Bad News Thread

[dad4]

Yeah that's not quick enough for total containment Australia style if you want to do outdoor only + screened indoor. You have to get it down to an hour and during that hours you have workers idling.

Why?

You just need to catch people before the viral load gets high enough to be contagious. A hypersensitive test that catches low viral loads works to your advantage here. It takes 1 day to get results, but that’s not a problem if they begin to test positive 2 days before they are contagious. This is hardly an impossible problem.

I suspect the bigger issue is we don’t want to spend $30 per employee per day on tests and N95 masks at our meat packing plants. When you’re only spending $12 per hour to have someone cut up your chicken for you, that $30 really eats into the profits.

 

[Grace T.]

Why?

You just need to catch people before the viral load gets high enough to be contagious. A hypersensitive test that catches low viral loads works to your advantage here. It takes 1 day to get results, but that’s not a problem if they begin to test positive 2 days before they are contagious. This is hardly an impossible problem.

I suspect the bigger issue is we don’t want to spend $30 per employee per day on tests and N95 masks at our meat packing plants. When you’re only spending $12 per hour to have someone cut up your chicken for you, that $30 really eats into the profits.

If that's the case then why are we worried about the asymptomatics? Why do we need masks to protect people from asymptomatics? Just quarantine the sick, test those who do not feel or look well. This makes no sense and has no consistency. If you really believe this, the only rationale for current policy is that people are assholes and will show up to work sick due to incentives. If that's really the case though you just need to change the incentives.

 

[dad4]

If that's the case then why are we worried about the asymptomatics? Why do we need masks to protect people from asymptomatics? Just quarantine the sick, test those who do not feel or look well. This makes no sense and has no consistency. If you really believe this, the only rationale for current policy is that people are assholes and will show up to work sick due to incentives. If that's really the case though you just need to change the incentives.

I dont follow you at all. We test because it is somewhat common to be contagious and not know it. We wear masks for the same reason. My kids’ schools do both already. There is nothing wrong with a belt and suspenders approach if you really don’t like your pants falling down.

As for why not just quarantine the sick, you know the answer to that. We do not know for sure who is sick, and we do not have test capacity for 330 million tests every two to three days so we can definitively find out.

 

[crush]

I'm looking for my smart educated forum friends to help me with this. I don;t know the answers to the "If" or the "Why."

 

[Grace T.]

I dont follow you at all. We test because it is somewhat common to be contagious and not know it. We wear masks for the same reason. My kids’ schools do both already. There is nothing wrong with a belt and suspenders approach if you really don’t like your pants falling down.

As for why not just quarantine the sick, you know the answer to that. We do not know for sure who is sick, and we do not have test capacity for 330 million tests every two to three days so we can definitively find out.

the problem here is that you seem to like the Australian approach then keep backing away and just want to do australia lite. The problem with Australia lite is that it’s Germany. You can’t have it both ways: if you want australia you either need a rapid test that can screen the meat packing plants And schools in an hour...or you are forced to say well maybe low viral load People like asymptomatics aren’t the problem.This is because you fundamentally misunderstood the australia approach which is to isolate and destroy any seed before it becomes a problem. So instead you engage in a rhetorical device and say” my approach is just like australia “when really it is australia lite (aka something closer to Germany where schools and meat packing plants did not close). Here’s a gut check for you: espola and husker are loving it. Seriously many your n is showing: you’ll do anything to bend the world to your prior that we can actually control it.

 

[dad4]

the problem here is that you seem to like the Australian approach then keep backing away and just want to do australia lite. The problem with Australia lite is that it’s Germany. You can’t have it both ways: if you want australia you either need a rapid test that can screen the meat packing plants And schools in an hour...or you are forced to say well maybe low viral load People like asymptomatics aren’t the problem.This is because you fundamentally misunderstood the australia approach which is to isolate and destroy any seed before it becomes a problem. So instead you engage in a rhetorical device and say” my approach is just like australia “when really it is australia lite (aka something closer to Germany where schools and meat packing plants did not close). Here’s a gut check for you: espola and husker are loving it. Seriously many your n is showing: you’ll do anything to bend the world to your prior that we can actually control it.

Germany opened dining. Back in May, Germany was still working. It is Germany lite that failed.

The real issue is that many in the US don't want Germany heavy. That it different from saying it never worked.

 

[Grace T.]

Germany opened dining. Back in May, Germany was still working. It is Germany lite that failed.

The real issue is that many in the US don't want Germany heavy. That it different from saying it never worked.

Again your priors are forcing you to misunderstand the Australia approach. You are still under the illusion we can "control" this thing by doing Germany plus. The reason the Australian (and New Zealand) approaches worked was it was to smother any seed that popped up before it became a problem (New Zealand just had an easier time of it because they didn't start with a cruise ship outbreak and are very rural outside of Wellington and Auckland while Australia has several major cities). It is a fundamentally different model than Germany plus so you can't claim one will work because the other did...goalpost moved BTW....where we started this was "like Australia" but now you've moved off that.

I agree that many in the US don't want Germany Plus. The red states would never go for it and Florida did well with Sweden Lite. On the left, you can't get the Ds to shut the southern border, even Trump couldn't shut down all overseas airlines, and you'd be pilloried the moment you sent out the troops to violently suppress the BLM protests in spring.

 

[Grace T.]

This is a very moving piece. Seriously, the public health experts have the blood of children on their hands. And it's not like this kid's parents ignored it and didn't give him support. I have no doubt that if my child were older when California announced the shut down of school and sports in the summer he might have tried something like this. My niece in fact did and had she been a few years older she would have been successful at it. Another mechanism at work is these health experts (many of whom go into their line of work because they are introverts) have no idea the damage this does to the extroverts (for whom socialization is like food, air and water).

The Lost Year: What the Pandemic Cost Teenagers

In Hobbs, New Mexico, the high school closed and football was cancelled, while just across the state line in Texas, students seemed to be living nearly normal lives. Here’s how pandemic school closures exact their emotional toll on young people.

www.propublica.org

 

[dad4]

Again your priors are forcing you to misunderstand the Australia approach. You are still under the illusion we can "control" this thing by doing Germany plus. The reason the Australian (and New Zealand) approaches worked was it was to smother any seed that popped up before it became a problem (New Zealand just had an easier time of it because they didn't start with a cruise ship outbreak and are very rural outside of Wellington and Auckland while Australia has several major cities). It is a fundamentally different model than Germany plus so you can't claim one will work because the other did...goalpost moved BTW....where we started this was "like Australia" but now you've moved off that.

I agree that many in the US don't want Germany Plus. The red states would never go for it and Florida did well with Sweden Lite. On the left, you can't get the Ds to shut the southern border, even Trump couldn't shut down all overseas airlines, and you'd be pilloried the moment you sent out the troops to violently suppress the BLM protests in spring.

I claim that a German approach can reduce R because, in spring, a German approach did reduce R. You’re standing by an airport and saying that flight is impossible.

You are also using teenagers as an excuse for adult unwillingness to sacrifice. Teenagers don’t spend a lot of time in restaurants, bars, and casinos. The problem is we closed all the recreation venues for teens and kept our own playgrounds open. We had police harrassing teens outdoors in parks, while adults were hosting indoor get togethers that went unmolested.

 

[Grace T.]

I claim that a German approach can reduce R because, in spring, a German approach did reduce R. You’re standing by an airport and saying that flight is impossible.

You are also using teenagers as an excuse for adult unwillingness to sacrifice. Teenagers don’t spend a lot of time in restaurants, bars, and casinos. The problem is we closed all the recreation venues for teens and kept our own playgrounds open. We had police harrassing teens outdoors in parks, while adults were hosting indoor get togethers that went unmolested.

The teens thing is a separate thought, not having anything to do with your position. It wasn't in reply to you.

So now you are on Germany? Where you started this thing you were on Australia, then Germany plus, and now Germany (except for the indoor dining). The issue there is that you can't sustain it for a year. Australia hasn't broken into full scale rebellion because the extreme measures were targeted and then lifted once the seed had been stamped out. The problem you have is that people aren't capable of doing the extreme measure for not only a year until the vaccine but the continued time period you want to keep going to prevent variants. It's an insane approach which is exactly why people have stopped listening to folks like you and the health experts. Germany (who you so widely praised early on) couldn't do it.. The EU couldn't do it....they couldn't close their borders let alone their cities so when things finally got stomped out in say Madrid, it just got reseeded.

BTW for people who always accuse you of goalpost moving, we are literally seeing @dad4 move goalposts in the course of 24 hours (those things are heavy if they don't have wheels....you must be getting tired).

How it started and how it's going.....

Germany COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

Germany Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

 

[Bruddah IZ]

I'm looking for my smart educated forum friends to help me with this. I don;t know the answers to the "If" or the "Why."

View attachment 10344

Gotta love the EUA's. Hydroxychloroquine not $exy enough for the Pharma Cartel$.

 

[Desert Hound]

we are literally seeing @dad4 move goalposts in the course of 24 hours

It is telling that despite the data, yesterday @dad4 was saying hey maybe classes should be held outside.

 

[dad4]

The teens thing is a separate thought, not having anything to do with your position. It wasn't in reply to you.

So now you are on Germany? Where you started this thing you were on Australia, then Germany plus, and now Germany (except for the indoor dining). The issue there is that you can't sustain it for a year. Australia hasn't broken into full scale rebellion because the extreme measures were targeted and then lifted once the seed had been stamped out. The problem you have is that people aren't capable of doing the extreme measure for not only a year until the vaccine but the continued time period you want to keep going to prevent variants. It's an insane approach which is exactly why people have stopped listening to folks like you and the health experts. Germany (who you so widely praised early on) couldn't do it.. The EU couldn't do it....they couldn't close their borders let alone their cities so when things finally got stomped out in say Madrid, it just got reseeded.

BTW for people who always accuse you of goalpost moving, we are literally seeing @dad4 move goalposts in the course of 24 hours (those things are heavy if they don't have wheels....you must be getting tired).

How it started and how it's going.....

Germany COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

Germany Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

The goalpost is, and always was, long term R<1.0 .

It is still there, right where it was last month and last year.

There is a line of crows sitting on top of the goalpost, because no one pays any attention to it any more.

It never was an extreme goal. R0 was only 3. Transmission outdoors is about 1/19 as high. That’s well below 1. If you are willing to move your life into the sun, you can still do most of what you normally do.

 

[dad4]

It is telling that despite the data, yesterday @dad4 was saying hey maybe classes should be held outside.

If you look at the data, class should be held outside in CA.

Outdoor transmission is about 1/19 of indoor. It’s beautiful outside today. Why not hold class in a park?

And don’t tell me “kids can’t spread covid”. The South Korea and Israel data disagrees with you there. Teenagers spread covid just as well as adults.

 

[Grace T.]

The goalpost is, and always was, long term R<1.0 .

It is still there, right where it was last month and last year.

There is a line of crows sitting on top of the goalpost, because no one pays any attention to it any more.

It never was an extreme goal. R0 was only 3. Transmission outdoors is about 1/19 as high. That’s well below 1. If you are willing to move your life into the sun, you can still do most of what you normally do.

Errr....Los Angeles has had almost all indoor activities closed except shops (again because it's not sustainable to keep the shops closed 1 year plus). No indoor dining, for the worst of it no indoor haircuts, no indoor schooling, no theatres, no indoor sports. Yes, the meat packing plants and factories open but with extreme masking and testing. It didn't help with the winter spike. That goalpost has moved from China to Australia to Germany and just breezed past LA....it's getting tired of looking for fantasyland.

 

[Grace T.]

It is telling that despite the data, yesterday @dad4 was saying hey maybe classes should be held outside.

Yeah, he's the worst kind of authoritarian. The kind that absolutely believes in control, particularly if it's his version of control, and will twist and turn every evidence against it to preserve his vision. But at the same time tries to appear reasonable and "no, I don't want China"..."no I don't want Australia". And is lacking in any empathy for those that are not capable of doing what he thinks is so easy. The world actually dodged a bullet that Fauci was in charge instead of someone like him.

 

[dad4]

Yeah, he's the worst kind of authoritarian. The kind that absolutely believes in control, particularly if it's his version of control, and will twist and turn every evidence against it to preserve his vision. But at the same time tries to appear reasonable and "no, I don't want China"..."no I don't want Australia". And is lacking in any empathy for those that are not capable of doing what he thinks is so easy. The world actually dodged a bullet that Fauci was in charge instead of someone like him.

It doesn’t speak well for your argument that you prefer ad-hominem labels like “authoritarian” to talking about the data.

If you have a real argument to make, make it.

But please make it something better than “Any enforcement of any rules for covid means I must be living in an authoritarian state.”

 

[watfly]

We can attempt to rationalize all day long, or for 120 pages, about how more restrictive lockdowns worked against Covid even though the state by state results in deaths or infections don't substantiate that conclusion. However, like most of us have been saying from the beginning Covid is really only part of the equation. The unemployment statistics are far more telling. California now ranks 50th for highest unemployment (DC included) only in front of Hawaii. The most telling difference is between California and Florida considering their approach to lockdowns. Here is a sampling.

	Unemployment Rate
State	Dec 2019	Dec 2020	Inc/(Decr)
California	3.9	9.3	5.4
New York	4.0	8.7	4.7
Texas	3.5	6.9	3.4
Florida	3.0	5.1	2.1
Georgia	3.2	5.3	2.1
Utah	2.3	3.3	1.0

 

[Grace T.]

It doesn’t speak well for your argument that you prefer ad-hominem labels like “authoritarian” to talking about the data.

If you have a real argument to make, make it.

But please make it something better than “Any enforcement of any rules for covid means I must be living in an authoritarian state.”

It's not an argument since it wasn't made directly at you (I think we've pounded that one into dust and you've moved that goal post all around the world now....China, Australia, Germany now back to Los Angeles). The fact that we started this with Australia shows you are in love with authoritarianism...just my opinion but only an authoritarian could love Australia. You'd also like for the restrictions to keep going for more than a year and have shown very little empathy for those who aren't as virtuous and can't do things as well as you can....that's a fact. You also have a tendency to keep backing off the most extreme of your authoritarian positions, (and now this part is also opinion) less because you don't love them, but because you are trying to appear "reasonable" and make your approach seem relatively easy. All this is in service of a bit of a religious belief you have, that every nation on earth got it wrong, except for a handful (which you tend to disavow when challenge), and that the virus is controllable.

It says nothing about you as a person BTW. It's just an observation that you have this real authoritarian streak. Your value as a person depends what you would do with it. I have no evidence one way or another on that, and am not your judge. That's between you and God. Which is why I said "someone like you" (with the same streak but willing to use it) instead of "you".

 

[dad4]

We can attempt to rationalize all day long, or for 120 pages, about how more restrictive lockdowns worked against Covid even though the state by state results in deaths or infections don't substantiate that conclusion. However, like most of us have been saying from the beginning Covid is really only part of the equation. The unemployment statistics are far more telling. California now ranks 50th for highest unemployment (DC included) only in front of Hawaii. The most telling difference is between California and Florida considering their approach to lockdowns. Here is a sampling.

	Unemployment Rate
State	Dec 2019	Dec 2020	Inc/(Decr)
California	3.9	9.3	5.4
New York	4.0	8.7	4.7
Texas	3.5	6.9	3.4
Florida	3.0	5.1	2.1
Georgia	3.2	5.3	2.1
Utah	2.3	3.3	1.0

Include OR and WA. You need some states with small cities and a tough response.

From what you gave, I can't tell whether the issue is city size or pandemic response. Maybe you just proved that big cities are vulnerable to economic downturns.