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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue May 05, 2020 12:27 am 
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Wait, Never Trumpers still exist? I thought they all evaporated when he won.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 12:01 am 
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Even when the Trump administration has no time for medical supplies, virus testing, quarantining, contact tracing or accurate information, they always have time for racism. Trump's threatening to withhold coronavirus disaster aid from blue states unless they cave on their sanctuary city policies. These people are ghouls.

It's probably another Stephen Miller brainwave. That Young Mr. Burns is the most dangerous man in the administration. Trump is a narcissistic clown who's surrounded himself with cronies, grifters, and profiteers, but Miller is an ideological sociopath. He's serious about his hatred. It's been his one motivating principle since childhood.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:32 am 
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Worth reading the whole thread:
Andy Slavitt wrote:
COVID Update May 6: Like many countries we picked a strategy to beat COVID-19. We just decided not to stick to it.


Having been told by Bill Barr that the politics of trying to take health insurance from 20 million people (many of whom are his base) in the middle of an epidemic really suck, Trump doubled down on trying to kill the ACA (otherwise known as Obamacare). I can't help but recall reading about the SS hurrying up the exterminations as it became obvious the war was lost. I wonder if Republican Attorney's General are stocking up on Argentinian visas?

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 2:49 am 
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The thing about lockdowns as implemented in most Western countries is that sick people who aren't badly off enough to be hospitalized are supposed to stay at home where they infect their families. That's why the case count keeps rising. Cuomo's just announced that 66% of new hospitalizations in NYC were people who'd been sheltering in place. They hadn't been riding public transport and they weren't essential workers. My guess is that they're catching it from their families.(1)

And then after announcing this, Cuomo goes:
Quote:
“Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could. Now it’s up to you,” Cuomo said.


WHAT? Like, what? Sounds like he's blaming people for getting sick even though they've followed instructions and stayed home like they should. How does he even get to that conclusion? Clearly something is wrong here.

Nobody seems to be given serious consideration to centralized quarantine, where people with mild symptoms are booked into field hospitals or empty hotels or repurposed school buildings so that they don't cough all over their families. I read something to the effect that NYC is starting to do it, but it was just a tweet from a city council member and I couldn't find any official information.


(1) Is anyone seriously looking at the possibility that the virus might be travelling through the plumbing in apartment buildings? We know that it gives a lot of people diarrhea, and when you flush a toilet, it aerosolizes germs. There was the notorious 2003 Amoy Gardens SARS incident in Hong Kong where 300 people in one apartment block got it due to faulty U-traps. I know that some scientists have been looking at sewage to detect outbreaks but I don't think they've isolated any active virus from it, just bits of RNA. But I think they've been pulling samples out of waste treatment plants, not from apartment building outflows.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 3:36 am 
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Kea wrote:
My guess is that they're catching it from their families.


Once one person in the house has it, then yes, that makes sense. But where did that one person get it from? Are people out there still visiting each other, going shopping without wearing even a basic mask, meeting other people in person? Waiting in queues in close proximity?

Kea wrote:
Nobody seems to be given serious consideration to centralized quarantine, where people with mild symptoms are booked into field hospitals or empty hotels or repurposed school buildings so that they don't cough all over their families. I read something to the effect that NYC is starting to do it, but it was just a tweet from a city council member and I couldn't find any official information.


The downside of this approach is that anyone who has both a cough and a temperature - whether it's from the virus or not - is going to end up stuck in a room with plenty of other people, at least one of whom almost certainly does have the virus. Or, in other words, people who catch a mild flu will end up catching this virus on top of it; and by the time the people with the real virus have started showing symptoms, they've probably already infected their immediate family a week or two ago in any case.

So I can see why no-one's particularly eager to try this. With this virus being asyptomatic but spreadable for so long before it kicks into gear, this idea would just give it more targets to spread to.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:15 am 
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Well yes, some people have to still go out. Some people have essential jobs. Someone has to go to the grocery store, and wearing a mask doesn't guarantee you won't get it. Some people are just idiots who do risky things. Divorced people might have children shuttling between households. An essential worker catches it on their job, or Stupid Steve goes to a coronavirus party, and goes home and infects 2 or 3 other people. If this happens over and over, then it's not surprising that 2/3 of new infections are people sitting at home.

As for centralized quarantine, this is how China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Myanmar (which doesn't generally win any prizes for functional governance) tamped the virus down. If you are confirmed positive then you can be sent to a hospital. If you haven't got enough hospital space they might stash you in a field hospital. If your diagnosis is uncertain, you should be quarantined in a facility with individual rooms. Hong Kong repurposed holiday camps, vacant apartment buildings, and hotels for this purpose. You stay there until you either test negative or get confirmed positive, and in the latter case you'll be transferred to a hospital.

Your family members and close contacts will also be quarantined in individual rooms in case you spread it to them while you were still asymptomatic.

Hong Kong had enough tests to do it this scrupulously, but poorer or less organized countries had to go for the cruder option. Everyone with symptoms and all their family members go to individual quarantine for 2 weeks until they either get sick or don't.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 10:15 am 
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The general plan here is that people with mild symptoms should self quarantaine. Stay at home, never go out, get your groceries delivered*, ect. And that includes the rest of the household.

The advantage of such a scheme is, that it required less overhead, both for the government (no organising of quarantaine locations) and the inflicted (what should i pack for the quarantaine) and you don't have to worry if quarataine place food respects any allergies some quarantained might have ect. It also gives less incentive to hide your symptoms, because you don't want to be sent to a quarantaine camps and the authorities resources will be less taxed by hypochondrics, who sneezed once because of dust.

The disadvantage is, that people are likely to fudge the time of their quarantaine, on their own they are more likely to do something stupid without realizing it and there is no oversight into if they do quarantaine correctly.

* Put infront of your door, and you only pick them after the deliverer has gone.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 10:58 am 
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Even if people stay home perfectly, they will still give it to their families. The idea is that you accept that as collateral damage, but the more people there are, the harder it is to ensure there aren't any leaks.

In the US, sick people are sent home and told to isolate in a different room than the rest of their family. But not everyone can do that. Or avoid sharing a bathroom with anyone else. And the rest of the family aren't told to stay home too. If one is an essential worker, they're probably still going to work. They can't get time off for a sick family member. They can't even get time off for themselves unless they get tested positive, and they can't get tested until they're about to keel over.

In Kerala they used home quarantine but they had healthcare workers calling people to check up on them and the government delivered free food to their doors, so that they could still eat even if they lost their incomes.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:05 pm 
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Any quarantaine plan would need to quarantaine whole households, because of the incubation period. Which means also quarantaining some essential workers, that have no symptoms themself.

Anything else will only work for single households. Maybe you can flatten the curve a little with that, but i doubt, that it does much good.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 11:08 pm 
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The CDC's plan to reopen the economy, which I posted in the other thread, was specifically suppressed by the White House. Friday the folks at the CDC were literally told "they'd never see the light of day". Apparently someone wasn't as impressed as the Republicans might have wanted. Why is obvious; this is a hell of a lot of work, and none of this is going to happen so long as Trump is a cowardly little crook who won't step up and get the Executive Branch working on coordinating it.

And such national coordination is vitally needed:
Washington Post wrote:
One week after Georgia allowed dine-in restaurants, hair salons and other businesses to reopen, an additional 62,440 visitors arrived there daily, most from surrounding states where such businesses remained shuttered, according to an analysis of smartphone location data.
Needless to say our favorite SARS virus is thrilled to pieces; not only is it infecting Georgia but it gets to cross state lines for free.

Oh, yes. One of Trumps servants tested positive for the virus. The individual in question is a member of the military working as a valet, who's duties include serving the President. Be interesting to see how the 'warriors' of the West Wing handle it if they start to do some of they dying that we're supposed to do for their personal benefit.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Fri May 08, 2020 2:21 am 
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Georgia obviously opened businesses because they didn't want to raise taxes to pay for unemployment benefits. If people refuse to go to work, they don't get to claim they were laid off.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Fri May 08, 2020 7:52 am 
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Kea wrote:
If your diagnosis is uncertain, you should be quarantined in a facility with individual rooms.


Okay, this line is super important and makes the entire scheme practical. To a degree.

Still, two in three people getting the infection while at home just seems absurdly high. Sure, one person can go out, bring it home, and infect the rest of the family - I can see how that works. But surely there are also a number of households with only one or two people living in the house? Such people must - surely - bring the averages down, because when they go home, they can't infect two more people (because there aren't two more people there to infect).

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 2:57 am 
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CCC wrote:
Still, two in three people getting the infection while at home just seems absurdly high. Sure, one person can go out, bring it home, and infect the rest of the family - I can see how that works. But surely there are also a number of households with only one or two people living in the house? Such people must - surely - bring the averages down, because when they go home, they can't infect two more people (because there aren't two more people there to infect).

The average household size in New York City is 2.42. 2.69 in the Hispanic community that is disproportionately affected. Then consider that poorer people are more likely to live in apartment buildings with shared laundry facilities and no proper kitchens, so even if they are trying to stay home as much as possible they are still forced to interact with people more.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 7:41 am 
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Kea wrote:
CCC wrote:
Still, two in three people getting the infection while at home just seems absurdly high. Sure, one person can go out, bring it home, and infect the rest of the family - I can see how that works. But surely there are also a number of households with only one or two people living in the house? Such people must - surely - bring the averages down, because when they go home, they can't infect two more people (because there aren't two more people there to infect).

The average household size in New York City is 2.42. 2.69 in the Hispanic community that is disproportionately affected. Then consider that poorer people are more likely to live in apartment buildings with shared laundry facilities and no proper kitchens, so even if they are trying to stay home as much as possible they are still forced to interact with people more.


If we assume that the average household among infected families is of size 2.7, and that at least (but never more than) one person per household has to occasionally leave (to, say, purchase groceries); then if every person that comes home with an infection immediately and inevitably spreads it to the entire rest of their household, then that would mean that (1-1/2.7)... just a smidge under 63% of people were gaining the infection from their housemates.

The 66% figure tells me that either there's a flaw in the survey... or the coronavirus is preferentially targeting larger households for some unknown reason... or some statistically significant amount of the people taking the survey are lying... or possibly someone is deliberately producing a misleading survey figure, perhaps for political reasons.

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 Post subject: Re: The Virus
 Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 9:55 am 
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It seems reasonable, that if the household is larger, there is an increased chance, that one of the members has a job or a habit or does something stupid, that increases the chance of infection for that member and with that the whole household.

Add to that, that larger households tend to be poorer and poorer households tend to lack some options to increase their savety, like having groceries delivered for some extra cost, making neccessary trips with a car and such.

BTW our government does strange things in the slow opening. Like for instance you can have yoga classes outdoors if certain distance requirements are met. But other sports such as martial arts are not allowed to be practiced yet (at least in an organized fashion). If a club would meet in a park to do Tai Chi or Karate katas or something like that, under the same distance requirements, there would be heavy fines. They could not just have made a list of distance requirements and let the clubs figure out for themselfs how to integrate them into their sports, because that would have been too easy i guess.

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