Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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The “controlled spread” to achieve “herd immunity” to make a “protecting wall around the elderly and vulnerable” has been exactly the strategy of our government in March. For a short time only, because it simply doesn’t work.
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@Grunnen sometimes. But the way the world works is that we have to get to herd immunity, so the alternative to getting relatively safe people infected is to get relatively vulnerable people infected, which is what you seem to be arguing for, but I think that in reality you're just not thinking it through enough, TBH.
Obviously, when you have multiple generations living in the same household, that's a big problem, but it's not a universal situation and treating the entirety of society that way is really bad.
It's important to take a step back and not let fear rule you, and not just on this subject. It's not uncommon for my wife to start freaking out about some subject in this manner and then we sit down and look at the facts and think analytically about it and eventually she's able to get reason to overcome emotion and calm down.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Too many people look at some small aspect of this thing and lose all ability to think critically.
Case in point:
This (pdf) was from early/mid July. The 1% was confirmed cases, so definitely very low, but the 0.04% is almost certainly too high given all of the known shenanigans surrounding cause of death reporting.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
eventually she's able to get reason to overcome emotion and calm down.
Glad that works for you. My mileage varied.
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@HardwareGeek to clarify, this is about stuff like global warming or child abductions, not about what happened in her dream last night.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Too many people look at some small aspect of this thing and lose all ability to think critically.
Case in point:
This (pdf) was from early/mid July. The 1% was confirmed cases, so definitely very low, but the 0.04% is almost certainly too high given all of the known shenanigans surrounding cause of death reporting.
Also - this is yet another example that people are extremely bad at probability. If 9% died, everyone would know multiple people who died of COVID.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Too many people look at some small aspect of this thing and lose all ability to think critically.
Case in point:
This (pdf) was from early/mid July. The 1% was confirmed cases, so definitely very low, but the 0.04% is almost certainly too high given all of the known shenanigans surrounding cause of death reporting.
Eh, Americans don't even know the size of their population to one order of magnitude (from a statistically relevant, anecdotal sample of 1), so that's no surprise.
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@error_bot xkcd World According to Americans
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xkcd said in https://xkcd.com/850/ :
World According to Americans
)
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Argentina now has the same number of deaths per million people as USA, after 150 days of lockdown. I don't know how people are in USA but here I'm been at home almost the whole time since March and there is talk of staying in lockdown until there is a vaccine in February or March next year, because the government is too inept to test people.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Grunnen sometimes. But the way the world works is that we have to get to herd immunity, so the alternative to getting relatively safe people infected is to get relatively vulnerable people infected, which is what you seem to be arguing for, but I think that in reality you're just not thinking it through enough, TBH.
Obviously, when you have multiple generations living in the same household, that's a big problem, but it's not a universal situation and treating the entirety of society that way is really bad.
I don't think it's possible to adequately identify who is at risk or even where risk can be defined to isolate only those individuals - once you try, the bubble of linked people very rapidly expands to a scale close to complete lock-down.
A few specific examples:
I would normally share an office with a 40-something guy who, both in terms of an underlying health issue and ethnic origin is at greater risk. He has two teenage children and his wife works in a public facing role. There's no way he can shelter if society re-opens fully.
A friend in his 50's who is notably fit and healthy (i.e. nothing to suggest being at risk) caught the virus in March while on a skiing holiday. He ended up in hospital on oxygen for several days, (his partner was affected more severely). Both fully recovered, but if that had happened at a point when hospitals were overwhelmed then the outcome would probably have been different.
One of my colleagues (healthy mid-30's woman) was off-work for a month with the virus - if that happened widely then sick-leave would rapidly bring society to a halt.
It's not common among urban populations in the UK for three generations to be living in the same cramped house (notably, but certainly not exclusively, Indian sub-continent communities). That was the case where I lived in Manchester - where the grand-parent generation were typically strikingly unhealthy (obese, probably malnourished and often diabetic); the middle generation worked at the local hospital (a major employer in the area) and the children went to school.
My point in this long-winded post is that you either can't identify who is at risk, or even if you can then often (usually) you can do little to protect them. The broad-brush approach of limiting viral spread across the whole of society is the only thing that's viable.
'Herd immunity' can be achieved with widespread vaccination - in which case the aims of social controls only need to be to hold-off widespread infection for long enough to allow a vaccine to be developed.
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@japonicus said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I don't think it's possible to adequately identify who is at risk or even where risk can be defined to isolate only those individuals - once you try, the bubble of linked people very rapidly expands to a scale close to complete lock-down.
I agree, and I think that's part of why a lock down doesn't really work. However, a lot of situations are not that fuzzy / mixed.
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@Tsaukpaetra one sword is missing in 1st panel. approves.
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@boomzilla So if 60% of Americans would have had it -which would be necessary for herd immunity- probably around 2,4% of the population would have died from it - or about double of all expected deaths of any cause in a normal year.
I think it perfectly illustrates why people all around the world do take it more seriously than ‘just a flu’ etc.
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No idea about the contents of their letter, but Fauci’s stance has been “I have no horse in the game one way or another, I just look at the data.” Which is exactly what it should be.
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@Grunnen said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla So if 60% of Americans would have had it -which would be necessary for herd immunity- probably around 2,4% of the population would have died from it - or about double of all expected deaths of any cause in a normal year.
Well...kind of depends on which 60% doesn't it? You're also using the case fatality rate which underestimates the infection fatality rate, because we know that a lot of infections never turn into cases.
There is also building evidence that 60% is an overestimate.
I think it perfectly illustrates why people all around the world do take it more seriously than ‘just a flu’ etc.
Because they're using their imagination to stand in for actual observations? I think that is very true.
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@lolwhat that reads a lot more like an opinion piece than scientific discourse.
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@boomzilla Firstly, I am using your numbers. Your numbers state "1% of Americans have had it", that sounds like the number of infections and not the number of cases.
Secondly, you can't control so easily who gets it and who doesn't. Especially not without strict government interference. So, especially without government interference, there is absolutely no reason to assume that by magic only strong and healthy people will get infected. That's just wishfull thinking.
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Well, let's calculate with the best numbers for my own country that I know. Around 5% of the population has had the disease (measured by antibodies in the blood), around 0,06% has died and around 0,015% has been on the IC.
Extrapolate that to e.g. 50% of the population necessary for herd immunity, and you can calculate that 0,6% of the population would have died (compared to an estimated 1,3% of total deaths in a normal year) and 0,15% of the population would have been admitted to an IC unit.
Firstly, you can discuss if so much excess mortality is still acceptable.
But more importantly, we don't have those IC units. Those 0,15% would translate to thousands and thousands of people who could potentially be treated, but who die in front of the hospital because there are not enough ventilators and not enough doctors. If such pictures appear on TV, it won't help to say that it's statistically negligible.
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@Grunnen said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla Firstly, I am using your numbers. Your numbers state "1% of Americans have had it", that sounds like the number of infections and not the number of cases.
Yes, as I said.
Secondly, you can't control so easily who gets it and who doesn't. Especially not without strict government interference. So, especially without government interference, there is absolutely no reason to assume that by magic only strong and healthy people will get infected. That's just wishfull thinking.
Yes, I disagree with your strawman that we can only have healthy people get it, but I also think that your magical belief in government is misplaced. The biggest problems we've had with government isn't with it not preventing things enough but with it actively making things worse (especially in nursing homes).
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@Grunnen said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Firstly, you can discuss if so much excess mortality is still acceptable.
Your mistake here is forgetting the important phrase, "compared with what?" You're definitely right to note that different health systems have different capacities. You just seem to have an unfounded belief in the effectiveness of lockdowns, is my main point.
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@boomzilla Numerous countries have shown that a lockdown is effective: before the lockdown the numbers went up, during the lockdown the numbers went down and after relaxing measures a lot the numbers go up again. There is no question about that.
But yes, there has been mismanagement at nursing homes.
And yes, very much discussion is possible how strict the restrictions should be in order to be proportionate. And that depends on a lot of variables. Among other things, it depends on the health care capacity, it depends on how many close contacts people have (which differs a lot from region to region!), it depends on the question whether people stay immune for a long time or not.
Could we have managed without a lockdown? No. Were all restrictions really necessary? With hindsight, probably not. Can we achieve herd immunity without disaster? Probably not. Would it be possible e.g. in California, with 20 times the amount of IC stations per capita? Maybe it would!
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@Grunnen said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Numerous countries have shown that a lockdown is effective: before the lockdown the numbers went up, during the lockdown the numbers went down and after relaxing measures a lot the numbers go up again. There is no question about that.
I think you're confusing "behavior changes" with "lockdown." And certainly lockdowns have caused a lot of that, but other things have been at least as effective. Emphasizing lockdowns strikes me as a cargo cult at this point.
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@boomzilla What's a 'lockdown' anyway? You have anything from the plain prohibition to leave your house for anything except 'essential jobs' to rules making it obligatory to wear a mask in crowded spaces or to put restaurant tables a bit further apart.
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@Grunnen I wouldn't include things like "masks in restaurants" to be lockdowns. I'm talking about restricting movements and forcibly shutting down businesses and parks. Especially shutting down parks and beaches.
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@boomzilla Ah, I see. If you define it like that, I also don't think that a 'lockdown' is proportionate or even necessary.
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Today it was children's day in Argentina, so the government had the brilliant idea to bring a clown to improve the people's morale right after reporting how many new cases and deaths happened today. It did not go well.
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@magnusmaster honk honk
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Especially shutting down parks and beaches.
And fucking playgrounds and dog runs
I get museums are not open, indoor zoo exhibits are not open (I get, I still may not agree with any particular closing, but I get it) but shutting down outdoor spaces ESPECIALLY in places like NYC where most of us do not have yards.
And for FFS, we were going to meet my my niece to play in a local playground near the doc appt my daughter had. The two closest playgrounds were still fucking closed. With no explanation.
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@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Especially shutting down parks and beaches.
And fucking playgrounds and dog runs
I get museums are not open, indoor zoo exhibits are not open (I get, I still may not agree with any particular closing, but I get it) but shutting down outdoor spaces ESPECIALLY in places like NYC where most of us do not have yards.
And for FFS, we were going to meet my my niece to play in a local playground near the doc appt my daughter had. The two closest playgrounds were still fucking closed. With no explanation.
Call the jewish action squad?
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Man. This thread is dead. Is the pandemic over yet?
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Let's ask the internet:
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Is the pandemic over yet?
No. Yesterday our general director declared emergency again and we should switch to working from home again by end of week, tasks permitting.
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
we should switch to working from home again
Again? I've been
watching Netflixworking from home all along.
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@topspin Yes, again. Around here it was mostly quiet over the summer with just a few cases, so we were back in the offices since first half of June. But the number of cases are raising since about mid-August again, so we are returning home. The mask mandate that only applied to metro over the summer is also extended to all public transport since start of September and extending to stores and most other closed public spaces from tomorrow.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Again? I've been
watching Netflixworking from home all along.Same. Though we've recently been given the option to visit the office occasionally even if we can work from home (for our mental well-being!). Concurrent number of people per office is limited, though, and I'm not sure how my mental well-being will benefit from shouting at each other across the corridors. (On the flip side, it's a bit like blind dating, you don't who else is going to be there, so you can potentially meet some new people, which can be fun ... I guess.)
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
and we should switch to working from home again
Meanwhile, in CA... (been WFH since March with no end in sight)
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@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Let's ask the internet:
In 2008, Polish government has temporarily increased VAT tax rates until the financial crisis is over. 12 years and counting...
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@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
and we should switch to working from home again
Meanwhile, in CA... (been WFH since March with no end in sight)
I'm technically able to go to my office though the company recommends against it unless there is a good reason to go in. In reality I'd sit in my cubicle (whose walls are nearly 6 feet tall) in a room of mostly empty cubicles (which was the case pre-COVID, too, actually).
I was full WFH before this so I'm not super motivated to go in, though I had been getting into the habit of going in for at least half a day each week just to get out of the house (as requested by my wife). Now I have an excuse not to do even that.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dfdub said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Let's ask the internet:
In 2008, Polish government has temporarily increased VAT tax rates until the financial crisis is over. 12 years and counting...
Huh, over here we have decreased VAT rates. Obviously to no effect at all, I’m not going to suddenly buy something because I save 3 cents on the
dollar€. But hey, we did something.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
over here we have <done the opposite>. Obviously to no effect at all <just like you>
I think it works as a metaphor of the current situation...
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I'm technically able to go to my office though the company recommends against it unless there is a good reason to go in
Almost the same, just a little more on the strict side - we can go in but shouldn't unless it's absolutely necessary. (For me, it's not. For the hardware devs and QA doing testing on the hardware, they kinda need to - but there's still an amazing amount of stuff they can do from home.)
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
and we should switch to working from home again
Meanwhile, in CA... (been WFH since March with no end in sight)
I'm technically able to go to my office though the company recommends against it unless there is a good reason to go in. In reality I'd sit in my cubicle (whose walls are nearly 6 feet tall) in a room of mostly empty cubicles (which was the case pre-COVID, too, actually).
I was full WFH before this so I'm not super motivated to go in, though I had been getting into the habit of going in for at least half a day each week just to get out of the house (as requested by my wife). Now I have an excuse not to do even that.
My husband has been planning to rearrange our bedroom/my office for some time. I can't handle the in process chaos so he needs me out of the house.
I think the longest time i'm out of the house while he's home is when I take my daughter to the playground or maybe when I go get my allergy shots.
My primary wants to see me in person soon and she is close to work, so I may take a day to go to work in order to go to that appointment. My ophthalmologist is there too, so do that appt as well.
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@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
My primary wants to see me in person soon and she is close to work, so I may take a day to go to work in order to go to that appointment. My ophthalmologist is there too, so do that appt as well.
The commute is actually nearly a non-factor for me. The office is only about 2.5 miles away. Depending on traffic lights, I can be there in 5 - 10 minutes.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
My primary wants to see me in person soon and she is close to work, so I may take a day to go to work in order to go to that appointment. My ophthalmologist is there too, so do that appt as well.
The commute is actually nearly a non-factor for me. The office is only about 2.5 miles away. Depending on traffic lights, I can be there in 5 - 10 minutes.
We were just about to move offices when this all hit. My new commute will be 4mi. But being Silly Valley, I judge a good commute will be 20m (US101 and CA237, or surface streets with an unsynced light every 100y). My plan is to bicycle - plus that will help get rid of the KungFluPounds.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
My primary wants to see me in person soon and she is close to work, so I may take a day to go to work in order to go to that appointment. My ophthalmologist is there too, so do that appt as well.
The commute is actually nearly a non-factor for me. The office is only about 2.5 miles away. Depending on traffic lights, I can be there in 5 - 10 minutes.
My office is 10 miles away, 45 min subway ride. Bike ride is a bit over an hour. So not looking forward to wasting that time.
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@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Karla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
My primary wants to see me in person soon and she is close to work, so I may take a day to go to work in order to go to that appointment. My ophthalmologist is there too, so do that appt as well.
The commute is actually nearly a non-factor for me. The office is only about 2.5 miles away. Depending on traffic lights, I can be there in 5 - 10 minutes.
My office is 10 miles away, 45 min subway ride. Bike ride is a bit over an hour. So not looking forward to wasting that time.
Man am I happy I can drive to work, ~9.5 miles to my office takes 15-20 min without traffic.