Edit: Source added.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/03/devi...
You'll be in a situation where people will die by contagion of other people who isn't even aware they are infected. You might infect your loved ones.
If you don't lock down now, it will be bad.
I've also been getting some too scarily close fitting done (not sharing that, it'd be irresponsible, this is not my job and I'm nowhere close to being an epidemiologist). I think the number of confirmed cases in Spain is going to grow appallingly this week and morale is going to be hit hard. Tiny in comparison of what we'd get if we did nothing about it, though. I also think (and hope) it'll start getting much better after that if we're effectively quenching contagion. I hope the authorities share their models with the public in order to give them a fuller picture. That might help psychologically.
At any rate, you don't have to wait for anything, you can start implementing social distancing and careful personal hygiene practices right now.
The US already moving that way in baby steps but things will certainly get there. That it isn't there already is already bad but I can't see this taking more than a few more days.
That's kind of problematic. The population in New York City is much denser than in Las Vegas and the number of infected much higher, consequently you might need a lockdown in NYC while in suburban Las Vegas everyone can just retreat into their McMansion on Cobblestone Court Road and watch Foxnews for two weeks.
As a politician you can angle for votes by mocking the healthcare system in Lombardy, one of the best in the world, because your local hospital won't be hit quite as hard, while the healthcare personnel on the frontlines risks infection with coronavirus. The free-rider problem in politics in unsolved, it seems.
Sheriff David Clarke, who has nearly a million followers on Twitter just said this a few hours ago and got thousands of retweets and favorites:
> It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM. First sports, then schools and finally commercial businesses. Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.
> GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW! If government doesn’t stop this foolishness...STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/1239324440934133760
These people are psychotic and should be expelled from polite society.
That is not an opinion much less an extreme one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/14/older-ame...
Do you believe the US is special in this regard?
Stupid has no party.
You may say stupid has no party, but the hallmark of stupid is trying to pretend reality doesn't exist so that it fits whatever you said (sharpie'ing out the exponential growth curves won't cut it this time), instead of admitting you were wrong and changing as the facts require.
"We are not saying you shouldn’t go to restaurants, but we certainly don’t want any restaurants with more than 250 people, we have ordered that. If you are in a restaurant, try not to be on top of other people, increase the social distancing, social separation."
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/487666-nunes-urges-americ...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-a-great-time-to-go-out...
Highly ironic, but not really, because they're getting the government they voted for.
Furthermore, it's densely populated cities which are the most likely to suffer casualties, and cities tend to vote more Democratic. On the other hand, Florida (a key battleground state) has a lot of older people and tends to lean Republican, as do older people on the whole.
Trump also doesn't seem to have the most inspiring Democratic opponent in the form of Biden. On the other hand Trump has himself been abysmally unpopular.
Something else to consider is that all the Presidential candidates and the President himself are old enough to be in the high risk category for succumbing to this illness, so it's quite possible that one or more of them won't even make it to November, which would throw the election in to chaos.
On the balance, both parties have their work cut out for them if they want to win in November. It could go either way.
Or, to put it another way, somebody 60 and under who catches it has about a 0.06% chance of dying, while somebody over 60 has about a 1.94% chance of dying.
Of course, this is before considering the effects of overloaded hospitals, which would be likely to skew those numbers, as younger people would have a better chance of surviving without proper medical care than older people.
Here's Wuhan's data: https://i.ibb.co/983SC13/covplot.png
This is not a particularly useful thing to say. Incumbents rarely lose anyway - it's only happened 3 times since WW2. Additionally, you have incumbents like Johnson who was so unpopular that he lost his parties' primary contest.
I don't think this is a "rally behind the flag" moment, especially because the President isn't invoking the language of national identity to get people to respond to the crisis. That could change, but it won't be super effective at this point.
Honestly it does seem to have a lot of blatantly manufactured steps added on top of a normal health situation. Australia has implemented a 50k fine for people who break curfew.
When did 1984 become reality for the public? This is not the stiff upper lip, we don't give our lifestyle away to foreign threats, classic western attitude. This is blatant politicking for a police state off the back of dead people. Nobody wants to live like this and sometimes you have to choose for yourself.
Italy has closed all stores other than grocery and drug stores. All non-essential travel is banned. There's a short list of valid essentials, like taking care of aging parents; there are roadblocks, they'll make you fill out a form stating your purpose, it's a crime to lie about it, and they do sometimes check.
In China, every place you go you get your temperature taken. Go in a building, get on a bus, they take your temperature. Show a fever, they take you to a dedicated fever center, where they check you for flu and bacterial infection. Come up clear on those, you're waiting four hours for a covid-19 test. Come up positive, you're there for the duration. You don't go home to your family because they've found 80% of transmissions are in family clusters.
Because the individual makes the wrong call for the whole.
Saying the individual makes the wrong call for the whole is remarkably stupid. The West is built on correct decisions for the whole by individuals.
Mindless politics.
Social distancing is therefore vital when patients keep coming out of nowhere. If there's a group of people they could easily spread the virus before they even know. If people don't listen, it may have to be enforced for public safety. It's the approach China, Singapore, and South Korea have done and succeeded in various levels.
But it's not just about you. It's about the elderly, the sick, the weak around you. Even if you end up fine after getting the disease, you're going to transmit it to other people, directly or indirectly, who may end up dying because of you. That's what R0 is about.
So yeah, a lock down will suck for you, but I hope it makes you feel better to know that it will help save someone else's life.
There are about 35k car crash deaths in the US each year [0].
I’ve seen estimates for total infection rate all over the map. Conservatively (?) if 30% of the US population is eventually infected and the fatality rate is 1%, that’s 1 million people, and basically two orders of magnitude larger for a comparable (?) time period. If we don’t do more than we currently are to limit transmission, these figures don’t seem that implausible.
Auto deaths are still a huge problem, but we can take more targeted action like improving transit coverage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...
Italy has 3,333 deaths from car accidents per year. Currently 0.04% of Italy has confirmed covid-19. They have 1809 deaths from it.
* Only stores open are grocery stores, pharmacies and some other essentials.
* No going out except to go to work or go food shopping, or a brief walk in your neighborhood, on your own.
* No weddings, funerals, church.
* No travel outside your town, except for work.
* Work from home if you can.
* Some companies, like Ferrari, are simply shutting down for a bit - they're not a key element in anyone's supply chain.
My mom and dad are 73 years old and I don't give a damn about someone's tin-foil-hattery about "fighting the war on viruses 20 years from now", if I can keep them from dying. Go read some first-person accounts from people living in Italy, not just the ones about the roadblocks and forms you have to fill out, but also the ones from people who couldn't even say goodbye to their loved ones who died or the ones from HCWs about the collapse of their hospitals.
All of us who are pissed off about the lockdowns should hold on to that anger and express it fully after we have to stop worrying about our parents and grandparents being left for dead.
Reasonable precautions? Of course. Going nuts and disrupting everyone's lives and businesses like that? I'd rather not.
1. Go nuts and lock everything down, Wuhan-style. 2. Be really competent at testing people, tracking everyone they've come into contact with over the previous ~2 weeks, test them too, and recurse. South Korea/Singapore-style. 3. Accept that ~60% of your population will get the virus and take the ~million deaths.
Obviously 2 is the best choice to take, but in the absence of competent government, you will inevitably get overreaching government because reasonable precautions taken by mediocre government DOES NOT WORK!
You left out a fourth option:
4. People exercise common sense and take precautions on their own initiative to minimize their risk.
You don't have to wait for the government to tell you what to do.
Yes, this was the oddest thing I noticed while shopping for necessaries. Every single place I went to was totally cleaned out of toilet paper. Other paper products were depleted but not completely out, but TP--nada. I don't get it.
At least in the US, I think it's too early to tell what the outcome of that option is.
We are not solving this through cleverness anymore, if it was ever on the table.
There are parents at my kids' schools rolling their eyes and planning playdates. The local ski hill closed and people are complaining falsely "it's less lethal than the flu". There are people filling bars all over the country.
It doesn't take all that many of these people to flood the hospital ICUs - which already run pretty full in normal times - well beyond capacity.
This is exacerbated by the political angle: once a huge, well-funded and entrenched propaganda system picked this up, it became inevitable that there’d be a lot of people who will take inordinate amounts of personal risk because they think doing so is somehow sticking it to liberals. The latest NBC poll showed a stark partisan divide on even basic personal safety measures:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/sixty-percen...
I like choosing lock-down to reduce no of wild cases to a small number followed by option 2. I believe that is what they are planning in Wuhan and China. They'll lift off the lock down gradually but will continue with aggressive monitoring/testing and tracing. This will bring back the economy while still keeping the risk of epidemic.
this implies 0.5% fatality rate. That's about an order of magnitude off.
Look at South Korea. Do you see a 5% CFR there? Of course not.
Every other nation would rather not too but, as soon as every single hospital collapses due to the sheer volume of cases (it's really that bad)... oh, you'd all rather yep, just like we did. It doesn't look like the US is going the South Korean way.
And when I say "the hospital collapses" I really mean it cannot even take care of other emergencies. There are not enough ICU beds nor ventilators. Period. Normal operation is mostly halted too (I know this from first hand).
The worst is I know you won't listen, just like nobody else listened until it was too late. Quote me on that.
"If a quarantinable disease is suspected or identified, CDC may issue a federal isolation or quarantine order.
Public health authorities at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels may sometimes seek help from police or other law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers are authorized to help enforce federal quarantine orders.
Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment."
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
The commerce clause doesn't override the second amendment (or any other part of the bill of rights), there are only cases where a particular amendment was found not to apply.
What you're looking for is emergency powers, but they're not actually in the constitution. In practice what has happened is that Presidents do whatever thing in an emergency and then get sued over it after, and typically lose, but by then it's years later and whatever temporary measures they ordered in the middle of the emergency are long since discontinued.
It's kind of a kludge, but it also kind of works, because it keeps the emergency measures from extending longer than it takes for the courts to catch up to it, and also gives the victims of rights violations the ability to get compensated after the fact for being done wrong in the midst of a big mess.
There are also strong restrictions on the scope of quarantine orders that would be allowed to circumvent due process in emergencies.
What a free society could do is massively incentivize and subsidize new drug research, while lowering the barrier to entry for human trials. Right now this is only being done manually in the US with a few drugs and major players, such as Remdesivir, instead of allowing a systematic approach for non-major players to skip the line, too (e.g. university research labs).
I hate to say it but this whole thread gives me the vibe of democracy dying to thunderous applause.
Personally, I believe very strongly in personal freedom, so I would absolutely rather have a million deaths than go into a state-mandated nationwide total lockdown.
Anyway, the truth is it’s not an “either or” scenario.
Hopefully there’s a sane middleground that we converge on :)
Stay at home as often as you can, reasonably. You don't need a curfew, yet!
People should stay home unless they're getting groceries/medicine or going to work in a hospital or other piece of critical infrastructure.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22218495
But there was not widespread interest here at the time.
Edit: Who likes drones anyway?
And it's nice to think that everyone will just stay home and quarantine until this blows over, but I'd be surprised if a majority of people actually did that. At some point the "lockdown" strategy produces diminishing returns.
What could work is some kind of UBI which people could then use to pay their bills.
We can't have a modern society where your choices are work and spread a deadly virus likely overwhelming hospital facilities or not work, fail to pay rent, become homeless and starve.
[1] https://www.mom.gov.sg/covid-19/frequently-asked-questions
The financial hit will be very real, but there can and will be mitigations down the line. What do you think are the chances that city, state and federal governments are all just going to let people starve in their homes? For example, the California state government has promised to keep paying teachers and school staff despite school closures. Not to mention companies, organizations and individuals. Many tech companies are continuing to pay maintenance staff despite office closures, for example.
As for the devastation that it prevents - well, many unnecessary deaths. The government might be able to pay you a portion of lost wages, give you a loan or reduce your taxes this year, but it can't bring back your loved ones if they die from the coronavirus.
> I'd be surprised if a majority of people actually did that
There are always going to be idiots and morons. But I think if cases and deaths skyrocket over the next few weeks, as is currently expected, the number of people flouting the quarantine is going to go down pretty dramatically. Not only will people become more aware of the risk, but more businesses will be closed so there's less incentive (e.g. all bars and clubs closed in several states, Starbucks is now takeout-only in some places, attractions like Disneyland closing down etc).
Personally I am in deep water because Airbnb is allowing 100% refunds without any compensation for hosts!
2) Don't make it optional. If ever there was a use for the national guard, this is it. Put police and soldiers in the street. No one goes out unless it's for food or healthcare, on penalty of heavy fines and imprisonment.
Again, this isn't optional, and we will do this. Look at Italy. It's just a question of whether we do it now or in a few weeks, when our hesitation will have cost tens of thousands of lives and even more economic ruin.
People continue analogizing without acknowledging that confounding factor.
I want no part of an armed national guard enforcing a nationwide quarantine. And I’m guessing the 70 and 80 year olds who are most affected would rather roll the dice than watch our country descend into such an autocratic look.
Autocracy is a bogeyman just like Socialism. Sometimes you have to temporarily rally as humanity for the good of the whole and give up your individual “freedom.”
I think you’re being incredibly cavalier with other people’s personal freedoms if you’re advocating China-style totalitarian lockdown in response.
No, I don’t think having the national guard enforce a national quarantine is a good thing.
Lots of people seem to have this delusion that we will eradicate this virus, or that we cam hold off until the vaccine is ready. That’s a fantasy. The entire world will be exposed, and thus our job is just to slow the rate enough that we do not run out of medical capacity. That’s all.
—-
Seriously tho, it shocks me that people are acting that this is an extinction event. It’s not. My layperson napkin math makes me predict around 1-3 million dead in America by the time this has run its course. That’s a terrible figure but it’s very different from losing 100 million.
Again, I support social distancing and flattening the curve, but I oppose all forms of compulsion in this matter. People seem to really be losing their sanity here...
I will note that the phrase “some freedom” is slippery. Really we’re talking about ceding the fundamental freedom of movement.
If you're free to move around while sick, doesn't that in essence limit my freedom to go to the same place? If you're infected you are in fact a danger to those around you.
* quarantine laws and powers have existed for thousands of years in all forms of governments, and much more draconian steps have been taken in this country in the past -- which were obviously reversed after the crisis.
* speaking of, these laws & powers have been on the books for quite some time -- not exactly in a sub-basement with a burnt-out lightbulb and a sign reading "Beware the Leopard" :-)
* the majority of people are OK with lawful extreme public health measures in the face of an extreme pandemic; that number increases as more people get sick and die from the disease.
* most people also uniformly agree that we don't have time right now to re-litigate the hundred years of legal analysis, court decisions, and public health science that led to modern public health law just for the benefit of the latest generation of libertarians.
* most importantly -- flippantly shrugging off the death of a million (or THREE million) of your countrymen as an argument against closing restaurants is going to make most people think you're a sociopath. Unless you're in an impermeable bunker with a literal lifetime supply of every need and no human relationships, the rapid death of millions of Americans and the attendant culture and economic shocks should upset you, or at least make you anxious about the future.
Stay healthy, and good luck with those back-of-the-napkin epidemiology and civil rights analyses!
> flippantly shrugging off the death of a million (or THREE million) of your countrymen as an argument against closing restaurants
The above is a blatant mischaracterization of my position. You really did show that straw effigy who was boss though :P
OK, but how will people without savings or adequate credit pay for food and healthcare?
Also, how can people stay at home if they're homeless?
Will governments step in with free food, and rules against eviction?
Re 2) There is no way the police has the manpower to enforce a shutdown like that, even with help from the national guard. There would be riots. And where does food even come from in this hypathetical situation?
There is a chance your friends may lose their jobs in any case given how this is being managed. It'll be interesting to see how people treat each other in the coming weeks when people suspect they've not been social distancing. People are just going to get more entrenched in their politics.
> where does food even come from in this hypathetical [sic] situation?
Where does the food come from that the National Guard are delivering in New Rochelle? [1] A point that isn't well made in many of these threads is that these shutdowns are targeted. The behavior of people in the neighboring areas will also be impacted without being part of the shutdown, and these only need to go on for a limited period.
I am curious how long the National Guard, etc. have remained engaged after other deployments. Do they need reauthorization after a certain timeframe? How does their engagement prevent better alternatives getting engaged? Someone has to have researched that, but I've never seen it brought up in discussions like this one.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/inside-new-r...
2) Disagree. Again, look at Europe right now.
Sounds like you need to register a vote for one Mr Bernard Sanders. It's not too late.
1 million infections is the point where we run out of ICU beds (ICU rate of 10%, US has 100k ICU beds), and that's the point where the death rate jumps from 0.2% to 3%+
Do you have a citation for that? We haven't seen a death rate of 0.2% in any population.
SK (which has the broadest base of testing), Diamond Princess (which offered a unique case study, where we could test every person), and epidemiological estimates are all closer to 1%.
Where are you getting the 0.2% number from?
CFR of 3% - 5% for unprepared areas is not unreasonable. 0.6% is closer to the South Korean experience. https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/covid-19
SK's CFR[1] is currently 0.9% (8,162 cases; 75 deaths).
I haven't seen any source (or reputable estimate) that indicates a 0.2% CFR. So I'm asking for a citation or reference for where that number came from.
[1] data from John's Hopkin's tracker: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
CFR is the fatality rate for diagnosed people and it's gonna swing wildly depending on how many people are tested and diagnosed. And considering how this virus affects young and healthy people, there's good reason to believe that a lot of people get infected and never seek out medical assistance and never get diagnosed.
Even the best numbers we have are often skewed and misleading - as an example, we have a lot of good data from the cruise ship quarantined in Japan, but cruise passengers do not match the demographics of the general population.
All researchers, doctors should see this video & cited papers to evaluate potential.
"but a broad range of 0.25%–3.0% probably should be considered."
The parent said the death rate (without care) jumps from 0.2% to 3% (with care) as if both numbers were known.
An article saying that the death rate (with care) could range anywhere from 0.25%-3.0% seems...like not a solid foundation to make the claim the parent commenter made.
The federal government can do so, once the President has declared a state of emergency (which, he has).
I think people are also conflating what the Federal government can do, which is very little, and what local governments can do, which is considerably more. Broadly speaking, the Federal government operates in an "advise and support" role, the legal authority resides with the States and localities. This is an example of where State sovereignty becomes very obvious. But even with the States exercising their broader powers, they are still restricted from violating fundamental Constitutional rights like freedom of speech, assembly, travel, etc.
Until then, the President of the United States can make an order, and if it is enforced by local authorities, it's defacto legal for the duration.
This happens in many other contexts, there is no reason to believe it wouldn't happen here.
> or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The interstate commerce clause is fundamentally restricted in scope such that it does not violate fundamental individual rights i.e. you cannot use the commerce clause to restrict free speech.
Freedom of travel -- what we are talking about with a "lockdown" -- is a thoroughly adjudicated fundamental right per the Supreme Court. Using the commerce clause to restrict travel in various ways has already been rejected by the Supreme Court, repeatedly.
But wait, haven't there been quarantines during past epidemics?
California's governor just ordered all bars, nightclubs, etc, to close, and restricted restaurant to 50% capacity.
[1] https://sf.eater.com/2020/3/15/21180845/california-coronavir...
"Newsom said the social isolation and bar directives were not an order, but that he’s confident they will be followed.
“We recognize that social isolation for millions of Californians is anxiety inducing ... but we need to lean in and own this moment,” he said."
In SF, it is an order for larger bars and clubs. Also for Santa Clara county.[1] Under California law, the county health officer has primary authority in this: "The county health officer may take any preventive measure that may be necessary to protect and preserve the public health from any public health hazard during any "state of war emergency," "state of emergency," or "local emergency," as defined by Section 8558 of the Government Code, within his or her jurisdiction." The Governor's direction tells county health officials to issue appropriate orders, which they are doing.[2]
[1] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-co... [2] https://www.smgov.net/departments/oem/sems/proclamations-and...
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/fiun99/oc_...
For the US, Italy's numbers are like looking 11 days into the future.
This entire thing has become a meme and it’s mainly wrong. It’s a serious issue but these kinds of data analysis are just super wrong. They are missing all context.
Italy is an awful model. Look to cities like NYC or London for realistic worst case scenarios as they’ve had infections just as long. And they are the worst case as most places don’t have anywhere near the foreign travel or social proximity.
It will get much worse than now (it’s not even bad yet almost everywhere in terms of ICU PATIENTS). But this ridiculous idea that the Italian situation is going to replicate in most places is bad analysis.
For someone like that, I'm hoping this flips a switch and they get a glimpse of a troubling and increasingly dangerous future that's only a week or two away.
I'm reminded of the Daniel Kahnemann quote:
an algorithm that is constructed on the back of an envelope is often good enough to compete with an optimally weighted formula, and certainly good enough to outdo expert judgment
Unfortunately, the expert judgment in some cases may be from a decision-maker who takes their cue on current affairs from sports radio or, god help us, the President of the United States himself.
No one cares if the theoretically more accurate number really should be 20K cases and not 50K cases in 10 days. The point is we need to act NOW rather than 10 days later. As Dr. Fauci said, it's probably better for us to be overreacting at this point than under-reacting. [1]
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/487639-fauci-...
Herd immunity is a very real thing, and considering most young people can get affected with rather mild symptoms, perhaps a steady infection rate to build up immunity among the population is way better than hoarding and locking down.
In NYC, they just decided to shut down schools but they're providing childcare to essential personnel still, as well as meals and online education for school aged children.
If enough people do that, I think we'll see US case growth start to taper off in a week or so.
We probably have about 200k sick people today. Few need help.
The median incubation period is about 5 or 6 days, not 10.
> We probably have about 200k sick people today.
That's the big question that nobody really knows the answer to. If the actual number is indeed that high, then you're probably right that we won't see the rate taper off in a week. I personally don't think it's that high, because most of the cases identified to date are in particular clusters. If the virus had really been spreading within the population for weeks undetected, which it would have to be for numbers like 200k total to be possible, cases popping up now would not be clustered so much. At least, that's my read--but I don't think anybody really has a good handle on the actual spread of the virus at this point.
I am not comfortable with the tourniquets being applied to our open society.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/fj2bmm/president_...