WWTBAM Bored

This took somebody a lot of work. How many deaths are acceptable risk, now? Just wondering if you have a number in mind. And how many cases?

Hugs.

COVID-19 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Gn/pubhtml by school

mrkelley23 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:23 pm

This took somebody a lot of work. How many deaths are acceptable risk, now? Just wondering if you have a number in mind. And how many cases?

Hugs.

COVID-19 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Gn/pubhtml by school

We had another version of this argument with Flock shortly before he left the Bored. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the reason that children appear "immune" to the disease is because they have been effectively quarantined since then. It's also become increasingly obvious that the supposed choice between public health and the economy is no choice. Remember all those rosy predictions from Trump:

Donald Trump 5/7/20 wrote:I think you’re going to have a tremendous transition, which is a third-quarter thing,

Larry Kudow 5/26/20 wrote:The third quarter of this year could be the fastest-growing quarter in U.S. history

Donald Trump 7/2/20 wrote:Today’s announcement [about jobs] proves that our economy is roaring back. It’s coming back extremely strong. We have some areas where we’re putting out the flames or the fires, and that’s working out well.

Donald Trump 7/3/20 wrote:You are going to have a fantastic third quarter. It'll be a third quarter the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, in my opinion. And the good thing is the numbers will be coming out just prior to the election. So the people will be able to see those numbers.

Well, it's halfway through that third quarter, and I don't see any signs of the economy "roaring" back. In fact, we've got a lot of businesses that weathered the first shutdown only to close for good this time around. Yet, instead of emulating Europe, which took the virus seriously and shut down until it was relatively safe to come out, we keep opening things up left and right.

Georgia is in the midst of one of the worst outbreaks of the disease, and our governor refuses to order masks anywhere, citing "individual freedom." Our two largest movie chains, Regal and AMC, will be reopening next weekend, and the first big release, Tenet, is coming Labor Day weekend. I love the movies and used to go see 3-4 films a week. Mrs. SSS and I haven't been to a theater in person since March and we won't be going for a while still. We haven't dined in at a restaurant since March either.

Now all the doctors warn about a potentially bad "second spike" in the fall, while we're still suffering through the first one. And there's increasing evidence that the antibody levels in recovered patients goes down after a while, especially in those with mild cases, so the concept of herd immunity may well be a myth. But too many of us continue to listen to Trump, Flock, and Spock and the rest of us suffer for it month after month. And they have the nerve to blame the Democrats for the fact that movie theaters have been closed and there may not be college football. The reason I won't be seeing Tenet Labor Day weekend at the local Regal theater isn't to stick it to Trump or our Governor Brian Kemp. It's because I want to keep Mrs. SSS healthy.

If you followed any of my posts from a few months ago-I was well aware (and worried) about the pandemic long before most here. At that time, most of the usual suspects were following the shiny bouncy ball of impeachment.

However, at that time, the death rate was still not known and I thought it might be much worse than it has turned to be.

As time has passed however, the death rate has turned out to be much less than 1% with most of the deaths concentrated on the elderly and those with severe comorbidities (obesity and whatever)

Quarantining the young and slamming our economy into the wall is not and was not warranted given the demographic profile of those who died.

Furthermore, (in Minnesota at least) the way we treated the elderly in nursing homes was almost criminal-we basically locked them into their rooms and dis-allowed family contact.

As one lady said the other day-in the nursing homes, the residents do everything as a family, they eat together, they watch TV together, they play games together etc etc and we took that away from them and hastened cognitive decline.

In our homes, we could still do things together as a family-but we took that away in the nursing homes. They should have been protected to the extent possible by the workers being careful about bringing stuff in from the outside.

One good thing, at least we have shown that we need far less teachers and professors than we currently have. If we are going to do a lot of learning online, one teacher can handle more students than in person.

Spock wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:00 am

One good thing, at least we have shown that we need far less teachers and professors than we currently have. If we are going to do a lot of learning online, one teacher can handle more students than in person.

That's a sentence that could only be written by someone who has never watched a spouse stay up into the wee hours grading homework. --Bob

Spock wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:54 am

As time has passed however, the death rate has turned out to be much less than 1% with most of the deaths concentrated on the elderly and those with severe comorbidities (obesity and whatever) Quarantining the young and slamming our economy into the wall is not and was not warranted given the demographic profile of those who died.

And again you are reducing the health "cost" of the coronavirus to those who die. That's like saying that the cost of the Iraq War was limited to those who died and ignoring the thousands of others who will have to go through the rest of their lives without various body parts. And then you throw in that red herring about comorbidities, ignoring the fact that half the population of this country has comorbidities and most live a long time with those comorbidiites.

You might read the post in another thread from Krox's daughter's blog about what has happened to her as a result of the coronavirus. According to you, she shouldn't be counted as a statistic (and she is young and healthy by the way). But she'll probably have to live with some permanent impairment the rest of her life. Or you might read the article I posted from a former coronavirus denier who talked his family into hosting a get-together. He spent a month hooked up to a ventilator and, when he got out, found out that one of his relatives at the party had died. He was young and healthy too, and I guess he doesn't count as a statistic either.

And that's not to mention that we still don't know what the long term effects of this virus will be. How many people will have heart or kidney or respiratory problems a year or two down the line (we've already seen some cases)? How many will have a life expectancy that's a decade or two shorter as a result?

But what you really overlook is the fact that we could have stopped the virus much much better if we hadn't listened to you and FLock and Trump. Europe and the whole rest of the modernized world did it and their economies are in a lot better shape than ours and they are going back to somewhat normal lives. New Zealand went three months without reporting a single new case. We have ignored the medical evidence and listened to Trump and whatever sources you listen to and we've got the worst of both worlds: a major disease problem that's getting worse and a bad economy that's not really getting much better.