I think that there was obviously an abundance of caution, or overabundance for those who would like to use that term.
If we collectively knew then what we know now, we probably could have saved countless lives.
I'm sure that many countries will do an exercise of "Monday morning quarterbacking" when this is all over.
But for now, we are still in Sunday.
@sh76 saidCNN can be a bit over-the-top at times but, without it, Donald Trump would still be in the White House.
1. I will never take mainstream media reporting on public health issues at face value again. Unfortunately, I watched too much CNN last March and it came close to driving me stark mad. I was socially distancing from my own wife and children. I was wearing masks while walking in empty parks. I lost 5 pounds in 3 weeks because I couldn't look at food without envisioning little cor ...[text shortened]... urse; and Fox's insistence that you didn't need a mask because of *FREEDOM* was possibly even worse.
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@sh76 saidI would think by now you would have abandoned your insistence that the IFR was 0.2 or even lower.
I'm referring to fatality rate, obviously. Not raw numbers.
My "predictions" were simply copy and pastes from the IHME model.
Guess not. If you had been correct, we wouldn't need vaccines now; we'd be way past herd immunity.
@sh76 said216 kids died of COVID in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
@moonbus
Nobody's Meemaw's death is directly traceable to anyone going back to school. If Meemaw doesn't live with Johnny and Janey, then Johnny and Janey didn't have to go visit Meemaw. If Meemaw does live with Johnny and Janey, then that family has to make its own informed risk decisions.
The idea that a single life has infinite value and that there can be no societal seto ...[text shortened]... isk of one extra death is untenable in real life, as much superficial moral appeal as it might have.
If you had got your wish and schools had remained open, how many more would have died? Triple that amount? How many teachers, administrators and custodians? How many relatives of the above?
I find the idea of possibly thousands more deaths far outweighs any benefits from opening the schools for in-person learning rather than the methods used in the last year.
There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember what it is: that the measures take solve or better a situation and because the situation is better, people think the measures aren’t or weren’t needed.
In most Western countries (I only really receive info on Western Europe, but the US will be the same) the measures taken have prevented the health care systems from collapsing.
As I’ve pointed out before, if the healthcare systems collapse society dives into very major issues... and lockdowns would be the least of the bloody problems.
In Europe, without the measures taken, we’d have had way more deaths (way over 4x as many), collapsed healthcare and society would have ground to a halt. He economic damage would have been greater than it is now.
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@no1marauder saidYou're mistaking my quoting of the Stanford study for an "insistence."
I would think by now you would have abandoned your insistence that the IFR was 0.2 or even lower.
Guess not. If you had been correct, we wouldn't need vaccines now; we'd be way past herd immunity.
I'll estimate now that the actual IFR throughout the pandemic was probably about .5%, but now it's much, much lower. In March, 2020, it may have been as high as 0.8 or 0.9%. But due to better treatments and the fact that the overburdened NY hospital system led to an outsized IFR last Spring, the IFR now is probably closer to .2 or .3% now. For parents of primary school children, who are typically younger than 50, it's almost certainly less than 0.1%.
Assuming an IFR of .5% and ~550k deaths implies about 110m total infections, which sounds about right (maybe a tad conservative).
The early coverage last March said over and over again that 4-6% of people who get COVID die. Hence my 10x comment.
@no1marauder saidHow many documented cases are there of in-school COVID transmission that led to death?
216 kids died of COVID in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
If you had got your wish and schools had remained open, how many more would have died? Triple that amount? How many teachers, administrators and custodians? How many relatives of the above?
I find the idea of possibly thousands more deaths far outweighs any benefits from opening the schools for in-person learning rather than the methods used in the last year.
@no1marauder saidIncidentally, vaccines would be necessary even if there were 250m infections due to the possibility of re-infections, especially from different variants. The Brazilian variant in particular seems to be able to re-infect people who already had the Wuhan version.
I would think by now you would have abandoned your insistence that the IFR was 0.2 or even lower.
Guess not. If you had been correct, we wouldn't need vaccines now; we'd be way past herd immunity.
@shavixmir saidAssuming that's true (and it's certainly far from clear), nobody can seriously argue that continuing to keep schools closed now is necessary to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system.
There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember what it is: that the measures take solve or better a situation and because the situation is better, people think the measures aren’t or weren’t needed.
In most Western countries (I only really receive info on Western Europe, but the US will be the same) the measures taken have prevented the health care systems from collapsing. ...[text shortened]... and society would have ground to a halt. He economic damage would have been greater than it is now.
The post that was quoted here has been removedIn March or April of 2020, perhaps that was a major factor.
By August, the vast majority of parents who were given the option did send their children to school.
Those schools that are still closed are closed due to government fiat, not due to parents' choices.
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@sh76 said"If you're looking for me to say that Trump's over-all handling of the pandemic was competent, I will not be able to provide that statement."
If you're looking for the answer that Operation Warp Speed might be the single most important contributor to the ending of the pandemic, I will be happy to provide it.
If you're looking for me to say that Trump's over-all handling of the pandemic was competent, I will not be able to provide that statement.
Not "looking" for anything, I just want the facts.
What would have been a better scenario than what Trump did? second guessing is easy when you dont have to back it up.
@mott-the-hoople saidHe could have been more straight with people in February about the danger rather than downplaying it to try to avoid economic hits (which is exactly what he said he did to Bob Woodward).
"If you're looking for me to say that Trump's over-all handling of the pandemic was competent, I will not be able to provide that statement."
Not "looking" for anything, I just want the facts.
What would have been a better scenario than what Trump did? second guessing is easy when you dont have to back it up.
Second, he was irresponsible in playing up hydroxychloroquine as the pandemic-ender before it had been properly tested. Possibly, people weren't as careful as they could have been in late March because they thought HCQ was a silver bullet therapeutic.
Third, he didn't have to make masks a political issue. He could have encouraged his supporters to wear masks instead of making going maskless into a macho thing.
Fourth, he could have been faster to build a better testing infrastructure. It took a loooong time for us to ramp up to the testing levels of the Fall.
Fifth, floating the idea of opening by Easter in early April was irresponsible. I was and am all for opening as soon and as much as possible, but Easter of 2020 was a pipe dream; and all he did was encourage notions of a quick end to the pandemic.
@sh76 saidHe didn't "downplay" Covid, he straight up lied. Trump admitted in that recording the he knew the virus was "five times" deadlier than the flu, but consistently denied it's severity, saying “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
He could have been more straight with people in February about the danger rather than downplaying it to try to avoid economic hits (which is exactly what he said he did to Bob Woodward).
That's not a "downplay", that's a lie.
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@vivify saidYou're kind of getting into semantics there.
He didn't "downplay" Covid, he straight up lied. Trump admitted in that recording the he knew the virus was "five times" deadlier than the flu, but consistently denied it's severity, saying “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.”
That's not a "downplay", that's a lie.
Those who subscribe to the Nietzsche quote “was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker” might argue that since COVID has a survival rate well over 99%, his statement is defensible.
The flu, it should be noted, has a survival rate of at least 99.9%.
Edit: Anyway, the 99% quote was in July. I referred to February.