Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

I don’t care about super spreader events. I care about whether my kids get it. Which is a reversal of policy.

But also, sure. I’m willing to concede the outdoor thing. Target is what my possibily irrational fear has glommed on to, now.

I mean, I avoid taking my kid to any store ever, pandemic or not. 😀

But super-spreader events and whether or not your kid gets it are totally related. Transmission is very well understood at this point, and it is understood that vaccinated people pose virtually no threat, and outdoor interaction accounts for less than 1% of transmission. Now combine that with the fact that vaccination rates are continually on the rise (y'all are doing really well in your area), new cases counts are declining exponentially, and kids are less likely to have severe symptoms, and I would not argue that kids are less safe. As we've learned in the last year, there are a lot of inputs to determine risk, and virtually all of them lead me to the conclusion that it's OK to get my kid out of the house and into the neighbor's bounce house. And Magic Kingdom.

Last flu season there were 477 flu deaths among kids 18 and younger. No real point, I just find the numbers interesting.

What seems to be forgotten here is the actual level of risk. I mean, the attitude is that other people fall into one of three categories--
a) Vaccinated = no risk of causing infection
b) Masked = no risk of causing infection
c) Unmasked = blowing COVID wildly all over the store
...and of course you can't tell the difference between (a) and (c).

The reality is that it just isn't so. COVID masks are source control, which means they are effective at preventing sick people from spreading virus. We made it a universal requirement because we couldn't tell who is sick: apparently you can spread SARS-CoV2 without knowing you have it. But here's the thing--

Most people aren't sick.

Every person who isn't immunized is not necessarily a super-spreader. In fact, most of them are not.

This has been the whole point of my data collection all along: an effort to try and judge the likelihood that I am even going to encounter this virus, let alone become infected with it. Based on some early research that I can't even cite, I assume that infected people stop shedding virus after 12 days (the European research said 11). Because of the high prevalence of asymptomatic cases, I assume a 70% undercount, which is an extremely pessimistic assumption. Count up the total cases in the State over the last 12 days, divide by 0.3 to get the undercount, subtract out the people who know they are sick (on the assumption that they will voluntarily remove themselves from society for a few days) and you get a risk probability. Yesterday in Ohio that was 0.24% or 1:417. That's definitely not zero, but it is a lot better than the 1:39 odds we had back in December. And vastly outweighed by the 1:2.7 chance that any adult you meet is, in fact, immunized.

It's the relatively low prevalence, and what we know about transmission--that time is such a critical factor--that has had me mostly-fearless about this thing from the beginning. Not that I didn't--or don't--take it seriously, or that I have a higher risk tolerance than others, but that I believe the risk to actually be lower than others do. I've been able to avoid the truly high risk environments (working in a call center, large gatherings at home) and understand that the remaining ones (restaurants, grocery stores, amusment parks) are actually comparatively low risk environments. That's a pretty nuanced view of things, I think, but with the increasing immunization numbers the CDC can now distill that kind of nuance into advice that we can all make use of. And the amusement parks are already taking note. We've seen mask requirements dropped or amended to match CDC guidance at Herschend, Cedar Fair, Sea World, Knoebel's, Hersheypark, Palace Entertainment, Universal, and even Disney. I haven't heard whether Koch has changed yet, although they were always pretty permissive.

I never dreamed that when these requirements started going away, that Six Flags would be the hold-out. I always expected Disney, which from the beginning has had the most draconian requirements in the industry, would be the last one.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

ApolloAndy said:

This is, of course all hypothetical, as my county is really strict.

This is the important thing, I think. The re-entry anxiety for folks who either self-imposed or were-imposed-upon (or both) in a strict manner seems to be a lot higher than for folks who more or less have lived life like normal...only in masks. Of course there is no peer-review study here, but, it makes intuitive sense.

I have a colleague who more or less put herself and her husband into a bomb shelter since it all started, and now they are convinced that the CDC, Fauci, and the rest of the scientists have been "bought out" by corporations because of the new guidance...even though up until now they have been saying "follow the CDC!".

But like any other anxiety, tossing "facts" onto it doesn't put it out. The guy who has flying-anxiety doesn't feel better if you hand them a pamphlet that talks about air safety.

If there has been one blessing in this entire thing, it's been that kids are just fine.

RideMan said:

I never dreamed that when these requirements started going away, that Six Flags would be the hold-out.

Have you ever been to a Six Flags? Nothing about their operations makes me think they could formulate and announce a new policy within 48 hours.

Edited to add: In somewhat more fairness, they're operating in a range of states under a single brand, and it might be hard to come up with a way to communicate different policies depending on the park.

RideMan said:

It's the relatively low prevalence, and what we know about transmission--that time is such a critical factor--that has had me mostly-fearless about this thing from the beginning.

I have to stop you there, because that actually runs counter to my earlier point about there being many inputs to determine risk. I think you've consistently left out certain inputs, or haven't considered their downstream effects. There's a tipping point where your fearlessness contributes to a significant problem due to the exponential nature of the transmission. Look no further than India right now if you don't understand.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I think you're trying to say that the risk is low, with mitigation protocols, but that's exactly where Andy is coming from, because the protocols are being largely dispensed with. I've often interpreted your analysis to mean, "No big deal," which seems rather cavalier given the amount of worldwide death we've seen.

Now, I tend to believe that earlier consensus that vaccination rates are the leading indicator of reduced risk. Nothing will allow you to confidently lick doorknobs like the vaccine. By extension, this removes a massive portion of the population as a transmission vector.

hambone said:

Have you ever been to a Six Flags? Nothing about their operations makes me think they could formulate and announce a new policy within 48 hours.

You think the others did it that fast? This has been filed away and waiting for months.

I think there’s been a disjunction for 200+ pages about the differnece between “the risk for me personally” and “the risk for the community at large” which does feed back into the former. I think most people in this conversation and maybe on the whole are not at great risk personally (even the octogenarians with risk factors only had 20% mortality after having gotten the virus symptomatically) but I think the latter piece is changing where then multiplier on the input feeding back from community health to personal risk is dropping and my brain is still catching up. (Also, community health in general is good.)

Jeff said:

RideMan said:

It's the relatively low prevalence, and what we know about transmission--that time is such a critical factor--that has had me mostly-fearless about this thing from the beginning.

I have to stop you there, because that actually runs counter to my earlier point about there being many inputs to determine risk. I think you've consistently left out certain inputs, or haven't considered their downstream effects. There's a tipping point where your fearlessness contributes to a significant problem due to the exponential nature of the transmission. Look no further than India right now if you don't understand.

What we have here is my failure to communicate. I'm rambling a bit, conflating the current situation, in which we have a bunch of factors which are bringing us into a safer-than-ever posture--continued low incidence, a certain critical mass of immunization, a more than adequate supply of vaccines for those who want them, improved treatment options, and statistically lower complication and morbidity for those people who cannot (yet) be immunized. We also know a lot more about the spread patterns for this virus; we are at case levels now which are comparable to case levels back in September, just when community spread was just beginning to ramp up. The data don't do a very good job at telling us *who* is getting sick and *where* it is happening (although the data file I have been parsing does contain a lot of demographic data that I simply ignore). My point is that combining the statistical data that I've been watching and the crunched data coming through various media sources suggests that based on what we know of how the virus has been spreading through the community and what the most critical risk factors really are (time and distance being the big ones) we are finding out that many of the public situations we've been so worried about are really not that big of a problem. People haven't been spreading this virus so much in grocery stores, gas stations, amusement parks and restaurants. They have been spreading it at home, in certain workplaces, and in other places where people gather together for longer periods of time and in close proximity to one another. The CDC has finally come out and said what we discussed here last Spring, that outdoors is really not a problem, and they've confirmed that vaccines work, which means most of us now have the option of taking ourselves out of the risk pool. That, in turn, is the best mitigation strategy we have available to us.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I think you're trying to say that the risk is low, with mitigation protocols, but that's exactly where Andy is coming from, because the protocols are being largely dispensed with. I've often interpreted your analysis to mean, "No big deal," which seems rather cavalier given the amount of worldwide death we've seen.

Remember also that there is a difference between how the spread of the virus impacts *me* and how it impacts *the community*. I have knowledge about my own activities, general health, recent history, and other factors that allow me to estimate the likelihood that I might be infected. Nobody else has this information. I am actually interested in not placing others in danger, and that does feed into my risk assessment.

I tend to come off sounding more cavalier about this because through this whole thing I've tried to manage my risk in a way that I can live with. Despite what it might sound like, believe me, I have taken this thing very seriously. It's a nasty virus that generates a nasty disease that I do not want. Especially as a 50-year-old overweight diabetic with high blood pressure. This is the kind of disease that could kill me. I don't want that, either.

But what does that look like? I work in an essential business that became a lot more essential when the panic started to set in. From the beginning, I had to evaluate all the things I was doing and seriously consider what risks I was actually taking. That's why I have been watching these numbers for the last 14 months, and why I'm looking so closely at some derived statistics: my estimates of the number of actively contagious cases, the potential undercount of those cases, and the resulting prevalence within the population. That's the part of the risk equation that I think is usually missing and has people running for their COVID-bunkers. On November 30, 2020, Ohio's worst day of the pandemic, we had 13,123 new cases, sending 489 people to the hospital. To date, Ohio has recorded 1,090,276 COVID cases, almost 10% of the State's population. If my undercount figures are anywhere close to reality, we might have had infections in 33% of the State's population. These are seriously big and scary numbers. The context that is missing from those numbers, in my opinion, is the prevalence. Up to 33% of the State has been infected. But according to my chart, we had our largest number of simultaneous active cases back on December 11, with between 120,628 and 402,093 active cases. That amounts to, at most, 2.5588% of the population, putting your odds of meeting one of the infected people at 1:39. So what do you do with that data? And how do you mitigate that risk? Well, you keep in mind that you want to avoid breathing the same air as that 39th person as much as possible. Incidental contact--short duration, longer distance--is probably okay, while longer durations are increasingly dangerous. I don't mind going to the grocery, but I don't want to wait in line...I'll make another lap of the store rather than stand in a checkstand queue, I'd rather check myself out, and I'm not holding any long conversations. I'm very thankful for the bad press that convinced my company's CEO to back down from his insistence that nobody would be working from home, because sitting in a call center for nine hours is probably the highest risk activity I could undertake, and under those circumstances I would have no interest whatsoever in going to a movie theater or indoor FEC. And at that kind of infection rate, I'm going to be selective about where I sit and in which restaurant. And I am not getting on a bus, train or airplane.

We keep talking about sliders...just because I have been trying to live in a somewhat normal fashion doesn't mean complacency. It means evaluating the decisions I use to live my life and trying to adjust all the inputs to get my risk down to some level that I can accept, and keeping some idea of what risks I don't really have to worry about. I happen to think some of the risks people are concerned about are really not the ones that are the most serious. And of course, the grocery sanitizers will disagree with me. They have a point; after all they haven't died of COVID yet. But then neither have I.

Now, I tend to believe that earlier consensus that vaccination rates are the leading indicator of reduced risk. Nothing will allow you to confidently lick doorknobs like the vaccine. By extension, this removes a massive portion of the population as a transmission vector.

And that's the big difference between now and last September. On September 25th of last year, the active case count, and thus your odds of meeting someone who could infect you, were about the same as they are today. The difference is that back then, at worst 4.7% of the population had been infected, and 0% had been immunized. That means that in a hypothetical group of 420 people you would have one infected person, and 419 potential future infections. Today that same group still has one infected person, but now about 156 of those people are immunized and have a near zero chance of becoming infected. That's only 263 remaining targets, some of whom might have been previously infected and may have some natural immunity. And while Mr. 420 might be lying about his vaccination status and hanging about maskless, that doesn't mean that other mitigations don't still apply: is this a situation where there is a high risk of infection (indoors, close contact, longer duration)? Or is this an incidental contact situation which is actually lower risk? And most important, can you simply remove yourself from the risk pool, either through immunization or through other mitigation strategies you can apply to limit your exposure?

I hope that makes some kind of sense. I'm supposed to be sleeping, in preparation for my first Cedar Point visit in 19 months...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Not hearing good things about CP’s opening weekend...

Do we ever? My kid is going today for the traditional day after prom thing so I'll have a first hand account this evening. I'm pretty sure being with his friends instead of his parents will be more important than what he rides so his expectations probably aren't going to be as high as some people.

^^As far as coronavirus petri dish or things closed/not running?

Oh no, we’ve all but forgotten about that Covid here in Ohio, lol.
It’s more the latter- closed locations, nothing to eat or buy, a beautiful festival that’s hard to access, no employees, and rides that close around 6p in order to empty out queues by closing time (8, even on Saturday)
And that synopsis is purely anecdotal on my part. I didn’t go- I know better than to put up with that nonsense. Oh, I’ll go, I always do, but it’ll be some day when they’re open for daily. And if it still sucks I’ll leave.

The local news networks picked up on a "story" that consisted of someone cutting and pasting Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit comments from frustrated guests, then they decided to actually air something.

Sit back, and hold on tight while you watch.

Feedback from actual humans I interact with who went mostly seemed to have a good time despite the typical first-weekend challenges that were no doubt amplified by, you know, that whole pandemic thing.

Local news just keeps getting ****tier. That's a shame.

Yeah. Sounds like the normal opening weekend hiccups amplified by the pandemic hiring woes everyone is experiencing.

Yeah, I watched the story. We already had reservations for today (Sunday) and decided we would still go. Our expectations were nothing short of a big, fat, steaming disaster. But since we have our season passes and drink plan, and we don't eat in the park, our cost is only for gas.

We had a great time in the park. We never waited more that 20 minutes for a ride, or more than 10 minutes to use our drink plan. Of course we did not attempt any of the Big 4 rides, and the food lines were long, but the day met and exceeded our (admittedly low) expectations.

Opening weekend has been a rough stretch for the last few years. We gave up on it for the last 4 openers. We only decided to go because we have not been in a park for 20 months. Glad we went. It was not nearly as bad as it has been made out to be.

My kid's off of school on Friday, so I'm planning on going up Friday and staying over and going again on Saturday. Hoping that it's not a big **** show. I know it's not gonna be the multiple Steel Vengeance rerides we had last July when the park was completely empty, but I was hoping for a Friday in May that enough people would still be in school that the crowd wouldn't be so bad.

According to the boy the park was busy, there was no skipping rows on anything they rode, mask enforcement indoors didn't really appear to be a thing, and lines for food were long. The friends he went with had meal plans but after half an hour line for food and still not to the counter in the afternoon they decided to call it a day and went to Steak and Shake on the way home. They still have school in the morning anyway.