Like vaccinating people and having a large portion of the state already infected? Got it.
Bad News Thread
- Thread starter kickingandscreaming
- Start date
Like vaccinating people and having a large portion of the state already infected? Got it.
Two different questions with 2 different answers.
Q1- does the recent bump in R demonstrate that NPI worked. (yes)
Q2- does the recent slowdown in R demonstrate that we should reimpose purple rules. (no)
For the first, dropping NPI is, by far, the best explanation for the March/April increase in transmissibility. You keep ignoring this angle.
For the second, the total number of cases/deaths potentially avoided by a May/June return to purple is too small to be worth the cost. It’s also completely unnecessary for the 70% of adults who are getting their shots.
Color me shocked. You actually did a cost/benefit analysis.
Again, it's not just NPIs. It's people relaxing after their grandmas had been vaccinated, as cases go down so you have less of a chance getting it, as people begin to return to normal (as seen in freeway traffic). Case in point: son's soccer team. They were allowed to continue practicing in December/January but because "cases were too high" and everyone had to go into quarantine and get tested because 1 family came down with it (no one caught it at practice) they decided not to. Yes, NPIs have some impact on mobility, but as we've seen in Sweden and Florida, people will distance irrespective of big government coercion. My business, for example, shut down a week before the government had mandated it back in spring 2020. The Belgium curve also began to inflect the week before the government imposed lockdowns, indicating that people were probably moderating their behavior by distancing (the fact that Belgium also has a tail to its curve means not everyone has been infected and India has shown us the threshold is somewhere north of 75% quite possibly with the variants north of 100%.
Interesting! If I’m following the logic, the adults (65+) which represented 10% of cases but 76% of the deaths should have been the ones to isolate because the other 90% were relatively unaffected?
I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted your logic, but totally agree with what I stated above.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
There's an underlying assumption that the virus behaves the same way when it is widespread vs. when it is not - as if some sort of law defines the "linearity" of the behavior. I'm not convinced the virus behavior is very well understood based on the percentage of poor predictions. There's a possibility that the behavior at relatively small numbers is different, or at the very least masked by the behavior when cases are rampant.
Also, I'd have to guess that a lot of children are passing it around quite freely now. For some reason, there are parents out there that don't believe locking their kids up for multiple years is a good idea for something that is no more risk to children than the flu. No doubt, many have mild, if any, symptoms. I'm also guessing many are questioning the value of reporting the symptoms at all. Once we get those between 12 and 16 vaccinated in decent numbers, I bet we see cases drop significantly.
The fact that Belgium “has a tail to its curve“ proves nothing. Every single state, country, and province in the world has a tail to its curve. That’s just the shape of a bell curve. It has a tail. It is a side effect of the fact that things die out exponentially.
Nor should you read anything into the existence and timing of the inflection point. A bell curve has two inflection points, one on the right and one on the left. It’s just a side effect of trying to draw a curve with a maximum and a tail. Try it. You always get an inflection point. It doesn’t mean anything.
You’re reading lots of stuff into parts of the graph that are completely meaningless. Those features exist in every single graph that could ever be drawn.
You misinterpreted it. I don’t believe it is possible to isolate the elderly to the degree necessary to block covid transmission. You can expose them unnecessarily, like New York did. But there is a limit to how well you can protect them.
It was more pure cost/benefit. The total number of remaining cases for CA is small. We have 1800 per day, declining by about 2% per day. That’s about 900K infections left before it is mostly over. Perhaps another 1500 deaths. We could cut that to 500 deaths by returning to purple for the next 4 months. But that’s a small gain. We could do more good by letting the economy grow and investing heavily in vaccine outreach.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Here, I fixed it for you:
Actually, adding NPI is, by far , the best explanation for the March/April increase in transmissibility. You keep ignoring this angle.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Probably more a function of less PCR testing.
I don't think anyone from "Team Virus" would disagree with this. You can only mitigate, not block the virus. I still think we could have mitigated the impact to the vulnerable with a targeted approach without putting a grossly unnecessary burden on the rest of the population, particularly our children.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Prednisone worked just fine for the six 80+ year olds that I know were infected. Saw one of them at the Winery yesterday soaking up some vitamin D and a glass of Quercetins.
Or maybe just do less PCR test.
I've been running the numbers for "what if they approve Pfizer for 12". It does not shift things all that much. Wish it did.
When they open it up to 12-15, you add about 3/4 of the 12-15 year olds. Reduces the unvaccinated population by about 8%. Which drops R by about 8%.
Which will increase the rate of decline enough to compensate for all of us getting 8% more social.
75%? We don't have 75% of adults yet and people will be more hesistant to get it for their kids at first. Maybe fall if schools force the issue
Desert Hound
DA
Has he run any models showing how far off his models are from real world data?
Team virus only says "protect the elderly" when they want an excuse for letting cases (and deaths) go up. It lets them support an increase in deaths without actually looking at the cost in their cost/benefit analysis.
At least when I support a policy that means 1000 additional people will die, I have the spine to admit it.
Fascinating....concludes much of the resistance to public health measures by vocal opponents is due to the experts pushing certainty when uncertainty exists. Sound like any two people we know????
Yeah case in point I did the vaccine particularly after showing prior infection was shown to be equivalent to 1 dose of the vaccine (mostly for my parent's sake but also don't want to in some fluke taking an unnecessary risk to make the kids orphans). I wouldn't give it to the kids right away....maybe August depending how hard things are pushed.
SCC is at 73.3%. I think we will hit 75. Might be less for you.
Maybe you're right. Maybe we only get a 7% boost instead of 8%. Still a small benefit.
Team Virus doesn't say just protect the elderly, but regardless, our approach conceivably could result in more Covid deaths...none of us can say either way with any degree of certainty. I have the spine to say a targeted approach could possibly lead to more Covid deaths, but I'm not willing to concede it will because a mandated blanket approach and quarantining the healthy is not credible and is taken less seriously by the general public (particularly when you consider the arbitrary nature of many restrictions). I support a targeted approach because I believe when you factor in health issues both physical and mental caused by overly broad lockdown restrictions that a targeted approach will result in better overall health picture than a blanket approach (even without considering economic factors). The cost in my cost/benefit analysis is not just economic, its other health issues and long term education and social issues...to name a few.
Do you have the spine to admit that the lockdown restrictions you propose would result in significantly higher mental health issues and possibly more deaths as a result of delays in care, etc?