From "Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread" (NYT). Graphs and maps at the link. Lots of bright red in the south, where the worst places have people averaging "travel" of over 3 miles a day.
It's interesting that our phone data is being used this way, but what's the problem if people are going out for a 3-mile walk? The data the NYT is using may have a rough correlation to whether people are getting together in groups, but I know I go out and get in an average of 3.5 miles, and I'm not doing anything that's not within Governor Evers's rules, which say:
Individuals may leave their home or residence... To engage in outdoor activity, including visiting public and state parks, provided individuals... [at all times as reasonably possible maintain social distancing of at least six (6) feet from any other person]. Such activities include, by way of example and without limitation, walking, biking, hiking, or running. Individuals may not engage in team or contact sports such as by way of example and without limitation, basketball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, or football, as these activities do not comply with Social Distancing Requirements. Playgrounds are closed.To get to a state park, you've got to drive your car, but that's just you in your car. You're not exposing yourself or others when you're in that interior space. Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?
ADDED: From the comments over at the NYT:
I'm a Fed, but live in rural Oklahoma. I normally travel 33 miles each way to work in Oklahoma City M-F, but we're on telework order, so that part is down to zero. However, most of you can't imagine the distances we have out here. The nearest decent grocery store is 16 miles away, and a Walmart is about 22. So, if we go out food shopping once every two weeks, that could be 44 miles for that alone. The maps therefore are missing once critical element (which is admittedly VERY hard to compute), and that would be "Average Essential Travel Distance". That should be the denominator in a ratio, with the numerator being "Average Miles Traveled". To be fair, I do statistics for a living, and I wouldn't even begin to know how to estimate that denominator, other than to ask a sample of individuals to take a guess at it.But most of the commenters over there are picking up the message that I think the NYT intended to send: The people who vote for Republicans are ignorant and/or unwilling to act for the good of the whole.
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206 comments:
1 – 200 of 206 Newer› Newest»Because unfortunately, people are not listening, and are still congregating. They closed the boardwalks on the Jersey shore for that reason..and they just had to close the BEACHES. Young people think it doesn't hurt them so they are still gathering together.
"Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?"
In a word, yes.
I tell you what, a nice ride in my car into the mountains sounds nice right now. But it does mean pumping gas which if you wear gloves doesn’t seem all that dangerous. But I don’t. It would be nice if the governor issued some clarifications though.
Leave your phone at home.
This is all nonsense.
If this is the next shaming scam, let's see who traveled the farthest...I'm looking at you NYC.
We’ve gone from “flattening the curve” to “no new cases” as the goal. It’s absurd and destructive.
The NYT proves the accuracy of Saul Steinberg's NYer cover.
Texas looks weird to me with the sparsely populated west locking down in the earliest cohort, and the densely populated east in the last. I wonder whether the west is just so rural that people just don't travel from their properties much at all.
Yes. Compliance is all.
I know I have been retired for a few years, but I worked in the field of network surveillance, and that is an impressive display of computer power.
Nevada's governor just asked residents to stay inside except for essential tasks. Going outside for a breath of fresh air or to exercise is NOT one of the approved of essential tasks. I suspect that the reason for the government's new position is that too many people are acting like the young couple Althouse passed on her morning run -- they're not allowing the people they meet to maintain a safe distance.
They want everybody to follow the same processes as are needed in NYC. We're trying to do one size-fits-all with this, which is unnecessarily damaging to the economy.
It is a very limited proxy since the problem is being around people not in your household, no matter where that happens.
Spread of the disease (I suppose using ER data) relative to the date of the first stay at home order would be much more useful, but there's about a 2-week delay (people going to the hospital today got it about 2 weeks ago; people dying today got it about 3 weeks ago). Still, that's the best we got.
The NYT want to promote the idea that “deplorable” are idiots. Southern=deplorable=idiot. Although we know that Florida was recently overrun by college snowflakes who by and large are idiots.
This is what I've been wondering. We're under no such orders in Montana either yet hardly anyone is outside. Except the occasional runner spraying droplets all over the bike-ped trail airspace. I can't get far enough away.
I notice that employees of the New York Times are not staying inside their homes.
You would think the New York Times would be more concerned, not with what people are doing in Omaha, but rather what their socialist Mayor is doing to New York City. As recently as March 16, De Blasio was still going to the YMCA gym, potentially spreading the disease far and wide and encouraging others to do the same.
Called out, the Mayor said, and I quote: "I live in the regular world."
His own staff had to threaten to resign to get him to change his behaviors.
My message to the New York Times is to quit fucking invading the privacy of American citizens and fix your own sh*thole of a town.
Individuals may not engage in team or contact sports such as by way of example and without limitation, basketball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, or football
NYC Parks had allowed tennis courts to remain open (and they were quite busy). In singles, at least, you're mostly around 80 feet from the other person (yes, you both touch the tennis balls, but it's not clear that poses any great danger). But last weekend they shut down the tennis courts. We are not allowed to have fun.
This is a bullshit article from the New York perspective, which is to say that they view all things by their own standard. If they live a certain way, everyone must live the same way.
A few things about Florida and the Southeast:
Season. That is, tourist season, snowbird season starts just after New Years Day and continues through till around Mother's Day, with the bulk of it taking place between Jan and April. In that time, we get people from all over the eastern half of North America coming down here to stay for a week, a month, or, as in many cases, a few months for those who have a 'winter home' in Florida. They are here. And over the past 2 months, a number of them trekked back home to be where their families are. New York, Toronto, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, etc. That's just how it is. I have neighbors now who want to go home to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but are not going anywhere.
Unlike New York, here in the Southeast we drive to get things such as groceries. In our own cars, an environment we can control. And in many cases the store is 3 or so miles away. Or we go to a park to walk. Again- 3 or so miles away. The NY Times people who are used to sitting in filthy cabs or germ ridden subways, or as in the case of the execs there in New York, in first class Amtrak rail cars going to Connecticut, are suddenly of the mind that everyone should live like them? Maybe living in 500 sf apartments in Brooklyn, where they can then walk to the grocery which is less than 3 miles away?
If we wanted to be doing that, we'd be there now, doing that. We saw it and moved the other way.
"To get to a state park, you've got to drive your car, but that's just you in your car. You're not exposing yourself or others when you're in that interior space. Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?"
The NYT thinks you shouldn't own a car.
They welcome The Police State.
Just because people are travelling more than 3 miles doesn't imply that they're behaving recklessly with regards to the social distancing guidlines. Technically I travel more than 3 miles every day, but it's just between my own house and my elderly father's house. It's 8 miles, so it's a 16 mile round-trip through a very rural area and obviously with no contact with anyone else since I'm in my car the whole time.
Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?
The NYT, on a daily basis, promotes the idea that we're idiots if we don't live our lives exactly as the people in Manhattan do.
It's basically ALL the NYT does.
It's not surprising that the Trump Chicken Hawks are AWOL in the war on coronavirus pandemic
What jumps out at me with that map is that it's the rural areas that are red. Less population density, farther to travel to stores, etc. So even after 2016 and Trump, the NYT still remains unfamiliar with and hostile towards flyover country.
yay. more fodder to bash the south.
It’s important to counterbalance the fact that New York is the reddest (most infected) of all States by pointing the finger elsewhere.
Of course, the problem in New York couldn’t possibly stem from having the highest concentration of idiots on the planet.
This map is ridiculous. In the green area where I live in California, you can't go ANYWHERE without driving several miles. For many...even a trip to the grocery store or pharmacy it is often many miles in just one direction. You will note that all the the green areas are in places where there is a lot of open space....mile and miles of Montana. Do anyone really think that those people aren't driving more than two miles? Plus...two miles from where to where?
Tracking your phone data is also a ridiculous idea. Not everyone takes their phone with them all the time. I take mine if I'm traveling away from my house or general area. But generally, if you track my phone you would think I'm dead and rotting in the house because the phone is turned off in in a dish with a bunch of keys on an entry room table.
There are lots of reasons to leave your house that don't involve contact with any other person. The NYT and the stay at home Nazis can just fuck right off.
If you live in NYC, you probably don't have a car and you probably live in a cramped 1 bedroom apt., So yes, they want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. If they are wealthy enough to have a car (and pay garage rents) they already left town for their second home out in the sticks.
It is actual real Spring in the southeast and Texas. Additionally, we are in places that aren't nuts to butts. And guess what- look at those places that were immobile first in the northeast- what do you see?
Your walks shouldn't contaminate the data. If they know how far you go they also know how long it took. So it should be pretty easy to filter out trips made at walking or running speed.
If people in NYC are not complying with shelter in place orders, why should we send them scarce ventilators?
Nobody ordered the mayor of New Orleans to cancel Mardi Gras? You can't make this shit up!
Yep. Those rednecks in the south are such idiots, Says NYT....or it could be they generally live farther away from the grocery store and are taking precautions with gloves and masks and sanitizers while keeping their distance.
...now lets talk about all those morons in manhattan who live stacked on top of each other and share HVAC and elevator buttons and door knobs.
The NYT thinks you shouldn't own a car.
Socialist totalitarians want us to live in urban high rises, take public transportation to work and use high speed trains to travel longer distances. That makes the population easier to control.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a wet blanket over those ideas. A really wet blanket.
Around here it's typical for people to drive 10, 20, 50 or 100 miles to get to a grocery store, doctor's office, etc. The (NYT/snort) map is completely incorrect for this area.
Compliance is all.
I understand and will obey.
What a stupid graph. The red correlates almost exactly to those parts of the country that are rural or have low density and where you need to drive long distances to go the store or your job.
People in rural America have to drive more than 3 miles to do anything. Meanwhile, if you live in NYC you don't have to walk more that 3 blocks. And here's another thing: The red areas have COMPARATIVELY almost no chinese flus deaths. Which obviously means the more you drive the safer you are.
My wife and I live in the Atlanta suburbs. I feel pretty sure we've 'traveled' more than 3 miles several times this week. To pick up prescriptions (through the drive-up window). To grocery-shop (observing all precautions and for the first time in two weeks). And to pick up takeout food (which was placed on a table outside the restaurant's locked door and paid for by credit card over the phone). We came within six feet of far fewer people than we could have if we lived in NYC, regardless of the raw distance we traveled.
I will just point out, for this map to actually be meaningful in any way, you need to see the same data at this time last year.
People at the NYT never get it through their head the rest of the USA is NOT like the Northeast or NYC or DC or LA.
Yes. They do want to label people covidiots. It's their arrogant totalitarian nature.
That's an odd metric.
Tuesday morning, I drove twenty-some miles to our vet, dropped off my dog to a vet tech in full PPE (mask, face shield, gloves, gown, the works) and sat in my car until they were done checking him out. (Post-surgery for cancer.)
So technically, I'm averaging more than three miles a day over the last week. But I'd bet the NYT author has been exposed to far more people using far less protection than I have.
Travel restrictions have only one reason to keep infected people from going on uninfected areas and spreading the disease. But what if no one has the disease? Or what if the people traveling are going to the store or some other essential thing?
Again, a moronic graph. Typical of the NYT.
More than two miles is "widely"? What would the map have looked like last year? How's that less than two miles slowing down NYC hotspot? How much of travel in south is actually people who live there? How many other stories do NY Times staffers have about South is bad?
Cat's out of the bag. I'm not sure why we're even pretending that social distancing will "flatten the curve" or whatever. Using non-influenza cases, Silverman and Washburn estimated case detection rates and forecast Covid 19 spread in the US. (These researchers focused on the sharp increase in non-influenza cases in certain states that are now experiencing Covid 19 outbreaks.) They estimated the symptomatic case detection rate to be 1/100 to 1/1000 of current confirmed cases. That means about ten million presumed symptomatic individuals across the US during the week starting on March 15, 2020. How many asymptomatic individuals are there? How many people have recovered from Covid 19?
We need antibody tests ASAP.
Take a look at Laurent Schirrer's CovModel twitter account. And stop freaking out.
Funny article. Meant, of course, to point out the stupidity and pigheadedness of southerners. And written and conceived by those who believe 3 miles is far and who believe you should do as you’re told. And yet as you examine their map closer you note that even in the deplorable south the metropolitan areas kept close to home while rural rubes drove around like nothing had happened. And, guess what, nothing had.
We live in Wyoming. The nearest town is 18 miles away. It's the better part of a mile round trip to the end of our lane and back to the house. The Post Office is four miles away. And we are in the densely populated part of the state. Two miles? We aren't even out of sight of our house.
Without irony, NYT has an adjoining story about how right-wingers are blaming others for the pandemic.
""A lockdown order right now is not going to be a silver bullet with containing this," Mr. Hladish said. "It will absolutely save lives. “
I wonder why this saves lives, and not shutting down travel from China?
More than two miles? Isn't that an absurd parameter? Most of us--at least here in the west--have to drive much further than that to buy groceries.
I live in Round Rock, a bedroom suburb of Austin, Texas, about 20 miles from my construction site for two new homes in east Austin. Every day I drive 18 miles down I-35 and 2 miles down empty city streets to my work site, where all alone I review the previous day's work by subcontractors on my two buildings and make calls updating subs & suppliers on what they need to do today. Then I drive home. I have over $700k involved in this project, and I'm probably the smallest builder in Austin. I need to finish these houses and sell or at least rent them.
The asshat mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, shut down residential construction last week.
Thank you, Texas Governor Abbot, for declaring residential construction an essential business and allowing my subcontractor crews of 1 to 4 guys to continue working on this isolated site. Most of them live paycheck to paycheck. They aren't getting any government relief, either, because they are mostly long-term illegal aliens, whose presence in Austin has long been encouraged by asshat mayor Steve Adler, who just tried to cut off their livelihoods.
Besides, it's not miles traveled in your car that exposes people to the virus. It's what happens at your destination.
An article in the telegraph today points out that only 12% of Italy's deaths of the Coronavirus were directly linked to the coronavirus. The rest were all already dying of one and sometimes two other underlying causes.
We are currently witnessing one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated upon humanity.
Looking for outdoor opportunities, I had discovered my favorite county parks were all closed by order of the county's poobahs. Suburban, but mostly rural county. I was greatly relieved that state parks and nature conservancy preserves were open and specifically addressed the needs of our souls for freedom in these circumstances as their reason to be open.
California is using this to grade its cities (so far my city has an A!). Hmmm. At some future time could states use this to punish cities for poor compliance - budgets/resources? That’s really only a small step up from using the power of the state to cut electrical and water to a businesses that remains open (especially if open is defined as the owner of the business inside alone wrapping up paperwork for the employees that had to be furloughed).
It seems we have an ever growing infringement on our liberty and privacy. But it’s ok, it’s for our own good.
Well, as of this morning we have lost 47 jobs per confirmed case of Covid-19. That is in the first two weeks of massive unemployment filings. If the mortality rate is 2%, that will be 2,350 jobs per fatal infection. I am going to postulate for discussion here that the death rate related to sudden unemployment will exceed 1 out of 2,350.
Interesting chart, but as others have pointed out, a connection to the spread of the corona virus is questionable. My first thoughts would be that people would travel further in less densely populated areas. And some places people are so isolated that they hardly travel at all. I knew a woman who grew up in Wyoming with the nearest neighbor twelve miles away.
Blogger Dust Bunny Queen said...
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There are lots of reasons to leave your house that don't involve contact with any other person. The NYT and the stay at home Nazis can just fuck right off.
4/2/20, 10:10 AM
This is exactly right. There are even places (stores/businesses) which you can go to where the closest contact is probably the cashier, several feet away from you. You don't need to interact with anyone else, there isn't anyone else. But...the store has to close...a pain in the fricking ass, with absolutely no ability to apply common fricking sense!
Wife and I have to drive slightly more than two miles to get to the nearest supermarket.
You have to drive for food and medicine, and this is the prime time of the year to be outside. I notice New York is green. How's that going--being close together enough to walk a couple blocks to anything? Perhaps the metric isn't meaningful.
We live in a very small town in northern SD. My husband came home from his essential job yesterday and told me that one of his customers, who works at the local grocery store, said that they had a guy come in from Colorado and buy 4 shopping carts of food and supplies.
They have had other people from Colorado come over the last week but they didn't buy as much.
Our store is very well run and hasn't had too many actual shortages because people around here are not panic buying I guess.
So it could be hungry people are having to forage farther afield these days.
NYC and SF had leaders in early Feb encouraging their residents to head to Chinatown. Go about your normal business. So now we are in the re-writing history phase even before the history has been written. Luckily, it’s all dated and captured on video and dated via social media.
Yes the south has traveled, but 1) they do not have an infested public subway system (well, Atlanta has MARTA), and 2) they are well below the 40th parallel north. Yes New Orleans has a problem, but I suspect that was Mardi Gras.
This broad brush approach is getting ridiculous.
When you think about it, the map makes sense, COVID-19 regardless. I suspect the same map from last year wouldn't look all that different.
In cities, most people wouldn't need to travel 2 miles for anything on a given a day. In the vast swaths of the Mountain West, there isn't all that much to travel towards that isn't so far that you wouldn't do it on a given day. In a lot of the rural, small town South, though, there is plenty of places you need to and would want to travel to that is between 2 and 10 miles away. Then you add in the weather this time of the year- in the Southeast, we are already truly in Spring- this time of the year the average high temperature is already above 60 degrees F.
How many other stories do NY Times staffers have about South is bad?
South is bad, vote Orange Man, spread flu bug.
And I see chuck already pointed out the reason for the Mountain West.
I believe the time to go back to normal will be decided by the collective impatience of the American public. We're not going to sit around until Memorial day and put famine on top of plague. 90% of the country is not a hot spot.
And beyond that. We are being lied to from all corners. But now we've managed to create social distancing prudes.
Just another way for those damned Yankees to look down on those ignorant peckerwoods in the South and Southeast.
Out here in hoity-toity and locked down Los Angeles the nearest Whole Foods is 3.5 miles away and it's a quarter of a mile closer than the local Ralphs (Kroger) supermarket.
Living up in the hills as I do, it's mile and a half down to the nearest main street and there's nothing but other houses between me and that intersection. Slim pickin's if I 'm looking for groceries there.
My wife and I drive about 20 miles each way, three days a week, to hike with our dog and an older, but very fit, woman and her dogs. Other than that, it's only the grocery store where I go in alone and grab whatever we need. Everyone around here, Winston-Salem, seems very conscientious so far.
Travel might be a good metric if it were long enough to correspond to a trip. Who has traveled over 100 miles say. Or traveled but not returned the same day.
How many of those red points in Florida are actually New Yorkers fleeing?
the real purpose here
McMaster just closed the SC beaches the other day. It's ridiculous! SC is not the Jersey Shore in some 1950s postcard. It's easy to maintain dozens of feet of distance even at peak season. Some people don't: That's on them.
"but there's about a 2-week delay"
The onset of symptoms averages 5-ish days. The 2 weeks seem like an outlier.
Part of this is that newspapers in cities think of 3 miles as a huge distance with thousands of people.
Young people think it doesn't hurt them so they are still gathering together. [Wendybar]
And they're probably right. They do pose a risk to olders. But their sense of their own strength may be improving society's overall resistance to this virus in any of its future appearances.
A matter of visual rhetoric. The dates up to 3/25 are gradations. 3/26 is a different, almost complementary, color. This is tendentious. Look at the southern rubes. If the coloring is tendentious then so I suspect is the selection of trips over 2 miles as opposed to any other measure. Maybe other measures of continuing congregation make New York or New Jersey look bad, so we’re not selected.
How To Lie With Statistics by Huff is still worth reading.
A great book is Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
As is How to Lie With Maps.
Traveling many miles in the West and rural areas of anywhere is normal. You HAVE to travel miles and miles to get anywhere. If I want to go to Costco, it is a 90 mile one direction trip. Needless to say, that isn't happening right now as I DO want to go to Costco, but not deal with the crowds and crazy.
The closest large grocery store is about 20 miles. Post office, there is no mail delivery at my location, miles. Bank....miles. Pharmacy 20 miles...near the grocery. And so on and so on.
As Mockturtle said...it isn't the miles you are traveling, it is what you are doing when you get there.
Not everyplace is NYC or SF crowded, people on top of each other, with crowded mass transit and filthy streets. Not everyplace has conveniences that deliver food to your door. The NYTimes can shove it.
Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?
Yes. The NYT and Democrat party want the USA crippled by the economic damage of this virus. ANY outcome that Trump can point to as a victory hurts their business model of Running America. The Media us working overtime to find fault with Trump and his team and the going is tough. We’ve reacted to this pandemic in a totally unprecedented (as in unique to history) way, with a “war footing” type mobilization of our populace in which every American is asked to sacrifice for the common good. This bringing us together, amazingly, even as we strive keep slightly apart. We are unifying, and that denies the Left their most potent weapon, exploiting differences and aggravating slights to divide the populace into separated identity groups. The virus has us doing the exact opposite and that threatens the very existence of the race-baiters, feminists, transactivists, Resisters and anarchists, not to mention the socialists and Medicare-for-all crowd.
If they can’t prevent us cooperating to defeat the virus then there only move left is to crash the economy and blame Trump, then rely on there historical ability to use crises to seize power and rig elections (see the ballot harvesting built into Nancy’s bill?) in order to accrue just enough votes to be in place to permanently and “fundamentally transform” America just as Obama set out to do. Ironically one of the reasons he failed to set in place those changes was his utter lack of salesmanship for Obamacare, but the killer choice was Joe for VP ensuring NO ONE would carry his vision forward. He should have shunned Hillary and Joe and promoted fresh faces to work with him. But he wasn’t that bright either.
The SF Bay Area just issued more restrictive rules: You may only recreate within 5 miles of your home. Through May 3.
"Outdoor activities are limited and may only occur within 5 miles from your residence. Use of playgrounds, dog parks, public picnic areas, and similar recreational areas is prohibited. Use of shared public recreational facilities such as golf courses, tennis and basketball courts, pools, and rock walls is also prohibited. Sports or activities that require use of shared equipment, like frisbees, basketballs, baseballs, and soccer balls, may only be engaged in by members of the same household."
On the upside:
"Landscapers and similar service professionals may only provide services necessary to maintain the sanitation, habitability, or operation of residences or businesses, or for safety reasons. They may not provide services that are cosmetic or for general upkeep or maintenance."
Totally racist!
If you read the article... I know, I know, the first map basically shows that rural Americans from Florida through the northwest are driving more miles. It’s kind of a shock, really.
The amazing thing is how Upstate New York shut down though. But the proximity to NYC and the hell they are going through probably explains it.
Nitschke scholar Howard checking ever other second to see if he got any attention.
Unlike New York, here in the Southeast we drive to get things such as groceries. In our own cars, an environment we can control.
I live in Tucson, or to be exact, just outside the city limits. I just got home from Costco, the "senior citizen" hour to shop. I got there at 7:20 and was in the exact same spot I was 10 days ago when I did this. They started letting groups of 50 in at 7:30. Well organized. Just inside they had a toilet paper stack the size of a moderate sized room. Slightly smaller stack of paper towels. Everything else was in stock. I left at 8:20 and, as I drove away, the line for over 60 was out to the gas pumps. Must have been a thousand people still in line.
The lefty Mayors and Congress critters seem to have finally gotten to the governor who ordered a shutdown statewide Tuesday at 5 PM. I was very disappointed to see him do this. Outside of Phoenix, which I consider LA east, AZ is wide open spaces.
I imagine the travel from infected NYC to, at the time, relatively uninfected Florida must be fairly intense. More Yankee terrorism. I doubt it’s escaped Floridians notice.
Talk about missing the point!
The NYT does not say or suggest that all travel is bad from the point of view of controlling spread. In fact, it explicitly says the opposite--that driving to get groceries, for example, is not a problem.
The point of the article is that overall levels of travel are probably predictive of spread, all other things being equal, and that they differ a lot depending on whether there is a stay at home order in place and, relatedly, whether the state is red or blue.
IMO the most telling part of the article is the list of urban counties where there has been a lot of travel in the past couple of weeks--almost all in red states (with Fresno County being a big exception). Urbanism plus less distancing means outbreak, no? Thus, one important implication of the article is that there is going to be a big explosion of cases in those urban locations.
That in turn raises the question of whether the federal government's decision to leave stay at home to state and local governments in red states--a decision that has been strongly challenged by a wide range of experts--was sound policy, either as matter of federalism or public health. Professor Althouse, you actually know a lot about federalism. What is your view on that issue, one where informed debate would surely be, as you put it, helpful?
more stupid shit for power tripping politicians.
Newsom didn't close the beaches he closed the PARKING LOTS for the beaches.
His rich buddies can walk to the beach. the lovely now unpeopled beach.
power tripping asshole.
"Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?"
Regardless of what the NYT says, yes, you and everyone your age should stay home.
Let the rest of us try to save the country.
Which states/localities/politicians were calling for everyone to get out there and mingle up to the first weeks of March?
Democratics.
Every time.
Howard said...
It's not surprising that the Trump Chicken Hawks are AWOL in the war on coronavirus pandemic
4/2/20, 10:08 AM
"Wow. Oh, man. Okay." (From what I understand, this is a polite way to say, "You're either an idiot or an asshole.")
our governor called attention, to it two weeks ago,
KemB Travel might be a good metric if it were long enough to correspond to a trip. Who has traveled over 100 miles say. Or traveled but not returned the same day.
Out here we measure traveling not by miles but by time. Hours of traveling. How far is it to XX place. Welp..about 2 1/2 hours.
We often travel/drive more than 200 or even 300 miles for just a pleasure day trip. To get out of the area. See something new or refresh ourselves. Take a picnic lunch to a lake in a nearby National Park. Drive on logging roads and collect interesting rocks or weathered wood. Just to get out.
If we really want to go further for fun, we might stay overnight in a familiar motel or lodge. Not now, of course. But this is nothing out of the ordinary. To visit family we have to drive 5 or 9 hours straight to get to their houses...one way 9 straight f*cking hours of driving at an average of 70 mph. Obviously not now!
As I pointed out it is about a 180 to 200 to 300 mile round trip to go big grocery shopping, to visit a big box home store, to go the the DOCTOR sometimes, take our cars/trucks to the dealership or other automotive repair services, to buy emergency supplies from our distributor for our business.
Routine travel.
People in NYC would have a fit if they had to drive or travel that far. We love it.
Ken B said...
A great book is Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
This is a genuinely excellent book for anyone interested in data analysis. I can't recall it having a chapter entitled 'How to Lie With Maps'. The author has at least two other similar books that are also interesting. Both the NYT and the WSJ modified there presentation of quantitative data to conform to the basic principles outlined in this book, and both publications are much better for so doing.
Ha! It’s done with “cubes.” We were first doing that to crunch huge amounts of network data in 2005 or so, I can’t recall exactly. I remember that when we got it working right, crunching cell network data daily in nightly jobs, it seemed like magic to the users compared to how it used to be done. I should have known. I guess the calculation is not that hard. Max and min long and max an min latt for the phone and do your calc from that. Or maybe cell tower hops, IDK. They probably tried a few things before they settled on something. It’s an “index” not an absolute measure. I wonder who is letting them spy on their networks?
"Data in the dashboard is updated daily. However, it takes 3 days for data to process fully.”
It makes more and more sense the more I read it. Things really haven’t changed as much as you would think, except that apparently telcos are selling their data now, which would have been a huge no no back in the day.
https://help.cuebiq.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041285051-Reading-Cuebiq-s-COVID-19-Mobility-Insights
The point of the article is that overall levels of travel are probably predictive of spread, all other things being equal,
Not true and typical. Travel by private auto is not predictive of anything except you don't live in NYC.
"I will just point out, for this map to actually be meaningful in any way, you need to see the same data at this time last year.”
I was going to say something witty, but Yancey blew it all away.
The thing is, is that normal is very different for most of us. Those living in NYC, don’t have to go very far to get what they need, but often do so on foot, or if they can’t, using mass transit, or a cab. All very prone to infection. In MT, we live inside the city limits of a small town (about 1k population). We have most of what we need w/I about 3-5 miles. But then, in normal times, we get out of town every couple weeks, drive 100 miles, and stock up at Costco and Walmart. Do it of course, in complete safety since we are driving. But the county is 100 miles long, with really only two legitimate grocery stores. Plenty of people in the county have to drive 30-40 miles to get to such.
Things are different here in PHX. One big grocery (Walmart) w/I half a mile and three more big ones w/I 3 miles. The newer parts of the metro area were set out as section grids (each 1 sq mile) with main streets down the edges, and shopping at most corners - usually including a big grocery store at maybe half the corners. You mostly drive of course - no one really wants to walk in 110 degree heat if you can avoid it. Much better laid out than the Denver metro area where I grew up, and still have much of my family. My youngest brother probably has better than a ten mile drive, either up the hill or down, for the nearest full service grocery.
The article very much looks to having been written from the point of view of someone living in a (very unhealthy in terms of COVID-2) dense city, such as NYC. Most of the country drives to the grocery store. They mostly can’t, and don’t. I find it somewhere between humorous and arrogant for them to fault the rest of the country for refusing to engage in ultra dense urban living, dependent on their highly dangerous (to health) choices in transportation. It is far safer these days to jump in my car in MT and drive 100 miles to a Walmart in Missoula or Sandpoint than for them to walk a couple blocks to a neighborhood bodega.
Re: 3 mile walks
The data can probably provide average velocity, and putting a cutoff of, conservatively, 10 MPH (really, almost everyone runs/jogs slower than a 6 min mile), you can remove a LOT of vehicle data. Though biking would still be counted ...
"Data in the dashboard is updated daily. However, it takes 3 days for data to process fully.”
It makes more and more sense the more I read it. Things really haven’t changed as much as you would think, except that apparently telcos are selling their data now to data brokers like these guys, which would have been a huge no no back in the day.
https://help.cuebiq.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041285051-Reading-Cuebiq-s-COVID-19-Mobility-Insights
Re: 3 mile walks
The data can probably provide average velocity, and putting a cutoff of, conservatively, 10 MPH (really, almost everyone runs/jogs slower than a 6 min mile), you can remove a LOT of vehicle data. Though biking would still be counted ...
they shut down the calle ocho, the street carnival in Miami, almost a month ago,
I am dubious of this articles conclusions.
Anyone traveling more than 3 miles is definitely in a vehicle (personal car, taxi, bus, train). And in the southeast US that will almost always mean a personal car. It is shorter trips that are more likely to involve walking (on busy sidewalks where one is bumping into strangers), and it is New Yorkers and other big city dwellers who are likely to ride in a shared vehicle such as a taxi, bus, or train (I shudder to think of how dirty they are).
So come down off your high horse there, sport!
The people saying this is some kind of "New Yorkers want us all to live like New Yorkers" moment need to go back and look at that map. There are plenty of places more rural than Florida where people aren't driving 3 miles a day.
"But their sense of their own strength may be improving society's overall resistance to this virus in any of its future appearances.”
Plus who needs grandpa anyways?
I don't take my phone when I walk, regardless of the distance. I do take my phone when I bicycle - 25 to 30 miles (approximately half the distance from my home).
I want to see the corresponding statistics for the confirmed cases of the virus, overlaid on this map. Otherwise this is just sanctimonious othering.
have a comfy chair
"The point of the article is that overall levels of travel are probably predictive of spread, all other things being equal,"
All other things are not equal. It's just as easy to argue that travel distance is dependent upon population density, and thus inversely proportional to spread.
yes that's a dubious inference, one can walk three miles easy around here.
"The data can probably provide average velocity, and putting a cutoff of, conservatively, 10 MPH (really, almost everyone runs/jogs slower than a 6 min mile)”
This is the kind of requirement I used to hear, and I would put on my best Scotty from Star Trek voice, and repeat the requirement ‘Computuhrrr! Tell me the...” I bet that would take longer than three days to process.
"need to go back and look at that map. “
Click on the article and look at the first map.
Anonymous cell phone data... yeah... sure.
I just moved (yesterday) into a new house in northwest Indiana. Semi-rural area, you have to drive to get anything. So, I am driving. Whaddya gonna do? Fuhgeddaboutit.
“ The point of the article is that overall levels of travel are probably predictive of spread, all other things being equal, and that they differ a lot depending on whether there is a stay at home order in place and, relatedly, whether the state is red or blue.”
But they aren’t. The virus just doesn’t spread that quickly, if at all, outside cities, and esp huge dense ones like NYC. Can’t.
They are essentially preening and virtue signaling, telling us that they are acting responsibly by no longer risking exposure from tens of thousands of strangers in the subways and on the streets of NYC, when much of the rest of the country doesn’t really have to do much in the way of quasi quarantining to achieve minimal risk of infection. Sure, social distance in the grocery store. But driving one mile, or a hundred miles to shop, really doesn’t matter, in terms of the pandemic, because you are driving. Closeness to home only is relevant in terms of probability of infection, if you can’t, or it is impractical, to drive yourself to the store.
Not all travel is problematic: A person driving for a few miles to pick up groceries would not be violating stay-at-home orders. And people in cities can infect others without traveling far.
But broadly higher levels of travel suggest more contact with others... [IF YOU LIVE IN AN URBAN AREA - me] - New York Times
But but but... But we are not going to let the fact that the data is pretty meaningless without a lot more data stop us from bashing deplorables.
the Kansas health department is tracking you by your phones digital footprint, would that have happened under kobach,
"I find it somewhere between humorous and arrogant for them to fault the rest of the country for refusing to engage in ultra dense urban living, dependent on their highly dangerous (to health) choices in transportation"
It's worse than arrogant, since NYC caused the biggest problems and feeds the panic.
Although we know that Florida was recently overrun by college snowflakes who by and large are idiots.
Snowflakes are college partiers are entirely different populations.
Imagine if you lived in a country where your ability to travel, work, socialize, go to church, and even leave your home were regulated by the government.
ARM
How to lie with maps is a book.
tim maguire said... The people saying this is some kind of "New Yorkers want us all to live like New Yorkers" moment need to go back and look at that map. There are plenty of places more rural than Florida where people aren't driving 3 miles a day.
And I say BULLSHIT on that. Those places that are GREEN on the map purportedly showing that people drive less than 2 or 3 miles a day are completely wrong wrong wrong.
As I and others who live in those areas pointed out that it is more than 3 miles...more than 10 miles routinely to get to ANYWHERE. More than 50 to 100 miles to get to some towns. Of course we are driving. We did. And we will. We HAVE to. There is no other way to get around.
Do you seriously think that the entire State of Montana has stopped driving anywhere?
Seriously?
Just because it may not fit into your world experience or your preferences, doesn't mean that travel isn't happening. Despite what the NYTimes wants you to believe.
Michael K said: The lefty Mayors and Congress critters seem to have finally gotten to the governor who ordered a shutdown statewide Tuesday at 5 PM. I was very disappointed to see him do this.
The "shutdown" has not made much difference here in Oro Valley. It affected teachers who were uncertain about the remainder of the school year. Home construction still continues. There were already lots of Amazon deliveries, now there are a few more. Many non-grocery stores are still open. People were not going to malls and clothing stores before the shutdown.
I am the chef and bottle washer at home, but we are picking up more food at our favorite restaurants because we want to support them. The break in my gourmet cooking schedule will be good for me to come up with new ideas. Life goes on for those who want it to go on.
Sweet Jesus but the comments section of that article suggest that many many readers took the bait. Orange man bad. South stupid. North obedient. Smart. Trump’s fault.
narcisco the Kansas health department is tracking you by your phones digital footprint, would that have happened under kobach,
I don't live in Kansas but fat lot of good that would do if you just leave your cell phone at home. Which I do all the time. I rarely use my cell phone. It spends most of its time turned off an in a bowl.
Surprise...not everyone is welded to their phones.
OT but pursuant to ARM's claim yesterday that "everyone knew" about the coronavirus in January: Comments on Joe Scarborough's claim that "everyone knew"
have a comfy chair
Is wrong of me to be looking forward to Fredo's podcasts from the ICU?
stevew I want to see the corresponding statistics for the confirmed cases of the virus, overlaid on this map. Otherwise this is just sanctimonious othering.
Ok for my area...I live at the conjunction of a dark green and light green county in California.
7 cases in the light green county...1 death.
Zero in the dark green county.
Few cases because there are few people and we live far apart.
We drive lots and lots of miles. The map is a lie.
I may have mentioned this before, but I am a non-driving senior citizen living in a Sunbelt megalopolis that is kind of the "urban poster child" for urban sprawl, and with an inadequate mass transit system. One of my fellow codgers complained to me how most of the how-to-survive-the-Kung-Flu advice in the media is geared toward middle-class families, and I find this especially and annoyingly true of these stay-at-home orders. Some of us don't have SUVs for picking up weeks' worth of supplies at a time, nor large pantries and refrigerators and freezers to store it in. What are we supposed to do? If we don't go out and buy food, we starve.
Last summer on my trip to Alaska I drove between 200 and 300 miles almost every day. My proximity to other people? Zilch.
"There are plenty of places more rural than Florida where people aren't driving 3 miles a day."
If you lived 10 mi from the nearest grocery (or any other critical resource), wouldn't you be driving (in non-plague times) 3+ mi a lot more than someone who is 40 mi from the nearest grocery? If I lived an inconvenient distance from a grocery, I'd go a lot less often and buy a lot more while there.
"The point of the article is that overall levels of travel are probably predictive of spread, all other things being equal, and that they differ a lot depending on whether there is a stay at home order in place and, relatedly, whether the state is red or blue.”
This is hilarious, Stephen. The data doesn't actually show this at all. I asked the readers to look at the New York and surrounding suburbs in that map provided- what does that tell you according to the authors of the article, Stephen?
I skipped ahead, only to comment that any such NYT article is a set-up to show how NYC is the only place in America where one might hope to find intelligent life.
Narr
"Don't worry about the crops, the maid will dust them!"
We are in rural Florida and I just saw a car with New York plates roll by.Right now in our county we have 0 {zero} cases of the Chinese Lung flu. If the refugees from New York keep coming in that will quickly change. The problem is not us, it's the carriers trying to get away from the plague. We are now in a lockdown because of the idiots coming into the state.
Blogger Matt Sablan said...
Part of this is that newspapers in cities think of 3 miles as a huge distance with thousands of people.
4/2/20, 10:46 AM
Working locations: I can easily travel 3 miles to get from one part of the plant to the other.
One might get the idea that not traveling leads to more cooties if one compares this map with the map of traveling.
The amazing PRK has NO cases of coronavirus. None! Zip! What an incredible job Kim has done to keep his people safe [despite evidence that almost 200 soldiers have died from the virus]. Kinda like Iran having no homosexuals and just as believable.
Looking at this map, again, it tells even less. Obviously, they are trying to bring up a causation between the virus and people travelling, but does almost the exact opposite.
Is that their point? Restricted travel doesn't do much to prevent the spread of a virus?
Can we just skip ahead to the part where we can deny Republicans health care?
Saw one article noting absenteeism in California’s online public school home-school experiment is running between 40% and 70%. Where are all the education advocates who are “looking out for the children” when we need them?
My impression has been that New Yorkers are so arrogant that they refused to comply with social distancing guidelines long after the rest of us did so. That’s why NYC is ground zero for the epidemic in the US.
>>We are now in a lockdown because of the idiots coming into the state.
Blocking travel from China: Racist
Blocking travel from New York: Sound health care policy
“We finally really did it.... “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
"But their sense of their own strength may be improving society's overall resistance to this virus in any of its future appearances.”
Plus who needs grandpa anyways?
As I had cautioned immediately before your selective quote, Tim in Vermont.
All data now confirms....
any goddamn conclusion you want, even when it doesn't.
Here’s a great tweet that shows a map of “supermarket stores within a mile” next to the NYT map.
https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1245742013330440193
minnesota farm guy said that "everyone knew"
Lying about someone's views is considered bad form around here. Please try to restrain yourself to the truth, no matter how difficult that may be for you personally.
tim in vermont said...
Here’s a great tweet that shows a map of “supermarket stores within a mile” next to the NYT map.
Speaking about lying with maps, that graphic cuts off half the country that would have undercut their point.
NYC Health: COVID-19 Daily Data Summary: Deaths
1397 deaths. 1046 underlying conditions. 333 conditions pending.
635 age 75 and over
574 female sex
872 male sex
The lessons Italy has learned about its COVID-19 outbreak could help the rest of the world
"The biggest mistake we made was to admit patients infected with COVID-19 into hospitals throughout the region," said Carlo Borghetti, the vice-premier of Lombardy, an economically crucial region with a population of 10 million.
At 10:00 AM, above: "Nevada's governor just asked residents to stay inside except for essential tasks. Going outside for a breath of fresh air or to exercise is NOT one of the approved of essential tasks."
It's in all the papers. Gov. Sisolak's order does not ban outdoor exercise. "The directive does not apply to the homeless, and it allows people to leave homes for exercise as long as they stay at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart and are not meeting up with people outside their household."
My lovely wife and I have been hitting the bricks daily, here in the SW corner of the Vegas valley. So far, no Karen-types have waggled the finger at us, but I expect it to happen. Misinformed busybodies are, in this day and age, unavoidable. Yesterday, I ran 3-4 miles-- in the street, since the apartment complex closed our gym.
So, we're not precluded from exercise outdoors. Gov. Moose is still going with the chloroquine ban for outpatient use. He says it's because of "concierge doctors" who have prescribed it to friends. (No evidence offered.) And, in the press release, it was implied that the drug doesn't work. (No evidence offered. Some evidence ignored.) And, also in the press release, it was implied that people who tout the positive effects of the drug are... lying? (Again, a baseless claim.) He's in over his head. At yesterday's presser, he sounded like shit, seemed to be weeping at times. Kept repeating, "And, I will do everything in my power..." at the beginning of every section of his speech. (Indicates that internal polling or word on the street says that he is perceived as not doing so, or worse, that he is doing it for political reasons.)
P.S.: Sisolak also referenced a lupus patient who was denied chloroquine because of the shortage. Again, no evidence offered.
ALSO: Sisolak and the reporters present don't seem to know or care that, according to Bloomberg and other outlets, U.S. hospitals have, on average, doubled their chloroquine orders in the past two months.
Can anyone explain how "concierge doctors" are responsible for the shortage when U.S. hospitals (and, I assume NV hospitals) have doubled their chloroquine orders?
Please try to restrain yourself to the truth, no matter how difficult that may be for you personally. [ARM]
lolol
I bike here and there every day but don't have a cell phone so they'll never find out.
I live in a suburb of Montgomery, Alabama. And I can get anything I really need within a three mile radius. Of course I'd have to obtain it by robbing my neighbors. There is not a single store, gas station or restaurant within three miles of my home. Nice golf course though.
And I'm very happy with the views from my windows even with a complete absence of skyscrapers.
Balfegor said...
Texas looks weird to me with the sparsely populated west locking down in the earliest cohort, and the densely populated east in the last. I wonder whether the west is just so rural that people just don't travel from their properties much at all.
Drive I10/I20 from Pecos, TX to El Paso sometime. It's 211 miles of nothing except ranch roads, the I10/I20 split and the town of Van Horne.
Just make sure you gas up before you leave and carry a gallon or two of water when you do.
Maybe Trump could do everyone a favor by calling chloroquine a hoax. Then Sisolak would lift his ban, because Science.
ARM: "Lying about someone's views is considered bad form around here."
One way to properly ascertain the viewsof a poster is to note the information sources in which they clearly place great trust.
In ARM's case, for months now he has advanced every now debunked ChiCom propaganda lie and used those lies to advance pro-ChiCom narratives.
Even after the entire world has awakened to these incredible and astonishing lies by the ChiComs which led to the deaths of thousands and crashing of economies across the world, ARM has yet to retract a single one of his ChiCom propaganda-based lies.
Therefore, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn regarding ARM's ChiCom "cuckholster-y"....
"that graphic cuts off half the country that would have undercut their point.”
You might be too old to know this, ARM, but you have to click on the graphic and switch between them using the arrows to see the whole thing. That’s what the kids do, anyway.
Saw one article noting absenteeism in California’s online public school home-school experiment is running between 40% and 70%. Where are all the education advocates who are “looking out for the children” when we need them?
My (HS Art teacher) wife initially struggled with getting her on-line classes going, but seems to be in the swing now. She is adventurous and trying to film different techniques for her students to try. In many ways she has been working a lot harder during the shutdown.
About 60% of her students are participating. The absent ones were generally absent in body or spirit when school was in session.
A surprising number of students do not have internet access or computers. We live in an affluent area, although students are drawn from Tucson proper.
Folks are taking issue with my statement that, all other things being equal, travel is predictive of spread. But that's obviously true.
It's also true, as NYT expressly acknowledges, that not all travel leads to spread.
And its also true, as many of you point out, that in less populated areas people have to travel to get groceries, so not all travel is unnecessary, either.
That's why I said that the most interesting part of the article was the chart of urbanized areas where travel was still high, most of them located in red states like Florida and Georgia which were strikingly slow to adopt mandatory social distancing. In those areas, travel is more weakly correlated with getting essentials, and more strongly correlated with spread.
Time will tell, but it is certainly not unreasonable: (a) to be concerned that there will be major outbreaks in those communities based on spread prior to the adoption of social distancing; (b) to worry that the outbreaks will be much worse because of those states' delays in adopting mandatory social distancing and that over time those delays will create problems for parts of the country like the Bay Area, where a more prompt move to social distancing appears likely to flatten the curve early; and (c) to ask whether the federal decision to leave the adoption of mandatory social distancing to the states was good policy or workable federalism. Does anyone here have any interest in these questions?
It takes a mile just to get out of my neighborhood.
I suspect much of the areas west of the Rockies are green because lack of cell tower triangulation.
Just another stupid article from a NYT reporter who has probably never been west of the Hudson. Like RNB, I also live in the Atlanta suburbs, in Forsyth County, a rapidly suburbanizing former rural county of forests and farms about 30-40 miles north of Atlanta. I live in a neighborhood of large homes on large lots. Over the past two weeks I have made a number of trips out to go to the grocery or pick up food. Here are the round-trip distances to each of the places I have gone:
CVS 3.2 mi
McD 3.2 mi
Publix 3.4 mi
Chick-Fil-A 9.0 mi
Ingles 9.2 mi
Doctor 10.2 mi
And this would be true for the 200+ homes in my neighborhood. And I live in the south part of the county, which is already pretty densely populated. Out north, which is still in the transformation from rural to suburban, the distances to places like these would be even greater.
Many rural counties across the South are very sparsely populated and in many places you would be looking at a round trip of up to 50 miles just to buy groceries or go to the doctor, maybe more. Texas would be even worse. I once drove over 100 miles across west TX without seeing another vehicle. The map does not say what the NYT wants it to say.
"The people who vote for Republicans are ignorant and/or unwilling to act for the good of the whole."
"Good of the whole"? As if anybody in New York City has ever given a shit about the hicks out in flyover country.
Stephen Folks are taking issue with my statement that, all other things being equal, travel is predictive of spread. But that's obviously true.
Actually, We or rather I am taking issue with the map at all. Showing that people are NOT traveling in areas (green and light greed) when it is true that people in those areas ARE traveling. Driving great distances. Have always done so and are still doing that amount of driving.
The MAP IS BOGUS. The map is BULLSHIT. The map tells us NOTHING. And it doesn't relate travel to infection either because there are no statistics on infection/cases associated with the map. The map could be better used as toilet paper.
Travel certainly may spread disease IF you consider what people are doing during the trip and at their destination. If you are making multiple stops and touching everything in sight..If you are using public restrooms...if you are closely interacting with many people... sure your chances of getting or spreading disease are higher. If you just traveled from an area where there is a larger group of sick people. Yes. You are being irresponsible if you don't quarantine yourself.
If you are taking a Sunday drive in your own car to have a picnic lunch that you packed from home and are sitting on a sunny rock overlooking a view. There is zero harm.
If I am driving to the grocery store and use gloves, sanitizer on everything, wash my hands..even sanitize the groceries. What difference is it that I traveled 2 miles or 50 miles.
People are being hysterical and being ridiculous.
NOT ALL TRAVEL IS EQUAL
to ask whether the federal decision to leave the adoption of mandatory social distancing to the states was good policy or workable federalism. Does anyone here have any interest in these questions?
Yes, it is in the interest of leftist politicians to shut down the economy to create the economic chaos they can blame on Trump.
They are already trying to create a "commission" to try to blame him for the whole thing.
Wreck the economy is on their list.
The MAP IS BOGUS. The map is BULLSHIT. The map tells us NOTHING. And it doesn't relate travel to infection either because there are no statistics on infection/cases associated with the map. The map could be better used as toilet paper.
It also tells us that 300 of the 330 million in this country would rather eat shit than live in NYC and its rabbit warren apartments.
tim in vermont said...
You might be too old to know this
I might. I almost never go on twitter. It makes blog comments look like the dialogues of Plato.
The amazing PRK has NO cases of coronavirus.
The Norks treat the cases with lead. Copper jacketed mostly. Works like a charm.
No need to use crude remedies like hydroxychloroquine.
"most of them located in red states like Florida and Georgia”
When’s the last time you drove between Jacksonville and West Palm Beach? Or even twenty miles west of West Palm Beach? The urbanized counties are green.
Have you ever driven though Georgia? Could you find Atlanta on a map? Here’s a hint, it’s the green island. You now what the biggest obvious industry around Savanna is? Lumber, and paper. I think that you might be one of those people that cover of the New Yorker was talking about.
"It makes blog comments look like the dialogues of Plato.”
There we agree.
The people who vote for Republicans are ignorant and/or unwilling to act for the good of the whole.
Funny,that is exactly the impression I have of the folks who comment on the NYTimes and WaPo. Reading the comments is like wading in a sewer.
Blogger Stephen said..."Folks are taking issue with my statement that, all other things being equal, travel is predictive of spread. But that's obviously true."
No, it's not obvious, for the reasons several people have explained. Unless you're hanging your hat on the phrase, "all other things being equal", which makes your observation meaningless.
People with essential jobs -- including medical personnel -- still need to commute.
Hey folks.
I'm not talking about the map. The map has nothing to do with my argument.
And I've expressly acknowledged that not all travel is equal. Some does not spread. And some is essential and would not stop with a shelter in place order.
BUT, there is chart in the article which shows a lot of travel in identified urban areas, mostly in Red States where mandatory shelter in place came very late. Because they are urban, they have greater density, which means that travel is more likely to be correlated with spread and less likely to be necessary.
No one is responding to this point, or to the questions that follow from it. The closest is Michael K., who denounces shelter in place as a Democratic plot to destroy the economy.
Well, Michael K., no, not exactly. Almost every state has now moved to some form of shelter in place--and that includes both Red states and blue states with Republican governors. So its not plausible to describe shelter in place as a Democratic plot. The issue is the speed with which they have done so. Any move to shelter in place, early or late, has severe economic consequences, but both the public health benefits and the economic costs appear lower if the move is early, before there is substantial community spread. That's what seems to have happened in California (Democratic governor) and Ohio (Republican governor). In contrast, the strategy adopted in Florida and Georgia of moving to shelter in place only after substantial community spread appears likely to have both worse public health outcomes, lingering economic effects, and spillover effects to other jurisdictions.
In all likelihood, the Republican governors who waited so long to move to shelter in place did so because, like Michael K., they and their supporters viewed shelter in place as a Democratic plot. Was it good national policy to allow them to act on that delusion?
I left the house today for the first time in two weeks to make a grocery store run. I wore a mask,and used sanitizer and clorox wipes. It's 7 miles to the nearest Dollar General and 14 miles to the nearest Kroger. It's 20 miles to my office but I didn't go that far because I'm working from home. So, the commenter is correct that in the rural south we have to drive a lot further for basic essentials.
@ARM You're the guy that claimed early and widespread knowledge about the anticipated effects of the Corona virus. A direct quote from you : "Everyone paying attention knew." I pointed out last night that if you knew- I am sure you include yourself among those paying attention - you did a lot of people a giant disservice by not letting Trump - and the rest of us -know that you had the Coronona virus problem all figured out back in January.
As far as my comments on your position re impeachment: "fraudulent" is my adjective for the impeachment that was taking place and, at the time, you were commenting either pro or con - I neither know nor care which. All the while you "knew" that the corona virus was a serous matter (perhaps more important than impeachment) yet you decided to keep it a secret from the rest of us.
"No one is responding to this point, or to the questions that follow from it. The closest is Michael K., who denounces shelter in place as a Democratic plot to destroy the economy."
Stephen, practically none of these cities, red state or not, are controlled by Republicans. The mayors and city councils are perfectly free to do the lockdowns locally, and they have done that with or without the various governor's direction. The red states generally resisted it because most of the area of those states don't have a problem with COVID, and they won't because of the low density of the population.
All people like you are doing is trying to force everyone into a one size fits all solution to this, and we just are buying the dogshit people like you are trying to sell.
When Gov Kemp put shelter in place in GA the places that needed it the most already had it. Where I am in Forsyth County (pop. ~ 260K) we have had it from the beginning. We have 51 cases and only 1 death, an 87-year old man. Fulton County (Atlanta), with a pop. of ~ 1.1M, has 22 deaths so far. Looking at today's stats at GADPH, there are a large number of mainly rural counties with cases in the low single digits that so far have 0 deaths, though I realize that could change. I am familiar with many of these counties and the population of them is so small that shelter might have minimal benefit. Many of them also poor.
There has been one tragedy in GA, in the SW part of the state, in Albany (Dougherty and Lee counties). Two funerals at a black Baptist church drew many of the same people and resulted in a large number of cases; they have 36 deaths as a result. If it were not for that GA would have about 110 deaths so far. This has gotten broad publicity across the state and I don't think you'll see that happen again.
Georgia is not New York.
Stephen
I believe you have the wrong idea about dense southern cities. Yes you can live in midtown Atlanta and walk to the grocery. But in most neighborhoods you cannot. City center neighborhoods are more like. Bronxville than the Bronx. More like Atherton than SOMA. Ditto Memphis Nashville Montgomery etc.
"The biggest mistake we made was to admit patients infected with COVID-19 into hospitals throughout the region," said Carlo Borghetti, the vice-premier of Lombardy, an economically crucial region with a population of 10 million."
There was story that didn't get a lot of play anywhere other than here in Tennessee. Yesterday it was revealed that 86 staff members of the Vanderbilt Medical Center are COVID positive. I am intimately familiar with this facility (my father spent week there in 2012 following a 10 hour surgery, and my youngest sister spent almost 2 weeks there in the ICU in 2014 following a car accident)- it is literally the cleanest and most professional looking hospital I have ever seen. However, they have been admitting COVID patients since the first cluster was discovered in Nashville 2 weeks ago.
When the history of this is written, it will be revealed that most of the deaths were from people who contracted this disease while in the hospital or rehab facility for some other serious ailment. I have written multiple comments over the last 3 weeks warning against such mixed use of the hospitals for a disease against which the staff can't be vaccinated. This is just fucking incompentence of the various state health departments- that should have been the very first step- completely separate staff and facilities.
I saw a video from someone in New York City, and I think it was from Lenox Hill, maybe, or Bellevue. It showed different signs like "This Elevator for COVID Patients Only" and "Wing Reserved Beyond This Point For COVID" etc. Just stupid shit like this annoys the hell out of me- signs like that only have to fail once or twice to contaminate the entire hospital.
“Georgia is not New York.”
No place in the country is quite like NYC. And nowhere else in the country do we have the problem of extreme population density combined with having to get around without private automobiles, which mostly means mass transit, walking, and cabs. All inherently extremely risky in terms of infection.
An argument can be made, though, that New York should have shut down all mass transportation 3 weeks ago. Not an easy decision to make at that time, but is actually one that I thought about myself when I wrote a comment that I couldn't imagine better place to get infected than a subway or a bus.
Just look at the locations of the infections in CT and New Jersey- locations for commuter trains into and out of New York City.
- signs like that only have to fail once or twice to contaminate the entire hospital.
I don't think they have a handle on how it's spreading.
I've been wondering for a week if it's airborne.
Look at Michigan, now 3rd in the nation cases/deaths.
It started in proximity to Detroit Metro Airport and spread out from there.
BUT, there is chart in the article which shows a lot of travel in identified urban areas, mostly in Red States where mandatory shelter in place came very late. Because they are urban, they have greater density, which means that travel is more likely to be correlated with spread and less likely to be necessary.<
I don't think you know anything but leftist nostrums. The shelter in place stuff is all coming from Democrat officials like the ones banning hydroxychloroquine. Densely populated cities like NYC and Chicago are good places to ask people w=to shelter as best they can. The subways and the commuter trains of Chicago are as bad as airplanes for spreading aerosol infections. In "red states" as you describe them, there is little public transportation in spite of a determined drive at enormous cost to force us into them. Travel by private vehicle is much more typical of "red states." And it drives the left nuts. And it does NOT spread the virus.
“ Densely populated cities like NYC and Chicago are good places to ask people w=to shelter as best they can. The subways and the commuter trains of Chicago are as bad as airplanes for spreading aerosol infections. In "red states" as you describe them, there is little public transportation in spite of a determined drive at enormous cost to force us into them. Travel by private vehicle is much more typical of "red states." And it drives the left nuts. And it does NOT spread the virus.”
Guess what? The Dems are salivating for billions more for mass transit in the upcoming infrastructure stimulus bill wending its way through Congress.
Stephen said: BUT, there is chart in the article which shows a lot of travel in identified urban areas, mostly in Red States where mandatory shelter in place came very late. Because they are urban, they have greater density, which means that travel is more likely to be correlated with spread and less likely to be necessary.
Please correlate (non-plane, bus and subway) travel with COVID-19 infections and deaths. Otherwise, you are just talking out of your ass.
An argument can be made, though, that New York should have shut down all mass transportation 3 weeks ago.
Yes, that would have made sense. The hard left Tucson Mayor and the lefty Democrat Congress critters in AZ finally got Ducey to do the shelter in place thing. None of them or their voters has to worry about a paycheck.
Arizona is hot (84 today) and dry and spread out except for PHX. It makes no sense, except to lefties who are trying to make it the Black Plague until the election.
Rural areas with low population density will show a considerable amount of travel because farmers are running around tending to cattle and crops. And how many of those dark green areas in the mountain states are federal land that has been closed off to the public?
In New York City they only closed the playgrounds a few days ago. Out here in the suburbs they’ve been closed for weeks. So perhaps the New York Times should focus it’s attention a little closer to home.
The weird thing is that Florida’s deaths seem to be leveling off. I guess in three or four days will will have a better handle on whether that’s real or an anomaly.
That's Raysiss!
I've seen nonsense like this on other websites that give New York City an "A" grade for social distancing merely because most have not travelled two miles or more.
Distance travelled is a poor to irrelevant factor.
The state with fully half of the COVID-19 cases in the entire country tells rural rubes they're doing it wrong. Are they treating it as a competition?!?
It started in proximity to Detroit Metro Airport and spread out from there
Proximity to Detroit Metro is a high Middle Eastern population. Don't know if it came through there.
New York New Jersey and California, what do they have in common?
So it starts with social distancing, segways to lockdown order, and then hits if you leave your house you must cover your face. Good thing they aren’t basing that on religion just possibly the belief that they have every right to control your life when there is an opportunity - oops sorry an emergency.
Althouse asks: "Does the NYT really want to promote the idea that we're covidiots if we don't stay inside our homes?"
YES! This is what I've been upset about and mentioning in the comments on the blogs I frequent. You should read the comments of WaPo, NYT, and also for instance my NextDoor neighbor loops. People are getting very upset about the idea of others simply leaving their homes to be outdoors. Virtually every public service announcement I see and every government official press conference pleads "Just stay home!" and "Don't go out!" They rarely qualify that with a mention that being free to go (with social distancing) out of doors is not only permitted, but encouraged by health officials. Then you've got places now in the US where you are not allowed to be driving in your car...just driving. Where you can't give any disease to anyone.
The term "covidiot" used non-ironically is a pretty fair approximation of cuntiness.
Didn't New York get into a war of words with Rhode Island about the leftist elitists fleeing to their second home(s)? Why is Florida being hit so hard? The democrat snowbirds driving in from NYC, Chicago and Boston to leave the poor deplorable masses to die. Not to mention their ultra woke offspring that just invaded the Florida spring break beaches.
Update on the reliability of the
NYT:
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/04/02/put-the-phone-down-ny-times-michael-barbaro-deletes-tweet-about-coronavirus-and-the-south-then-gets-re-ratiod-for-the-spin/
If you have any PPE in New Jersey, watch out -
"WHEREAS, the New Jersey Civilian Defense and Disaster Control Act (the “Disaster Control Act”) authorizes the Governor to “utilize and employ all the available resources of the State Government and of each and every political subdivision of this State” and to “commandeer and utilize any personal services and any privately owned property necessary to avoid or protect against any emergency” subject to the future repayment of such takings, N.J.S.A. App. A:9-34; and
WHEREAS, the Disaster Control Act empowers the Governor “to employ, take or use the personal services, or real or personal property, of any citizen or resident of this State, or of any firm, partnership or unincorporated association doing business or domiciled in this State, or of any corporation incorporated in or doing business in this State, or the real property of a nonresident located in this State, ..."
Howard, you are such a cunt. Give it a rest FFS.
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