Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Wow. That's a great way of expressing it.

The fatality rate itself wouldn't be that terrible if it wasn't so contagious. That's a bummer.

The paper that the article draws the data from is linked in the paper. It gives a more granular breakdown by age as to the death rates. I think my age 50-59 is at %0.11. And being optimistic I think I would be less than that since I am at the low end of that age group.

Here's a great (long) explanation of where the world is in terms of vaccines. Lots of different approaches and programs in different stages of development and testing. If any of these make it inside of one year, that would be one of the most extraordinary achievements of human history. I don't think that's exaggerating.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/the-ars-covid-19-vaccine-pr...al-trials/

I know I'm now trending into "harping on this" territory, but:

States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 residents. Thousands died. How it happened.

- At least 3,043 people have died inside New York nursing homes due to COVID-19 complications, or about 17% of the state’s 18,015 deaths as of Wednesday.
- In Pennsylvania, about 65% of coronavirus deaths were nursing home residents, and New Jersey had 3,200 residents of long-term care homes die due to complications from the virus, about 40% of the statewide total.
- About 58% of the deaths in Delaware lived in nursing homes, and 46% of the fatalities in Maryland were at nursing homes, prompting Gov. Larry Hogan to order residents and staff members at nursing homes to be tested for coronavirus.

Those numbers are nuts. And if you subtract them from statewide totals in the examples given (and this isn't all of the deaths from that age group, just the nursing home deaths), you're looking at a very different pandemic.

I still posit that this is the key to the necessary segregation...err, quarantining...that needs to happen.

If we changed how (who?) we're locking down, could we achieve herd immunity way faster and with minimal risk...while maintaing a greater degree of "normality" overall?

I've wondered this for weeks. Is it really productive to quarantine or "shelter in place" an entire healthy population?

I also was thinking of this this week and figured I'd post it here. It cracks me up when folks are still calling this a "quarantine" or "lockdown". Even at its strongest, it's been nothing more than a "stay at home suggestion". That I was able to get Krispy Kreme drive thru and had to wait 20 minutes for the privilege after going to check my office mail and getting Beefy King for lunch in the height of this hardly is being locked down. Yeah, we've all made some sacrifices and some of us have chosen different courses of action for their own personal situations. And obviously the economical impact is scary and sad. But we've yet to be locked down.

I wouldn't look at it strictly through the lens of fatalities. One of the things that affect the fatality rate is the availability of treatment. If the hospitalization rate is 15%, the system still gets overwhelmed. As it is, recall that death rates from non-Covid problems have spiked in places like Italy, NY/NJ, Detroit and rural areas with high infection rates. People aren't even doing wellness visits right now, which is the thing where you get that scary mole looked at or the doctor hears something off in your chest. My point is that if you let it spread by getting people out into the world, you still overwhelm the healthcare system because the hospitalization rate is still high. We've seen that in action, and it's why hospitals are still fighting to get the most basic gear.

I have to agree with Brett though about the "lockdown" drama. If you're not working in a service industry, I suspect that life hasn't dramatically changed for you beyond not going to restaurants. That, and obviously theme parks, is the only real change we're "enduring." We were already pretty much getting everything delivered before.

Here's data I have for several states that, according to the IHME model, have passed their peak resource days:

Florida (peak, as of now, was April 19th): 1503 general beds needed (20,184 available) and 459 ICU beds needed (1696 available)

Georgia (peak was 04/28): 1805/8323 general, 434/590 ICU

California (peak was 04/19): 2731/26,654 and 722/1994

Texas (peak was 04/29): 1209/28,634 and 303/2260

Some other early adopters, like Ohio, fared well, too.

New York and New Jersey, obviously, overshot both numbers. Maryland, Louisiana, and Michigan overshot on ICU. Not sure how MD, an early adopter of restrictions, overshot ICU needs.

Suffice to say, overwhelmed hospitals were/are not the norm in a lot of places. As I mentioned earlier, I think New York gets treated like the poster child for what inevitably happens if you let it run unchecked, and I'll at least concede that the three states I mentioned as overshooting on ICU only do raise some questions given that they aren't necessarily massive (and we all know what happened in Louisiana), but conversely, you have Florida and Texas, which were in a way considered slackers, still manage to enjoy an impressive success rate. I'd like to think they can enjoy a bit of leeway in the spread of this as a result of easing restrictions without hitting their resource capacity. I'm not suggesting full release of restrictions, but my point is that the system at least has some degree of give (though Georgia came really close to maxing out on ICU beds).

Source, since it's been a while since I've linked to it: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/louisiana

Louisiana was the last one I checked, but you can always tweak the state, or even country, that you want.

Can't speak for resource availability even in the states that avoided getting overwhelmed, but I can understand concerns stemming from that. I just wonder how universal those problems actually are, so I'd welcome any data that breaks down that information.

Florida and Texas were state slackers, but the local counties and municipalities were not. That's why the outcomes were better.

It's reasonable to conclude that stronger mitigation efforts yielded better results. I keep seeing critics say, "See it wasn't that bad," well, yeah, because people stayed home.

That still seems oversimplified to me. Call me a critic, I guess

Obviously, staying apart helps when dealing with something that's contagious or spreads between people. But it's just one piece of an insanely complex puzzle.

I think both will end up being true to some degree. It wasn't that bad...and keeping apart made it even better in some places. (and that's still oversimplifying it)

My thoughts also turn to the "what about the second wave?" thoughts and how that impacts travel and activity in, say, October. Let's say things are going well, folks are back to work, theme parks are open, stadiums are open at half capacity, etc. Do we proactively shut down again just because we think a second wave is about to hit over the winter? Or do we wait and see?

Jeff said:

One of the things that affect the fatality rate is the availability of treatment. If the hospitalization rate is 15%, the system still gets overwhelmed. ...My point is that if you let it spread by getting people out into the world, you still overwhelm the healthcare system because the hospitalization rate is still high.

Is there data on these numbers, specifically fatality rates with/without hospitalization? The 15% overwhelming value? Hospitalization rates?

Jeff said:

I have to agree with Brett though about the "lockdown" drama. If you're not working in a service industry, I suspect that life hasn't dramatically changed for you beyond not going to restaurants. That, and obviously theme parks, is the only real change we're "enduring." We were already pretty much getting everything delivered before.

That the only things you are missing out on are restaurants and amusement parks seems awful. A few examples from our family: the high school play that our youngest son was playing Col Mustard in, the steel drum concert in our township, my nephews high school graduation (he is the valedictorian), several friends with kids who missed out on their 18th birthday party, our oldest at OSU did not get to do classroom observations this semester nor did he get to play/practice in front of his music instructor (yes he did the zoom thing but it is not the same as having a hands on lesson), the bell choir that my son and I are in, Boy Scout campouts, our annual spring break trip to Hilton Head, basic human interactions in public. So while I do agree that this is not really a quarantine, I think for many people there is a whole lot of life that is being missed out on.

I'm missing a cruise to Alaska, but I wouldn't categorize that as routine. I have one child who is 10 with ASD who frankly doesn't miss school where the kids are mean to him. My wife's work is seasonal anyway. So yeah, it could have otherwise been six weeks from last year. Does that make my life awful?

It may make your experience an outlier.

All around me people are being laid off, businesses endangered, missing critical events, all those things you hear about. I, on the other hand, got a raise, have missed exactly (1) day of work (due to an illness that I don't think was COVID-19), and am now working from home (and liking it a lot) even after the company I worked for said they would never allow us to work from home.
I'm sure having several people in the building test positive for COVID-19 and one person actually die from it probably influenced the work-from-home decision, but still...I work in an essential business (especially with people trying to work/school/worship/meet/buy stuff from home) and the biggest change for me is that I am driving less, gas is cheaper, I'm not eating out for lunch, and I am buying a ton more groceries. Except toilet paper, which mysteriously is still mostly unavailable.

So my experience is an outlier, too.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I teach (maybe a service industry?) and pastor (also maybe a service industry) and things couldn't be more different. The biggest change is that my kids are home and we've had to self-furlough in order to make sure they're doing their work. Here in CA, though, we have fairly strict guidelines about "no leaving the home except essential stuff" and since we're abiding by that, it means that we haven't started a car more than once a week and that's pretty much just to go to the grocery store.

As for the IHME model, it's pretty much the most optimistic of all the models and if you've been following it the last 3 or so weeks, they've regularly been adjusting their model to make it more in line with reality. Like, I remember the day we hit 50,000 deaths and we getting 2k a day and the IHME model was still predicting 60,000 total by August. I think the next day they adjusted it to 67,000. I think now they're predicting 72k deaths by August, and we just hit 63,000 and have been consistently seeing ~2k per day (average) for three weeks. I don't know what they think is going to happen in the next 4 days, but I'm skeptical. If you care for FiveThirtyEight, here's some thoughts on various models and their aggregataion. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/

As for segregating a particular portion of the population (I think nursing homes is what's being advocated here), I think that's a great idea if there's a way to actually do it. If having *everyone* shelter in place led to outbreaks in a few nursing homes, what could we do that would prevent outbreaks in many/most/all nursing homes? If we're seeing that asymptomatic infection is very real and very widespread, and we decide we're going to let 60-70% of the low risk population get it, I have no idea how you prevent the virus from getting into every nursing home before they get vaccinated.

Higher academia is not a comfortable place to be right now. So far, my institution is weathering the storm, but some less well-managed colleges near us are taking measures like 25% pay-cuts (regardless of tenure/status), layoffs, hiring freezes, adjunct firings...

If we are not face-to-face by the fall, I am officially worried.

I have talked with a number of businesses in various industries and impacts vary. Some service industry companies are running full out (some increasing in volume). Others are pretty much shutdown. And everywhere in between. Some manufacturers are running normally (some with extra shifts/production). Others shutdown. And everywhere in between.

And because you can either operate pretty much at 100% capacity remotely or are deemed essential to allow continued operations does not necessarily mean the demand is there. People who still have jobs are tending to spend less (particularly on big ticket items). A lot of entities have spending freezes/postponed capital projects. And as the economy opens back up, I expect a lot of that reduced demand to continue (for a least some period of time -- particularly if there is another outbreak/wave).

Our building closed to the public March 18 and we started working remotely March 26. I'd also agree that things couldn't be more different. Working with the public and managing a group of volunteers (many who are 65+) it has been a month and a half since I have seen and worked with people I typically see every day. That's huge. Add in the cancelled spring and summer park trips, working grocery delivery for extra "just in case" money, and essentially uprooting my entire work and social routine and everything has changed. Plus we have cancelled enough events and work where we are all on edge about the budget for next fiscal year and what that looks like for staff. Keeping even mundane routines and having the ability to look ahead to things like work events, weekly meetups with friends, and bigger things like vacation are critical for my mental health. Having all of that blown up and the uncertain future has been anything but normal. I absolutely get it. But it hasn't been easy or normal.

And I know anyone that has been laid off, furloughed, or become ill or had a loved one become ill or pass away would give anything to trade with what are my minor discomforts through this.

What concerns me is the optimism. It seems unfounded. With no vaccine, no reliable treatment, we're not really in a different place than we were two months ago. The "immunity" hope is based on the as of yet unmeasured immunity of the previously infected, and we don't know how immune anyone is or for how long. And for that to matter, 70-90% of people need to have the immunity. In the US, we're at 0.3% of the population. Even if 100 times the people have been infected because they were asymptomatic, that only gets us to 30%.

I get the fiscal carnage. In my line of work, it just depends on what industry you're connected to. I'm glad I didn't take that contract job with Disney, obviously. I don't see how my wife goes back to work before the end of the year, as theaters and performing arts centers are likely the last things to open.

I'd have to go digging for the article, but I could've sworn I saw something where South Korea was reporting that folks who had it weren't relapsing.

As for the optimism, I think it stems from the general joy of having some options for getting back out in the world as well as the flattening of the curve, the whole reason for which these shutdowns were allegedly implemented, which was achieved in many cases with a far better outcome than predicted. Not everywhere, of course, as the overall death count has already exceeded many predictions, but in many places. Also, while it doesn't appear that there's a cure-all, I think the encouraging results of some treatments warrants optimism.

Quite honestly, I'm more surprised at all the pessimism. I get that there still is a risk, but I also think that reopening is quickly becoming more of a need than a desire. I also think that we have to accept that of the four options we really have to get past this (total disappearance, herd immunity, cure, or vaccine), the only really balanced, and dare I say controllable, option is herd immunity. It could very well be the most efficient, but that really depends on how many people actually have it and what its spread will be like in an overall sense. I just don't think staying shut down until one of the other three options is realized is doable without the severe consequences we've already gone on about numerous times.