Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

GoBucks89 said:

What is preventing us from a semblance of normality is the lack of a safe, effective and widely administered vaccine. Absent that, we are looking at mitigation efforts to control the spread of the virus and by definition that isn't normality.

I feel like you keep trying to make semantic arguments. There is no "normal" in the classic sense, and if people were willing to accept that, we could at least exercise something that's in the realm of "consistently closer to normal." What we're actually doing is, "I can't have normal, so F' it, I'm gonna 'live my life' or whatever." That's working out really well for the world. And why? There's no great mystery about how to co-exist with this thing without packing hospitals.

Fauci has repeatedly said that we do not need to do the draconian lockdowns unless things get "really bad"

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/52...ave-to-get

The argument against these lockdowns is that you are simply delaying the inevitable spread more than anything. I guess my question regarding this second hard close of France is as follows. Is this too much? Or is it actually necessary and helpful, but Fauci realizes it's not even an option in the United States so he just steers the conversation away from it as something that should be considered.

In my opinion (as an internet not-even-expert), I think it will help and I guess I don't understand why it would be controversial. Exponential growth and all. Assuming an R of 2, if you have two active cases and isolate one of them, you get a full generation (~10 days) of relief. In order to do that when you have 10,000 active cases, you have to find and isolate 5,000 active cases. Or put another way: in order to save the same lives, you have to invest a LOT more economic hardship regulations later on than you do early. So why not just go super strict when you need to and buy yourself a lot of time with freedoms later on?

This is of course assuming that vaccine is the end game and not herd immunity, which, in my opinion, it has to be.

(Although, I guess I could ask the exact same question about the budget deficit, which continues to frustrate the pants off of me).

Edit: As noted below, this is all theoretical, because I don't think we could ever actually pull it off for a number of reasons.

At this point I'm not sure we have the guys, desire, or balls to be aggressive. With that, I think the next best thing is to look at the hot spots (as defined by ICU capacity which I think is the most telling and concerning stat to watch) and if you get a region where hospitals get into trouble then a hard lockdown of that region for a couple of weeks to get things back under control might make sense.

It may be too late to take a national approach to this. I think it could have been done...but that ship sailed.

France had 34k new cases yesterday and 52k new cases on the 25th. Population about 67 million. US highest one day total is about 83k. Population about 328 million. When lockdown was announced, Macron said ICU beds could be filled with Covid patients by mid-November unless something changed. Not sure how you say what they are doing is too much. Trick is how long does it need to stay in place.

The thing that people don't seem to appreciate, for the third time now, is that if you find yourself in trouble, you're already in trouble. There's a lag in the escalation because the increase in hospital load today is largely because of behavior a week or more ago. Then people are contagious for at least a week sometimes longer. When you're reactive, it takes three weeks to see any appreciable result in your action.

Trump rallies aside, the community spread seems to occur more among smaller groups of people who believe that it's OK to comingle without taking precautions. That's the family that isn't cohabitating or the neighbors who "seem like they're doing it right." And maybe that can be managed too, but while we all have a blueprint for successfully visiting Walt Disney World, we don't have one for Thanksgiving.

I feel like you keep trying to make semantic arguments.

I used the language that Fauci used. Maybe he is playing semantics too?

There is no "normal" in the classic sense, and if people were willing to accept that, we could at least exercise something that's in the realm of "consistently closer to normal."

If there is no normal how can we get to something consistently closer to it?

Without a vaccine, how do we get to something "consistently closer to normal" for everyone?

A little more than a month has passed since Governor DeSantis ended the vast majority of the virus related restrictions in Florida. Some cities and counties have lifted mask mandates in the interim. Since September 25 (source):

• COVID-related hospitalizations have decreased 15-25% across all age groups
• COVID-related hospitalizations as a percentage of all hospital stays has remained level
• COVID-related deaths have continued to decline in spite of gratuitous death certificate matching (trying to match prior deaths with positive test results)

Even "cases" haven't risen substantially since that time. Countries that were held up as examples in the summer on how to beat the virus (France, Spain, Germany, Czechia) are now seeing daily record cases and reintroduction of lockdowns. How much more time do we need before we realize that non-pharmaceutical measures are a waste of time?

Cases per 100k are increasing in Florida. They've almost doubled since September 27th, from 10.6 to 18.6 during the time when Floridians should be able to socially distance outside more due to the cooler weather. Hospitalizations are a touch higher from the 27th as well.

I thought Florida greatly reduced the testing that was being performed?

Gary Dowdell said:

Since September 25 (source):

• COVID-related hospitalizations have decreased 15-25% across all age groups
• COVID-related hospitalizations as a percentage of all hospital stays has remained level
• COVID-related deaths have continued to decline in spite of gratuitous death certificate matching (trying to match prior deaths with positive test results)

I'm not sure what's gratuitous about death certificate matching; that seems like it would be a necessary task to understand the effect of the pandemic.

In any case, there's a lag in the deaths data - I'm not sure where you're finding your indication that deaths have continued to decline, but in looking at four reports about a week apart, and averaging the two-week lookbacks, you get:

Report of 9 Oct: 18.3 deaths/day
Report of 15 Oct: 16.8 deaths/day
Report of 23 Oct: 17.9 deaths/day
Report of 29 Oct: 17.7 deaths/day

Fair to say deaths haven't shot up since 25 Sept, they've remained constant. Given that the average time from infection to onset of symptoms is 3-14 days, and from onset of symptoms to death is 18 days on average, one would expect to see an increase in death rates starting around mid-October. And given the lag in reporting, we won't be able to see what's actually happening from the Florida DOH data for another week at least.

Beyond that, transmission from active people - I'm not going to say it - on the beach to vulnerable people introduces another likely lag. As Jeff said above, by the time your realize you're in trouble, you're in trouble.

I hope you're right, but it's too early to tell from the available data.

Gary Dowdell said:

<some stuff about Florida>

I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you not remember all the people in late June saying that Florida was brilliant and was a shining example of how to reopen an economy? And then they saw the worst per capita cases through July and August save Texas? Maybe we shouldn't risk hundreds of thousands of lives on just over a month's worth of incomplete data, especially when it contradicts basically every epidemiological model and our previous experience with Florida.

I'm not beyond admitting when I'm wrong. In fact, back on June 8th, I was prepared to re-evaluated my entire position on the thing because Florida did seem to be leading the way in safe reopening. For better or worse, my original position was vindicated, so forgive me if I'm a little hesitant to jump ship a second time. Fool me once....

ApolloAndy said (on June 8th):

And that's probably the thing that I lost track of the most around mid-May and maybe I need to eat a little crow on that? I'm still not sure. It is true that the situation isn't fundamentally different than it was in mid-March. BUT we gained new information about the effectiveness of a variety of strategies to combat transmission...so maybe the knowledge that shelter-in-place is extremely effective and mask wearing/outdoor/distanced events are low threat is a good enough reason to let people to go to the beach or Universal. Or maybe we'll see in 2-3 months that we made a catastrophic mistake?

All of the key metrics for Florida are headed in the wrong direction. That's not a fantasy. Explain to me again how reducing risk factors doesn't matter.

Well, in Gary's defense, the daily death rate (one week backward looking average) is dropping fairly sharply and has been for two weeks. Though that is a very lagging indicator. The state reopened early June. Cases peaked mid July. Deaths peaked mid August.

Shades said:

I thought Florida greatly reduced the testing that was being performed?

They may have done so when it came to the tornado that hit Universal days before it reopened in early June, or Isaias, which spared Florida. Right now, I believe they may have ramped up these efforts.

Florida's peak testing took place on 7/17 with 65k tests. Shortly after the testing dropped off to a low of 18k on 9/11. The latest trend has been an uptick in testing but they've just recently peaked at 38k. For the sake of comparison, Illinois has been showing a consistent increase and is now testing 70k.

Comparing those two states what I find interesting is the positivity rates. Illinois has consistently been around 4% with a recent uptick bringing us to 7%. Meanwhile since July Florida's positivity rate has shown a decline in positivity from 19% to 10%.

What conclusions can we draw? Illinois is almost certainly going through a surge in the virus. With increased testing the positivity rate is climbing. As of this coming Sunday, 9 of the 11 regions in Illinois will be in mitigation.

Florida's data is showing the opposite trend (less testing, declining positivity). Does that mean they are in a valley? I'm not so sure since their positivity rate is still 10%+. Does that indicate they are testing enough?

You can't be in a valley when your infection rate is above 1.0 and your case counts are going up.

Some of the positivity rates that get tossed around here blow my mind. I live in Western New York. Over the past 4-6 weeks, after hovering right around 1% with some days above and others below, Labor Day rolled around and we've never really recovered. About 10 days after that, 4% positivity came around and the way it was addressed on the news and by The State (Cuomo), you'd have thought that end times were imminent. Since then, positivity rate has continued to bounce around quite a bit with some streaks back down in the low 1% and then spikes back up to 4+% (we're in one of those right now). I'm leaving out a lot here, but the main point is that it amazes me how casually some people (or states) treat rates of 10%+ as evidence of progress or a workable strategy when others, like NY, see hot spots pop up and move quickly to understand them by looking for hot zip codes, super spreaders, mini-spreaders, neighborhood components (religious makeup, health demographics, etc...).

Right or wrong, the scientists have generally noted that 5% or more is too high. Anything less is...manageable, I guess. So, again, it's noteworthy how NY sees rates that are trending TOWARDS 5% and mobilizes tasks forces to understand and do targeted testing (free) in impacted areas while other states shrug their shoulders at 10% and call it progress and a sign that mitigation efforts like mandated masks and limits on gatherings are "working".

If the various governing bodies in the US can't come to consensus on something that fundamental, we're going to be riding this out for a long time to come. This is, for a lot of us, not new news I guess.

Yeah... It's something else. North and South Dakota both have 113 infections per 100k! Pennsylvania currently has 16 per 100k. Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) has 10.8 despite there being 6 universities with students on campus within 5 miles of one another.

The per capita number and the RØ (infection rate) are the things that tend to concern me the most. Anything over 1.0 means the net number of people infected from day to day is increasing, and the closer it gets to 2, the faster it gets bad. That should have been the lesson of the first outbreak.