Americans - Please Wake Up

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johnspeth
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by johnspeth » May 9th, 2020, 4:34 pm

Aimless wrote:
May 9th, 2020, 4:26 pm
As for Professor Hinckley, he describes himself as "an over-educated Oregonian writing under a pen name", so I have zero idea about his credibility other than what I can glean from that article, which I consider to be very clearly polemics, and not science. The distinction is that science tries to state the observed facts as accurately as possible, while polemics states a premise and argues the truth of the premise, using whatever means the author thinks will be most convincing, including appeals to emotion or prejudice. I can see he makes ample use of those tools in his arguments, which gives me no confidence in his conclusions.
Anybody who hides behind a pen name lacks credibility no matter what they say.

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texasbb
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by texasbb » May 9th, 2020, 4:36 pm

johnspeth wrote:
May 9th, 2020, 11:14 am
MacAttack wrote:
May 9th, 2020, 7:16 am
The restrictions maybe made sense when this was new & there was fear of hospitals being overwhelmed. Well the predictions were incredibly wrong & hospitals are closer to empty than full. Check for yourself, https://govstatus.egov.com/OR-OHA-COVID-19.
At this point we have no ... data to support that getting sick solves the problem.
We also have no data to support that shutdown-style mitigation saves COVID lives, assuming you're referring to (so called) scientific data. If that's not what you're referring to, then I beg to differ. While we're pretty darn certain there won't be a vaccine for at least 9 months (wildly optimistic), we have quite a bit of "data" that suggests having been infected will protect the vast majority of people from reinfection; we just don't yet know for how long. Other corona viruses usually confer immunity for months to years so, absent any other info, extrapolating to the COVID19 case is a most reasonable thing to do.

What we are certain of is that shutting down the economy for 9+ months will impoverish this nation like never before, resulting in many deaths from overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicide, etc., and it won't stop the COVID19 deaths, it'll just spread them out a bit. Lose, lose.

Kicking the can down the road waiting for that miracle vaccine has a zero percent chance of a winning outcome. Herd immunity would seem to have a substantially better chance.

This virus is a killer of unhealthy people. Anyone not in one of those high-risk categories would be completely rational to go about his/her business hoping to get the infection out of the way ASAP. The big problem, of course, is doing that without infecting the high-risk people. I'm confident we can figure out a workable protocol in less than a month with our next $3 trillion.

Aimless
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by Aimless » May 9th, 2020, 5:11 pm

What seems to be missing from this discussion so far is an appreciation of the fact that plans for loosening restrictions, expanding economic activity, and re-opening various outdoor recreation areas are already being formulated tied to a list of measurable milestones, which would rigger further opening or further restrictions. This represents our government's best effort to solve the 'big problem of not infecting the high-risk people'. To the best of my knowledge, a "miracle vaccine" is not one of the milestones required, but rather the plan is tied to rates of new infections, statewide testing efforts and contact tracing, and selectively quarantining potential vectors.

Talking about "shutting down the economy for 9 months" is an oversimplification that does a disservice to those who carry the responsibility for solving an enormous problem that has no happy solutions, including herd immunity.I think a plan that's the outcome of the intensive talks among health experts, business and industry representatives, and state and county executives will be better designed than anything "Professor Hinckley" or you and I are likely to develop in our spare time. Flawed or not, give them credit for trying. This is not rocket science, but something far more complex and indeterminate.

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texasbb
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by texasbb » May 9th, 2020, 5:45 pm

Aimless wrote:
May 9th, 2020, 5:11 pm
Talking about "shutting down the economy for 9 months" is an oversimplification that does a disservice to those who carry the responsibility for solving an enormous problem that has no happy solutions, including herd immunity.
That's a good point, but the 9-month thing is not a strawman of my making, it's the literal expectation of many people opining on various social media and even some journalists (all of whom still have a job, BTW). It's part of the idea that we should (literally) do everything possible to save every COVID19 life possible. NY's illustrious gov made the utterly ridiculous statement that because every life is priceless, he'll keep extending the lockdown as long as needed, which apparently is until there's no longer a single COVID19 patient at risk. That's foolhardy and dangerous rhetoric that blatantly ignores the numerous people who will lose their lives because of the shutdown, and the millions losing their livelihoods for the same reason.

I don't fault our leaders for the lockdowns to this point. They really had no idea what we were dealing with and did the best they could. We now know a lot more about this virus than we did, but we apparently haven't changed the models (just the inputs). We should be estimating non-COVID deaths and lives ruined, too!

Aimless
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by Aimless » May 9th, 2020, 7:15 pm

I did a few back of an envelope calculations on herd immunity, based on the best numbers I could find in an uncertain situation. This is how they looked.

R0 is a number that describes how many people will become infected with a disease through exposure to another infected person. As with so much of the early findings, the R0 of COVID-19 has not been firmly established. Early studies from China placed it at approx. 2.5. This slightly later preprint of a scientific paper(https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20021154v1) placed its R0 between 4.7 and 6.6. Another source from Australia estimated 3.25.

Herd immunity can be directly calculated from R0. Conservatively, assuming COVID-19's R0 is about 3.0, as a rough working number, herd immunity would require individual immunity to extend to 70% of Oregon's population. In the absence of a vaccine, immunity can only be conferred by becoming infected and recovering. Therefore, at a minimum, 70% of Oregonians would need to become infected and recover for herd immunity to be effective. That's about 2.8 million Oregonians.

The mortality rate of COVID-19 has not been firmly established, either. The most common numbers I've seen place it between 0.5% and 1% of all cases. Using the lower of these numbers, herd immunity could be purchased at the cost of about 14,000 dead Oregonians. The higher rate would be 28,000. So far, through mitigation efforts, about 125 Oregonians have died. That seems like a significant difference to me, far different than the idea that we are paying a massive cost to save just a few lives. The longer we can keep the numbers of deaths low, the more time we buy for physicians to discover new treatments, not simply a vaccine, but active mitigations that reduce the severity of symptoms in individuals and reduce the mortality rate.

I tried to get a number for how many Oregonians died of all causes in 2019, but had to go eat supper. It would be interesting to compare my very roughly calculated 14,000 additional deaths needed to acquire herd immunity (since no Oregonians died of COVID-19 in 2019) to the baseline number of deaths before COVID-19 arrived.

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BurnsideBob
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by BurnsideBob » May 9th, 2020, 7:22 pm

The following graphs were taken from the John Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Dashboard issued today, 5 May at 3:21 PM PDT. In all of the following graphs time is on the X axis and number of Covid-19 cases is on the Y axis. The scale is not the same on the Y axis for all graphs. Each graph can be clicked for an expanded view.

This is New Zealand's curve. Notice that the curve flattens, but the slope does not go to zero. New Zealand has gained control of transmission, but not completely stopped it. New Zealand adopted aggressive social distancing and quarantined all incoming travelers, a result directly contradicting the "Professor's" statement that social distancing doesn't work.
NewZealandConfirmed05092020_1732.jpg


This is the United States curve. The rising line is straight indicating about the same number of new Covid-19 confirmations are made each day. This despite a dramatic slowing of new confirmations in New York.
USA_Confirmed05092020_1732.jpg


This is Oregon's curve. Like the US curve, the slope is fairly straight.
OregonConfirmed050920_1732.jpg


This is South Dakota's curve. South Dakota has 1/5th the population of Oregon but surpassed Oregon in confirmed cases yesterday, 8 May. South Dakota, which has no "stay at home" order, is experiencing an increasing rate of transmission which results in an increasing number of daily cases confirmed.
SouthDakotaConfirmed05092020_2032.jpg


When I first started watching the John Hopkins University Dashboard, there were 22 states with fewer Covid-19 confirmations than Oregon. Now there are 10. The states trailing Oregon in Covid confirmations have less or significantly less population than Oregon. By comparison, New Zealand and Oregon are almost identical in land area and population. Arguably Oregon, by virtue of its social distancing efforts, has been more successful than states with weaker social distancing requirements, but has not come close to achieving New Zealand's success.

Here is a bar graph of Oregon's Covid-19 confirmations by date:
OregonConfirmedBarGraph05092020_2032.jpg


Covid-19 is highly contagious and, despite the social distancing measures in place, all we Oregonians have accomplished is changing exponential growth to linear growth. The last few days of the graph are flashing red that transmission is increasing, even after taking out the presumptive cases of Covid-19 now included in the daily tally.

* * * * * * * * * * *

All this talk about the cure being worse than the disease misses that most people are changing their behavior to reflect their fears of Covid-19. Sorry, there is absolutely no way the economy comes back without an effective vaccine and/or effective treatment no matter how much distancing policies are liberalized or even abolished. IMOP it will take decades to repair the damage.


And as for the professor. Very nice "hang your hat article" that cherry picks a whole bunch of sources that are more opinion than science but sound plausible.

I wish all this weren't so. Stay safe everybody. And buckle up, cause we are no where near the end of this historic pandemic.

* * * * * * * * * * *


PS. If you think this is bad, here's Russia's curve. It closely resembles the classic exponential growth curve.
RussiaConfirmed05092020_2032.jpg
I keep making protein shakes but they always turn out like margaritas.

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BurnsideBob
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by BurnsideBob » May 9th, 2020, 7:34 pm

The first line of my previous post should read "9 May", not "5 May".

Thanks,

Burnside
I keep making protein shakes but they always turn out like margaritas.

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Charley
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by Charley » May 9th, 2020, 10:30 pm

texasbb wrote:
May 9th, 2020, 4:36 pm
We also have no data to support that shutdown-style mitigation saves COVID lives, assuming you're referring to (so called) scientific data.

. . .
What we are certain of is that shutting down the economy for 9+ months will impoverish this nation like never before, resulting in many deaths from overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicide, etc., and it won't stop the COVID19 deaths, it'll just spread them out a bit. Lose, lose.
There's a good point in here (that a tradeoff is necessary), but you've played fast and loose with the facts. Please, especially if you're an epidemiologist, show your proof that social distancing doesn't work to save lives. I've yet to see a single scientific paper making such a claim, and I'd love to see your evidence.

Finally, do you remember that the White House finally started taking this seriously when Trump was informed of the modeling showing the possibility of 2 million deaths? He is now taking credit for the fact that we're not at 2 million deaths. Please think about the economic effects of 2 million people dying, our healthcare system brutally overwhelmed, and a President unwilling to take any responsibility, and then explain to me how that's the better of the two broad courses you've laid out. You really think that judicious restrictions on infection prone behaviors has worse effects that suddenly losing 2 million Americans? Do you really think our economy would be humming along, but for the dastardly leftist governors trying to save lives and slow the spread of the disease?
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

MacAttack
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by MacAttack » May 10th, 2020, 6:58 am

Regardless of all the debates against over-reaction vs not an over-reaction I still see no benefit whatsoever to closing forests, beaches, hiking trails. They should all be open & people must have the right to govern themselves staying a few feet apart just like everywhere else I go in Portland..........not that it even matters when you are outside in the fresh air.

People are standing in lines a few feet from people for a long time at every store I go to. People are walking around inside the stores.....they are closer together & in longer contact with people than they would be outside. They are in an enclosed building with other people. They are touching things that many other people have touched. This is deemed to be ok, but you can't go to the beach or the forest. Give me a break!

Those that can't see how this is a violation of American rights for absolutely no health purpose whatsoever are being controlled by fear.

I do not want this virus or any other virus to add to the collection of virus's my body already has. I'm a little freaked out walking around a grocery store even though I don't buy into what I think is an over-reaction. I keep a distance from people. I wash my hands & don't touch my face. I have not seen anyone intentionally get close to another stranger or try to infect them. We can govern ourselves & take a balanced, logical approach to this. Wake up!

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drm
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Re: Americans - Please Wake Up

Post by drm » May 10th, 2020, 7:52 am

Nobody is talking about shutting the economy down for 9 months. Even the most cautious states are starting to open some time in May. Every life is priceless - that doesn't mean that we can save every life.

Locked