COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[Railbob1776]

Getting outraged because your PPE equipped Costco employee wouldn’t touch your receipt doesn't seem helpful.

For the record, I was not outraged, I just found it odd that someone with gloves was scared to touch a receipt. I was always under the impression that one wore gloves in order to allow one to touch things one would otherwise not touch. Another lie apparently. The receipt was long and curled under itself and so it needed to be extended in order to allow the employee to see the full receipt. The employee reached to grab the receipt in order to stretch it out but recoiled presumably because he remembered the current situation we are in. When I saw he was afraid to touch it I proceeded to stretch the receipt out for him, and he sheepishly said, "sorry." I said, "no problem." There was no outrage. I understand everyone is just trying to get through this as best they can.

[wiigelec]

So -- how come this latest YouTube expert and his press-conference-happy ER doctor get an even lower IFR (I think they claim 0.03%)?

I believe this latest YouTube expert and his press conference happy ER doctor sidekick divided total deaths by total population to arrive at an absolute mortality of .03% and not an IFR of .03%...

[JordanNewell]

IFR is high by a factor of 5. Infection rate is high by a factor of 2.

Where are you getting these numbers from? We are getting to the point where we don't need to guess anymore, as there are bits and pieces of good quality research coming out. For example there's data from Geneva where they did random household sampling and looked for antibodies as evidence of exposure (i.e, they did proper sampling, unlike the notorious Stanford study).

The numbers are converging on an infection fatality rate of 0.5% to 2.5% - my guess is the true figure is around 0.6 to 1% depending on the population structure.

Of course this is massively skewed over the age distribution, with the vast majority of deaths in the elderly.

What we should do with this information is a different question.

[lazygun37]

I guess it's pretty clear by now that I have a problem with people using false or misleading numbers to support their opposition to lockdowns. I have no problem at all with the opposition itself -- but if somebody can't justify their position without resorting to false claims, it doesn't speak well of either them or of their position.

However, nobody in their right mind -- and certainly not me -- thinks the economic and social consequences of what's happening are anything other than catastrophic. The problem isn't that people love lockdowns. The problem is finding a better alternative.

And yes, I know the libertarian take here is to just take the government out of it and let people decide what they want to do. But, judging from many recent posts in this thread, there seems to be a realization that this wouldn't really be a solution -- because most people simply aren't ready or willing to go back to business as usual, even if you let them. And an economy with no customers isn't an economy.

So what I wish we'd talk about more in this thread is what realistic alternatives we actually have. What does -- or should -- "re-opening the economy" look like?

Here are some random thoughts and questions I have in this vein. If nothing else, perhaps this will at least convince some people here that not everybody who disagrees with you is a fascist:

• The default at the moment seems to be to assume we'll have sufficient testing and contact tracing in place "soon" to prevent most large scale outbreaks. I can sort of believe the testing side of this -- we're not there right now, but it seems at least plausible that we could get there. But I'm always surprised that there is so little discussion of contact tracing. Traditional shoe-leather contact tracing is *hugely* demanding -- how many tracers do we actually have or can train, and how many cases could we realistically track this way?
• As was briefly discussed earlier in this thread -- if shoe-leather contact tracing is unrealistic, could/should things like phone apps be used? Could the privacy concerns be dealt with somehow, e.g. via strict laws with massive penalties for data breaches/misuses?
• Finally, there *is*, of course, a way to reduce the IFR and still achieve herd immunity. If you could quarantine old people and people with serious co-morbidities, and if you could also make sure that the rest of us mostly get infected, you'd probably get to sth like the 60% infected threshold with an IFR < 0.1%, say. But how could you actually achieve this? This virus is pretty damn infectious, so how do you effectively quarantine old and sick people? And are younger and healthier people really going to be so keen to get infected for the greater good? I mean their odds of not dying are good, but the disease is still pretty nasty, and some *will* die, of course. So, individually, everybody is better off if everybody else got themselves infected. (The pay-off matrix here is that of a Prisoner's Dilemma, actually.)
• Last, but not least -- do we actually know that infection gives long-lasting immunity against COVID-19? If not, that's obviously the nightmare scenario. I suspect it would change the cost-benefit calculus of almost all interventions.

[bambambam]

On an unrelated note what are the chances of Cuomo running against Trump instead of Biden?

He won't run this year. He'll run in 2024 for sure, unless Biden somehow skates through with dementia and wins the election this year. I think if Trump gets another 4 years, Cuomo will win in a landslide.

[MatthewG]

Y

So -- how come this latest YouTube expert and his press-conference-happy ER doctor get an even lower IFR (I think they claim 0.03%)? As near as I can tell, their brilliant calculation involves extrapolating the fraction of tests administered that were positive to the entire population. Apparently that's a great way to estimate the total number of people who are infected. And of course it would be, if it weren't for the tiny problem that tests haven't been and aren't administered at random. They're administered to people with symptoms. Which is precisely why random antibody studies are needed to estimate the true IFR. You know, like the one from NYC that you were more than happy to believe while you still thought it supported your point.

Let's hope the Germans can settle this debate once and for all.

Germany is conducting COVID-19 antibody testing nationwide - Business Insider

[Mark Rippetoe]

Where are your IFR and max infection rate coming from?

Where do you work?

To be clear: I'm grateful to any ER doc on the front lines, regardless of whether they support my position. Including the guy I was talking about. But his press conference wasn't about emergency medicine, it was about epidemiology. Does he have any credentials for that? I would think in the ER he only sees the symptomatic cases, not the millions upon millions of asymptomatic ones he's basing his "calculation" on.

What are your credentials?

First, what's "very few" in your book? With an IFR of 0.5%, 1 million cases = 5000 deaths. Does that qualify?

2.9 million people died in the US last year. No, it does not qualify.

Second, at the moment, with all these restrictions in place, the number of deaths in the US is 54,000. Where do you think this number might end up, both with and without any restrictions?

It doesn't matter, since it's tailing off already.

Third, could you please state specifically what you think the IFR and herd immunity thresholds are? And where you get your preferred numbers from?

How about you answer questions for a while.

I guess it's pretty clear by now that I have a problem with blah blah blah

You have lots of problems with posing as an expert behind a user name, and ignoring all the arguments but your own.

[wiigelec]

Where are your IFR and max infection rate coming from?

Where are your numbers coming from? Show me yours first and I’ll show you mine...

[Dillon Spencer]

For the record, I was not outraged, I just found it odd that someone with gloves was scared to touch a receipt. I was always under the impression that one wore gloves in order to allow one to touch things one would otherwise not touch. Another lie apparently. The receipt was long and curled under itself and so it needed to be extended in order to allow the employee to see the full receipt. The employee reached to grab the receipt in order to stretch it out but recoiled presumably because he remembered the current situation we are in. When I saw he was afraid to touch it I proceeded to stretch the receipt out for him, and he sheepishly said, "sorry." I said, "no problem." There was no outrage. I understand everyone is just trying to get through this as best they can.

Apologies if I misconstrued how you actually felt about it. Your post just seemed to come while people were posting some "Today I saw..." examples of ridiculous behaviour, and yours didn't seem that ridiculous to me. Hope there's no hard feelings!

[Gerald Boggs]

Busted! My local food store has not been practicing social distancing and maybe 1 out of 8 were wearing a mask as of Friday morning. Today, everyone was masked, although still not social distancing. Word came down from higher that masks were mandatory.

On a different note, I think I understand why folks are so freaked out by the deaths in nursing homes. It's the suddenness of it. Normally, the decline and death of a loved one is a slow gradual process. You have time to accept what's happening and are able to spend the last moments by their side. That's how it was for me and my mom. Now, from time of positive infection to death is often a few days and people aren't allowed to be there. That's hard way to die and a hard thing to experience as child.

However, and not to be callous, but what should not be overlooked by us collectively, is many of those that have died, where going to die, maybe not this month but certainly this year. From a CDC page:

“Over 4 million Americans are admitted to or reside in nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities each year and nearly one million persons reside in assisted living facilities. Data about infections in LTCFs are limited, but it has been estimated in the medical literature that:
1 to 3 million serious infections occur every year in these facilities.
Infections include urinary tract infection, diarrheal diseases, antibiotic-resistant staph infections and many others.
Infections are a major cause of hospitalization and death; as many as 380,000 people die of the infections in LTCFs every year.”

My point? We need to keep perspective and not let our fears overwhelm our sense. Here in Virginia, except for the larger population centers, the virus is like watching the wars. It's something happening somewhere else to someone else, but we're all stuck with the same lockdown and from my perspective, that makes no sense.