Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

RCMAC said:

If it had worked he may have won re-election.

Wait. He didn't win?

I think there's some good points and truths sprinkled throughout this opinion piece:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-06/which-covid-1...ny-of-them

From the Bloomberg piece:

"It would be wonderful if the CDC could also start telling us which rules and recommendations are unlikely to work, so we can all concentrate on the ones that will."

This is obvious, of course, but the CDC was broken by the political appointees at the top. If the CDC were allowed to be the CDC, this likely would have happened. Sure, there would have been mistakes early on regardless, but the agency was neutered by the hacks appointed by the White House.

My favorite part was this:

Harvard disease expert Hanage says that the science to date points to the primary risk coming from what he calls the three C’s — close contact, closed spaces and crowds. He says in Japan, where they’ve had few Covid-19 deaths, people are advised to avoid these — not just to wear masks in these situations but to limit them or avoid them altogether

Because it's almost exactly what I was arguing a week ago.

Also, just saw this today:

Monulparivir, the drug that "completely" stops the spread of coronavirus in 24 hours

Article says Molnupiravir is currently in advanced phase II / III clinical trials. Could be another good tool - especially for those afraid of the vaccine. No timeframe though. How long does it take to go from testing ferrets to public human use?

Phase II and III already is human use. The challenge (or maybe non-challenge, the way things are going) is that they need to have enough infected people to take it. So if you want to try it out on 20,000 people for a solid sample, you'll need twice that (for the control group) who are infected, and then you have to extensively contact trace each one of them after they get the drug (or placebo) to see how effective it is in limiting transmission. I'm not sure how you design that study, since people will hopefully be extra careful around someone known to be infected in the first place.

I was so happy when Publix stopped the one way aisles. It was always frustrating when I had to go around in a circle and pass 5 or 6 people rather than walking against the arrows to pass one person.

I imagine things like sanitizing coaster seats and spacing out coaster trains won't go away until we're well into the vaccination period. Even if it is pointless, it's all about the perception, which as the article points out, is frustrating and a waste of resources. I know our building would love to reallocate the part of the budget that buys giant containers of spray disinfectant we have to use at the end of each day to wipe down door knobs and touch points that were never even used. But if we stopped doing that, enough people would "feel unsafe" where it would create a situation. Rather than take the time to educate, it seems we just do things like that for the sake of doing them.

I get so annoyed these days when I just want to get into the grocery store (where I completely ignore the arrows on the floor, just like everybody else) and somebody wants to wipe down the cart that I just brought in from the parking lot. Did the CDC not tell us we could stop doing this months ago? And yet it's not just that the stores are doing it, the State is still telling them to do it. One of the most recent re-opening guideline documents from the State of Ohio had a dozen pages of wiping down surfaces and enforcing mask-wearing but not a word about ventilation.

Then there are the mixed messages that are absolutely no good for credibilty. As I was noting to someone last night, I was watching the 11pm news and...

News: Hospitals are full to capacity, healthcare workers are burned out and in short supply, ICUs are full because of the pandemic.

Every commercial break during the news: $HOSPITAL has implemented all these new practices so you can feel good about coming to us for your routine and emergency medical care. In fact, we really want you to come and use our services. Please. In fact, drop what you are doing right now and call us to schedule an appointment for that procedure you've been putting off, we really want you to come back. Please. We're begging you. Our emergency department is waiting for you!

Well, that's how it comes across, anyway.

Where is the research, and more important the guidance, about the optimal temperature and humidity we should be maintaining in public buildings to keep spaces as hostile to virus transmission as possible?

As for the nonsense with the coaster trains...when I visited Holiday World I realized how useless it all is. Separating people who are all facing the same direction by an empty row, and doing excess cleaning...all it does is reduce the ride capacity meaning that people spend more time in the poorly ventilated queue house and station standing close to each other. The best way to keep the rides safe is the same as it has always been: optimize capacity and keep the line moving.

Six Flags and Universal got that message; by the end of the season both were apparently filling every row, but had added some barriers in the station shotgun. I suppose it makes sense that in an industry where teams of people spend their entire professional lives doing risk analysis, they would be working hard to come up with the best solutions, not just the ones that looks the best.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I haven't agreed with everything you've said about COVID, Dave, but everything in this post is spot on.

I just got back from Universal.

• They aren't cleaning the rides but they are squirting some hand sanitizer into your hands before you board
• Coasters are loading one party per row and if the loading platforms are narrow enough they add the sneeze guards
• Spiderman, Transformers, ET, MIB, etc, are loading one party in the front and back row or the entire car if you have enough people
• Kong and I assume Fast and Furious load one party per row and add the sneeze guards between the rows
• Food service is a mess. I've never seen lines so long for a beer or pretzel at all hours of the day.
• They now have mask compliance officers who actively look for people skirting the rules. Anecdotally, compliance among guests was higher than my trip in October.

Gonch, the three C-s is from the WHO website. I wouldn't be surprised if the CDC was instructed to come up with it own language because of presidential politics. I'd like to know how one avoids crowds in Japan. I visited last summer and the amount of people literally everywhere was exhausting. I had to queue up for the escalator into my Tokyo hotel.

RideMan said:

...they would be working hard to come up with the best solutions, not just the ones that looks the best.

Are you new to this world?

RCMAC said:

Ok. Now I’m left to wonder what the scientists had to gain by pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes like that.

If you're looking for logic in this reasoning, I'm afraid you're out of luck. Apparently, secret left-wing conspiracies that want to control you and deny you freedom "because socialism" are the real source of the pandemic and/or its overemphasis in the media.

Trump missed his chance at the very beginning of this...Instead he could only think of what he could do to keep his base active and on his side, and it turned out to be the most harmful thing anyone has ever done to our country.

Agreed, but you can't say you're surprised, given that he felt the need to argue/lie about inauguration crowd size and basically everything else.

Lord help us.

Gonch is doing all he can. He's only one man.

It's not just the socialism, but the pedophilia and blood drinking with the Clintons. Duh.

How seriously do you take enforcement?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/asia/taiwan-quarantine-fine-scli-intl/index.html

Say what you will about "freedom" but the Taiwanese results speak for themselves. The alternative is the US where our protocols have no teeth and our public health officials resort to banning things that don't actually matter, because they can't/won't do anything about things that actually do matter. It's not like they're China where Corona virus patients are whisked off to distant medical centers for "treatment."

It goes back to what I was saying earlier... mitigation compliance is at its best when there are consequences. That's why you're OK at WDW or Universal Orlando, but not at Miami restaurants where there's no compliance and no one can do anything about it.

As a professor told me decades ago, a statute without a penalty is just advice.

Restaurants could enforce compliance but they don't want to lose the business. Like the smoking policies of parks: enforcement is part of the policy. You can have a very strict policy but if you don't enforce it, the benefit is greatly reduced (rule followers will tend to follow even you do not enforce so there likely will be some benefit).

Enforcement of Covid restrictions is largely an honor system. I have seen reports of local bars/restaurants that were fined/shut down for Covid related violations. Don't know enough firsthand to know if they are true or just out there to help scare restaurants/bars into more compliance. But there aren't enough health inspectors/law enforcement to police all of the various businesses out there in terms of compliance. No one is getting pulled over to check if you are out for an approved purpose. Or counting cars in driveways to see if gathering limits are being exceeded, distancing followed or masks worn.

Ultimately you take a society as it is not how you would like it to be (you can work on changing it but that takes time and isn't likely (if successful) to be helpful with the current pandemic).

So, unfortunately, there's a chicken/egg thing or a self fulfilling prophecy in there. I was super strict from March to May, but the more I saw people totally disregarding things (and as things actually got better) the less I was willing to sacrifice my own sanity and wellbeing to support the recklessness of others. As Jeff said, there's a point where me staying home and not throwing the frisbee with my neighbor isn't doing anything when others are dry humping in bars.

Beyond enforcement or resources or whatever, the thing that made it work in Taiwan, New Zealand, and many other countries was a shared sense of responsibility. They didn't need to spend millions on enforcement because, for the most part, people understood their obligation to each other and their country (and maybe they also understood that it would help the economy in the long run to suck it up for a few months). I genuinely believe this is cultural, but it also certainly has to do with previous experience with SARS and other similar outbreaks.

Cultural condition is clearly a huge part of it. Look at the UK, where they narrowly embraced the silly Brexit action, but the nation almost universally cheers on the efforts of the NHS in the pandemic. In US terms, that's like Trumpies high-fiving Bernie Sanders. Americans briefly seemed to have some shared responsibility after 9/11, though I'm not sure what that meant other than be nice to each other for awhile.

I don't know what to do with that. If anything about our culture has made me sad, it's the lack of shared responsibility for anything. Individualism has become outright toxic.

I will say that I think, in some instances, people/businesses are just testing authorities to see if we are going to "do anything about it". When the business restrictions/guidelines first came out our Code Enforcement was spending a lot of time giving out warnings...but nobody was taking those warnings seriously. We ultimately put out a warning to all businesses on a Friday that we were moving to a "no warning" phase the following week and any reports of violations would be met with immediate citation and a 24 hour shut down.

Come Monday we had a business in violation...and it was shut down. The word got out very fast and...all these months later...we have had a total of 11 warnings (in a City with 67,000 residents) and only 4 citations resulting in a closure. None of those four businesses has been a repeat offender.

There was a lot of grief from some segments of the community when that business got shut down (again, just for 24 hours) but the compliance has remained high because we were decisive. The Governor of Florida has taken our ability to cite and fine individuals away from local authorities...which is a huge disservice...but certainly explains why Florida is where we are right now.

ApolloAndy said:

Say what you will about "freedom" but the Taiwanese results speak for themselves.

This assumes the goal is to save lives, only save lives and save those lives regardless of cost (in money, freedom, donuts, or whatever).

Whether that is the goal a society should pursue is obviously debateable. (and I'm not trying to do that here, just pointing it out...again)

This is the same conversation we had back in March.

If you think the goal should be to save as many lives as possible at any cost, the US response is probably frustrating.

If you think the goal is normality and freedom at any cost, the US response is probably frustrating.

And I think right there lies the problem. We sort of half committed. With the slider in the middle it's not far enough in any direction to make very many people happy with the result.

Yay compromise!