dimitrig said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

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I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

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Quoting myself to update a prior post after reading an article in the NYT this morning. According to the NYT, FEMA (which, for those who don't know, is an agency run by Trump) is projecting a rise in cases and deaths peaking at ~3k daily deaths by June 1. This would definitely call into question whether we may actually exceed 250k by August and in any event is quite troubling. If you look at the death projections in the report itself, you can see there is a broad range so hopefully we come in quite low. Nonetheless, it certainly seems worth noting.

Quote:

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The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

"There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow," the C.D.C. warned.
The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation right back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system grew overloaded.

See the internal report.

"While mitigation didn't fail, I think it's fair to say that it didn't work as well as we expected," Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump's former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. "We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we're just not seeing that."

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago. But his new estimate still underestimates what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May much less in the months that follow. It follows a pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease.

"We're going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people," he said in a virtual town hall on Fox News. "That's a horrible thing. We shouldn't lose one person over this."

Mr. Gottlieb said Americans "may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal."

Some states that have partially reopened are still seeing an increase in cases, including Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, according to Times data. Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska also are seeing an increase in cases and reopened some businesses on Monday. Alaska has also reopened and is seeing a small number of increasing cases.

While the country has stabilized, it has not really improved, as shown by data collected by The Times. Case and death numbers remain stuck on a numbing, tragic plateau that is tilting only slightly downward.

At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month. On a near-daily basis, at least 25,000 new cases of the virus are being identified across the country. And even as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, other urban centers, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are reporting steady growth in cases.

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country's largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

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Many people never really took this very seriously and now states are reopening even as the number of new cases is rising.

This morning here in Southern California we have kids riding bikes while a gardener is mowing a lawn. A chihuahua got loose and a bunch of neighbors caught it. They went door-to-door to try to find the owner. Someone is working on restoring an old VW van in his driveway and someone else is sanding and painting the trim on his house. (Actually, all of the neighborhood activity is driving me crazy but that's another topic.) There's always a long line at the Starbucks drive through. This isn't a lockdown.

One of my aunts lives in France. She is allowed to leave the house to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy one day per week. Otherwise, she needs to stay at home. That means no going for walks or to a cafe for a to-go order or anything like that. Even Amazon is only allowed to deliver "food, hygiene and medical products" on threat of a $1M per day fine. That's what a real lockdown is like.

We have a lot of narcissists and whiners in this country and those people are prolonging our collective misery.

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I can tell you that here in SoCal, for the first 4 weeks there was almost no traffic on the roads. That's as close to lockdown as one can imagine here. Even a world war wouldn't have caused that kind if decrease. I was in the Phoenix area over the weekend. Far more freeway traffic there, even traffic jams, but businesses have the same protocols as here in CA. However, I received an Ikea delivery there and no masks were worn by the delivery people, and they had no issue going into homes.

I think the problem is that people aren't seeing the kind of improvements that were expected. They're seeing diminishing returns for their sacrifice, and for lack of a better word, are getting more courageous. When your job situation is getting dangerous, people tend to view threats with a different lens. My daughter's boyfriend's parents weren't even letting him out of the house for 5 weeks, but have now released him into the wild.

However, my niece in the UK is only allowed out of the house once per day per local laws.

I think the reason for optimism is that the number of cases isn't increasing right now on a nationwide basis. I've seen it posited that the reason for that is that the massive NY cluster is decreasing while the rest of the country is increasing and the NY cluster is obscuring the growth elsewhere. The growth projected by FEMA is also likely predicated on the continued growth of the rest of the country, but I haven't had any time to really dig in this morning.

Here's an article which outlines the theory.

I think this graph speaks for itself (assuming, of course, that this is accurate data):

Government report predicts coronavirus cases will surge to 200,000 a day by June 1 - The Washington Post


https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/government-report-predicts-covid-19-cases-will-reach-200000-a-day-by-june-1/2020/05/04/02fe743e-8e27-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

---

I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

First - we still don't really know what the death total is. Based on some excess death calculations, we could already be at 100k dead. It's also possible we've overcounted by some amount - perhaps 10k and that we have fewer than 60k dead at this point. Only time will tell.

Second - if we fail as a society to effectively address the spread though social distancing and other measures, it will come back and bite us. As everyone is aware, people in this country want to return to some sort of normalcy and normalcy provides opportunities for COVID to spread. We have done a pretty good job with the SIP orders in limiting the spread, but we have not defeated it. We still don't have a vaccine or effective treatments.

We are 1/3 of our way to 250k dead from this virus and I don't think it's possible to say that we are more than 1/3 of the way through the pandemic in this country. It will depend on what we do from here on out.

Birx said pretty clearly today that we aren't out of the woods yet and that 250k still assumes we are doing some social distancing.

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You are doing exactly what I suggested - moving the goal posts. It is a 100% certainty that - EVENTUALLY - total deaths will reach 250k. A cure is not on the horizon and covid is with us for the foreseeable future - just like the flu and other chronic illnesses. The relevant period for all the models was through August 2020 - that was the time period upon which all policy and predictions was based including SIC. You're picking a different timeline of 10 months to disingenuously fit your narrative. Again, the purported justification for extreme SIC policies was to flatten the curve over the next few months - not indefinitely.

Even with a good vaccine and some pretty good treatments (tamiflu), we still lose 30-80,000 people a year to flu. That is the cost of dong business - we accept it for flu and will need to accept some level of death/illness for COVID too.

On your second point, you're constructing a strawman. Literally no one is suggesting that we eliminate social distancing or other measures. We will not defeat COVID - we will contain it. And just like many other societal risks, we cannot (at this point) eliminate the virus. Inevitably, by restarting the economy more people will be infected than continued SIC. That is the price of having a functional society.

bearister said:

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Government report predicts coronavirus cases will surge to 200,000 a day by June 1 - The Washington Post


https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/government-report-predicts-covid-19-cases-will-reach-200000-a-day-by-june-1/2020/05/04/02fe743e-8e27-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

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The article is based on a draft - literally a rough draft - that was disavowed. So there is no government report predicting this. For all we know, the report had significant errors.

""The White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disavowed the report, although the slides carry the CDC's logo. The creator of the model said the numbers are unfinished projections shown to the CDC as a work in progress.

We have no idea - and the article does not discuss - what assumptions are in the draft model. We also don't know what they mean by "cases." I suspect they mean positive tests and, if so, that is to be expected as testing increases. Given the prior absence of testing, new positive tests is a largely irrelevant metric since there's no baseline.

So many chicken littles here who can't wait to report the latest doomsday articles without any critical thinking, nuance, or explanation. Its almost like the media and some people on this board are beholden to the panic and narrative they created.

dimitrig said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

---

I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

---

Quoting myself to update a prior post after reading an article in the NYT this morning. According to the NYT, FEMA (which, for those who don't know, is an agency run by Trump) is projecting a rise in cases and deaths peaking at ~3k daily deaths by June 1. This would definitely call into question whether we may actually exceed 250k by August and in any event is quite troubling. If you look at the death projections in the report itself, you can see there is a broad range so hopefully we come in quite low. Nonetheless, it certainly seems worth noting.

Quote:

---

The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

"There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow," the C.D.C. warned.
The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation right back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system grew overloaded.

See the internal report.

"While mitigation didn't fail, I think it's fair to say that it didn't work as well as we expected," Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump's former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. "We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we're just not seeing that."

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago. But his new estimate still underestimates what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May much less in the months that follow. It follows a pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease.

"We're going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people," he said in a virtual town hall on Fox News. "That's a horrible thing. We shouldn't lose one person over this."

Mr. Gottlieb said Americans "may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal."

Some states that have partially reopened are still seeing an increase in cases, including Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, according to Times data. Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska also are seeing an increase in cases and reopened some businesses on Monday. Alaska has also reopened and is seeing a small number of increasing cases.

While the country has stabilized, it has not really improved, as shown by data collected by The Times. Case and death numbers remain stuck on a numbing, tragic plateau that is tilting only slightly downward.

At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month. On a near-daily basis, at least 25,000 new cases of the virus are being identified across the country. And even as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, other urban centers, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are reporting steady growth in cases.

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country's largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

---

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Many people never really took this very seriously and now states are reopening even as the number of new cases is rising.

This morning here in Southern California we have kids riding bikes while a gardener is mowing a lawn. A chihuahua got loose and a bunch of neighbors caught it. They went door-to-door to try to find the owner. Someone is working on restoring an old VW van in his driveway and someone else is sanding and painting the trim on his house. (Actually, all of the neighborhood activity is driving me crazy but that's another topic.) There's always a long line at the Starbucks drive through. This isn't a lockdown.

One of my aunts lives in France. She is allowed to leave the house to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy one day per week. Otherwise, she needs to stay at home. That means no going for walks or to a cafe for a to-go order or anything like that. Even Amazon is only allowed to deliver "food, hygiene and medical products" on threat of a $1M per day fine. That's what a real lockdown is like.

We have a lot of narcissists and whiners in this country and those people are prolonging our collective misery.

---

I don't know about the chihuahua adventure, but do you really believe that this virus is going to be spread by people working outside on house and car projects? Same with the kids riding bikes, as long as they can be trusted not to touch each other. I mean, even Newsom has started allowing outdoor construction, as of today.

Seems like there's stuff to be legitimately concerned about, but this isn't it.

Or were you just making a point about what constitutes a lockdown?

BearGoggles said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

---

I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

First - we still don't really know what the death total is. Based on some excess death calculations, we could already be at 100k dead. It's also possible we've overcounted by some amount - perhaps 10k and that we have fewer than 60k dead at this point. Only time will tell.

Second - if we fail as a society to effectively address the spread though social distancing and other measures, it will come back and bite us. As everyone is aware, people in this country want to return to some sort of normalcy and normalcy provides opportunities for COVID to spread. We have done a pretty good job with the SIP orders in limiting the spread, but we have not defeated it. We still don't have a vaccine or effective treatments.

We are 1/3 of our way to 250k dead from this virus and I don't think it's possible to say that we are more than 1/3 of the way through the pandemic in this country. It will depend on what we do from here on out.

Birx said pretty clearly today that we aren't out of the woods yet and that 250k still assumes we are doing some social distancing.

---

You are doing exactly what I suggested - moving the goal posts. It is a 100% certainty that - EVENTUALLY - total deaths will reach 250k. A cure is not on the horizon and covid is with us for the foreseeable future - just like the flu and other chronic illnesses. The relevant period for all the models was through August 2020 - that was the time period upon which all policy and predictions was based including SIC. You're picking a different timeline of 10 months to disingenuously fit your narrative. Again, the purported justification for extreme SIC policies was to flatten the curve over the next few months - not indefinitely.

Even with a good vaccine and some pretty good treatments (tamiflu), we still lose 30-80,000 people a year to flu. That is the cost of dong business - we accept it for flu and will need to accept some level of death/illness for COVID too.

On your second point, you're constructing a strawman. Literally no one is suggesting that we eliminate social distancing or other measures. We will not defeat COVID - we will contain it. And just like many other societal risks, we cannot (at this point) eliminate the virus. Inevitably, by restarting the economy more people will be infected than continued SIC. That is the price of having a functional society.

---

We're all working with uncertainty. The models (really just IHME) pegged 8/4 for reasons that I don't recall. You and many others talk about annual flu-related deaths, but 8/4 is only 5 months into this pandemic (only a handful had died by March 1 and only one was known at that time) so I was suggesting we should be looking at a full year.

The model our government most frequently cites literally doubled the projected death total overnight and yet you seem to think the death totals are on the decline.

You talk about the cost of doing business as if businesses can possibly quantify that cost. The business I work with is having a helluva time doing so and we've spoken to and looked at a lot of other businesses who are similarly having trouble doing so. The business community relies on stability and predictability in order to make plans and investments of capital and operating funds. If you think that can be done in this environment of incredible uncertainty as a "cost of doing business" then I guess I would hope the businesses you advise are giving federal, state and local government some guidance because they certainly don't have that much certainty.

We simply don't have enough information at this point as to what the cost is of relaxing shelter in place, either to our economy or to our citizen's health. You say that we will contain COVID after restarting our economy but you don't know that we will or that we can really restart our economy when we haven't contained COVID to date.

Until someone proves Dr. Hendrik Streeck is a hack, he is my designated go to expert. If I was in a panic or not critically thinking, I would not have chosen him so f@uck you very much.

Can we all stop with Sweden. They are running an experiment, one that may have little relevance for us. Until we know how immunity is developed and for how long it lasts it's an experiment not a model. Better them- their old people are no doubt healthier and their medical infrastructure better.

Looking Back on Locking Down

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-lockdown-world-f3a2bad2-9479-44ae-b213-d2f2687950ec.html

Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

---

I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

First - we still don't really know what the death total is. Based on some excess death calculations, we could already be at 100k dead. It's also possible we've overcounted by some amount - perhaps 10k and that we have fewer than 60k dead at this point. Only time will tell.

Second - if we fail as a society to effectively address the spread though social distancing and other measures, it will come back and bite us. As everyone is aware, people in this country want to return to some sort of normalcy and normalcy provides opportunities for COVID to spread. We have done a pretty good job with the SIP orders in limiting the spread, but we have not defeated it. We still don't have a vaccine or effective treatments.

We are 1/3 of our way to 250k dead from this virus and I don't think it's possible to say that we are more than 1/3 of the way through the pandemic in this country. It will depend on what we do from here on out.

Birx said pretty clearly today that we aren't out of the woods yet and that 250k still assumes we are doing some social distancing.

---

You are doing exactly what I suggested - moving the goal posts. It is a 100% certainty that - EVENTUALLY - total deaths will reach 250k. A cure is not on the horizon and covid is with us for the foreseeable future - just like the flu and other chronic illnesses. The relevant period for all the models was through August 2020 - that was the time period upon which all policy and predictions was based including SIC. You're picking a different timeline of 10 months to disingenuously fit your narrative. Again, the purported justification for extreme SIC policies was to flatten the curve over the next few months - not indefinitely.

Even with a good vaccine and some pretty good treatments (tamiflu), we still lose 30-80,000 people a year to flu. That is the cost of dong business - we accept it for flu and will need to accept some level of death/illness for COVID too.

On your second point, you're constructing a strawman. Literally no one is suggesting that we eliminate social distancing or other measures. We will not defeat COVID - we will contain it. And just like many other societal risks, we cannot (at this point) eliminate the virus. Inevitably, by restarting the economy more people will be infected than continued SIC. That is the price of having a functional society.

---

We're all working with uncertainty. The models (really just IHME) pegged 8/4 for reasons that I don't recall. You and many others talk about annual flu-related deaths, but 8/4 is only 5 months into this pandemic (only a handful had died by March 1 and only one was known at that time) so I was suggesting we should be looking at a full year.

The model our government most frequently cites literally doubled the projected death total overnight and yet you seem to think the death totals are on the decline.

You talk about the cost of doing business as if businesses can possibly quantify that cost. The business I work with is having a helluva time doing so and we've spoken to and looked at a lot of other businesses who are similarly having trouble doing so. The business community relies on stability and predictability in order to make plans and investments of capital and operating funds. If you think that can be done in this environment of incredible uncertainty as a "cost of doing business" then I guess I would hope the businesses you advise are giving federal, state and local government some guidance because they certainly don't have that much certainty.

We simply don't have enough information at this point as to what the cost is of relaxing shelter in place, either to our economy or to our citizen's health. You say that we will contain COVID after restarting our economy but you don't know that we will or that we can really restart our economy when we haven't contained COVID to date.

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You really are willing to go to great lengths to avoid conceding a factual point (that the models suck as I pointed out) and then digress into a bunch of different points.

You are correct - there is tremendous uncertainty. Your word salad about business uncertainty is irrelevant. Absent a government mandated shutdown order, businesses will make decision about how they want to operate in the current "uncertain" environment. If there was no SIP order, virtually all business will want to open in some respect - though if they don't they can shut down.

We don't know the exact cost of ending shelter in place - just like we don't know the exact cost of continuing it. We know that in either case, there are costs. All policy is informed by a "best guess" projection on at least some issues and costs/benefits. But to put your head in the sand and pretend that because we don't know the cost to relaxing SIP we should continue the SIP is absurd. There are costs no matter what. Massive costs if we continue SIP.

All we know is: (i) the deaths will continue no matter what we do - just like all other illnesses for which there's no cure or vaccine; and (ii) the virus is FAR more widespread and less deadly than originally thought. This is the new normal - there will be continued covid (probably with seasonal surge) and the corresponding need to test, distance, wear masks, wash our hands, not shake hands, and have vulnerable people (old and ill) shelter in place or at least take heightened precautions. The sooner we all accept that the better - we need to stop overreacting to every speculative report, stop letting the media and politicians with an agenda manipulate/panic us, and stop pretending that we can SIP until covid is no longer a risk or less "uncertain."

Please feel free to name one other pandemic when the US imposed such drastic measures for such a long period of time? It is unprecedented and we don't do that for any other type of societal risk.

Anarchistbear said:

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Can we all stop with Sweden. They are running an experiment, one that may have little relevance for us. Until we know how immunity is developed and for how long it lasts it's an experiment not a model. Better them- their old people are no doubt healthier and their medical infrastructure better.

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Is what we're doing less of an experiment?

Interesting article here regarding the "R" number in Sweden. As the article points out, the conclusions are unclear because the data set is limited. But interesting nonetheless.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-tames-its-r-number-without-lockdown

BearGoggles said:

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Please feel free to name one other pandemic when the US imposed such drastic measures for such a long period of time? It is unprecedented and we don't do that for any other type of societal risk.

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What's your point? Please feel free to name one other pandemic in US history that killed 100k Americans in 90 days. We are living in largely unprecedented times and we have no functional leadership.

We are a few months into a world-wide pandemic and what we've learned so far is that countries that shelter in place effectively can contain the virus and those that don't, fail. It appears we are rushing to join the "don't" category and just hoping for the best.

Everyone wants the same thing: a return to normalcy in a world where we can manage the virus without mass casualties and disruption. What we disagree on is the path. Other countries have charted paths, we've just chosen not to do so.

What the anti-caution crowd is suggesting is not guaranteed to lead to a successful return of a functioning economy. The risk of opening too soon is essentially to waste the time we bought through shelter in place and to prolong the economic devastation. We still don't have a comprehensive testing plan in place nor do we have the support of the american public.

Let me put this in more concrete terms, Disneyland may be able to survive closing for a summer but it will not be able to survive being twenty percent full for 3 years. Many restaurants cannot survive with patrons 6 feet apart - the economic model doesn't support it. I have friends who own restaurants and they have a minimum volume they need to be profitable. The same is true for ski resorts and many many other consumer facing businesses. Ask WIAF how his tenants will do in a world in which their revenue is cut in half for years because of the path people like you are advocating.

What many believe is that by opening too soon you are prolonging the badness. We received almost no benefit from closing the economy for 6 weeks - it's like stopping chemotherapy half way through treatment. I hope you and the rest of the anti-caution crowd is right and that we've somehow done enough even though all of the publicly available data points otherwise, but if not we are pretty much guaranteeing a terrible economic recovery and far worse health outcomes. I fear that 250k dead will look like a rosy scenario.

Big C said:

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dimitrig said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

---

I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

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Quoting myself to update a prior post after reading an article in the NYT this morning. According to the NYT, FEMA (which, for those who don't know, is an agency run by Trump) is projecting a rise in cases and deaths peaking at ~3k daily deaths by June 1. This would definitely call into question whether we may actually exceed 250k by August and in any event is quite troubling. If you look at the death projections in the report itself, you can see there is a broad range so hopefully we come in quite low. Nonetheless, it certainly seems worth noting.

Quote:

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The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

"There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow," the C.D.C. warned.
The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation right back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system grew overloaded.

See the internal report.

"While mitigation didn't fail, I think it's fair to say that it didn't work as well as we expected," Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump's former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. "We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we're just not seeing that."

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago. But his new estimate still underestimates what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May much less in the months that follow. It follows a pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease.

"We're going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people," he said in a virtual town hall on Fox News. "That's a horrible thing. We shouldn't lose one person over this."

Mr. Gottlieb said Americans "may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal."

Some states that have partially reopened are still seeing an increase in cases, including Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, according to Times data. Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska also are seeing an increase in cases and reopened some businesses on Monday. Alaska has also reopened and is seeing a small number of increasing cases.

While the country has stabilized, it has not really improved, as shown by data collected by The Times. Case and death numbers remain stuck on a numbing, tragic plateau that is tilting only slightly downward.

At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month. On a near-daily basis, at least 25,000 new cases of the virus are being identified across the country. And even as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, other urban centers, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are reporting steady growth in cases.

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country's largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

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Many people never really took this very seriously and now states are reopening even as the number of new cases is rising.

This morning here in Southern California we have kids riding bikes while a gardener is mowing a lawn. A chihuahua got loose and a bunch of neighbors caught it. They went door-to-door to try to find the owner. Someone is working on restoring an old VW van in his driveway and someone else is sanding and painting the trim on his house. (Actually, all of the neighborhood activity is driving me crazy but that's another topic.) There's always a long line at the Starbucks drive through. This isn't a lockdown.

One of my aunts lives in France. She is allowed to leave the house to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy one day per week. Otherwise, she needs to stay at home. That means no going for walks or to a cafe for a to-go order or anything like that. Even Amazon is only allowed to deliver "food, hygiene and medical products" on threat of a $1M per day fine. That's what a real lockdown is like.

We have a lot of narcissists and whiners in this country and those people are prolonging our collective misery.

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I don't know about the chihuahua adventure, but do you really believe that this virus is going to be spread by people working on outside house and car projects? Same with the kids riding bikes, as long as they can be trusted not to touch each other. I mean, even Newsom has started allowing outdoor construction, as of today.

Seems like there's stuff to be legitimately concerned about, but this isn't it.

Or were you just making a point about what constitutes a lockdown?

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Mostly the latter. People are screaming bloody murder because they can't sunbathe. In China if someone in your apartment building tests positive everyone in the building has to stay inside for 2 weeks. We are a nation of whining children. I think part of that is because of the inconsistent messaging from our leaders. The country really needed to adopt a unified response. This is a stupid time to let every state do as it wishes but what else do you expect with the leadership we have?

BearGoggles said:

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Anarchistbear said:

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Can we all stop with Sweden. They are running an experiment, one that may have little relevance for us. Until we know how immunity is developed and for how long it lasts it's an experiment not a model. Better them- their old people are no doubt healthier and their medical infrastructure better.

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Is what we're doing less of an experiment?

Interesting article here regarding the "R" number in Sweden. As the article points out, the conclusions are unclear because the data set is limited. But interesting nonetheless.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-tames-its-r-number-without-lockdown

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The Reff for most countries in Europe and Asia is now below 1. That's what happens when you reduce transmission by death and people recovering ( plus reducing contact.). I'm not sure Sweden has done any better or worse- their deaths are higher than their Scandinavian peers.

Of course this is all a point in time, the virus is still out there- a Reff of less than 1 means people still catch it, new clusters can still develop and it's likely there will be other waves. Plus the immunity question is just that.

Anarchistbear said:

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BearGoggles said:

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Anarchistbear said:

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Can we all stop with Sweden. They are running an experiment, one that may have little relevance for us. Until we know how immunity is developed and for how long it lasts it's an experiment not a model. Better them- their old people are no doubt healthier and their medical infrastructure better.

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Is what we're doing less of an experiment?

Interesting article here regarding the "R" number in Sweden. As the article points out, the conclusions are unclear because the data set is limited. But interesting nonetheless.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-tames-its-r-number-without-lockdown

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The Reff for most countries in Europe and Asia is now below 1. That's what happens when you reduce transmission by death and people recovering ( plus reducing contact.). I'm not sure Sweden has done any better or worse- their deaths are higher than their Scandinavian peers- but as we've seen different countries are hit very differently

Of course this is all a point in time, the virus is still out there- a Reff of less than 1 means people still catch it, new clusters can still develop and it's likely there will be other waves. Plus the immunity question is just that.

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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They have an extremely robust and widespread testing system, so they are able to isolate and quarantine new cases quickly.

kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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Yes. Lots of people know. It's been repeated over and over here and in the media. You choose to ignore the reasons why because they expose the sham and clusterfudge that is this administration's response to the pandemic AND your full-throated support of it and criticism of "lefties and libs" who expect better.

So, in short, STFU.

I'll take " Who has a functioning government?" for a $100.00, Alex."

kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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Because they are a nation of pipe toting, blow torching disciplined mother f'ers instead of a nation of wimps governed at the national level by F Troop.

Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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The models were projecting total deaths through early August (I believe 8/4/20). There is very little chance the US deaths reach 250,000 by that date. Even if you project deaths at the highest weekly amount (10-12,000 per week from a few weeks back), we wont reach that level. And, as you know, the current death rate is less than 10,000 per week and seemingly on the decline (for now).

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I'm just going to address this one point. Of course I agree that we won't reach 250,000 deaths in the next 13 weeks, because that would require us to average 2k per day over that period. But I don't think we are a slam dunk to remain below that over the next say 10 months for a number of reasons.

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SIP was only meant to flatten the curve, not change the total underneath it. There is some variance here, but that's not SIP's purpose. It is disingenuous to say that SIP "saves lives" in that sense. We are merely flattening out the same number of total deaths.

And there's a reason you didn't address his other points.

kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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They soooooo want to justify SIP and will discredit anything that explores that possibility. What's their motive and end-goal here?

whaat?? sorry (not sorry) don't hear you anymore GB.

There are studies indicating men are more susceptible to Covid because of their testicles. It stands to reason that certain men with special testicles are more resilient to covid.

Mortgage interest rates are historically low so I called my mortgage broker at Wells Fargo (not the cheapest but I have a long and satisfactory history with them) to inquire about a cash out refinance because the house needs a new roof so why not finance it at 3% while lowering the rate on my outstanding mortgage?

He said that as of Friday last week they have stopped cash out refis, HELOCs, and 2nd mortgages entirely. Entirely. Doesn't matter your credit score, the loan-to-value, or anything else. They are not underwriting them.

I told him that other lenders are still writing them and he said that he hates to lose my business but if I want to take advantage of the rates I better find one that it still lending and do it fast, because others will probably follow suit.

Tangentially related, but a good friend of mine has a credit card with a well known credit union at a very low interest rate. Her line of work keeps her unemployed sometimes so she has a large balance, but she ALWAYS pays on time and has had the line of credit for at least 20 years. Sometimes she has really had to scrimp to come up with the minimum payments but she made it a priority because that line of credit is literally her lifeline when she is out of work and has an emergency like a car repair. She had come into some extra money recently so had actually paid a decent amount of the balance down. They closed her line of credit. They said they had examined "several factors" which led them to believe she was no longer a worthwhile credit risk. Mind you, she was not late, had never been late, and was not even using her full line of credit.

Banks and other lenders seems to be forecasting some bad juju going forward to want to treat longtime customers like this. It looks like a credit crunch is looming.

dimitrig said:

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Mortgage interest rates are historically low so I called my mortgage broker at Wells Fargo (not the cheapest but I have a long and satisfactory history with them) to inquire about a cash out refinance because the house needs a new roof so why not finance it at 3% while lowering the rate on my outstanding mortgage?

He said that as of Friday last week they have stopped cash out refis, HELOCs, and 2nd mortgages entirely. Entirely. Doesn't matter your credit score, the loan-to-value, or anything else. They are not underwriting them.

I told him that other lenders are still writing them and he said that he hates to lose my business but if I want to take advantage of the rates I better find one that it still lending and do it fast, because others will probably follow suit.

Tangentially related, but a good friend of mine has a credit card with a well known credit union at a very low interest rate. Her line of work keeps her unemployed sometimes so she has a large balance, but she ALWAYS pays on time and has had the line of credit for at least 20 years. Sometimes she has really had to scrimp to come up with the minimum payments but she made it a priority because that line of credit is literally her lifeline when she is out of work and has an emergency like a car repair. She had come into some extra money recently so had actually paid a decent amount of the balance down. They closed her line of credit. They said they had examined "several factors" which led them to believe she was no longer a worthwhile credit risk. Mind you, she was not late, had never been late, and was not even using her full line of credit.

Banks and other lenders seems to be forecasting some bad juju going forward to want to treat longtime customers like this. It looks like a credit crunch is looming.

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This the sensible move that could possibly prevent a huge crash in the future.

The sensible prediction is values with not increase for a while and unemployment will be high for a sustained period of time. Housing bulls I know are still saying if inventory stays low, values won't plummet. But if there is widespread panic and inventory increases, all of a sudden comps get lower and lower.

It's better to restrict credit now before values plummet that lend like crazy today and see a significant number of people in 1-2 years underwater, leading to foreclosures and a crash that can't be avoided and when of course there will be next to no credit available.

Restricting credit to customers who have had high balances is smart too. Employment is unstable and unpredictable right now.

GBear4Life said:

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This the sensible move that could possibly prevent a huge crash in the future.

The sensible prediction is values with not increase for a while and unemployment will be high for a sustained period of time. Housing bulls I know are still saying if inventory stays low, values won't plummet. But if there is widespread panic and inventory increases, all of a sudden comps get lower and lower.

It's better to restrict credit now before values plummet that lend like crazy today and see a significant number of people in 1-2 years underwater, leading to foreclosures and a crash that can't be avoided and when of course there will be next to no credit available.

Restricting credit to customers who have had high balances is smart too. Employment is unstable and unpredictable right now.

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Not debating whether it is sensible or not, but just thought people should know credit seems to be tightening. Lots of self-employed people in particular rely on such lines of credit to get by.

kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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It is no secret. They responded fast. They wear masks. They take other precautions, like infrared cameras to identify people with fevers. Mainly they test like crazy. and they have hired thousands of people to do contact tracing plus implemented technology on mobile phones to do contact tracing.

Despite what lower IQ, politically motivated people may claim, Democrats do not want shelter in place. The whole point of shelter in place was that we were not prepared for this like Asian countries like South Korea were. Shelter in place was to flatten the curve so hospitals were not overwhelmed and to give our governments time to get to where South Korea is. Had we been prepared like South Korea, shelter in place would never have been necessary. One could argue that if our governments weren't going to use the time bought by Shelter in place to undergo massive efforts to be able to do what countries like South Korea have done, there was no point to ever shelter in place. What Democrats have an issue with is not that shelter in place is being lifted. It is that precious few measures have been implemented in the interim so it basically seems like governments are opening with no new measures to fight the spread of the disease.

The economy will not recover with 2000 people a day dying. Thinking that we can just "reopen" to a normal economy is magical thinking. But it has become clear that most of our leaders are basically throwing up their hands and hoping for a vaccine and treatment and doing basically nothing in the meantime but hoping the virus doesn't hit their community.

OaktownBear said:

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kelly09 said:

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Does anybody know why South Korea has been so successful? I believe their death rate is about 5 per million.

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It is no secret. They responded fast. They wear masks. They take other precautions, like infrared cameras to identify people with fevers. Mainly they test like crazy. and they have hired thousands of people to do contact tracing plus implemented technology on mobile phones to do contact tracing.

Despite what lower IQ, politically motivated people may claim, Democrats do not want shelter in place. The whole point of shelter in place was that we were not prepared for this like Asian countries like South Korea were. Shelter in place was to flatten the curve so hospitals were not overwhelmed and to give our governments time to get to where South Korea is. Had we been prepared like South Korea, shelter in place would never have been necessary. One could argue that if our governments weren't going to use the time bought by Shelter in place to undergo massive efforts to be able to do what countries like South Korea have done, there was no point to ever shelter in place. What Democrats have an issue with is not that shelter in place is being lifted. It is that precious few measures have been implemented in the interim so it basically seems like governments are opening with no new measures to fight the spread of the disease.

The economy will not recover with 2000 people a day dying. Thinking that we can just "reopen" to a normal economy is magical thinking. But it has become clear that most of our leaders are basically throwing up their hands and hoping for a vaccine and treatment and doing basically nothing in the meantime but hoping the virus doesn't hit their community.

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Once again, I find myself agreeing with Oak. And the need to embellish. Big government types really don't want businesses closed and the tax base degrading. The hard, cold reality is that absent a bail out, expect huge cuts in government sectors, including to bring this home too many of you, cuts at UC. Just as an example, the City of Los Angeles last week laid off a substantial potion off its work force and is requiring the remaining workers to take at least a 10% pay cut, including union employees. Some of the friction you see with local governments, who are spending due to COVID and now may be refusing to enforce Newsom's orders, is that local governments know property values will plummet once foreclosures are permitted and commercial landlords file Prop 9 reassessments, and sales tax proceeds already are down dramatically. They want things open to lessen the blow. The State is way too reliant on personal income tax proceeds (a subject for another day) and with record unemployment and many small businesses not coming back, will have a huge deficit. But the State can simply steal remaining property taxes away from many locals under AB 8 during emergencies.

I truly expected to see some phased in reopening, and people to be wearing masks, limits on number of people, spacing, and taking other precautions. I think some politicians are trying that (even in Utah they require this though they never really went into full lock down mode), but if there is no will to enforce locally, is there really a policy? At least in one case, Newsom, the unwillingness to address issues with those impacted, has meant a loss in credibility and being ignored in certain areas. In Orange County, many restaurants just simply opened for Cinco de Mayo, with lines out the door, people were at the beach, groups of kids were together with surf boards or skate boards, etc. Several counties in gold county simply just opened everything up. It is as stated in Oak's post, they just think everything can just magically open w/o consequences.

What it may take is personal action (how Republican?) where people simply say I'm not going into your hair cut place unless you are wearing a mask, swabbing down surfaces, social distancing, wearing gloves, etc. And you are not coming into my office unless we talk from a distance, you have a mask, I know you have not been sick, etc. Or yelling at the 20 somethings sitting together at Urth Cafe drinking coffees and looking cool (I have no lawn to say get off of), and yes, me yelling at them achieves nothing. But I did mention to an employee that all those "kids" hanging around means a whole bunch of us are not coming to his restaurant any time soon. Overkill? Maybe not until the virus runs its course in summer. But if people adjust their conduct to demand safety measures, those selling good and services will adopt. At least I hope they will.

Ask for the vaccine, people don't seem to get the process of developing, testing and then supplying to a nation a vaccine is very time consuming. And you actually have to come-up with an actual vaccine. That is not even close to a given.

It is convenient he provides no support for his claims that the testing labs are empty.

Who is Alex Berenson and what special expertise does he have?

golden sloth said:

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It is convenient he provides no support for his claims that the testing labs are empty.

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I can tell you that the drive by testing at Redondo Beach (at the mall) is empty. It was getting used, but now it is just a bunch of lonely people waiting for someone with an appointment or even a drive by to test.

Labs may be a different.

wifeisafurd said:

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golden sloth said:

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It is convenient he provides no support for his claims that the testing labs are empty.

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I can tell you that the drive by testing at Redondo Beach (at the mall) is empty. It was getting used, but now it is just a bunch of lonely people waiting for someone with an appointment or even a drive by to test.

Labs may be a different.

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California set a new record for confirmed new cases yesterday, so people are getting tested somewhere.