New Zealand Reinstates Coronavirus Restrictions After First Locally-Transmitted Case in 102 Days (cnn.com) 229
schwit1 shares a report: New Zealand has reintroduced coronavirus restrictions in parts of the country after new locally transmitted cases broke the 102-day streak the country had gone without recording a local infection. New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed four new locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Tuesday night, and announced that New Zealand's most populous city, Auckland, will temporarily see level three restrictions introduced for three days starting from midday on Wednesday. All four of the cases were found within one household in South Auckland according to New Zealand's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. He added that none of the new cases had recently traveled outside of New Zealand. "We have been preparing for that time, and that time is now," said Dr Bloomfield adding that the "health system is well prepared." "In line with our precautionary approach we will be asking Aucklanders to take swift actions with us, as of 12 noon tomorrow, Wednesday August 12, we will be moving Auckland to level 3 restrictions," said Ardern.
Hidden Reservoirs (Score:5, Insightful)
This strongly suggests that we'll never be rid of COVID-19. The article notes that the person hadn't traveled and wasn't known to be in contact with someone who did. That means for more than 3 months COVID-19 either was in one infectious individual with no symptoms, or more likely, was still spreading unnoticed among the populace.
One person got symptoms, got tested, and suddenly we find that 3 of their family members are asymptomatic. That suggests a much higher percentage of asymptomatic spreaders than anyone has really been suggesting, as far as I'm aware.
Three months of spreading without anyone showing symptoms is a long damn time. It suggests that once we go back to some sort of normal that we'll definitely have pockets popping up regularly. That's going to make mass gatherings, whether for school, entertainment, or business less enticing for a lot of people. That in turn hinders a return to some normalcy.
God is this pandemic depressing.
Re:Hidden Reservoirs (Score:5, Informative)
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suddenly we find that 3 of their family members are asymptomatic
You know that how? Has a sufficient amount of time elapsed to conclude they weren't pre-symptomatic? How long ago did this testing happen?
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"historic recollection of a past event using slow-ass commoner logistics measuring a past infection"
What? The tests took place yesterday. How is it "a historic recollection"?
We're buying time for a Vaccine (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line, we can stop pandemics, but it means some very large changes to how we run our society. And there are a lot of people who just plain don't want to do that. They'd rather live with the pandemics and the deaths and the lingering side effects.
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There are always going to be novel pathogens. Evolution is a thing; viruses and bacteria continue to evolve, develop novel traits, and continue to propagate. Eventually they burn themselves out, but what we can choose to do is to take measures that make getting from Point A to Point C less damaging overall, by trying to suppress Point B.
Just because we've built a world of concrete skyscrapers, a sort of psychological wall against nature, doesn't mean we aren't still part of the natural world. When you think
I didn't say there wasn't (Score:3)
Vaccines, for example, are surprisingly unprofitable, and as mentioned a whole lot of research was done on general purpose vaccines going into the SARs pandemic and then dropped like a bad habit as soon as the panic stopped.
The Black Death isn't exactly a good example. People pr
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<sarcasm>What? Get out there and bust your ass, you loser! My stonks are falling!</sarcasm> [bandcamp.com]
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But again, we've got a shit ton of people who don't want to make any changes to anything and to devil with the consequences.
What? That's a bunch of crap.
We love change! We change all the time! Just look at all of the civil unrest about racial injustice in the US right now! That's new. We've never seen anything like that before!
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Bottom line, we can stop pandemics, but it means some very large changes to how we run our society. And there are a lot of people who just plain don't want to do that. They'd rather live with the pandemics and the deaths and the lingering side effects.
Change? But I fear change!
We must just act like it doesn't exist, and it'll just go away and not affect us (or rather, me, personally), because...reasons.
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Or we can just...not freak out about the damn flu. I had COVID-19. Wasn't that bad. Not worth canceling western civilization over.
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For about 99.5% of people, it kind of was, yeah.
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They do, but it's like .5% of people. Probably not worth ending western civilization over, but whatev.
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There are lots of treatments, my nephew is sucking down tea made of boiled ginger, onions, garlic and huacatai (an Andean herb). Of course most of those treatments aren't any better than a placebo, and some, like massive doses of quinine, are actually worse than not doing anything.
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Thinking about this some more, if it holds up that it was out there spreading and only after 3 months did a case get symptomatic enough for someone to go to the hospital, I bet this thing has been around for a lot longer than anyone is suspecting.
If one person got sick enough to go see a doctor in January of 2019, nobody would have even considered that it was a new disease. It doesn't matter what country they were in. And if another showed up in March or April of 2019, even the same doctor wouldn't likely m
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Thinking about this some more, if it holds up that it was out there spreading and only after 3 months did a case get symptomatic enough for someone to go to the hospital, I bet this thing has been around for a lot longer than anyone is suspecting.
It seems to me that a disease that spreads silently for several months but suddenly causes an influx of so many severe cases that it overwhelms hospitals are two diametrically opposed concepts. The only way I see it working is if people are pre-symptomatic for several weeks. Perhaps 14 days of quarantine isn't long enough.
It's all speculation at this point. We have to wait for the data before we jump to any conclusions.
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It seems to me that a disease that spreads silently for several months but suddenly causes an influx of so many severe cases that it overwhelms hospitals are two diametrically opposed concepts.
So you don't understand exponential growth?
It's all a numbers game. Lets suppose 1 in 100 get sick enough to go to the hospital, and you double cases every week. When you hit 1,000 people with this, only 10 are going to the hospital. A month later you're looking at 80, and the month after that 1,280. Spread 10 people over a month going to the hospital and mix them with all of the other people in there for all the other reasons, and I bet they're pretty much invisible. Send 300+ people to the hospital with t
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2. New Zealand knows what they are looking for, and are much more vigilant.
3. 1% getting sick enough to go to the hospital seems like a massive underestimate, and is off by an order of magnitude vs. the paper you cite.
4. Exponential growth with the rates you are spouting means there should be close to 200 people going to hospitals in New Zealand with COVID-19. We have evidence of one.
5. Exponen
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Honestly, I'll wager it was probably making the rounds last fall, but like anything that functions on a logarithmic growth scale, it takes time to build up critical mass. Let's imagine the virus first started making the rounds in Wuhan in early December (might have been earlier, but we don't know). That means there symptomatic carriers early on, but that because it behaves to some extent, at least in the early infection, like any number of more typical contagious diseases, no one would have thought any more
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Seems iffy. Because we've also seen that when this thing hits a concentration of vulnerable folks like in an old age home, it's not something anyone can miss.
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So NZ doesn't have old age homes? Or did they somehow lock them down so hard the last 3 months that nobody carrying this got in?
Those seem to be the only explanations for how this could lurk silently among the population given your position.
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I think it's far more likely someone snuck into the country undetected. There may have been a few asymptomatic cases from that person until this one now. However, 3 months in a row of asymptomatic
Re:Hidden Reservoirs (Score:4, Insightful)
People are still coming into NZ from outside the country. So it's much more likely that a quarantine was ineffective than that there was still a smoldering infection somewhere on the islands
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People are still coming into NZ from outside the country. So it's much more likely that a quarantine was ineffective than that there was still a smoldering infection somewhere on the islands
Yes, I don't understand how so many people are convinced COVID-19 spreading unnoticed for 3 months is the most logical conclusion.
Stay Tuned (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. The official government briefing on the case can be found here. [beehive.govt.nz]
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The New Zealand government has been very open, and has more success containing COVID-19 than any other nation.
While New Zealand has done relatively well compared to most other countries in the world, several other countries have been more successful.
For example, Taiwan has a cumulative per capita death rate 15x lower than New Zealand, also without shutting down the economy.
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Yeah, all of those "look at New Zealand" articles (Score:5, Interesting)
... were tempting fate. Cases will randomly continue to slip past any system. What matters is that you demonstrate the ability to stamp them out. We had an outbreak here recently, for example [covid.is], 20 days after our last one's last local transmission. Looks like it's getting back under control - but of course one doesn't want to speak too soon.
It's not entirely clear how the current outbreak got into the country. The last one was some Romanian burglars who came to the country, were supposed to be quarantined, but immediately broke quarantine to go rob some flats. There were no "unknown source" community transmission cases there, however, so it wasn't a serious threat. Our current outbreak was more problematic as genetic studies showed two people who didn't know each other had somehow acquired virtually identical strains, one tracing back to the other, meaning that there was an unknown infected go-between. So we've had to tighten regulations - max gathering size down from 500 to 100, business enforcement on social distancing, masks on buses for the first time, etc. And of course back to much higher testing rates, both of suspected cases, as well as random sampling the population to see how common the disease actually is and to catch latent pockets.
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The landmark "doesn't lessen any of the risk" of another spike in infections, Ms Ardern said. "One hundred days is a milestone to mark but, again, we still need to be vigilant regardless," she added.
BBC [bbc.com]
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Dude if their contact tracing is at the point (Score:3)
Here in America our contact tracing consists of tracing contacts between Mr Idano & Weedlord Bonerhitler and a school board in Georgia who, I shit you not, proposed moving kids around the class every 14 minutes to bypass a policy requiring them to contact parents when their kid sat next to a positive case for > 15 minutes.
Likely from airport/quarantine workers (Score:2)
The detection is in south Auckland which is where the primary airport for managing international quarantining is located. Which makes it the most likely area of where reintroduction will come from.
Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to go about my day to day life until there are treatments and a vaccine. That means my dollars aren't going to be going about day to day life either. No eating out. No movie theaters. No travel. It's not worth a double lung transplant [cnn.com] or brain fog [sciencemag.org] and fatigue for who knows how long.
That means guys like you trying to force the economy back open are going to fail miserably. You'll end up making the pandemic worse, which will make guys like me continue to hunker down and spend no money, wrecking your economy.
If you don't like it, spend more money on public health. This pandemic was completely avoidable but we've been knee deep in "Austerity" since 2008 and have woefully underfunded public health initiatives. There are consequences.
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I think the studies really are saying that whatever you do, don’t half-ass it— you need to be consistent in message and strategy.
In Month 5, Sweden’s strategy seems to be proving itself out pretty well; they have a pretty good immunity level and people and businesses are functioning pretty much as normal with almost no restrictions. They might face a challenge now with people coming back to work from summer vacations, but they are doing generally well. ...and of course, no matter what you
Re:Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:5, Insightful)
Um.
You seriously consider 83,126 cases for 10,343,403 population to be "pretty good immunity level"?
Recall, Sweden's goal was herd immunity by June 1st.
Herd immunity for Covid19 requires 75%-80% of the population to be infected before you can return to concerts, conventions, and other large gatherings. And even then infections continue at a lower rate until over 90% of the population is infected.
A blood antigen study showed 7.3% in Stockholm, 3.7% in the next two largest cities, and below 3.7% in the rest of the country. The national rate is under 3.7%. That means they are 1/20th of the way to herd immunity.
It's clear the swedish people got the message: The government is going to let you die and so they have gone to ground.
As a result, at a minimum, on April 30th "The National Institute for Economic Research (NIER) said in a statement Wednesday that it believed that Sweden's economy is set to shrink 7% this year and unemployment to rise to 10.2%." It's gotten worse since then.
By rushing things- Sweden got a lot of old people killed before treatments were figured out. So their population shut itself down.
But they don't have "pretty good immunity".
If they were really open, they'd have more infections- and more deaths than they are reporting. Right now only 1/122 swedish citizens are officially infected (and about 1/30 by prevalence studies). In the US, it's 1/66 ( and probably about 1/16 in reality ).
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Recall, Sweden's goal was herd immunity by June 1st.
Not true! Sweden NEVER had a goal to reach herd immunity, that is some kind of urban myth propagated online.
If you believe you are right, please show credible sources to back them up. But to save you the time, there is an interview with the Swedish foreign minister from earlier this spring that describes how she is fighting this misconception.
So someone, please mod parent down, Sweden has probably made a lot of wrong decisions regarding Covid-19, but this narrative is incorrect.
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Google "Dr Anders Tegnell "herd immunity""
"Speaking to local media, Dr Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden's controversial strategy, claimed that the population of Stockholm - the epicentre of the country's outbreak - could achieve 'herd immunity' as early as next month. "
Sweden is literally rewriting history here. It was common knowledge they were going for herd immunity by june. There were numerous leaks to that effect. As well as statements by Dr. Tegnell to that effect.
See also John Campbell's in
Re:Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweden's response bought them an economy that is only doing marginally better than neighboring countries. It didn't succeed at anything but illness and death.
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Sweden's response bought them an economy that is only doing marginally better than neighboring countries.
Ah but better is better isn't it. Yes no shock when all your trade partners slit their economic wrists, its hurts your economy too.
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Ah but better is better isn't it.
Being punched in the balls is better than being kicked in it. That doesn't mean it's any kind of success to feel such pain.
Yes no shock when all your trade partners slit their economic wrists, its hurts your economy too.
False equivalence. Trade is the one thing that has been by n large unaffected as it is the movement of goods between countries that determines trade and production in countries has been unhindered. If trade shrinks, one has to wonder why, and the answer universally in this case: people aren't buying stuff.
That's the reality of the situation. Sweden's economy can't be blamed on Norway or
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The illness and death that is going to overcome all those other smug lockdown countries eventually.
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Sweden's economy is set to suffer more than any of their Nordic neighbors this year, and they have the highest unemployment rate. This in exchange for a death rate an order of magnitude higher than those neighbors, and a corresponding greater number of people permanently affected. They seriously screwed up their response by every measure.
You say you're not an idiot, OK (Score:2)
But believing that lockdowns don't hurt is mental. Lockdowns are self-induced economic depressions. Go search for the list of companies who have had to declare bankruptcy, it's incredible. Economic depressions hit the lower ends of society the hardest. 40 MILLION PEOPLE lost their jobs in the US. I don't know what proportion of those jobs had medical insurance, but it's a safe bet that a very hefty percentage of them did. All that medical insurance is now gone with the COVID winds. "Doesn't hurt?!" Ridiculo
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Lockdowns hurt.
Excessive deaths from overwhelmed hospitals and police gathering dozens of dead bodies per week from the streets also hurts.
There is no good path out of this.
But there are several bad paths and resuming "business as usual" is worse because it both destroys the economy and kills a lot of people.
Until we get a vaccine, this has the potential to explode and kill 5% of the population- that's 16 million dead in the U.S. Over a billion dead globally. And that includes many people 20 to 49. In
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That's what I don't get. Not only is the "open everything" position killing people unnecessarily, it's not even working at keeping the economy afloat! We can -- and inevitably will -- argue about where the line should be on the countermeasures, but the least bad answer is clearly and provably not "sacrifice the weak". [bandcamp.com]
Arstechnica already covered this (Score:2)
TL;DR; lock downs don't increase death or stress all that much. If you live in a society that doesn't abandon you to die in a pandemic they don't increase it much at all. Turns out going to work/school is also stressful.
And the point of me saying "I'm not an idiot" is that I can read the CDC's data, studies on the long term health effects of the virus and I know the odds of it affecting me. America has an aging population with lots of pre-existing conditions. If we "le
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And this is why we need a national health insurance system. Had the Republicans done that instead of forcing the Democrats to go with the half-a**ed measure called Obamacare, the lost jobs wouldn't matter nearly as much, particularly with the foreclosure and eviction bans that
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Riiight sure; in country where small businesses make up 40% of the GDP you want us to believe that they were all months away from ruin...
BULLSHIT
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Yes. Most small businesses operate with minimal reserves. That's why 20% of new businesses fail within the first year.
Healthy businesses would be run by complete idiots to not take advantage of PPP loan forgiveness to pay their bills so that they could wait the virus out. So we can safely assume that approximately all of the businesses that decided to skip the PPP loans and close permanently were already struggling to pay their bills before the pandemic hit or were owned by business owners who decided t
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If you had free at the point of delivery healthcare funded through general taxation (like we have in civilisation), you wouldn't have to pay for your own health insurance.
"There's no way to afford it" is blatantly untrue. Every country in Western Europe affords it. It can be afforded in the US because it is being afforded right now. In fact, because of the inefficiencies introduced by the US system, moving to a single payer system would make your healthcare cheaper.
Re:You say you're not an idiot, OK (Score:5, Interesting)
You're already paying those costs. You just don't know it. Employer-mandated health insurance is a tax. The employer pays the cost of your health insurance, and that's money that your employer is spending to keep you employed, but you aren't seeing a penny of that money. When those costs go away, presumably you'll end up with more money coming in to offset those additional taxes that you pay.
For that matter, in principle, there's no reason that universal healthcare couldn't be funded through increasing the employer portion of the payroll tax exclusively, in which case you wouldn't even notice the change unless you're paying for coverage for an unemployed spouse or dependent. The employer would just pay into the universal fund instead of paying an insurance company, and because there wouldn't be a profit-taking middleman for the cheapest plan (the public option), the cost of that basic plan for employers would likely go down even if they build in the cost of paying for all the folks who don't have insurance now. So there's a possibility that you might even see *more* income as a result, assuming your employer passes those savings on to you in the form of a discount on coverage for your spouse or first dependent or whatever.
And remember that your insurance costs already pay for the cost of people who don't have insurance. Hospital ERs are forbidden from turning people away for lack of ability to pay, and they spread those costs across all the fees paid by people who actually can afford to pay. The problem is, because that law applies only to emergency rooms, that means that uninsured people can't go to a clinic, where they can be treated cheaply, and instead end up in an ER, where the cost of service is much higher. So not only are you paying for their care, you're paying for their care in the most inefficient way possible.
There is no way to afford it.
Actually, I would argue that we can't afford not to.
Re:You say you're not an idiot, OK (Score:4, Insightful)
If you start adding MORE cost onto employers for W2 employees...well, that means they have to come up with that money somewhere too and guess what that means? Less pay to employees OR less employees hired.
I think you missed the part where the amount that they pay to the federal government would be less than the amount that they currently pay to private insurers (which they would no longer have to pay).
I'd much rather fix the private sector....
The private sector is good for many things. Providing essential services is not one of them. The problem is, the main goal of businesses is to turn a profit, and that means people are paying more than they otherwise would if those profits were not being taken, assuming all else is equal. Now in some areas, competition can foster innovation; this usually occurs in companies that are creating a product.
But in providing healthcare, there is no competition, apart from specialized surgeries. The vast majority of the time, you go to the hospital because you need a hospital right now, and you aren't picking between them based on price or quality of care (except perhaps when your doctor orders them to move you from a small hospital to a larger hospital that actually has an ICU or whatever). When innovation occurs in healthcare, it's because somebody tried something new in an effort to make the procedure better or safer, not cheaper. (And although fewer deaths does make healthcare cheaper, that is almost certainly too far removed from the innovation to be a significant driver of that innovation.)
So for the most part, in healthcare, the profit being taken provides no benefit to patients, either in the short term or in the long term, and does nothing to drive the costs down, whether in the short term or in the long term. So private sector profits driving up the cost of healthcare is not really something that can be fixed. It's fundamental to the nature of for-profit medicine.
This goes double when you're talking about a company that has (or should have) no actual role in the standard of care, like an insurance company. The only ways that insurance companies can drive costs down are by A. using leverage to drive down what they pay (which is more possible with larger companies) by B. refusing to cover certain procedures, or C. dropping coverage for people who cost too much (which sounds great right up until you cost too much), i.e. socializing the costs an privatizing the benefits. The extra leverage gives a single payer system a huge cost advantage, which is why government healthcare tends to be a lot cheaper. The issue of certain procedures not being covered is usually solvable through supplemental insurance, though in practice, it is better to solve it through government grants to fund the testing of those experimental procedures. And dropping coverage for expensive patients isn't really good for anyone except the health insurance industry.
I can change insurers...I can't well change my government in the same manner.
A large insurer tends to be better at keeping costs down, so it seems unlikely that you would ever want to change insurers with a single-payer system. That said, there's nothing inherently preventing private insurance companies from existing, as a means of either lowering your deductible or providing coverage for things that the public system won't cover. Taken too far, that could certainly create a two-tier system where the wealthy get better coverage, but I can't see it ever getting as bad as the two-tier system we have now, realistically.
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Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not budget items.
Social Security payments are not taxes, they're trust fund contributions. Not really voluntary, but not taxes.
I'm not clear on why conservatives seem to believe that the healthcare system that works for every other industrialized country on the planet won't work here. Are we just magically incompetent in that one area?
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Holy carp, you have never dwelt in the dark underbelly of an insurance company, there is no worse bureaucracy on the planet. Even Immigration is more efficient and streamlined. The last time I had to work at an insurance company they even had someone whose title was (I'm not making this up) 'Software Archivist', who made us print out the 1800 page Lenel System Administration manual, in triplicate.
The fact that the DMV is under-bugeted so they 1) can't hire enough people to handle the work load, 2) can't h
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No eating out. No movie theaters. No travel.
As someone who has done all three of those in the past 24 hours there's nothing "normal" about any of those activities. You're not crammed in tight spaces with people breathing on you, people are getting booted from establishments for breaching social distancing rules in all of the above.
Now if your local establishments aren't taking precautions then maybe it's worth not giving them specifically your dollars, but right now it seems like the last place I'm likely to catch COVID-19 is at a mostly empty restau
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I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to go about my day to day life until there are treatments and a vaccine. That means my dollars aren't going to be going about day to day life either. No eating out. No movie theaters. No travel.
That's great for you, since obviously you're not someone whose job depends on people traveling, eating out, going to movies, etc., so you get to save money all this time. And you just assume that when you can spend that money again, all those movie theaters, restaurants, hotels, airplanes, etc., will be there waiting for you. Good luck with that.
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I'm not going to go about my day to day life until there are treatments and a vaccine.
You seems very optimistic about the efficacy of the unreleased covid-19 vaccine. I won't hold my breath until the vaccine is ready and maybe until then the virus has mutated.
Re:Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the lenders will start to drop like flies, or limit who they lend money to, which will have massive impacts on credit markets. Is 2008-2009 so long ago that you have forgotten what a crisis in confidence looks like? If you've got a few million bucks laying around to buy up defaulting properties, bully for you, but for most people that is not an option, and making a whole bunch of people homeless because you think the best way to motivate people is to put a gun to their heads doesn't seem like any kind of sane public policy.
There's only one way through a pandemic. We've known it for centuries, even before we even knew what caused pandemics. When the last great outbreak of the bubonic plague hit London in 1665, Parliament delayed its sitting, shops were closed, mass meetings were banned and anyone with symptoms, or even suspected of having the disease, were quarantined. Just because we haven't experienced anything on that level in decades doesn't mean that the formula has changed. Seattle weathered the 1918-19 flu pandemic because it took extremely proactive measures, over public outcry, and in the end its recovery was far faster, and the mortality rate was far less than cities like Pittsburgh that went full steam ahead, and ended up shooting themselves in the foot.
There's no magic solution here. There are simply less bad ones, and partial shut downs where distancing can't be accomplished is the only sensible solution. It's the only one that means an actual and tangible recovery, and the only that doesn't punish people because they aren't as foolhardy as you are.
Re:Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:5, Insightful)
And we can't just say X% of the population will die and we should just accept it. Apart from being totally unethical and inhuman in its lack of empathy, it is scientifically unsound. Herd immunity won't happen for a significant time, and likely won't happen fast enough to keep up with mutations. We'd just be dooming the population to some portion dying constantly, until a vaccine.
Re:Multiple studies show lock downs help economies (Score:4, Insightful)
And the evidence of that is what's happening in some US states. They opened up early, despite warnings from public heath officials, and now are facing huge increases in infections. How are their economies faring.
People have a very particular and predictable set of responses to some imminent and obvious disaster, and it's not shrugging shoulders and acting as if the shit isn't hitting the fan. When they say the tornado on the horizon, they don't just sit on the porch and go "Oh well, gotta finish this beer". When they feel the earth shake beneath their feet, they don't just hop in the car and take the kids to school. And when they see hospitals filling up, and friends and coworkers getting sick, they don't pack the family up and go to Arby's or buy tickets to Disneyland. People may, in general, be ten kinds of stupid, but our primate brains were built specifically to recognize an imminent danger (so built for it that we're actually pretty bad at assessing the risks of more remote crises). And, of course, the nature of contagious diseases is that they will wax and wane a bit, so people will get lazy, and the disease will come back with a vengeance, and then any notion of "pandemic fatigue" will disappear, and parents will keep their kids home from school, won't return to theaters and restaurants, won't take discretionary trips, and at best will periodically screw up the courage to go to the grocery store.
You cannot make people walk through fire just because you imagine the only way to fix the problem is to tell them not to worry, and it's unlikely they'll get badly burned. A few may say "fuck it", and act brave, but really, all those idiots mobbing state legislatures protesting mask rules are actually in a more full blown panic than someone who opts not to go back to a job because they don't feel their employer is taking their safety seriously, or stops spending money at restaurants or hotels.
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Maybe if your country had a decent social safety net you wouldn't have that problem.
Re: Multiple studies show lock downs help economie (Score:3)
I feel like this is a little over the top. The US is in fact in a far worse way than where I am. (Canada), but I see differences in how people (citizens, government, businesses etc) reacted early on.
We were on pretty steep lockdown restrictions at first, probably for 2 months or so. Now like is almost back to normal, save having to wear masks, physical distancing, caps on people gathering, self isolating for 2 weeks after entering the province and maybe having to wait outside a store for a few minutes du
You know I'm still employed, right? (Score:2)
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Well, count yourself lucky...and so am I.
However, what about those folks that are NOT employed and the ever number of small businesses that are closing to likely never re-open?
Small businesses make up the VAST majority of jobs in the US....so, you have people out of work and a shrinking amount of potential jobs for people to even come back to when this virus shit ends sufficiently.
There's a LOT of jobs out there, that aren't able to be worked remotely.
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My country has been helping the unemployed and small business while going out of its way not to reproduce the problems of 2008 where the help was given to big businesses and banks who used it for bonuses.
Your government seems more interested in propping up the stock market.
Where I am, most things are now opened up, though with limitations like only 6 people at a restaurant table. Cases are up to over 40 a day, close to 10 people currently hospitalized, about a death a week if that, with a population of 5 mi
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So naturally, you're ready, willing, and able to crack your wallet open and pay the medical costs for everyone affected? Those lung transplants are godawful expensive. Months of therapy and rehab aren't cheap either.
NO? You don't want to do that? What's that Lassie?, you say it's cheaper to take necessary measures to contain the outbreak?
Re: Multiple studies show lock downs help economie (Score:2)
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Then you can be fired, default on your mortgage and we can buy your assets on the cheap. No problem for the economy.
Most folks on Slashdot work for companies that are perfectly content with their workers working remotely for the foreseeable future, so no you can't buy their assets on the cheap.
But let's suppose for one moment that this were not true. With most workers hesitant to return physically to work, if the people who own those properties can't afford to own them without returning to work, and a significant percentage of them say, "Screw the house," who do you think is going to buy that house from you in the futur
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you understand thats actually not good for the economy right?
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Its perfectly fine for the economy. It just means some of the have nots will see their little savings become worth more (deflation) and the haves will see their assets decline in value. It will be big wealth transfer but given the wealth gap it might even be good for the economy.
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Its perfectly fine for the economy. It just means some of the have nots will see their little savings become worth more (deflation)
The haves have savings, the have-nots don't.
and the haves will see their assets decline in value.
Some of them will, sure. Not the wealthiest, of course, because the wealthiest maintain plenty of liquid assets they can use to buy up depreciated assets. So, what you've described is a general sucking of wealth from everyone but the richest.
It will be big wealth transfer but given the wealth gap it might even be good for the economy.
It will increase the wealth gap. The gap always increases during downturns.
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With voluntary self isolation dropping mobility 25% or so (people just not wanting to get their parents or themselves sick), clearly there's economic damage. I suspect far more damage than alert level 3 in one city 3% of the time.
Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:5, Insightful)
Although if you have faith in there being a decent vaccine at some point soon, you can do as New Zealand have and be strict and highly responsive to outbreaks, and have less restrictions than countries that sat back and did very little until they had a widespread outbreak. If a vaccine does emerge quickly, countries like New Zealand end up looking rather good. If a vaccine is a long time coming, then they probably are fighting a battle they can't win, but do note that in general they've had fewer restrictions than other countries that have had large numbers of deaths. I find it hard to criticise their approach as things stand.
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The world has seen a great many pandemics, and you know what, we're still here. The 1918-19 pandemic killed a lot of people, made a lot more people sick, seemed a bit like an apocalypse, but in the end it did fade away and the economic damage was healed. Making this is a zero sum game is itself a symptom of the panic.
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When this is over, a lot of people will still be here. I'd like to be one of them.
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They might get a working one out the door soon, but I doubt it'll be quick enough to prevent all the deaths that are going to happen as lockdown is relaxed. So 2 choices - hide under the duvet until this virus goes extinct, maybe in a few thousand years , or get back to work and accept that 0.5% are going to die from it no matter what.
I know you said the vaccine might not be available soon, but to take a few thousand years seems a bit much!
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The Chinese are already vaccinating all their military, and then will move on to the civilians. Russian elites have their vaccine already, and it's filtering down to commoners. We're behind the ball, apparently.
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I would agree if the only option you have is "flattening the curve." There are other things that could be done. In the future, after some people kill themselves off, something like this is going to happen: https://news.osu.edu/ohio-stat... [osu.edu]
Make them so cheap everyone can have one. Combine with an educated populace that actually cares about other people, and you could make a real dent in a virus like COVID-19.
Considering the economic damage that can be done, this is the only logical course for the future.
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Do you have any evidence that ending lock downs will magically make economies grow again? A pandemic is a psychological hit as much as it is a health crisis. Confidence won't just return because you say "Fuck it, let's ignore the virus and act as if it isn't here." Look at jurisdictions where it's full steam ahead for a return to school. Parents in many jurisdictions aren't happy, so as much as you think people will just willingly march to the proverbial abattoir to save the economy, creating confidence in
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Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean all those job creators can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they hit a bump? Like how people are supposed to have 3 - 6 months worth of an emergency fund saved.
What happened to all that money these companies got through the largest tax cut in this country's history? Did they save for a rainy day or did they squander the money on stupid things like stock buybacks and executive bonuses? Why is it these companies can't go more than a week without begging the government for money? Are they that incompetent that the only way for them to survive is via socialism?
Yup, completely idiotic restrictions. Which is why Taiwan only has 450 cases and 7 deaths compared to the 8,300 dead in Florida, a state whose population is only fractionally smaller than Taiwan's. It's why New Zealand went three months without a single recorded case because of those "idiotic" restrictions.
I can't wait for all the cases coming out of Sturgis. With 250,000 people all bunched together and not wearing masks, expect to see hospitalizations soar as well as the spread of covid 19 running amok when these people return home. Not to mention all the dead. But hey, 170,000 dead in five months is no big deal. It's just like the flu.
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There's also a big difference between someone who doesn't have a mask and avoids contact, versus someone who has to prove they're an asshole and gets confrontational about it. The latter is going to have disproportionate effect in a superspreader event.
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What if the primary method of transmission is ingestion of fecal matter from infected people who can't adequately wash their hands with soap and stay off their phones while in the restroom? If we would focus on stopping fecal matter transmission, a lot of people in retirement homes could still be alive.
Well there's literally no evidence to support that's how it's transmitted...so...no they probably wouldn't be?
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Haven't you seen all the meme pictures saying STURGIS 2020: Check back in two weeks for deals on used motorcycles!
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Not yet, but I'll check tonight when I'm home. Should be interesting.
This will be no different than that school down in Georgia where the girl took a picture of effectively no one wearing a mask and suddenly they have 280 (known) cases and had to shut the school down.
About the only difference is some people who were at Sturgis will die because of their age and medical condition.
Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up! Did you somehow totally miss the part where they managed 102 days with zero transmissions? I'll bet that was pretty good for their economy. Yes, they will need to restrict entry into their borders until the rest of us get our shit together and pull our pants up.
As for being vulnerable, we have yet to find evidence that there is anyone who isn't vulnerable.
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Re: This virus isn't going away (Score:2)
There will be a vaccine soon enough. Meanwhile, theyâ(TM)ll go back into lockdown for a bit, get it back under control (meaning ALL cases are under control, NZ effectively eliminated the virus) and go back to having sports with packed stadiums and crowded bars and other events like they were doing last month.
Compare that to the US. How many millions are going to be lost by not being able to have 40,000 person events? NZ gets to because they handled this well.
Unfortunately in the US the economy is not g
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You are correct, that the virus will be around for a while. BUT we have to wait for either an effective cure or a vaccine before we can get rid of the lockdowns. The viral prevalence can be greatly reduced if we get a vaccine. The virus can even be eliminated if enough people were willing to be vaccinated. Although not nearly as contagious as Covid, smallpox was eliminated using vaccines (except for a few samples in labs). Polio is almost eliminated. Of course deluded anti-vaxxers claim smallpox and polio a
Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not a personal choice. Your choice impacts the people you interact with. What you're really saying is your choice should override their safety. That's not a declaration of your liberty, it's a declaration of war on those around you, that somehow you're more important, and that your personal choice overrides their rights.
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Yes, life is, but when one recognizes an unwarranted risk, then it's foolhardy to ignore it. Some people have no choice. If you do, and go out anyways and risk other people, then at best your a selfish piece of shit, at worst your a sociopath.
Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:5, Insightful)
If your savings are being devalued, it's because of the lack of confidence, and that won't go away because you imagine you can put a gun to everyone's head and force them back to work. It won't work. What will work is controlling infection rates as much as possible. That will increase confidence, not just threatening people with homelessness and starvation unless they work to keep your 'savings" intact.
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If your savings are being devalued, it's because of the lack of confidence, and that won't go away because you imagine you can put a gun to everyone's head and force them back to work. It won't work. What will work is controlling infection rates as much as possible. That will increase confidence, not just threatening people with homelessness and starvation unless they work to keep your 'savings" intact.
So it has NOTHING to do with the printing presses in Ft Worth working overtime? Inflation is caused by adding cash to the ecconomy. Yea, there is a short term boost as money flows as you dump it in, but long term stuff starts to cost more dollars, becasue there is simply more dollars chasing the same goods. It's sort of injecting adrenaline into your arm to keep you alive. It works for awhile but eventually it doesn't do anything but kill you.
This is called "monitizing the debt" by the way. You inflate y
Re:This virus isn't going away (Score:4, Insightful)
Economies have survived lockdowns in the past. Those lockdowns have cost a lot of money, and yet here we all are. You seem to have a dim view of our ability to navigate these crises and come out the other side; and yet societies have rebuilt after pandemics, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, crop failures. Yes, some have faltered and disappeared, but to imagine that Western nations, the wealthiest political entities in the entire history of our species, cannot handle the debt burdens that get incurred by crises and disasters, is to basically state that we have no capacity at all, that survival is simply dumb luck.
The US drove up its national debt by orders of a magnitude during the Civil War. By some calculations, the US has never actually repaid the Civil war debts, and has been building on those debts for the last century and a half. And yet in that century and a half the US built one of the most robust economic engines in history, one that could survive a sustained economic downturn, a world war in which it bore a great deal of the financial burden through Lend-Lease.
The economic dislocation of COVID-19 will last perhaps another year, maybe two. Some industries will collapse (I don't hold much hope for much of the hospitality and tourism industries to survive as they are), but there will be rebuilding. And in ten years, it will be like the 2008-2009 collapse, and in a hundred years it will be like the Spanish Flu pandemic.
You truly need to stop panicking. You're more a chicken little than the people who are staying home. What you're really saying is that the economy is so fragile and weak, the actors in that economy, from the laborer to the captains of industry, are so incompetent and so incapable of restructuring and rebuilding, that if we don't force people back to work and risk their health, that the whole thing will come crashing down.
Take a deep breath and stop projecting your anxiety. People like you are creating the real crisis of confidence.
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Re:SARS-Cov-2 is everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
And naturally, those who do get more severely affected can expect the full financial support of society for their expensive treatment and rehab, right? Being that they were doing their part and taking the risk for the good of everyone? That's right, isn't it?