OT: Corona virus thread-7 months later we're still screwed (MOD: NO POLITICS)

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

Which city? Vancouver seems pretty brutal when adjusting for everything. Toronto seems bad as well

Out of Ontario/Canada?

Etobicoke

 

[violaswallet]

Etobicoke

Nice nice: has to look it up

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

Nice nice: has to look it up

Lol it's a suburb of Toronto

 

[violaswallet]

Lol it's a suburb of Toronto

Yep yep; that’s what I learned today

seems nice and probably spacious for the times

 

[letsgrowcactus]

Sorry for venting here in the middle of FA but we're so so screwed.
We're following the spring Italy scenario - or worse. It's almost certain the hospital system will collapse in a few weeks.
And our PM "doesn't feel responsible - this is not my fault, I just did what everyone wanted!" I swear, every time I think I can't be more disgusted with the guy, and then he opens his mouth again... This is what we get for electing a populist oligarch.
They had six months and did nothing - didn't increase testing capacities, didn't improve tracking, didn't make a plan, they laughed at the opposition who said in April that we should be preparing for the 2nd wave. So now we're going to need full lockdown if they want to at least somewhat manage this.
As awful as it will be, I wish they did it already. Every day they delay at this point only makes it worse.

 

[KW]

If people haven’t seen this, here’s a little different perspective on what societies should do with covid at this point. Basically, these doctors fear that the focus on covid related isolation is going to cause other disease processes to become way worse. You be the judge whether you agree or don’t, obviously, but this is a pretty significant opinion.

Great Barrington Declaration and Petition

 

[zeroG]

If people haven’t seen this, here’s a little different perspective on what societies should do with covid at this point. Basically, these doctors fear that the focus on covid related isolation is going to cause other disease processes to become way worse. You be the judge whether you agree or don’t, obviously, but this is a pretty significant opinion.

Great Barrington Declaration and Petition

i kinda see this as a strawman. lockdown isn't the policy against which this type of approach should be measured. if we got our mitigation game together a bit more, we could safely open up more of economy. it doesn't have to be this lockdown vs "seal off the nursing homes and let everyone else do what they want".

from a Nature article last month:

Assuming an optimistic herd immunity threshold of 50%, for countries such as France and the USA, this would translate into 100,000–450,000 and 500,000–2,100,000 deaths, respectively.

...

An effective vaccine presents the safest way to reach herd immunity.

this is the consensus overall in the field.

 

[KW]

i kinda see this as a strawman. lockdown isn't the policy against which this type of approach should be measured. if we got our mitigation game together a bit more, we could safely open up more of economy. it doesn't have to be this lockdown vs "seal off the nursing homes and let everyone else do what they want".

from a Nature article last month:



this is the consensus overall in the field.

I don’t think you can say it’s the overall consensus in the field. I just posted an article where a couple of thousand doctors from both political sides agreed on a pretty significant statement.

In any case, I only wanted to share a different viewpoint on covid that discusses OTHER health concerns as well, and the effect the shut/slowdowns/virtual existence is having on society. I’m not saying it’s correct, but in the same sense I don’t think the “correct” way has been found yet.

My stance is that all opinions matter.

 

[violaswallet]

I don’t think you can say it’s the overall consensus in the field. I just posted an article where a couple of thousand doctors from both political sides agreed on a pretty significant statement.

In any case, I only wanted to share a different viewpoint on covid that discusses OTHER health concerns as well, and the effect the shut/slowdowns/virtual existence is having on society. I’m not saying it’s correct, but in the same sense I don’t think the “correct” way has been found yet.

My stance is that all opinions matter.

Not all opinions matter: that’s the problem with modernity. All experiences have value but I don’t give a damn what Shelly in compliance thinks is optimal about pandemic containment. These past few months show how people think they’re qualified as epidemiologists then legal scholars then economists then national security experts; they’re not.

This statement is great for recognizing a channel that relates to health (unlike the last major push like this that was purely political) and I agree about the mental health side; I’ve struggled. Yet the underlying problem at least in the US is compliance: simple steps can be used to re-open society. Wear a mask indoor, wash your hands, socially distance yourself outdoors. Super simple yet people don’t do it and it creates this painful dichotomy

 

[zeroG]

I don’t think you can say it’s the overall consensus in the field. I just posted an article where a couple of thousand doctors from both political sides agreed on a pretty significant statement.

In any case, I only wanted to share a different viewpoint on covid that discusses OTHER health concerns as well, and the effect the shut/slowdowns/virtual existence is having on society. I’m not saying it’s correct, but in the same sense I don’t think the “correct” way has been found yet.

My stance is that all opinions matter.

all opinions matter to their owners? sure. to their adherents? ok.

this is science, though. all opinions do not get the same weight. the ones that are based on hypotheses that have been questioned by more scientists and have been borne out, get more weight.

this particular opinion, that of tiny fraction of the world's physicians and scientists, differs from overwhelming majority of physicians and scientists.

but anyway, again, this is a lot of ado about nothing. i don't know about you but where i am, we are not in a lockdown. there are many restrictions on how we can gather and, granted, they do have an impact, for some more than others. but as @violaswallet said so well, there are some very basic steps we should be taking to help with mitigation that we continue to fail at.

this is really just a cop out for weak and/or incompetent politicians all over the world.

 

[KW]

all opinions matter to their owners? sure. to their adherents? ok.

this is science, though. all opinions do not get the same weight. the ones that are based on hypotheses that have been questioned by more scientists and have been borne out, get more weight.

this particular opinion, that of tiny fraction of the world's physicians and scientists, differs from overwhelming majority of physicians and scientists.

but anyway, again, this is a lot of ado about nothing. i don't know about you but where i am, we are not in a lockdown. there are many restrictions on how we can gather and, granted, they do have an impact, for some more than others. but as @violaswallet said so well, there are some very basic steps we should be taking to help with mitigation that we continue to fail at.

this is really just a cop out for weak and/or incompetent politicians all over the world.

Couldn’t disagree more, but I’ll drop it.

I’m sure there’s someone here who appreciated the different way of looking at the issue, instead of your “majority of scientists” lockstep “no difference of opinion allowed” approach.

 

[letsgrowcactus]

i kinda see this as a strawman. lockdown isn't the policy against which this type of approach should be measured. if we got our mitigation game together a bit more, we could safely open up more of economy. it doesn't have to be this lockdown vs "seal off the nursing homes and let everyone else do what they want".

from a Nature article last month:
this is the consensus overall in the field.

This.
It's balancing act - trying to keep life as normal as possible while keeping the pandemic somewhat under control.
Unfortunately, they completely blew it here in Czech republic because our Prime Minister hailed himself a hero to everybody and repeatedly declared that "Covid has been defeated and is not coming back", despite the majority of epidemiologists warning him that we were back to exponential growth - so right now, we have the 3rd most new cases/100,000 people in the world and the situation is rapidly getting worse.
A month ago, there were essentially zero restrictions - no masks, no social distancing, gatherings were limited to 1,000 people outdoors and 500 people indoors and that was it. So now it's completely out of hand - we're pretty much at the stage where we have more new daily cases than we had cases in total over the whole spring - and some form of a lockdown is about our only option left.

(Which really screws me professionally as I desperately need about six more weeks of lab time to finally finish my PhD, and starting Monday, all universities are teaching online-only, with the exception of med schools who still allow practicals. I promised my new employer I'd be done by March... so, that's clearly not happening. Yay.)

 

[Prominence Problem]

This.
It's balancing act - trying to keep life as normal as possible while keeping the pandemic somewhat under control.
Unfortunately, they completely blew it here in Czech republic because our Prime Minister hailed himself a hero to everybody and repeatedly declared that "Covid has been defeated and is not coming back", despite the majority of epidemiologists warning him that we were back to exponential growth - so right now, we have the 3rd most new cases/100,000 people in the world and the situation is rapidly getting worse.
A month ago, there were essentially zero restrictions - no masks, no social distancing, gatherings were limited to 1,000 people outdoors and 500 people indoors and that was it. So now it's completely out of hand - we're pretty much at the stage where we have more new daily cases than we had cases in total over the whole spring - and some form of a lockdown is about our only option left.

(Which really screws me professionally as I desperately need about six more weeks of lab time to finally finish my PhD, and starting Monday, all universities are teaching online-only, with the exception of med schools who still allow practicals. I promised my new employer I'd be done by March... so, that's clearly not happening. Yay.)

I read an article last night about the European second wave. Not good. And your country of Czech Republic does not sound like it's in a good spot. What was with the giant table and all these people eating together? Sounds like your leader thought he was a shade under God or something.

 

[letsgrowcactus]

I read an article last night about the European second wave. Not good. And your country of Czech Republic does not sound like it's in a good spot. What was with the giant table and all these people eating together? Sounds like your leader thought he was a shade under God or something.

He does think that. Just one example - our PM had a long meeting with a bunch of people, one of them was diagnosed corona-positive a few days later. Unlike a regular person, the PM refused to be quarantined because - quote - "there were high ceilings, the window was open and I wore a respirator, so I couldn't possibly be infected." While he didn't get sick, you can imagine what sort of message that sends to people... That was September 2.

He's always been an oligarch, a liar and overall a terrible leader, hurting this country right and left, but these last few months have truly been "something".

(Just as the cherry on the cake, there's also the fact that he's profiting from the pandemic, cheaply buying companies that couldn't survive the severe spring economic restrictions. Yeah.)

 

[SoupyFIN]

(Which really screws me professionally as I desperately need about six more weeks of lab time to finally finish my PhD, and starting Monday, all universities are teaching online-only, with the exception of med schools who still allow practicals. I promised my new employer I'd be done by March... so, that's clearly not happening. Yay.)

Weird that you don't have it at 50% capacity or something like that, even with the number of cases rising rapidly. I think my uni kept the labs open like that in the spring, and I'd guess they're weighting their options now on how to proceed after the fall break.

It doesn't look good at the moment, my region has 24,4 cases per 100k residents in the last 14 days. I went to the store on Friday and I'd say 75% of the customers had masks, I was impressed. Meanwhile in the neighbouring region, 231,4/100k. You done f***ed up Vaasa.

I just read that some Stockholm nightclubs opened on Friday.. what are you doing Sweden?

 

[Pigge]

Weird that you don't have it at 50% capacity or something like that, even with the number of cases rising rapidly. I think my uni kept the labs open like that in the spring, and I'd guess they're weighting their options now on how to proceed after the fall break.

It doesn't look good at the moment, my region has 24,4 cases per 100k residents in the last 14 days. I went to the store on Friday and I'd say 75% of the customers had masks, I was impressed. Meanwhile in the neighbouring region, 231,4/100k. You done f***ed up Vaasa.

I just read that some Stockholm nightclubs opened on Friday.. what are you doing Sweden?

We had been doing alright and they were getting ready to allow more than 50 people in attendance at sports and cinemas and such. Now they soured on people getting irresponsible (like going clubbing), so the restrictions remain. They have been working a lot with shaming people for being bad citizens when irresponsible, and it has worked decently well.

 

[SoupyFIN]

We had been doing alright and they were getting ready to allow more than 50 people in attendance at sports and cinemas and such. Now they soured on people getting irresponsible (like going clubbing), so the restrictions remain. They have been working a lot with shaming people for being bad citizens when irresponsible, and it has worked decently well.

So they didn't open the clubs after all?

 

[violaswallet]

This.
It's balancing act - trying to keep life as normal as possible while keeping the pandemic somewhat under control.
Unfortunately, they completely blew it here in Czech republic because our Prime Minister hailed himself a hero to everybody and repeatedly declared that "Covid has been defeated and is not coming back", despite the majority of epidemiologists warning him that we were back to exponential growth - so right now, we have the 3rd most new cases/100,000 people in the world and the situation is rapidly getting worse.
A month ago, there were essentially zero restrictions - no masks, no social distancing, gatherings were limited to 1,000 people outdoors and 500 people indoors and that was it. So now it's completely out of hand - we're pretty much at the stage where we have more new daily cases than we had cases in total over the whole spring - and some form of a lockdown is about our only option left.

(Which really screws me professionally as I desperately need about six more weeks of lab time to finally finish my PhD, and starting Monday, all universities are teaching online-only, with the exception of med schools who still allow practicals. I promised my new employer I'd be done by March... so, that's clearly not happening. Yay.)

Another PhD guy here...that’s great!! WhT field?

 

[violaswallet]

Weird that you don't have it at 50% capacity or something like that, even with the number of cases rising rapidly. I think my uni kept the labs open like that in the spring, and I'd guess they're weighting their options now on how to proceed after the fall break.

It doesn't look good at the moment, my region has 24,4 cases per 100k residents in the last 14 days. I went to the store on Friday and I'd say 75% of the customers had masks, I was impressed. Meanwhile in the neighbouring region, 231,4/100k. You done f***ed up Vaasa.

I just read that some Stockholm nightclubs opened on Friday.. what are you doing Sweden?

How is the heterogeneity of mask compliance? In NYC, it correlates so much with age, ethnicity and income...and extremely negatively with being a cop...

 

[Pigge]

So they didn't open the clubs after all?

Some clubs did open after restructuring their club to only serve customers at tables, like restaurants. Restaurants have been open the whole time as long as they can guarantee that people can maintain certain distance. So it was more the clubs changing to comply with restrictions, than the restrictions easing up.

 

[letsgrowcactus]

Weird that you don't have it at 50% capacity or something like that, even with the number of cases rising rapidly. I think my uni kept the labs open like that in the spring, and I'd guess they're weighting their options now on how to proceed after the fall break.

It doesn't look good at the moment, my region has 24,4 cases per 100k residents in the last 14 days. I went to the store on Friday and I'd say 75% of the customers had masks, I was impressed. Meanwhile in the neighbouring region, 231,4/100k. You done f***ed up Vaasa.

I just read that some Stockholm nightclubs opened on Friday.. what are you doing Sweden?

That's awesome compared to here... we currently have 295 cases per 100k residents nation-wise; Prague (my city) has 379 cases per 100k people.
Anyway, they closed unis and secondary schools as essentially the first thing before anything else... primary schools and kindergarten still going, although it's debatable for how long.

 

[letsgrowcactus]

Another PhD guy here...that’s great!! WhT field?

PhD girl
Organic chemistry... you?

 

[SoupyFIN]

How is the heterogeneity of mask compliance? In NYC, it correlates so much with age, ethnicity and income...and extremely negatively with being a cop...

I'd say at the store it was mostly old people and adults, young adults maybe 50/50 and teenagers & kids 1/4.

At work people don't really hang out at the library (kids being the exception, as many come there due to their parents still being at work) as much as they used to before corona or come to browse stuff, since you can pre-order everything and just pick it up at the counter. Old people that don't know how to use that service (or don't have the access) can also ask the staff to recommend books for them, by telling a little bit about what they like and we write that down & come up with a list of books, so the next time they come around we can just refer to the list. Most of them visit on certain days, so we have a pile ready behind the counter lol.

Wearing masks will probably rise as the government gave a recommendation to start wearing masks nation wide from the 19th onwards.

Some clubs did open after restructuring their club to only serve customers at tables, like restaurants. Restaurants have been open the whole time as long as they can guarantee that people can maintain certain distance. So it was more the clubs changing to comply with restrictions, than the restrictions easing up.

We had the table thing too in the summer when clubs opened, but you weren't forced to sit there. It was just that the club couldn't take in more people than the seating capacity they had, which really isn't that great since most clubs have those cramped sofa things.

That's awesome compared to here... we currently have 295 cases per 100k residents nation-wise; Prague (my city) has 379 cases per 100k people.
Anyway, they closed unis and secondary schools as essentially the first thing before anything else... primary schools and kindergarten still going, although it's debatable for how long.

There was some unis here that didn't open at all, they already decided in the summer that they're doing the whole fall from home.

Some secondary and primary schools are closed temporarily, but nothing nation wide.

 

[pb1300]

Greece has been pretty good dealing with this, if you believe the numbers that they publish. There are a couple hundred cases daily, and they’ve mandated masks in stores and in the streets now, but here where I live, it’s not strictly enforced, which makes me skeptical about the daily new cases.

 

[zeroG]

Couldn’t disagree more, but I’ll drop it.

I’m sure there’s someone here who appreciated the different way of looking at the issue, instead of your “majority of scientists” lockstep “no difference of opinion allowed” approach.

i'll give you this - when new theories are trotted out for the first time, they can be seen as heresy by the establishment. there's certainly some of that going on.

again, though - the whole premise for this argument is to free us from a lockdown, which really shouldn't be necessary except when states fail miserably at basic mitigation, which isn't that difficult. unfortunately, that is what we are seeing across the globe and especially in the US. in that context, what motivation could/should we ascribe to this "alternative" perspective?

there's a fine line between pushing forward bold new science and promoting junk science for your own political, economic or other reasons. the latter is what this feels like right now to me.

at the risk of being repetitive, this viewpoint you are promulgating is fringe; it is not endorsed any any of the world's top epidemiologists. subscribe at your family's risk.