Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Did we commit to anything other than vaccine development at the federal level?

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

I'd be kind of shocked if you did; I mean, I have said stuff about COVID and our response to it that I don't entirely agree with. Especially in a thread that has been going on for more than ten months so far.

I am noticing something interesting, though. I've been tracking the Ohio numbers since March, and right before Thanksgiving the daily numbers got really noisy; the State says they're way behind on processing test data. I responded by setting up a script that downloads the raw data file that the State also provides. It's adjusted by onset date, and it shows a couple of very interesting trends.
First is that the case rate is actually producing a very nice curve, especially compared to the daily reported numbers. Second, it looks very much like the new case curve is flattening dramatically, with the highest daily case count (10,605 as of yesterday) coming on November 23, a record that has stood for more than a week now. Third and perhaps most interesting, is that the new case chart shows a distinct lack of inflection points relating to any of the various orders. Curfews, mask requirements, early bar closures, early restaurant closures, stay-at-home recommendations...none of that has made a bit of difference. The only thing that seems to have changed anything is that cases took off on or about September 20, and did not slow down from there, which seems to implicate the start of school. Yes, cases seem to be slowing now since 11/23, but because of the incubation period that means those infections started falling *just before* the curfew order was put into effect on 11/19. Almost as though they timed issuance of the order to make it look like it did something.
Maybe that's not fair. But I'm not nearly as tired of dealing with the virus as I am of dealing with the continuing restriction-of-the-week game.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Lord Gonchar said:

If we locked everyone in their house for 28 days, this would be done.

If I knew on March 15th what I know now, I'd have been game for this.

I feel like that was the entire conversation in March regarding exponential growth.

Lord Gonchar said:

Yay compromise!

I know this has been batted around a bunch in the last ten months, but I don’t know if I’ve seen (or remember) your take on it:

Do you think early, decisive, unified action would have saved lives, jobs, normalcy, freedom, and basically everything we’re now trying to trade off? Because if so, then that course of action is objectively better and should have been pursued.

I guess my overall end of the year take is that I was naïve enough to believe that the stay at home suggestions and non essential shutdowns in March and April would have done enough to curb things (and to unify the nation to come together and do what they needed to do) where we would be in a much better place now nine months later rather than in the worst position yet.

Those early shutdowns did curb things. They did exactly what they were advertised to do: they slowed the progression of the virus. They also ruined lives for a great many people, wrecked the economy and destroyed several industries. But even with all the damage done, it could not stop or eradicate the virus. Finally, Americans had enough. I still think the massive protests back in June across the country were about a lot more than a bit of egregious police brutality in Minnesota*. It was about “two weeks to flatten the curve” turning into 3.5 months of ever-tightening restrictions with no end in sight. Everybody had enough. Direct action types took to the streets, leveraging an “acceptable” opportunity to come out for the only activity their leaders didn’t shut down. Legal types took to the courts, thinking maybe these restrictions weren’t entirely legal. Ready or not, the United States started opening back up.
Of course now the question is, what would have happened if we hadn’t shut down? In hindsight it sure looks like we might have cut six months off the pandemic. But then, hindsight is always...well, you know. I mean, it’s hard to argue with the shutdown when it looks like getting a new, incurable disease looks like a death sentence...and the mitigations we started with weren’t working and we didn’t know why.
But the Spring shutdown was a blunt instrument that we probably didn’t need at the time...and because of what happened back then we probably can’t really do it again. Once fired, that gun can’t be reloaded.

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

*I certainly don’t want to minimize the whole civil justice issue...but we were seeing protests against police violence in cities where police violence wasn’t even an issue until the police reacted violently to those same protests...

—DCAjr

So then, what should we be doing now?

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

I don't know why anyone is still trying to make the distinction. Sweden relied entirely on voluntary social distancing, and it along with having one of the worst per capita death rates in Europe, their GDP still took an 8% hit in the second quarter. Their outcomes are still better because they have healthcare for everyone. It was never an economy or lives decision.

I also think Americans suffer from massive perception problems. We never had any "lockdown," we only had certain businesses required to close or reduce capacity. And for the jobs lost, the feds could be doing more, but the socialism boogeyman is scarier than getting help.

To be clear, the shutdowns earlier in the year did produce the intended effect. They worked in terms of limiting the spread of the disease. Every bar chart you've seen shows that. The problem is that half the nation got bored with that and opened everything back up before we met the criteria that even the feds had prescribed, so here we are, likely worse off than before because it's not concentrated in just the big cities. Now it doesn't matter if there are restrictions or not, because the more sick and dead people will be a drag on the economy no matter what we do to mitigate.

The bottom line is that if we had the will to take the strong hit up front and stick with a moderate hit for the rest of the year, we would likely come out in better net shape economically and in health than doing what we've been doing.

To that point, there was an interesting article in the NY Times today that explained that the current rate of infection with a 95% effective vaccine is actually worse than a 35,000 rate of infection with a 50% effective vaccine. Of course, YMMV.
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The vaccines will be much less effective at preventing death and illness in 2021 if they are introduced into a population where the coronavirus is raging — as is now the case in the U.S. That’s the central argument of a new paper in the journal Health Affairs.

An analogy may be helpful here. A vaccine is like a fire hose. A vaccine that’s 95 percent effective, as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s versions appear to be, is a powerful fire hose. But the size of a fire is still a bigger determinant of how much destruction occurs.

I asked the authors of the Health Affairs study to put their findings into terms that we nonscientists could understand, and they were kind enough to do so. The estimates are fairly stunning:

At the current level of infection in the U.S. (about 200,000 confirmed new infections per day), a vaccine that is 95 percent effective — distributed at the expected pace — would still leave a terrible toll in the six months after it was introduced. Almost 10 million or so Americans would contract the virus, and more than 160,000 would die.
This is far worse than the toll in an alternate universe in which the vaccine was only 50 percent effective but the U.S. had reduced the infection rate to its level in early September (about 35,000 new daily cases). In that scenario, the death toll in the next six months would be kept to about 60,000.
It’s worth pausing for a moment on this comparison, because it’s deeply counterintuitive. If the U.S. had maintained its infection rate from September and Moderna and Pfizer had announced this fall that their vaccines were only 50 percent effective, a lot of people would have freaked out.

But the reality we have is actually worse.

How could this be? No vaccine can eliminate a pandemic immediately, just as no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage. “Bluntly stated, we’ll get out of this pandemic faster if we give the vaccine less work to do,” A. David Paltiel, one of the Health Affairs authors and a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told me.

There is one positive way to look at this: Measures that reduce the virus’s spread — like mask-wearing, social distancing and rapid-result testing — can still have profound consequences. They can save more than 100,000 lives in coming months.

RideMan said:

Of course now the question is, what would have happened if we hadn’t shut down? In hindsight it sure looks like we might have cut six months off the pandemic.

You've said something to this effect a couple of times, but I don't think I'm catching your argument from the rest of your post(s). Why do you think this is the case?

Cutting six months off of the pandemic, if we're to believe that vaccination goes well and is widely accepted (I doubt it will be), that would put the end today. Good luck explaining that math.

The problem back when we began reopening is that there was a prescribed way for doing that...put out by the Administration...that was largely ignored. The "President's Guidelines for Reopening America". Those guidelines specifically instructed us to slowly open the valve...and to be prepared to close it again if there were triggers for doing so. As much as I don't care for this President...and I really don't...I was actually pretty impressed with that plan.

Well, not long after the plan was distributed he was already running away from it. Instead of slowly opening the valve we just busted it wide open and let all hell break loose. And here we are today.

Jeff said:

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

It was never an economy or lives decision.

Now do freedom, donuts and whatever!

Apollo Andy said:

I know this has been batted around a bunch in the last ten months, but I don’t know if I’ve seen (or remember) your take on it:

Do you think early, decisive, unified action would have saved lives, jobs, normalcy, freedom, and basically everything we’re now trying to trade off?

I don't know.

I don't think we're just now making trades either. We decided way back in March.

When a deadly virus is trasmitted through the air between humans and you still put humans in spaces together, you've made a decision. Mitigation and prevention are two different things.

Even with the limited measures we've taken, a portion of the population pushed back. For better or worse, it was gonna happen in any situation I think:

Gonch said on October 6th:
At some point, maybe the problem isn't that people (as a whole) won't lockdown/mask up long term, but rather that we expect them to...

I don't think we could do what Taiwan did. And that's ok.

Our outcome is what it is. We're here. Maybe with the pieces we had to play with this is a decent outcome? I mean, the only constant is the virus. Every region of the world has different mindsets, structures, processes, resolve, leadership, and so on.

We can "what if" all day long. We're not Taiwan. We're not Sweden. We're not anyone else. We can observe what they did and even learn from it, but it doesn't mean we can do it. I can study Gates, Bezos and Buffett until the cows come home, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be able to make myself a billionaire.

And to finally try to answer your inquiry, I still don't know. My take has evovled over the last 9 or 10 months (as any reasonable person's probably has). Back in March, I'd likely have been against it 100%. The fact that I brought up sliders so early on shows, I think, that at the time I understood we weren't going to hard commit in either direction (whether it was because we wouldn't or we couldn't and whether, in hindsight, it was the early and persistent "muh freedoms" crowd or the third wave "I tried, but my resolve is fading" group)

All we can do is navigate what is put before us. I see no value in sitting here ("here" being the point we are in the pandemic, not posting on the rollie coaster forums) and, to continue with the cow-based idioms, crying over spilled milk.

At this point nothing is going to change. I'll keep protecting myself the best I can and hope I'm fat or sick enough to get an early vaccine and ride down the other side of the pandemic curve.

^All of this. I'm tired of hearing armchair pandemic experts declaring what we should have done, what we should be doing, what we should do going forward, as if any one action or series of actions is the definitive answer. Whatever your take on individualism is, I've so far done what I've done and managed to keep myself and my family from getting it, without relying solely on whatever government has mandated, recommended, or otherwise. I've taken and continue to take in all the information we've been given and used it to the best of my ability to stay healthy and keep others healthy.

No armchair hypothetical realities here; there is a debate happening now in Ohio due to a statement from the OEA. That's the Ohio Education Association (the public school teachers union in Ohio), and they made the following declaration:

The OEA said...

As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb in Ohio, the Ohio Education Association (OEA) is calling on state leaders and school districts across the state to demonstrate their commitment to putting students first in their pandemic response by following a four-point plan that reflects the latest science and best practices for ensuring Ohio’s children receive a high-quality education in a safe environment.

The four point plan (reset, restart, reprioritize, resources) can be found here, but the first of the four points is the most impactful: the "reset" point calls for all schools (regardless of grade level) to completely close until January 11th. All remote, every school, every grade level. For perspective, most xmas breaks here in Ohio will start sometime around the 21st and go about 2 weeks until January 4th.

Both of our daughters have been face-to-face since the opening (about 20% of the district chose to go remote) and I my own ideas are in stark contrast to the plan. Meaning, it falls under my thought/mantra about sliders: that what can be done safely should be able to continue to happen. From my observations and experience, teaching and learning can be safely done.

The declaration was made yesterday; no response from our own local school district so far.

Vater said:

I'm tired of hearing armchair pandemic experts declaring what we should have done, what we should be doing, what we should do going forward, as if any one action of series of actions is the definitive answer.

Yeah, but that's inherently the American problem (if we're going to engage in exceptionalism anyway)... we don't learn from anything. We make the same mistakes over and over again, we disregard history, we lack self-awareness. As individuals, we don't operate this way. We don't usually spill milk as adults because we learn to be careful after making the mistakes. This is not our first pandemic, we had a playbook, it will not be the last time we deal with something like this.

It seems to me like a good retrospective is exactly what we need. In my line of work, we do this every two weeks, and after every project. That's how we get better at what we do.

Lord Gonchar said:

Our outcome is what it is. We're here. Maybe with the pieces we had to play with this is a decent outcome? I mean, the only constant is the virus. Every region of the world has different mindsets, structures, processes, resolve, leadership, and so on.

We can "what if" all day long. We're not Taiwan. We're not Sweden. We're not anyone else. We can observe what they did and even learn from it, but it doesn't mean we can do it.

I don’t know if this is a difference of personality, perspective, or what, but I disagree with this. If some other country did something which got them what we want, why wouldn’t we do it? Are we “not Taiwan” because our priorities are to be lazy and get worse outcomes?

ApolloAndy said:
Are we “not Taiwan” because our priorities are to be lazy and get worse outcomes?

Actually, yeah. Kind of. That's sort of exactly what I'm saying.

The larger "we" (the citizens of this country) have proven we collectively couldn't (wouldn't?) do what they did. We're playing a different hand than they are.

I'm not sure I'd call it "lazy" (because that feels like a taken opportunity to impart personal opinion), but our priorities (or abilities, maybe) are definitely different.

(and as a total aside and not the point of the discussion, but still something I feel the need to point out - even if we did exactly what those other countries did/do, it doesn't guarantee the same outcome...but that's neither here nor there, for the sake of this discussion we can pretend it does)

I looked this up yesterday for a reply that I never posted. The United States' scale did us no favors.

Airports
Taiwan: 4
New Zealand: 62
United States: 5,080

Population
Taiwan: 23.78 million, less than the state of Florida
New Zealand: 4.886 million, equals the state of Alabama