Said President Trump, at yesterday's coronavirus transcript.
2.2 million is a number — a number of deaths — that the experts were citing in the task force discussions. The continuing lockdown is portrayed as an effort to keep the number down to 100,000 deaths. You can see that when Trump said 100,000, he paused to declare that a "horrible number," because it is horrible to hear now, but 100,000 compares favorably to 2.2 million, which is the number he was told would die if we did nothing. As Trump put it:
[B]efore we heard the 2.2 million people... we had a lot of people were saying maybe we shouldn’t do anything, just ride it. They say ride it like a cowboy. Just ride it. Ride that sucker right through. That’s where the 2.2 million people come in. Would have died maybe, but it would have been 1.6 to 2.2, and that’s not acceptable, but there were a lot of people that said… I thought about it. I said, “Maybe we should ride it through.” You know you always hear about the flu.... You’ll have 35, 36, 37,000 people die, sometimes more, sometimes less. This is different....Ride it like a cowboy. Just ride it. Ride that sucker right through.... That was the alternative. Ride it like a cowboy... to 2.2 million deaths.
Perhaps the metaphor of the cowboy came from the notion of getting — as quickly as possible — to "herd" immunity. But we are not cattle.
Posts
332 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 332 of 332The statistic is not whether 2.2 M die. It's whether 2.2 M more people die than expected.
I deleted that comment because it was uncalled for and crappy and bad and rude and stuff.
I guess you had to be there. I hear he's better live in person than on the printed page.
"Herd immunity," as I understand it, applies to situations where you have a vaccine, or maybe to situations where many people have died, but some people use it to apply to something we could do without the vaccine or the deaths.
Tim in Vermont I don’t know what you are advocating for? "Let’s pretend this isn’t happening and let the chips fall where they may?”
I'm not advocating for anything.
Perhaps we should consider the Trolley Problem a thought experiment in ethics. Unfortunately, we are no in a hypothetical situation right now.
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
2.Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
In this current case it is the opposite. We may be pulling the lever to KILL the five people on the track (the majority of society) to attempt to save the one person (the fewer who are sick)
Save the few. Damage the rest? I don't think it is an "either/or" scenario we are in. We can try to do both, save the few and don't damage the majority. BUT----> we HAVE to consider the consequences of what our actions are.
The Trolley Problem is a lot more interesting to think about when it is just a hypothetical. Now. Not so much.
Finding out what your grandparents or great-grandparents did in the 1918 influenza epidemic sounds like an interesting project. But use skype or something like that: you still have to stay away from the really old folks who might know something about it.
It can suddenly jump at anytime, but a currently positive data point is that the new deaths are starting off very slow today, after yesterday's 50% drop.
Tim, you can basically go fuck yourself, if you want.
And I won't be deleting the comment.
I really appreciate what AllenS did back in the day, we all do
Yes.. We/I do too.
I was not presuming to speak for AllenS. He is capable of that himself.
Just trying to explain why or how some people become more fatalistic based on my own experiences and those of people that I know and knew.
"AllenS's comment is the very antithesis of fatalism."
Fatalism, the philosophy of predetermination, okay. I was using the definition of fatalistic meaning "resignation" or "helplessness" which fairly describes AllenS's comment.
Herd immunity does not require either vaccines or death. Vaccines are just another way of becoming immune, (being exposed to the pathogen signature) Death does not contribute to herd immunity at all, since you are no longer part of the heard, and non-lethal diseases still can create a herd immunity.
"im, you can basically go fuck yourself, if you want.”
More rational replies from the monkey house. "I don’t want to think about scary stuff so I am gonna make up a fairy tale!"
But we are not cattle.
Sure,sure.
"People aren't cattle, you know!" was said to be FDR's response when told that the economy would automatically right itself, given time. Lucky for the people or Roosevelt's Agricultural Adjustment Administration would have had them destroyed in the name of recovery.
Macabre kidding aside, this is how big government gets started. I'm not saying that as an attack: sometimes "big government" is necessary. So many people act like we could still have government the size in was in 1950 or 1900 or 1850 or 1800, but we can't. This may not be the best example of why that is, but it does provide much to ponder.
Empowering and protecting your family during the COVID19 pandemic
- Dr. David Price, Weill Cornell Medical Center
* social distancing (3 ft)
* hand to face hygiene
* coexisting with people (especially in close proximity) who are infected, who have the disease
* when to visit the hospital (e.g. resource management), and triage (e.g. telemedical services)
Bottom-line: We don't have to shut down the country. We should avoid spreading a social contagion. There are rational and reasonable steps to take in order to mitigate infection, respond to disease, to manage resources, and to mitigate collateral damage.
Each of us are a cowboy, cowgirl acting independently and working in concert.
"In this current case it is the opposite.”
Why don’t you talk about how that is the case rather than shrug at hundreds of thousands of deaths?
People who have lived shelter, safe, comfortable lives may not be able to understand.
That, but more-so their irrational certainty that their proposed draconian plans will be a net positive, something that's not certain at all.
No, Meade, it isn't resignation either. All it is is the recognition that life must be lived as one sees fit to live it. I have no problem with people isolating if that is what they want to do, but AllenS not doing it in the face of this threat isn't fatalism or resignation.
Let me ask you this- how long are you and Althouse prepared to self-isolate the way you have the last month? Are you prepared to do it 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 5 years, etc.? I asked because there is no reason at this point to believe a vaccine will appear anytime in the next couple of years, or even that it would be broadly effective. It is always possible that the virus mutates regularly and we will be dealing with this every year in another form.
bagoh20 said...
"Herd immunity does not require either vaccines or death."
Do you have a practical proposal for implementing this herd immunity? Do we all go get ourselves infected? Or just call off the social distancing and let the virus come to us? If the former, how do you plan to get infected yourself?
herd im·mu·ni·ty
noun
the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease within a population that results if a sufficiently high proportion of individuals are immune to the disease, especially through vaccination.
"the level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity varies by disease but ranges from 83 to 94 percent"
Vaccination seems to be an important part of achieving "herd immunity." Death isn't "required," but without a vaccine, there will be more deaths than necessary.
We aren't talking about the common cold, but about an illness that has contributed to many deaths already. Death and vaccination are both a part of any discussion of herd immunity and coronavirus.
The most important question is the one no one seems to be asking; "Are we all going to get this disease eventually?"
If the answer is yes, then it makes sense to try to "flatten the curve", so that the medical system is not overwhelmed. But that will literally take years of lockdown, which is not going to happen.
If most of us are actually not going to get this disease, as the Diamond Princess experience clearly indicates, then the lockdown is a very expensive way to save the lives of a small number of people. It is nice of the government, I suppose, to save those people's lives.
"If most of us are actually not going to get this disease, as the Diamond Princess experience clearly indicates,”
How long was the Diamond Princess at sea?
It would be so nice to have a leader at this time that understood how fake our expert class is and how we aren't going to get anywhere near a million deaths.
Let us go back to work Mr. President.
You're being lied to by the medical community.
A man's home is his cattle.
Why don’t you talk about how that is the case rather than shrug at hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Of the 55 million deaths per year, worldwide, I only shrug at....well, almost all of them, I guess, just like most people do.
Yancey, as you suggest, "there is no reason at this point to believe" anything. Except that social isolation can in fact eradicate the virus and can in fact prevent one from becoming infected. Is it realistic to believe each and every human being on earth will effectively self-isolate? Of course not.
If your question is serious and not just rhetorical, the answer is yes.
You can't have vaccines without cattle.
"All it is is the recognition that life must be lived as one sees fit to live it.”
So if the intensive care unit is overwhelmed by sick people it’s none of your never mind and you can go ahead and play Russian roulette with the virus. If you happen to be one of those people who needs intensive care when you get sick, well too bad for the other guy.
If you want to catch the virus and go someplace to ride it out and never call for help and you survive it, great. That’s the most likely scenario by far if you catch it and head off into the woods to live in a trailer ’til it’s over. But nobody is going to do that, and when they do get sick, they are going to call an ambulance.
"Of the 55 million deaths per year, worldwide, I only shrug at....well, almost all of them, I guess, just like most people do.”
You know what I shrug at? When your 401K goes down, because there are billions of people in this world who are dirt poor.
"A man's home is his cattle."
Cattle Doctrine. Duty to retreat to the barn.
Who said it, Stalin or an Althouse commenter: “One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic."
One thing that sucks in our current plague state is that Amazon delivery for non-essential items is now at 3 weeks. Doing anything once again requires actual planning rather than relying on next day delivery.
Yes DBQ, we are in agreement. Rock and a hard place without a guide or manual.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
Remind me again, who is the leader of the Senate and where did his money come from?
ARM still has not read Angelo Codevilla's essay on the "Ruling Class."
Which means he has no idea why Trump was elected. You'd think a person who worries about "reading comprehension" would read something that explains what happened in 2016.
None so blind...
"Rock and a hard place without a guide or manual.”
No, not quite right. She knows that it’s better to protect her job and personal wealth because that will save more lives in the long run than fighting the pandemic with whatever tools we have, she said so. She said that by taking action to slow it to a manageable pace where we can give all patients a fighting chance we are killing *more* people. By thowing the swich we kill five to save one, remember?
No chance of motivated reasoning there either.
The obvious association for ride it like a cowboy is not herd immunity, but the Marlboro man, an advertising idea created specifically to symbolize male bravado in the face of overwhelming evidence that tobacco smoke was highly carcinogenic. That worked out great for Phillip Morris, not so well for public health.
Though Trump was strongly drawn to a similar approach to coronavirus, mercifully the scientists talked him out of it. But it should not have been such a hard sell for them--and in the meantime the message was confused in ways that will result in additional deaths.
Further proof that Trump's rhetoric and judgment pretty consistently point in the wrong direction.
The real issue between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats live in cities where more draconian measures are justified and there are plenty of counties where less drastic measures are acceptable, but one size fits all. Like Cuomo said “New York is one state!” Even the parts where bears outnumber people.
"Is it realistic to believe each and every human being on earth will effectively self-isolate? Of course not."
Your ability to do so is dependent on others not.
Let me ask the question the other way- what would it take for you to stop isolating? Put numbers to it in regards to "New Cases"/"New Deaths". In other words, at what point would you risk a trip to the supermarket or the hardware store?
"Further proof that Trump's rhetoric and judgment pretty consistently point in the wrong direction.”
Is that what you call “proof”? Ha ha ha ha ha!
I think what you meant was that you would vote for somebody else because you don’t agree with POTUS on most things. That’s not proof of anything in particular.
Here's a good comet hunting site
And here's the finder chart for C/2019 Y4 (Atlas)
ARM
But you should have acquired all essential items in December including supplies of hand sanitizer with the appropriate amount of alcohol content, toilet paper, paper towels, rice, beans etc. if you didn’t then you are every bit the dumb fuck that DJT is. An unprepared dipshit yammering away about nothing. Why didn’t you prepare. You had read about the virus. You. Did. Nothing.
"Your ability to do so is dependent on others not.”
That’s true. And that’s why it’s important, as a matter of public health, to stay healthy as long as one can so as not to drain hospital resources from those people caught up in the front lines.
This epidemic will be halted mostly by herd immunity, and is already being slowed down by it. There is not a vaccine, and won't be until we are already past the crisis level. Vaccine is important, but not when you don't have one, and millions will join the herd immunity before we do. Once we get one, it will flesh out the herd immunity and end the virus as a serious threat in future years.
My recollection of an ethics class (at good old Antioch U.), was that one could never balance an equation that had lives on one side and economics on the other. Lives (or rape, or theft, or violence) always outweighed monetary considerations. Actually, incorrect: could not even be put on the scale to be weighed against anything other than like costs: lives, violence, etc.
The case study used to illustrate the argument was the Ford Pinto, which had its third flaming fatality and Ford had studied the cost to recall and refit the extant population of Pintos. If memory serves, the cost was about $5 per car for the fix, not including labor and recall costs.
It added up to several tens of millions when all costs were projected, vs at that time three deaths, and a projection of "maybe" ten more given the incident rate and population of Pintos at that time.
The decision makers at Ford were literally debating the cost verses lives lost. And hence became part of case study lore in decades of ethics classes.
This case however has lives on both sides of the equation. Forget the economics, except as perhaps the "disease" that will cost lives on one side of the equation.
Does anyone believe that the decline of opioid deaths and suicide rates is due to the brilliance of our legislative bodies? Or, is the decline an effect of a good economy?
I happen to think, that short of a vaccine, we are pretty much all going to get it, same as pretty much all ash trees in the US are doomed. Nothing has changed the flatten the curve logic. I think if that Pacific Princess ship was on a three week cruise from LA to Sydney, rather than hugging the coasts, it would have told a very different story, worthy of a James Conrad novel, something between Lord Jim and Heart of Dearkness.
Michael said...
the dumb fuck that DJT is
As I posted, more than a month ago, I did in fact get very well prepared. The only thing I cannot deal with over the next two months is a failure in the water supply. I was, however, speaking about new projects that I am now planning. I am glad that we find common ground on Trump.
"This epidemic will be halted mostly by herd immunity, and is already being slowed down by it. “
So people locking themselves indoors and shutting down businesses, social distancing, etc, have nothing to do with it? Its all herd immunity. Wow.
"something between Lord Jim and Heart of Dearkness.”
I waste this shit on you guys.
@Meade
Thank you for the clarification. I apologize for my ungenerous interpretation. I've been away (from here).
"Do you have a practical proposal for implementing this herd immunity?"
It doesn't matter if I have one or not. It doesn't matter if the government has a proposal. The virus and our immune systems are doing it, and doing it faster than any such proposal could. If I was under 50, and could stay away from others 100%, I'd gladly allow myself to be infected, just as millions already have been without any sickness. They effectively have been vaccinated. We are already immune to thousands of pathogens without ever being vaccinated for them. That's life on earth. I would, of course, have older people wait for the vaccine, but millions of Americans, and billions of humans won't have to, and won't get sick.
"How long was the Diamond Princess at sea?"
So, Tim, are you saying that, if the Diamond Princess was at sea for, like, a year, then you are willing to accept my argument, and apologize for calling us all horrible names, but if it was only, like, a week, then the horrible names still apply? Or what?
The more relevant question is, how long were they cooped up in that floating petri dish after someone brought the coronavirus aboard. And the answer is, long enough for about 20% of them to get it. But I read an account by a guy who had it, but his wife, in the same stateroom, didn't get it. Which indicates to me that we are not all going to get this stupid disease.
Which means that we already have herd immunity.
"Flattening the curve" means stretching out how long it takes for a large number of people to get infected - enough to block general transmission through herd immunity. It does not necessarily reduce the number who get infected. In fact, until we get a vaccine, we need those people to get it eventually and recover. Those effectively sheltering in place will remain unprotected until we do. Herd immunity is sheltered, but not in place. The shelter is all around you, moving with you and growing more effective every day.
How long was the Diamond Princess at sea?
How long do you spend at the grocery store?
Long enough.
Meade said in response to Ward's comment that
“AllenS's comment is the very antithesis of fatalism."
Fatalism, the philosophy of predetermination, okay. I was using the definition of fatalistic meaning "resignation" or "helplessness" which fairly describes AllenS's comment.
————
Have to disagree with you this time meade. AllenS's comment was just an expression of indifference: his disbelief in the number combined with his indifference to the possibility. In short, that saving those lives is not worth the cost, or even the trouble of seriously thinking about.
bag, I'm following your logic, but not your math. You seem to have grasped that if everyone gets this disease, it will take years to flatten the curve. And so, you are hoping for a vaccine. Thats your deus ex machina, to save us from spending the next twenty years locked up in our homes. But a) what if it takes years to develop (and test!) a vaccine? And b) what if most of us are immune already?
"So people locking themselves indoors and shutting down businesses, social distancing, etc, have nothing to do with it? Its all herd immunity. Wow."
So what would happen if everybody effectively sheltered in place and nobody got the infection? Do we stay sheltered forever. Of course not. I mean, what are we waiting for anyway. If there was no herd immunity developing, we would never be able to come out. It would just start right up again, becuase it is here now for good, waiting to infect us, but only if it can.
the fatalism of AllenS's comment at 6:47AM
I am most certainly not speaking for AllenS, but fatalism can come easier, or more naturally, to people who have been in situations where their life and the lives of those around them are in danger every moment of every day in a situation that they had no choice in creating. Watching people you love and know die. Vietnam War...for example.
You either become fatalistic in your approach to life....or you go crazy. Source: ex husband: Vietnam vet and many of his friends who also came out alive. Many many more did not survive Damaged survivors; some of them. But alive.
People who have lived shelter, safe, comfortable lives may not be able to understand.
I see this with my partner. She has been around death all her life. At 13, she was the one who called 911 when the grandmother who doted on her stroked. Between 19 and 21 she watched her oldest brother shrink from 240 to half that, before succumbing to cancer. They were very close, the two together winning the NV HS debate competition, National Physical Fitness Award together, etc. By his size, he protected her from the football team, more than once pulling members of the football team off her, and against the wall. Then her first husband, the youngest executive chef in NV, died of medical malpractice, after a kitchen fire, leaving her alone with two babies. Walked into find her best friend had died from pacemaker failure. Next, identifyingvthe body of her murdered sister. Etc. Then maybe a decade ago, she flatlined in the ICU, after more medical malpractice (Anaphylactic shock due to allergen well marked in her chart, followed by ICU nurses having turned off breathing monitors in the ICU due to all the apnea in the geriatric crowd there, and finally documented sanitization of her charts showing knowledge of guilt). In her near death experiences, she tells of partying with her departed brother, sister, husband, grandmother, etc. Now, it would probably include her father and uncle as the centers of attraction. And, yes, there were residual effects, including damage from the emergency re-intubation. Her surgeon (who refused to do surgeries at that hospital after that) told her that when it was her time, it was her time, but it wasn’t yet. Very fatalistic, but I think a lot of surgeons get that way. She very much agrees. That means that she isn’t going out of her way, more than she has to here. Which means that we don’t see her daughter or her family as much as we would like, and I do a lot of hand washing and sanitizing after coming back home.
I, on the other hand, have been mostly spared the experience of death. I wasn’t the brother who accompanied my father to identify my youngest brother, who had died in a climbing accident, or another brother who was sponging my father’s face when he died, etc. More fearful of death, I am still the one who goes out every day to shop. Death is still remote enough to me, that I don’t really worry. Maybe I should (I am higher risk due to age and health). My kid calls weekly to check on our (my) precautions. I counter that they are much more vulnerable. I am adjusting to social distancing, but stil surprised when people react quite vocally to my transgressions.
“I happen to think, that short of a vaccine, we are pretty much all going to get it,”
Tim, that is my fear too (not my prediction) but that doesn’t mean the lockdown is foolish. I agree with Michael K that the real hope is remdesivir and chloroquine. If the latter especially is effective we can use it on a large enough scale to reduce the severity of the epidemic.
I think you agree with this, but I expect someone to point at your comment and say “you admit it's all futile then” .
We do not have vaccines for most of the respiratory diseases that could similarly kill us, and there are probably thousands of them. We have simply developed immunity through exposure. Sometimes we get sick in the process, but usually we never even notice the process.
“ I waste this shit on you guys.”
Tim, this blog became Marat/Sade long ago.
Well, not the way it read to me Tim. Everyone knows you throw the switch. What is not known is how many will die from the economic hardship. As another says above, you don't weigh lives against wealth.
But, perhaps I'm being generous in my reading.
KEN B..... AllenS's comment was just an expression of indifference: his disbelief in the number combined with his indifference to the possibility. In short, that saving those lives is not worth the cost, or even the trouble of seriously thinking about.
Well, as long as we are all going to try to read AllenS' mind and put words into his mouth....I might as well chime in here.
My personal take on his comment...."Eventually, 2.2 million people will die of something."....is more of a fatalistic acceptance of the fact that people do die. Not indifference or callous disregard. Just the reality of life.
Que Sera Sera. Whatever will be will be. The future's not ours to see. Que sera sera.
Doesn't mean we can't try to affect the future. But...be careful what we do. We may not like the consequences.
Bagoh20
The evidence is that we don’t have much immunity to this virus. The only way most of us could have immunity is if we got the virus and recovered. (You are advancing the “everyone has it” theory that I was told no one was advancing.) Aside from its implausibility this theory is refuted by facts. There are parts of the country where no one has it. And it is still spreading fast.
This case however has lives on both sides of the equation. Forget the economics, except as perhaps the "disease" that will cost lives on one side of the equation.
Does anyone believe that the decline of opioid deaths and suicide rates is due to the brilliance of our legislative bodies? Or, is the decline an effect of a good economy?
@John G. Lynch, thank you! I was starting to think that I was the only Althouse commentator who realizes that shuttering small businesses is going to cost lives. When the normally level-headed Meade writes about "avoidable agonizing deaths of millions or thousands or hundreds or tens or one American," I think about people who have been clean while they had jobs that will revert to opioids and OD. Is it worthwhile to say "just one American" if it means ten or a dozen people ODed? What about men and women who sank their saving and put their whole lives into establishing a small business, but now its shuttered, they don't know when they'll be able to reopen, and they know that they're too old to start over so they just kill themselves. Is that a reasonable to price to pay for just one American, Meade?
"As another says above, you don't weigh lives against wealth."
If you don't, it's because you have someone else do it for you. Then you buy the least expensive product, and the consequences play out somewhere out of your sight. The economy weighs lives against wealth all day long, except when the government has shut it down. If it didn't, we would close the interstate highway system, which kills tens of thousands of people every year, just so we can go places and have stuff.
"There are parts of the country where no one has it. And it is still spreading fast."
I'm going to give you the BOTD, and assume you meant something logical here. But how can it spread fast if no one has it?
Except that social isolation can in fact eradicate the virus and can in fact prevent one from becoming infected.
1.Can the virus be "eradicated"? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe just minimized. Time will tell. How much time?.
2.Can social isolation prevent one from becoming infected? Possibly. Possibly not. You might avoid infection..... For now. Depending on how diligent you are and how long you plan to isolate.
If the answer to #1 is no, then the moment you step out of your cocoon, you are in danger of being infected and restarting a new round of spreading the virus because you have NO immunity.
@Ken B., I'd be really happy if you'd stop commenting until you apologize for using the word "denialist" to describe people who don't see things exactly your way.
"Is that a reasonable to price to pay for just one American, Meade?"
No. Any other strawmen you need me to knock down for you?
But how can it spread fast if no one has it?
Ask Yogi Berra. "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
"If the answer to #1 is no, then the moment you step out of your cocoon, you are in danger of being infected and restarting a new round of spreading the virus because you have NO immunity."
Well, that's the question. Suppose you had been on the Diamond Princess, locked in your cabin for two weeks with your husband who had Covid-19. And you did not get it. Would you think you could still get it any day? Or might you suspect you were not going to get this bug?
In her near death experiences, she tells of partying with her departed brother, sister, husband, grandmother, etc.
My wife had a similar experience about 12 years ago. I have had one patient with such an experience that gave us all chills.
Where did that cowboy metaphor come from? Our host--or Trump?
There was a bull named Bodacious that essentially couldn't be "rode". He bucked off everybody who tried. But this cowboy metaphor is a bodacious reach on someone's part.
ARM and Michael share a nice case of TDS. Their imaginary president would have done all this before hand,.
Lefties are making a mistake at the molecular level with their efforts to oust Trump. That is why they are destined to fail.
So, if you have been locking yourself away for weeks, when do you finally come out? What has to happen before you feel safe enough for that? The authorities are never going to say the threat is 100% gone. I assume getting vaccinated would do it, but what if that takes a year?
Serious question.
Big Mike
You didn’t object when people who aren’t panicking were called panicked, or people who weren’t alarmed were called alarmists. But you object when people who are denying facts are called out for it? Civility bullshit.
Some interesting maps:
COVID-19 Per Capita Mortality Highest Risks
COVID-19 Per Capita Mortality Highest Risks
COVID-19 Per Capita Mortality Party Risk
What was striking to me was how centralized the disease has been on a state by state, per capita, basis. The epicenter is the NYC metropolitan area, including nearby states. The risk for most of the country is still fairly low, even in a big metropolitan area like PHX where I am currently situated (actually, right across the border - I can see it from my window a block away).
My (biased, of course) conclusions are:
- the urban experiment is a colossal failure. Wuhan, the source of this pandemic, has very similar population characteristics to NYC. Even LA, due to its lower density, seems to be doing decently well. As is San Francisco with its homeless problem, and their piles of shit on the sidewalk.
- The Green Dream of mass transit translates into mass infections. Much better to be in your own car, safe from contagion by other travelers.
- Dem/Progressive policies and politics are deadly, in response to pandemics like this one. Their governments typically face more intense problems due to their population densities, but defer too much to their state and city bureaucracies, since they are a key voting block. The result is that they move too slowly to address challenges like pandemics. The rest of the country has more time, and appear to be more flexible.
Finally
- The Wuhan pandemic is very likely being viewed in such dire terms because the national media is based primarily in NYC, which has become the epicenter of the epidemic. Like with HIV, they likely know people effected. Most of us do not. Compounding this, the pandemic has reached the DC area, and politicians are now showing up as having been infected. Making things worse, much of the original spread of the disease involved international travel (esp, but not exclusively, from China). The media and elites, as well as the political class in DC are far more international than the rest of us, and as a result, are much closer to this pandemic.
I would suggest that this colors everything from the news coverage, through the two trillion dollar response package. Threaten to kill off an equal proportion of fly over country, and I expect studied indifference from the same sources who have panicked this country.
"AllenS's comment was just an expression of indifference: his disbelief in the number combined with his indifference to the possibility. In short, that saving those lives is not worth the cost, or even the trouble of seriously thinking about."
Given the vast range of opinions here, among a group of people who have clearly given a lot of thought to this issue, it does not appear that thinking is very useful in dealing with it. The government has decided to err on the side of a particular kind of caution - caution about the lives of a vaguely-defined, possibly nonexistent group of people. That caution entails indifference to the costs incurred by a very clearly-defined -- and large -- group of people. It is not evident to me that this choice is justified.
Bagoh20
Several answers to that have been discussed on other threads. Staged re openings accompanied by testing. Some people will have to accept being isolated for a long time. I am retired so I can stay out of the way more easily than some. What we have to watch at each stage is health care capacity and infections. There might be intermittent lockdowns.
"So, if you have been locking yourself away for weeks, when do you finally come out? What has to happen before you feel safe enough for that? The authorities are never going to say the threat is 100% gone. I assume getting vaccinated would do it, but what if that takes a year?
Serious question."
I asked that question just about 90 minutes ago, no answer from anyone.
Ahh, the sweet smell of flop sweat in the morning. The Great Leader is deviating from the path, the planets are in motion, and soon, a 100,000 will be too small a figure to reveal the true greatness of the Great Leader.
And if he'd stuck to his original date (Easter), you'd have just changed the above around to fit your already preconceived narrative.
Shouting Thomas is right about ARM...
"How long was the Diamond Princess at sea?"
So, Tim, are you saying that, if the Diamond Princess was at sea for, like, a year, then you are willing to accept my argument, and apologize for calling us all horrible names, but if it was only, like, a week, then the horrible names still apply?
I mentioned Diamond Princess to another person, who then responded "but they all have individual staterooms." Yes, because in Wuhan, Italy, and NYC people all live in barracks with one another to explain the difference... Geez the stupid is strong with people. There's a freaking buffet on Diamond Princess which is open 16 hours a day, not including the multiple social activities across the ship. Even when you have a sit down dinner, most cruises will sit you with other people to fill out tables and ease the load on staff. About the only thing going for the passengers is that cruise lines fear the norovirus and thus promote hand sanitizing. It's not mandatory, but they do ask you to use it.
@Meade, but you do get my point? It’s not just dollars at stake in the lockdown.
And for the record, I have felt that you and your bride were ignoring, or at best underestimating, the human costs of the shutdown.
@bagoh20
Here are some possibilities for a resolution that have been discussed:
1) An effective vaccine is developed and deployed
2) Widespread accurate testing is available to try targeted isolation efforts
3) People get fed up with distancing and another wave maybe happens (&repeat)
4) Summer in the Northern hemisphere makes it become seasonal
These are not all equally likely and have different timelines and consequences.
Blogger I Callahan said...
Shouting Thomas is right
Never a good way to start a sentence.
Yeah, I've been thinking about people who depend on AA meetings or NA meetings.
when do you finally come out?
Heck, I'd come out right now if my favorite, or 13th favorite, restaurant were seating.
I am repeating BagoH20's question, because those who think they answered it, didn't actually do so:
"So, if you have been locking yourself away for weeks, when do you finally come out? What has to happen before you feel safe enough for that? The authorities are never going to say the threat is 100% gone. I assume getting vaccinated would do it, but what if that takes a year?
Serious question."
He is asking you what it would take for you to want to stop isolating yourself.
“Ride it through” is the advice given by many here.
Just saying that you would feel safe if the authorities ended the lockdowns on the implementation of some other policy is a non-answer. However, we can play that game, too- what would the policies have to do with the numbers being reported for you to have faith enough in the policy to come out of your self-isolation?
@Ken B., unfortunately you really did come across as panicked. Sorry, dude.
But the word “denialist” has an unfortunate connotation insofar as it is used to smear people, such as myself, who object to the junk science and junkier mathematical models that underly anthropogenic global warming (aka “global climate change”).
Meade said...
Yancey, as you suggest, "there is no reason at this point to believe" anything. Except that social isolation can in fact eradicate the virus and can in fact prevent one from becoming infected. Is it realistic to believe each and every human being on earth will effectively self-isolate? Of course not.
If your question is serious and not just rhetorical, the answer is yes.
Social isolation is a temporary solution.
Everyone will eventually be exposed unless you mean to keep everyone isolated forever.
And really it is clearly obvious that this was widespread back when democrats and the media were calling Trump xenophobic and racist.
So this isolation is all a sham anyways.
But they managed to get the police state they always wanted.
Easy peasy lemon squeasy.
Ken B said...
Bagoh20
Several answers to that have been discussed on other threads. Staged re openings accompanied by testing. Some people will have to accept being isolated for a long time. I am retired so I can stay out of the way more easily than some. What we have to watch at each stage is health care capacity and infections. There might be intermittent lockdowns.
No.
We will not be accepting a police state.
We are not China.
To believe there were only 34,000 deaths world-wide, you would have to absolutely believe China has provided accurate numbers on their deaths.
Although there is some truth to that, I use worldwide numbers because the US numbers look even more at odds with official estimates. We are at 2,600 death. To be near 100,000 deaths by end of April, then we should be 10,000 to 20,000 deaths at the end of the week and nearly double that in two weeks with some signs of tapering then. Remember, most people who died in the US to date were exposed prior to the emergency declarations with fewer respirators and no news of any effective treatment.
Right now, I'm still seeing bad data out there. Yeah, we don't really no the toll in China. In the US, I'm seeing under reporting of recovered patients. We all know that widespread testing is only just beginning. The data is bad, so no matter how good the model (and I don't think they are that good), it is still garbage in.
Big Mike
I think the word used with AGW skeptics is “denier”. I have not used that word, for that reason.
I can not control how I seem to you, panicked or otherwise. I am not panicked nor it seems to me are any of the commenters here who support distancing measures.
bagoh20 said...
So what would happen if everybody effectively sheltered in place and nobody got the infection? Do we stay sheltered forever. Of course not. I mean, what are we waiting for anyway. If there was no herd immunity developing, we would never be able to come out. It would just start right up again, becuase it is here now for good, waiting to infect us, but only if it can.
You are asking people to think for themselves and come to logical conclusions.
I would like to know what happens next October when flu season starts and we face the prospect of 30,000-60,000 people dying over the next four months.
Are we supposed to shut down the economy again?
@Jupiter, if the wife and I were confined to our cabin on the Diamond Princess, and the wife came down with COVID-19 but I didn’t seem to have it, I think I would assume that I had it too, but it was mild (or asymptomatic).
Blogger I Callahan said...
Shouting Thomas is right
ARM: "Never a good way to start a sentence."
Based on recent performance, for ARM, the only acceptable sentence opening includes the words: "As Dear Leader Xi has taught us......"
Pretty much anything can follow that opening.
And I do mean anything.
"To be clear, I don't agree with his fatalism or his callous flippant disregard for avoidable agonizing deaths of millions or thousands or hundreds or tens or one American."
I have a family member that lives paycheck to paycheck -- not by buying new cars or such, but because of the overwhelming medical bills cumulating from his wife's breast cancer (surgeries, rounds of chemo and radiation, tests etc).
They are doing the best for her one American life, but he has now lost his job to the current situation, and will be falling further and further behind.
Do they pursue more treatment that they now know they will probably not be able to pay?
It ain't all about 401ks and teenagers out of a job.
But the constant shaming by the virtue-shelterers is bad faith in a situation that has the goal posts moving every hour.
I am Laslo.
Jupiter:
The economy weighs lives against wealth all day long, except when the government has shut it down. If it didn't, we would close the interstate highway system, which kills tens of thousands of people every year, just so we can go places and have stuff.
The ethics course was a 300 level class. I'm sure deadly common good public works projects were at least a grad level course. As my masters was in business, I somehow didn't take that one. Ethics are difficult.
However, the actions taken to date here in Ohio, while borderline draconian, are being taken fairly well for now. I'm going along, but have reserved the right to come back on these decisions as more facts are revealed. If it can be shown (or credibly estimated) that we have saved over twenty thousand, then maybe, just maybe, it's OK.
Why 20,000? Because the decrease in opioid overdoses 2017-2018 was 20,000. Link. Here in Ohio, it was pretty much an "opioid epidemic".
That's probably an understatement of lives lost from shitty economic conditions, but it is at least a surrogate data point.
Laslo
Are hard questions proof of bad faith? If not, read on.
Is he receiving the CARES money?
Is his employer?
Is there any reason to think the job is gone permanently if the lockdown begins easing by late April?
Would her cancer treatment be impacted if the medical system is swamped?
Are her drugs dependent on a fragile supply chain that could collapse if the outbreak got bad enough?
Is this whole thing a hoax, or are there really tough choices to be made in the face of a lot of uncertainty?
Okay, that last was rhetorical. The others aren’t.
DBQ way upthread: "This mad rush to DO SOMETHING..DO ANYTHING!!! is not rational."
This is of course the essential point: not to do nothing, but to attempt to be rational even in a panic: to do "real calculations" on the economy, on costs and benefits, and calibrate our response accordingly--without spending trillions to save thousands.
Relatively trivial bit relevant example: number of athletes reported to be seriously affected by the Wuhan virus in over two months of epidemic: 1. Sports shut down worldwide: nearly all.
Number of young people under 20 seriously affected by the Wuhan virus: very small; number of young people seriously affected by flu: larger. Shutdowns of schools and colleges to control flu and save "just one life" a la Cuomo: none. Shutdowns to "protect" kids from Wuhan: massive.
Most businesses run by and serving young people can "reopen safely," as in: safe in terms of the sorts of risks we routinely accepted prior to the panic, right now.
Of course, that should go along with rigorous isolation of risk groups, and continued behavioral adjustments by everyone else, mainly to spread out the burden on health care.
Laslo Spatula said...
Do they pursue more treatment that they now know they will probably not be able to pay?
One thing to consider. Where I am they are now only treating new cancer cases. Waiting may result in being triaged if she is in an area that becomes a hotspot. I understand the financial consequence might be dire and the outcome uncertain. It is just a terrible situation to be in.
the final scene in Dr. Strangelove comes to mind
John G Lynch said...
.....
The decision makers at Ford were literally debating the cost verses lives lost. And hence became part of case study lore in decades of ethics classes.
Little known fact: The Feds actually made them do that calculation; statistically, Pintos were no more likely to catch fire than any other vehicle. Thanks to Nader et al. with the Pinto and Corvair, that myth of Big Corporations Killing People Over $5 got fixed in the public imagination.
Sweden defends its more relaxed coronavirus strategy
Anthony:
I was aware that the Pinto was no more likely than others to catch fire. It was as RHHardin might opine: about the feelings. When a Pinto went, it did so in spectacular, inside the passenger compartment, fashion. As they were debating costs per life, events took over as a family of four were killed.
I know the Feds were involved, but did not know they made them do the calculation.
Thanks.
“My wife had a similar experience about 12 years ago. I have had one patient with such an experience that gave us all chills.”
I showed up the next day (against orders, since I hadn’t heard from her), to find that she had been mostly out after her flatlining. And the first fifteen minutes or so were very chilling to me. She wasn’t really there, but rather in some fugue state, where she seemed to still be experiencing whatever it was that she experienced. Somewhat carrying on a conversation with me with half her mind, and still experiencing whatever with the rest of it. It was almost as if there were a crackle in the background. At the time, I thought it might have been flame like. Or, possibly like an older radio. Then she slowly woke up fully, but still seemingly still remembering everything vividly, just now in the past tense. About that time, her best friend showed up, and I gave them some privacy. I think that he got a taste of it too.
While we are proing and conning, how about this one. Multiple researchers have said it would be possible to make a vaccine for Coronavirus in a week or two. The difficulty is that it will take much longer, likely a year (sorry, bagoh2o) to do the controlled tests that prove it is safe and effective. Should the government waive that testing regime, and give the vaccine to anyone who wants to take it?
Extra credit - one of the ways that a vaccine can fail to be safe and effective is that it actually makes the recipient more susceptible to the disease.
Is he receiving the CARES money? A one-time check that is a portion of a paycheck: the band-aid has not arrived as yet.
Is his employer? Don't know. Businesses downstream of theirs are doing layoffs, with the expectation that business will NOT ramp up magically at some TBD date.
Is there any reason to think the job is gone permanently if the lockdown begins easing by late April? Yes.
Would her cancer treatment be impacted if the medical system is swamped? Already is. Appointments and tests cancelled, treatment postponed.
Are her drugs dependent on a fragile supply chain that could collapse if the outbreak got bad enough? Yep.
I am Laslo.
Ken B said...I think the word used with AGW skeptics is “denier”. I have not used that word, for that reason.
--
True. I believe it was "covidiots".
As in "Anything is better than reading the Althouse covidiots tell us to lock door handles and boomers should die anyway."
Jupiter- and then there are vaccines like the one for Japanese encephalitis. It is used, but you have to be within a certain time's drive of a hospital for a while after because for some people it has terrible adverse effects.
As the boredom increases, the panic will decrease. You can argue numbers all day long but that’s the real arc of this story.
@Ken B., sorry I overlooked your response. (Thank you, walter, for pointing out that there was one.) I think the difference between "deniers" and "denialists" is a quibble.
Big Mike
I know people who think niggardly is a racial slur.
Yancey and others,
Thanks for restating my question, which still has not been answered. It was specific to each person:
What would need to happen for YOU to give up your self quarantine?
Why is nobody giving an answer? Have you not even considered the question? I think it's the prime question to consider at this point, and it's hard to believe nobody has asked themselves that yet?
bagoh20: I am going along with the quarantine, reluctantly but in service to my fellow citizens. Besides, my company won't allow me to travel, customers won't meet f2f, my family isn't allowing visitors, nor are my friends, and everything is shut down.
For me the answer to your question is that I would like to see a flattening of the curve of deaths, sustained over, say, a couple of weeks. Even and especially if the diagnosed cases continue to rise. That data would convince me that we are past the peak and the likelihood that I would become sick or infect anyone had passed.
Thanks, Steve. Sounds reasonable. I would have a more liberal standard, but that's OK, and it depends on where you live and what "going out" really means. If I lived in Manhattan, it would be different than here in NV. I can go about town without ever getting close enough to be infected or vise versa, I can constantly disinfect and avoid contact, I can simply never touch my face without disinfecting my hands, especially after touching anything. Those precautions reduced the possibility to virtually zero, and that's what I do.
Put me in the stevew category. I'm hoping this new 15 minutes test will become cheap and widely available. I'd like to test myself at least once every day. Test negative? go out and about, visit my 94 year-old mother, my brother who has diabetes, my friend who is recovering from Pneumonia and pulmonary embolism. Test positive? self-quarantine.
Bagoh
I think I answered your question. I can stay in and out the way more easily than most. So I intend to stay in as much as I can until conditions clarify and we have a coherent plan in place in my town. That won’t happen before May. It might not happen until summer, I do not know. Except for groceries infrequently and drugs infrequently I am staying in. I have 3 months on my prescriptions. We have a freezer.
I'd also resume walking my neighbor's dog... if I test negative. I'd like to think he misses me.
I went to my doctor today. I thought I had skin cancer. It turned out to be Shingles. I had the vaccination about a year ago. Oh, well. Doctor tells me it's 96% effective.
We were talking about the virus and he was very relaxed, and felt it was not worth getting too worried about if you take normal precautions. In his opinion, you can triple the number of positives being reported, and that we will see a huge increase as soon as the new 5-15 minute test comes out and testing really expands. In his opinion, it's like a strong flu, and expanding exposure and the resulting immunity will soon take over and win the fight as the warmer weather here joins our side. Next year it will be a vaccination that may be part of the normal flu shot, but probably marketed separately for psychological and market reasons.
Yeah, "going out" is a function of where you are and what it means and involves. I live in northeastern MA. Going out around here for me is out to dinner and visiting friends and family. Will depend on what those establishments and folks are doing. It may be a while until I have somewhere to go.
Most of my work travel is usually to NYC, NJ, eastern PA, and central to southwest CT. I suspect it will be quite some time until I can return to that activity.
The wife finds it more of a strain than I do. Of course she is stuck with me, and I am only stuck with her.
She worked in drug development. Her contempt for the ******** ********** here is greater than mine btw. And her language harsher.
An idea for a plan
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2020/03/29/group-testing-is-our-secret-weapon-against-coronavirus/#6e45989b36a6
https://twitter.com/fuller_brandon/status/1242911468959330305
Yancy and Bagho- yes, that is a very interesting question.
What will it take for people to come out?
Meade said...
Put me in the stevew category. I'm hoping this new 15 minutes test will become cheap and widely available. I'd like to test myself at least once every day. Test negative? go out and about, visit my 94 year-old mother, my brother who has diabetes, my friend who is recovering from Pneumonia and pulmonary embolism. Test positive? self-quarantine.
You could become positive sometime within that 24 hour period.
Ken B said...
She worked in drug development.
Anyone with any knowledge of drug trials/drug development is in much the same boat. There is a reason why genuinely useful drugs appear so infrequently.
Meade
Kotlikoff suggested a plan. A group of homes is identified, everyone gives a swab each morning. Swabs combined, one PCR run. If clean all get a pass for the day, if dirty none do. Follow up if dirty. Faster, cheaper, can test more people. The idea is to get people working.
Won’t work everywhere, won’t work if the virus is already widespread in an area, won’t work if infected people fake swabs because “it’s just a mild flu”, but would allow more people in an area to work more and for longer.
Post a Comment