
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago> This is not like the AIDS crisis; the medical system was not at risk of collapsing. Neither is it now? Even at the peak in NYC, the Javits center was never filled, nor the hospital ships. Likewise in the UK the nightingale hospitals were never used. Should we be wary at all of our propensity for stigmatizing people with disease(especially a viral one)? Should we berate anyone who gets HIV when they could have worn a condom?
- wins32767 6y agohttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-surge-breaking-healthcare-workers/617091/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-sur... > The entire state of Iowa is now out of staffed beds, Eli Perencevich, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Iowa, told me. Worse is coming. Iowa is accumulating more than 3,600 confirmed cases every day; relative to its population, that’s more than twice the rate Arizona experienced during its summer peak, “when their system was near collapse,” Perencevich said. With only lax policies in place, those cases will continue to rise. Hospitalizations lag behind cases by about two weeks; by Thanksgiving, today’s soaring cases will be overwhelming hospitals that already cannot cope. “The wave hasn’t even crashed down on us yet,” Perencevich said. “It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health-care system in Iowa is going to collapse, no question.” Most of the US is likely to have their medical systems collapse this winter. That will lead to thousands of preventable deaths. Stigmatizing people with HIV was bad because it was a proxy for stigmatizing gay men. Stigmatizing people who don't wear masks is stigmatizing anti-social behavior.