The coronavirus spread updated in real time

[_EAllusion]

[quote=ajax18 post_id=1224138 time=1589128674 user_id=21]
What's unselfish about all the essential workers risking death to make shelter in place even an option?[/quote]Essential workers are working. Almost by definition.

What's selfish is people demanding they get to do nonessential activities without any care or thought to who they are risking along the way, including significantly increasing the risk to the lives of essential workers who are making sacrifices for them. What really sucks is if our country could just get people to collectively stop actively selfishly for a relatively short period of time, we could safely manage something much closer to normal, but we are incapable of that on both a governmental and cultural level. So we get to experience mass death on the scale of a bad war or genocide while other countries with less resources than us flourish.

[quote]This is going to spread sooner or later and probably already has. 40 million unemployed is not the best option.[/quote]

While you are welcoming the inevitability of death, you probably should take a look around and notice that this isn't every country's fate.

[_EAllusion]

[quote]What about people in third world countries that never had the funds to social distance? [/quote]

How much do you pay to socially distance?
[quote]
I still haven't met someone with Covid but I've met plenty of people unemployed and ruined economically because of it[/quote]Yes, you do seem like the type who doesn't care unless you or someone within the limited circle of people you care about is personally affected. Well over a million people have been infected by COVID Ajax. We're around 80 thousand official deaths with thousands more likely on top of that as mortality estimation methods take time to catch up.

The economic devastation isn't principally caused by legal orders reducing economic activity. States that never had stay at home orders are being crushed too. Economic activity was already in steep decline before the first orders started taking effect. The primary issue is a catastrophic drop in organic demand in certain sectors of the economy because people don't want to risk themselves or other people becoming infected. Dead people don't shop. They don't work. And still living people trying to avoid that fate impact aggregate economic activity.

Yes, you personally might not care about going to the movies because you think the risk is worth it and don't care about other people very much. Lots of people, however, just aren't going to do that. Enough of them, as it turns out, to seriously impact that business model.

[_Gadianton]

Ajax,

While I've noted myself that masks have been undervalued given the presumed nature of the virus's spread, there are serious limitations to what a mask is going to do for your practice. Even with proper N95 masks, with the foot traffic pouring through your office, masks and even 6 ft. social distancing are not going to matter if the number of infected reach a certain level. I'm sure you understand this -- unlike your silent mentor, Rush Limbaugh, you've taken calculus and you understand how exponential growth works. In the hospital studies I've read, masks don't do much good at preventing the spread of airborne viruses, and regular flu spreads much slower than coronavirus. The greater the number of infected, the room for error in mask performance and proper wearing will drop far below what home-made masks and the untrained are capable of.

I'm actually not opposed to re-opening to some extent. Oh, I'm personally not going anywhere. My clippers arrived and I cut my own hair for the first time in my life. Looks pretty good actually, and I didn't even use a mirror. Anyway, the problem I see is that even in states where the numbers are looking pretty good, the level of infrastructure and policy to support proper contact tracing isn't up to snuff, and so we're treading water. The inevitable seems to be that we need to do a limited re-oppening, trigger round 2, which will be substantially worse than round 1, but the hope is by then, whatever barriers prevent getting the people power together to properly pursue the spread, reality will settle into those in charge, whoever they are, and we can do another lockdown and get a better fix in place.

I'm counting on an effictive vaccine taking longer than presumed. I hope I'm wrong, but as the presidency gets involved, rest assured the only thing that matters is rushing to market with something that can be lied about in order to get votes; and cutting corners and failing on human experiments will only prolong the process.

[_EAllusion]

I think some things have gotten lost in hammering simple messages about sound mitigation behavior. 6 feet of social distance is the minimum distance people should be apart from one another when interacting in passing, but there's still some risk at that distance and even longer ones. That's just a good rule of thumb number where risk of transmission in passing encounters falls off a cliff. If you prolong exposure at that distance with lots of social contacts, you end up multiplying the small risk into a bigger risk. Unless Ajax is extremely decked out in PPE, he's exposing himself to a fair amount of risk by seeing patient after patient if he's doing it in person. And if he is decked out in PPE, there's even some risk then.

Data is still foggy, but it appears that health care workers are experiencing infection rates at slightly below average. That sounds good, but when you consider they are the most likely to be using available mitigation strategies and equipment the most effectively, that's a story about how multiplying lots low risk encounters eventually creates meaningful risk.

One thing that's frustrating here is that it's not like there aren't reasonable plans for opening up more economic activity much more safely. The Whitehouse is employing that strategy for itself, in fact. The resources exist, but there's no marshalling of them. Instead, the plan appears to be to propagandize people like Ajax to be the thin edge of the wedge in just letting the bodies pile up.

[_ajax18]

EAlusion why aren't bodies piling up in Mexico city or Tegucigalpa?

[_Jersey Girl]

It's worth thinking about if catch COVID and kill some people you interact with, is it their blood on your hands?

Every single patient came in wearing a mask as requested. All glasses and contact lenses are dispensed by mail. Patients wait in the car before entering the exam room. I'm sure there are plenty of kids running around who are asymptomatic and would test positive. My older and at risk patients have the option to order online and I'll gladly renew their prescription without an exam during this unprecedented situation.

I spent six weeks looking for a job of any kind and like many of my patients found nothing, at least not until the day before I was scheduled to return to work. I haven't forced anyone to leave their house. I've found many people agree with my view that there are many cures far worse than death.

What do you mean they couldn't find a job? That's BS. They can do what President Cuomo told them to do. Get a job as an essential worker.

Walmart, Costco, Sam's, Amazon and the like, all added staff and opened thousands of positions nationwide.

[_Jersey Girl]

EAlusion why aren't bodies piling up in Mexico city or Tegucigalpa?

What? Why are you asking that? Are you serious here? That is just crazytown.

[_EAllusion]

[quote=ajax18 post_id=1224159 time=1589141049 user_id=21]
EAlusion why aren't bodies piling up in Mexico city or Tegucigalpa?
[/quote]

They are? They've had an outbreak with thousands of deaths. If you mean, why not to the extent of the US, the answer is they've done a much better job with policies enforcing social distancing. That's why the US has been leaning on the country to open up industries. Not sure how long they can keep it up, but that's the main reason why it has been a slower burn there.

The United States is the backwards "3rd world" country here. You live in the shithole country now. Congrats.

[_ajax18]

I seriously doubt they can social distance better especially without running water. I suspect many would test positive for it in the third world as well. It just hasn't been nearly as deadly as the models have predicted.

[_EAllusion]

[quote=ajax18 post_id=1224178 time=1589152783 user_id=21]
I seriously doubt they can social distance better especially without running water. I suspect many would test positive for it in the third world as well. It just hasn't been nearly as deadly as the models have predicted.
[/quote]

Awesome that you're in the medical profession. It's about approximately as deadly as the models predicted, unfortunately.

1) People in Mexico city have running water. 2) They have socially distanced better. I like that you can't fathom people you look down on are doing better than you, so you just assume that - wait - what is it are you assuming again?

You express skepticism that social distancing backed up by some government restrictions of business activity is all that important for preventing COVID deaths. Let's go back to normal. But thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people have died in the United States, and that's with the benefit of some social distancing measures in place.

So, you ask, if it's so risky, then why aren't people dying in Mexico? They are, but they aren't dying quite as much as the US, at least in significant part, because they had a stronger coordinated response. That's true of a lot of countries. But you reject that they're capable of that. Your brain can't let you accept that you live in one of the worst performing countries on the planet when it comes to this. So you then surmise that the disease just must not be all that risky. But, then why all the deaths in the US?

I think I see where this is going, but you should spell it out.