Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Jeff said:

And please, Beaver Creek had a dewpoint of 69 today. But South FL is a little worse.

Ten degrees is the difference between uncomfortable and miserable in terms of dewpoints...and dewpoints approaching 80 are limited to the ****tiest places on Earth...like Florida. No one in their right mind tolerates this.

Right now the dewpoint back home is 63, it's 77 here. Even at the same temperature, the difference in feel is momumental.

And wearing a mask outside is about as unpleasant as it gets. I absolutely get not wanting to visit a park right now. There's no way I'd be able to do it for any extended period of time.

We all make choices. I wouldn't live in South Florida, but I can roll with two humid months in Orlando instead of four months of gray winter in Ohio.

Florida sucks, you can have your swamp ass and constant wetness. I'll keep my 8-9 months of nice weather and 3 of snow.

Anyway, I got everyone jumping down my throat for even thinking that herd immunity would ever be possible without vaccine but then I stumbled across this today.

Population immunity is slowing down the pandemic in parts of the US

Sure confirmation bias, whatever you want to call it, but all I wanted to do was toss an experts thoughts into the mix that I had alignment with.

As long as we're scoreboarding on weather, today's forecast for sunny North Texas: high of 103 with a dew point around 75. You Florida people can suck it. And those high temperatures stick around through the weekend. It's forecast to be a brisk 94 degrees on Monday.

The article still assumes social distancing.

“However, this level of immunity is not compatible with a full return to societal behavior as existed before the pandemic.”

Even if you estimate 10% of people have been infected, the idea that this creates any kind of effective immunity is absurd. And yay, infection rates are down in Orange County, but still 10x of what it was two month ago. We have a weird criteria for "winning," which is probably why we're losing. We've yet to master testing, let alone contact tracing.

The oft quoted comparison to driving is wholly silly, and even more absurd if you're subsampling fatalities by age. You can't isolate people by age in either case. Furthermore, and I don't know why we have to keep repeating this, your odds get worse if the infection rate gets worse. There's no universe where driving becomes more dangerous because there are 10x or 20x more people driving, ever. Sure, 1 in 100 people die from the virus, but your odds are zero if you're not one of the 100 people in the first place.

Also, probably don't get hung up on death alone. Getting it and surviving very often has a significant cost that does not go away. I mean, 20-somethings getting lung transplants because the virus trashes their lungs? I don't wish that on anyone.

Lord Gonchar said:

Right now the dewpoint back home is 63

If you were home you would be a sticky Gonch

A sticky Gonch is better than a miserable Gonch yes?

Jeff said:

We all make choices. I wouldn't live in South Florida, but I can roll with two humid months in Orlando instead of four months of gray winter in Ohio.

Which Central Florida are you living in where we only have two months of humid swamp ass a year? I want to move there.

Jeff said:

Even if you estimate 10% of people have been infected, the idea that this creates any kind of effective immunity is absurd.

Agreed, 10% is probably not enough, what number is, I'm sure that has been attempted to be calculated and there are always different variables that will affect those numbers. But an immune person is better than one who isn't.

The oft quoted comparison to driving is wholly silly, and even more absurd if you're subsampling fatalities by age. You can't isolate people by age in either case. Furthermore, and I don't know why we have to keep repeating this, your odds get worse if the infection rate gets worse. There's no universe where driving becomes more dangerous because there are 10x or 20x more people driving, ever. Sure, 1 in 100 people die from the virus, but your odds are zero if you're not one of the 100 people in the first place. Also, probably don't get hung up on death alone. Getting it and surviving very often has a significant cost that does not go away. I mean, 20-somethings getting lung transplants because the virus trashes their lungs? I don't wish that on anyone.

Same goes for any other activity, I jump out of airplanes, my chute doesn't open, I could die, or I could survive with long term complications, or I could survive with no long term effects. Replace jumping out of airplanes with whatever you choose. Do we have data and number on death/survived with complications/survived with no complications? Then what do we define as a complication? Also, major complication to one person could be minor inconvenience to another. Again, easier to remove the variables and look at things from concrete numbers, death is binary and easy to use as a measure because there aren't shades of grey.

The other thing about comparing a viral outbreak and pretty much any other form of death is that there's zero chance that "other form of death" will grow exponentially over the next six months. I mean, whatever you want to compare to Covid: cancer, heart disease, car accidents etc. the ceiling on deaths caused by each of those is 110% (total BS number pulled straight out of my butt) of last year. Like, we're not going to see a doubling or tripling or worse of the number of cancer deaths or car accidents if we return to normal societal functioning.

That's why the initial flu comparison (which is obviously now totally incorrect) was so ridiculous, even in March when Covid had only killed 5,000. There was no chance that the flu was ever going to kill 100,000 and there was (now even more obvious in retrospect) a substantial chance that Covid would kill 50,000 or even 500,000 people.

We can't sit around and look at how many people Covid has killed to determine what we should be doing. We have to look at how many people Covid has the potential to kill. And that's many, many times more than car accidents, flu, and even cancer or heart disease if we really screw the pooch. That's why we should drastically change our behavior for Covid and not for car accidents. Changing behavior for Covid could save half a million lives and will definitely save many tens of thousands. Changing behavior for car accidents could save, what, ten thousand?

Immunity is good. I hope it does slow the spread and improves our "normalcy vs. safety" trade off across the board, but even the experts in the article aren't fully convinced that the decline in transmission rate is due to immunity and not to increased intervention. Let's hope it's the former but plan like it's the latter because....wait for it.....hope is not a strategy.

Edit: This post originally took a "community health" perspective, but I suppose an "individual health" perspective is also relevant because saving other people apparently isn't a good motivator: The same logic about exponential growth applies. Up to this point, you might be 13x more likely to die in a car accident, but that's like arguing that in March you were 1300x more likely to die from a car accident than Covid. The more the virus spreads the more 45 y.o. fatalities we'll see from Covid and the more that number will drop. Who knows what the final number will be, but it's not unreasonable to think that if 50% of the population gets the disease, a 45 year old will be equally likely to die from a car accident as from corona virus (and, incidentally, Great Aunt Mae will be 100x more likely to die of Covid). We can't look at the current chance of 45 year old Covid death vs. current chance of 45 year old car accident death. We have to look at the potential 45 year old Covid death and it could/will be much worse if the disease continues to spread.

ApolloAndy said:

The other thing about comparing a viral outbreak and pretty much any other form of death is that there's zero chance that "other form of death" will grow exponentially over the next six months. I mean, whether you want to compare Covid, cancer, heart disease, car accidents etc. the ceiling on deaths caused by each of those is 110% (total BS number pulled straight out of my butt) of last year. Like, we're not going to see a doubling or tripling or worse of the number of cancer deaths or car accidents if we return to normal societal functioning.

Covid can grow exponentially, the case count can grow exponentially, the deaths can grow exponentially. However, unless something changes with the virus, the mortality rate should remain relatively the same. We have ~6 months of data, it should be a large enough sample to get a decently accurate per capita death rate. I don't care if the virus infects 100 or 100 million, you should still see x deaths per 100,000 for those under 45. One area that might change this number is for those who are school aged, if enough of them have not been infected to get an accurate per capita death count. Exponential deaths are very different than exponential death rates.

We can't sit around and look at how many people Covid has killed to determine what we should be doing. We have to look at how many people Covid has the potential to kill. And that's many, many times more than car accidents, flu, and even cancer or heart disease if we really screw the pooch. That's why we should drastically change our behavior for Covid and not for car accidents.

So your last sentence tells me that you accept the death rate for MV incidents and that we shouldn't worry about changing our behaviors to attempt to lower that.

Maybe, this is because we have all grown up driving and being transported on the road, maybe we are very accepting of that risk, covid is a new risk, one which didn't exist last year. Many people are concerned about it, however if covid still exists in 10 or 20 or 30 years and we don't have a vaccine I would venture to guess at some point we are going to cross the threshold of "we need to change our behavior", to, "it is what it is" and it will become just another normal risk for society. When the automobile was introduced there were probably a bunch of people who felt it was too dangerous and wouldn't engage in using one. No different than covid today.

Immunity is good. I hope it does slow the spread and improves our "normalcy vs. safety" trade off across the board, but even the experts in the article aren't fully convinced that the decline in transmission rate is due to immunity and not to increased regulation.

There will absolutely be a decline in transmission because of people being infected. That is a mathematical certainty, just a matter of, how much will it cause the infection rate to decline? If we know the r0 we could most likely model transmission rates for various population rates with differing levels of immunity. I just don't have the interest in devoting my time and energy into doing those calculations.

We will change and adapt, eventually we will settle into various practices that will reduce risk. Those practices are still being crafted and adopted or rejected. The country as a whole will make the decision as to what is acceptable and not acceptable levels of risk and the practices we feel like engaging in vs those we don't. The guarantee is that you can pick 10 people and get ten different answers on what they feel is the right course of action. Eventually everyone will settle into a new practice given enough time. Whatever level of protection that provides is what we will have, and the risk will be whatever it is. One person will not change the minds of 328 million people.

If I was 85 years old I would probably think twice about going to a public place. However I am not, and so I continue with my life and try to have fun and enjoy it, rather than consume my day with worrying about whether someone else is wearing a mask, or who sneezed where, or what the latest information from a different expert is.

I'll just tackle the first part, because I don't know what to do with "I'm not 85, so I don't care" and "Eventually, after lots of preventable deaths, we'll establish a new normal."

***I accept motor vehicles fatalities because we're not going to save significant lives (maybe 10,000?) with significant change in behavior. I do not accept Covid fatalities because we could save hundreds of thousands with significant change in behavior.*** This is the point that I keep making.

We agree that the mortality rate isn't going to change. Let's assume its 2.276%. That's for 45 y.o.s who are infected. If 1% got infected (too late) we would only have seen .02276% of 45y.o.s die. If we are now able to limit the infection to 10% of the population, then .2276% of 45 y.o.s will die. If 50% of the population gets infected, 1.138% of 45 y.o.s will die. If 100% (I know, herd immunity, blah, blah) of people get infected 2.276% of 45 y.o.s will die.

The point is that (I feel silly stating this but I guess it needs to be said explicitly?) the more people who contract the disease, the more people have to dodge the 2.276% and if we limit the spread then we limit the number of people who have to roll the dice and limit the total number of deaths.

TheMillenniumRider said:
Why can't I make comparisons.

I explained why. Andy explained it further. The inputs are different, the risk changes based on infection rate, which we can mitigate.

Furthermore, and I don't know why we have to keep repeating this, your odds get worse if the infection rate gets worse. There's no universe where driving becomes more dangerous because there are 10x or 20x more people driving, ever. Sure, 1 in 100 people die from the virus, but your odds are zero if you're not one of the 100 people in the first place.

Maybe my definition of swamp-ass season is different in Orlando, but to me it's July and August. It's not four months of winter even if you double the time.

Anyone seen the recent New Zealand article?

Can someone explain how they went 100+ days with no domestic cases and then had an outbreak triggered by a family of four who had not traveled overseas or had any connection to any known cases?

ApolloAndy said:

We agree that the mortality rate isn't going to change. Let's assume its 2.276%. That's for 45 y.o.s who are infected. If 1% got infected (too late) we would only have seen .02276% of 45y.o.s die. If we are now able to limit the infection to 10% of the population, then .2276% of 45 y.o.s will die. If 50% of the population gets infected, 1.138% of 45 y.o.s will die. If 100% (I know, herd immunity, blah, blah) of people get infected 2.276% of 45 y.o.s will die.

The point is that (I feel silly stating this but I guess it needs to be said explicitly?) the more people who contract the disease, the more people have to dodge the 2.276% and if we limit the spread then we limit the number of people who have to roll the dice and limit the total number of deaths.

I have no problem agreeing with these statements. Regardless of who is infected, the risk once infected remains constant (more or less). That's the problem with per capita numbers. We are assuming 100% infection. The change comes from probabilities, that is a much harder number to generate. The risk never really changes much. That's why I use those numbers because they are easy to work with and quickly make some simple calculations.

Probability of infection is a whole other beast. I can stay home and for the most part guarantee that I won't get infected. It is possible to completely isolate from the world. My probably is now near 0.

I can go about my life and my probability will range from 0-1

I can go dry hump like mad at the frat parties and 'merica and all that jazz and possibly get my probability to near 1.

Multiply that mess by 328 million and the infection rate and give me a number. Good luck. :p

Lets look at New Zealand, they were the model, no deaths, no cases. Then out of the blue cases started popping up. This is the problem, you take a model country and they haven't eradicated it. Even if we were a model country we wouldn't eradicate it. If we develop a vaccine which works and the virus doesn't mutate we *might* eradicate it, but we have only ever done that with one disease.

Our other option is to learn to live with it, personally I think this is the likely option, what does that look like in 10 years I don't know. Depending on vaccines it might be very simple like most other diseases.

What I can more or less bet on is that people are selfish to some degree. Most people simply don't care enough about other randoms in their day to concern themselves heavily with limiting exposure. Andy you said it yourself early on that this isn't some disease in a far off land, if it was none of us would even care much about it. If I promised you none of your family or friends would die and you could ignore all modifications to your daily routine because of this virus would you? This is just one more sliding scale to add to the mix. Many of us on this site get all worked up over "why can't they wear a mask", "why can't they stay home", "why oh why can't they stop dry humping"? The sad reality is that the vast majority in this country simply don't care about the other person. We can discuss this to death, but it isn't going to change anything.

Another thing I can say will most likely happen in time is eventually people will tire of wearing masks, we do it now because we are trying to get over the hump. But if the virus exists for years and wearing a mask is a thing for years, eventually the population will get sick of it and masks will largely stop being a thing.

So, that being my take, I go on with my life, I don't care what the media says, or how many new cases are popping up today, I just enjoy my day, do my best to follow what is asked of me, and I move on with life.

Shades said:

Anyone seen the recent New Zealand article?

Can someone explain how they went 100+ days with no domestic cases and then had an outbreak triggered by a family of four who had not traveled overseas or had any connection to any known cases?

I'm no expert, I think it was said it came from outside the country and through work exposure. However, there have been cases of coronavirus infecting dogs and initially it came from an animal host. If every human on earth was corona free, it could still be alive and well in a non human host and jump back over to us once again. Was it a one time oddity of a mutations that allowed that jump or is it much easier than that?

TheMillenniumRider said:

Multiply that mess by 328 million and the infection rate and give me a number. Good luck. :p

That's actually a fairly straightforward thing to model. It's hard to calculate, but you can create a pretty basic model and if you set a few assumptions (the hard part) it will do all the math for you. That's why the CDC uses 34 (I think) models and can see some of the broader trend lines, even when they disagree. Spoiler alert: the more people interact with each other, especially without masks and indoors, the greater the probability of infection and transmission.

Another thing I can say will most likely happen in time is eventually people will tire of wearing masks, we do it now because we are trying to get over the hump. But if the virus exists for years and wearing a mask is a thing for years, eventually the population will get sick of it and masks will largely stop being a thing.

Or people will just get used to it. Asian counties have had mask-wearing as a normal part culture for decades and it's just as normal as putting on deodorant. Spoiler alert 2: They fared much better than we did against corona virus.

The sad reality is that the vast majority in this country simply don't care about the other person...If I promised you none of your family or friends would die and you could ignore all modifications to your daily routine because of this virus would you?

If I were still a risk of transmission to other people, then I would do my part to prevent the spread to my neighbors because I'm not a selfish a-hole. Not being a selfish a-hole isn't a specifically Christian thing (I think most religions, philosophies, and half competent parents teach it), but I've never understood how so many people who claim Christianity (not directed at anyone specifically on here) can then turn around and not care at all about how their actions affect the people around them. Like that seems like a basic level of human decency and the fact that we even have to discuss it is so discouraging to me.

However, I won't take some else's entitled, selfish, a-holeness as an excuse for me to then do likewise. I choose to do my part, I choose to inform myself, and I choose to care about my neighbor, even if that neighbor doesn't care about me.

I don't get the automobile death comparison. How many people have been in a car in the last year? Probably close to everybody.

How many people have had Covid 19? Not close to everybody.

Besides driving has become significantly safer over the years based on the number of miles driven and deaths per million people. Fun graphic

Maybe to take a more positive approach on my previous post:

Instead of sitting around staring at (and worrying about) the selfish, entitled a-holes and using them as a justification for me to do the same, I prefer to look at the people who are going above and beyond to help and use them as an inspiration for me to do the same.